Advertising with Facebook is one of the hottest trends in law firm marketing today. Less than ten percent of firms were doing any Facebook advertising whatsoever just 3 years ago (not even having a firm page!). Today, over half of lawyers have a Facebook presence and more are starting to use Facebook advertising every day. Keep reading to find out six different answers to the question “why advertise on Facebook?” that will make you think.
Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #1: Everybody's Doing It
For many lawyers, advertising with Facebook might have been a waste of money as recently as just a few years ago. The number of Facebook users has been soaring every year since the website began, and only now is it popular enough for it to become an advertising method for marketing to a wide range of demographics.
Today, it's not just college students who are using Facebook. With nearly a billion users looking at Facebook ads worldwide, Facebook advertising is now a way to reach out not only to young people, but to anyone looking to reconnect with old friends or talk to family members and colleagues.
In other words, the answer to the question “why advertise on Facebook?” has changed significantly for most law firms. Almost every forecaster sees Facebook advertising as likely to maintain its relevance for many years to come. As long as advertising with Facebook puts you in front of the biggest B2C audience in the world, you'll want to keep working with it.
Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #2: Why Facebook Beats Google AdWords
Maybe you already have a pay per click strategy on Google that seems to work. If so, you may be wondering—why advertise on Facebook instead of just continuing with business as usual on Google?
Business owners who are used to doing most of their web advertising with pay per click Google AdWords are often excited by the precision targeting abilities that Facebook advertising has. When you start advertising with Facebook, you don't need to think about what kinds of keywords your target market is looking for—all you have to know is who your target market is.
If you know, for example, that most of your clients come from your zip code and the six zip codes that surround it, you can narrow your focus so that your Facebook advertising is only displayed to people who live in those zip codes. You can also segment your advertising with Facebook by gender, age, and location.
Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #3: Your Advertising Generates Extra Buzz
When you start running direct ads with another advertising service, like Google AdWords, it's pretty unlikely that anyone is going to show their friends your ad. But with Facebook advertising, this kind of thing happens all the time. Advertising with Facebook gives you the ability to have your ads seen not only by their initial viewers, but also by the people those viewers are connected with.
If your Facebook advertising starts generating “likes” and comments, its visibility will increase substantially. After you have been advertising with Facebook for some time, you'll be able to figure out which ads work best for generating the kind of buzz that your law firm needs in this competitive economic climate.
Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #4: Mobile Advertising Results
When you do Facebook advertising today, you have more options than ever. Because mobile traffic to Facebook doesn't look at sidebar ads, you can now start advertising with Facebook directly to mobile customers with organic-looking “sponsored stories.”
Why advertise on Facebook Mobile? When you pay for a sponsored story, your advertising with Facebook will get click through rates that are more than ten times better than rates for browser ads. What's more, when you design your landing pages to be conversion friendly, you can take people from Facebook advertising to consulting over the phone in just seconds.
Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #5: Easy Results Tracking
Not all Facebook advertising works. Why advertise on Facebook if you're not keeping track of the results that you're getting? As soon as you start advertising with Facebook, you need to start testing your ads and applying what you've learned.
The great part about Facebook advertising is that Facebook has simplified results tracking and is great at showing you the information you need to know. Not only can you easily track your key performance indicators when you start advertising with Facebook, you can also ask Facebook to do a lot of the work for you.
Facebook advertising even allows you to decide what your objective is, and can automate a great deal of your bidding if you don't want to outsource but don't have the time to babysit clicks and bids all day long. While this may not be the most cost effective method of advertising with Facebook, it takes a lot of the guesswork out and lets you get back to practicing law.
Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #6: Beating Your Competition
Let's face it: most consumers only have room to “like” one or two law firms at most. That means that the best way to make sure your firm is liked better than your competitor is simple: get there first. Start advertising with Facebook sooner than your competition does, and you'll be the only game in town. If you delay your Facebook advertising campaign, your competitors will get to those potential clients first.
If your competition is already advertising with Facebook, you have a tougher road ahead of you but it's not impossible. Try to identify the weaknesses in your competitor's marketing strategy. Remember that just having a Facebook page isn't enough to really be strong marketing: is your competition doing all they can do in terms of creating new content, using polls, and asking open ended questions to fans and friends?
If not, there's still room for you to do something different. Different is what the internet notices, and you're better off trying to pick up where your competition left off than going head to head with similar marketing efforts.
