Why Paid Social Does Work for Law Firms

In the past, paid social media mar­ket­ing for law firms did not make sense. Just a few years ago, this type of mar­ket­ing was con­sid­ered a waste of mon­ey since organ­ic social media mar­ket­ing was suf­fi­cient. Sim­ply cre­at­ing social media accounts and being active on them used to be enough to reach your audi­ence, gain brand aware­ness and gen­er­ate leads.

How­ev­er, the land­scape has changed over the years, and that is no longer the case. Now, it makes sense to include some ele­ment of paid social media mar­ket­ing in your law firm’s advertising.

Exploring Advantages of Paid Social for Law Firms

The ben­e­fit of paid social media is that it allows you to present your mes­sage to peo­ple that don’t fol­low you direct­ly. Law firms that take advan­tage of paid social adver­tis­ing will notice sev­er­al key ben­e­fits. This starts with the fact that it only takes min­utes to set up your ad on LinkedIn or Face­book, so you can start see­ing a return on invest­ment (ROI) right away.

The ease of using social media ads also extends to the time­line; you can run an ad for as long or as short of a time as you want. There usu­al­ly are no min­i­mum com­mit­ments of the extreme nature you will find with TV ads, mak­ing it eas­i­er to stick to your bud­get. This also lets you stop the ad cam­paign if it is clear that it has not done any­thing for you. Each plat­form uses the pay-per-click (PPC) pay­ment mod­el. This means that your firm pays only if the user takes the action you want. Unlike con­ven­tion­al adver­tis­ing, this lets you engage with niche mar­kets at a dis­count. After a few ad cycles, you can refine your tar­get­ing to dri­ve greater results and ROI.

One of the most cru­cial fac­tors of paid social is the abil­i­ty to tar­get your audi­ence. Instead of hav­ing to dis­play your mes­sage to every­one, paid social also allows you to direct your mes­sage to a nar­row­ly defined audi­ence. While most social net­works offer the abil­i­ty to pro­mote your con­tent through paid adver­tis­ing, each plat­form has dif­fer­ent advantages.

Paid Social on Facebook

In 2018, Face­book announced that its algo­rithm would pri­or­i­tize “mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions” from friends and fam­i­ly over con­tent from brands. Thus, paid sup­port on Face­book has become cru­cial for firms look­ing to make an impact on the platform.

If your law firm is tar­get­ing con­sumers, Face­book might be the right choice to start a paid social cam­paign. Face­book has an aver­age cost per click rang­ing from about $.20 up to $2.00. With high com­pe­ti­tion, bid­ding can go much high­er, but these are the prices you’re like­ly to find in gen­er­al. Over­all, Facebook’s major plus is the abil­i­ty to laser tar­get adver­tis­ing to the con­sumer audi­ence you want to reach. On the plat­form, you can define your audi­ences based on loca­tion, demo­graph­ics (gen­der, edu­ca­tion, income, etc), inter­ests, con­nec­tions, and behav­iors. You can also tar­get your mes­sage to peo­ple who have already shown inter­est in your firm, whether they’re con­tacts from your CRM sys­tem, email lists or peo­ple who have vis­it­ed your website.

Paid Social on Instagram 

On Face­book and Insta­gram, the tar­get­ing cri­te­ria is the same. Sim­i­lar to Face­book ads, using paid social or pro­mot­ing a post will lead to more expo­sure for your firm, as well as more con­trol over who can see your post. AdE­spres­so recent­ly found that the aver­age cost per click (CPC) for Insta­gram ads in Q3 ranged between $0.70 and $0.80. 

Paid Social on LinkedIn

While LinkedIn can be a bit more expen­sive than Face­book when it comes to adver­tis­ing, it’s the num­ber one con­tender when it comes to paid social for law firms tar­get­ing cor­po­ra­tions. LinkedIn’s biggest advan­tage is the abil­i­ty to reach busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als. If your firm or com­pa­ny tar­gets busi­ness­es or pro­fes­sion­als, you’ll be able to get your mes­sages in front of the deci­sion mak­ers at com­pa­nies all over the world. You can tar­get spe­cif­ic pro­fes­sion­als based on their job titles, their com­pa­nies, senior­i­ty, indus­tries, loca­tion and sev­er­al oth­er cri­te­ria. The research con­duct­ed from our Social Law Firm Index reveals that 30% of AM Law 200 firms are using paid LinkedIn for brand aware­ness and lead gen­er­a­tion. 

Paid Social on Twitter

One clear advan­tage of using paid social on Twit­ter is that your con­tent will appear direct­ly in your tar­get audience’s news feed, whether they fol­low your firm or not. You have the abil­i­ty to dis­sem­i­nate your mes­sage to peo­ple based on their inter­ests or top­ics of con­ver­sa­tions they’re active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in.

There are mul­ti­ple types of Twit­ter ads to uti­lize, we sug­gest tri­al-and-error to estab­lish which for­mat works best for your firm but we see the most suc­cess with spon­sored con­tent. Twit­ter Ads run in an auc­tion. You can decide how much you will pay for each inter­ac­tion, such as a new fol­low­er or a click to your web­site. You can also use auto­mat­ic bid­ding, this deter­mines the best bid cost based on your bud­get and goals. 

Two con­sid­er­a­tions to make when exe­cut­ing your paid social strat­e­gy on Twitter: 

• An AdAge Sur­vey ranked five online adver­tis­ing plat­forms in terms of impor­tance by ROI. Google was the clear win­ner, fol­lowed by Face­book, and then Twitter.
• Twit­ter claims that Pro­mot­ed Trends pro­vide a 22% lift in brand con­ver­sion, 30% lift in pos­i­tive men­tions and 32% lift in retweets.

How to use Paid Social

To get the most from paid social for your law firm, work toward a few key goals. You may want to increase your brand aware­ness with some­thing like a short video. While paid social cam­paigns can be cost-effec­tive, they do require a well-thought out strat­e­gy and on-going man­age­ment to ensure the suc­cess of the pro­gram and to deliv­er a high return on invest­ment. In order to extract the val­ue out of your paid social media cam­paigns, you need to choose the prop­er tar­gets, craft smart ads and set an appro­pri­ate budget. 

Takeaway

To ensure that your firm’s social media con­tent gets the screen time it deserves and to real­ly move the nee­dle, law firms should con­sid­er paid social media strate­gies. While organ­ic pro­mo­tion of your law firm’s con­tent on social media was once enough to gain brand aware­ness and gen­er­ate leads, the sat­u­ra­tion of busi­ness­es in the dig­i­tal space has increased the need for paid social media mar­ket­ing for law firms. Paid social is spon­sored con­tent that is used to increase your firm’s pres­ence. At its core, paid social media allows you to reach peo­ple who may not fol­low your social accounts direct­ly but fall with­in your tar­get demo­graph­ic. This allows law firms to expand their content’s reach and gen­er­ate new clients. 

SOURCE: Good2bSocial