Facebook Ads for Personal Injury Lawyers

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising costs can vary significantly. However, for lawyers, they tend to be quite expensive, even more so for personal injury ads. Because these costs are so high, search ads may not be the best choice for some personal injury law firms. Fortunately, other options may be more cost-effective.

Law firm social media is a powerful and affordable tool, particularly Facebook advertising for lawyers. The platform is ideal for engaging audiences in different marketing funnel stages.

Additionally, this type of marketing may be an alternative to PPC services for lawyers or something that can supplement search advertising campaigns. However, you'll need to create a Facebook business account for your law firm.

This article provides the information you need to do this and explains how to develop a Facebook advertising campaign that gets results. Of course, we're always available to provide additional assistance.

7 Reasons to Start Facebook Ads for Personal Injury Lawyers Campaign

Personal injury lawyers who have left Facebook out of their digital marketing strategies should reconsider that choice. By failing to use Facebook ads for lawyers or create any sort of presence, they are missing out on opportunities to generate leads and generate more revenue.

Additionally, tapping into Facebook can have competitive advantages. If your competitors aren't placing their own Facebook ads for personal injury lawyers, then you have that audience to yourself.

Facebook's Large User Base

Others may be growing faster or catching more attention, but Facebook remains the largest social media platform. More than 2 billion people use Facebook each month and spend nearly an hour per day scrolling.

Mobile users are spending almost one-quarter of their internet time on Facebook. That's double the amount of time they spend watching videos on YouTube or using Google.

That's a lot of people spending a lot of time on one platform. With personal injury Facebook ads, you can engage prospective clients, improve brand recognition, and earn new leads. You'll be able to do this while targeting a very specific audience.

Its Lower Prices

Compared to advertising on TV, it's significantly less expensive for a personal injury lawyer to advertise online. Taking things even further, a Facebook ad campaign can be even more cost-effective than using Google AdWords for your law firm. Lawyer advertising on Facebook is popular because it is flexible and gives marketers control over their daily spending.

It is possible to run an ad campaign for five dollars or less per day. Law firms can adjust what they choose to spend on-demand. This setup is something of a bonus, as Facebook ads for lawyers have an excellent return on ad spend (ROAS).

Facebook's Targeting Options

If you create a Facebook ad campaign, you will discover that you are able to target very specific audiences. Here are just a few examples of the targeting options you can choose when setting up Facebook ads for lawyers:

• Geographic targeting — target entire countries or dial in specific neighborhoods
• Interest targeting — show your Facebook ad to people with specific hobbies or activities
• Behavioral targeting — display ads to people who have engaged in certain behaviors
• Demographic targeting — job title, gender, age, or other characteristics

This setup helps to ensure that only the most relevant audience sees your Facebook ads.

It's a Good Alternative to Google Ads for Lawyers

Google ads are very effective. Unfortunately, they can be prohibitively expensive. Google search ads are displayed when your target audience uses keywords that you specify when you set up your personal injury lawyer ad campaign.

The keywords associated with personal injury law tend to have a lot of competition because they have higher search volumes. That volume drives up the prices significantly.

Conversely, Facebook is significantly less expensive. Cost-per-click rates on Facebook are often a fraction of what they are on Google. This reality makes it much more budget-friendly to run Facebook ad campaigns.

Increase Lead Generation

Personal injury attorneys rely on new leads to keep their practices running. Since this is not an area of law with significant repeat business, new client acquisition is key.

PPC search ads and personal injury SEO certainly help attract leads, but you can get closer to your lead generation goals with Facebook ads for lawyers. Additionally, thanks to Facebook's exceptional targeting features, personal injury lawyers can show their ads to the most relevant audience.

Facebook's Customization Options

In addition to providing extensive targeting options, Facebook ads for personal injury law firms have virtually limitless customization options. 

For example, you can capture email addresses from potential clients for your monthly newsletter, create custom landing pages, or simply let users request a call from you. If someone clicks on your ad, you can also send them to your page to get their contact information.

Increase Brand Recognition

Finally, Facebook ads for personal injury law firms can be used to increase brand awareness. When personal injury law firms share engaging ad content as part of Facebook ad campaigns, they attract additional fans and followers. That following multiplies if they also provide valuable content.

One thing that makes content like Facebook video ads unique is that users will click on them. With search ads, people usually click only when they are interested in making a purchase. That puts many prospects out of reach.

By building brand awareness with your ad campaign, you increase the chances of high funnel prospects contacting your law firm when they are ready to hire an attorney.

Setting Up Your Facebook Personal Injury Law Firm Page

If you create a Facebook business page, you can use it to share engaging content and interact with your audience. It's also free, and you need to have one to create a Facebook ad campaign.

The setup process is very easy. The first thing you will do is log into your personal Facebook account. Don't worry — your personal profile information will never be available to people who visit your law firm's business page. Once you have done that, navigate here.

You will see three boxes. This area is where you name your business, add your business categories, and create a short description.

Making a Page Name

You'll likely just use the name of your law firm for your business page. Before you input it, know that Facebook expects you to use correct capitalization when you name your business. The site doesn't allow all caps.

However, you are allowed to use an abbreviation or acronym. Don't use your law firm's slogan as your page name. You're also not allowed to use any variation of the word Facebook. Finally, leave off symbols or irrelevant punctuation.

Facebook will usually reject business names that are just geographic locations or non-descript words. For example, "Personal Injury Lawyer" would probably not be accepted. However, San Francisco Personal Injury Lawyer is a little better. Likewise, San Francisco would also be rejected.

The bottom line is that you want to be straightforward with this. Use your real law firm name. Don't try to be "creative." There are other ways to make your business page stand out.

Choosing a Business Category

You can select up to three categories for your business. You will choose these from a drop-down list. All you have to do is start typing in a relevant word, and you will see what your choices are.

For example, if you type the word "personal," you might see "personal injury lawyer." Choose the options that are most relevant to your law practice.

Filling in the Description

You have to add a name and choose at least one business category. The description is not required, but it's important to add this information anyway. This text is just a brief description of what your personal injury law firm does. There is a limit of 2555 characters here.

Once you have completed this text, you can click on the button to create a page. That's at the bottom of the screen. It becomes "clickable" once you have added information to the first two boxes.

Selecting Images

Your Facebook business page should include a minimum of two images — a cover photo and a profile picture. Before you finalize your cover photo, look at it on different devices. You want to make sure it looks nice on different screens.

Keep your profile picture simple and memorable. Consider using your logo, as it is readily associated with your brand.

Here are some best practice recommendations for your business page images:

• Use a PNG file for images with text or a logo
• Cover Photo — 640 x 60 on mobile and 820 x 312 on desktop
• Profile Pic — 128 x 128 on mobile and 170 x 170 on desktop

However, these recommendations are not a substitute for testing any images for appearance before you use them.

Providing Contact Information

This step is pretty straightforward. You will add the phone number, address, and email contact information for your law firm. You may include your business hours as well.

The important thing here is accuracy. You are going to have issues attracting leads if this basic information is incorrect — and such errors are also frustrating for prospective clients.

Publishing Your Facebook Page

Now you have created your Facebook business page, but that doesn't mean it is visible to other people. Next, you have to publish it. Once you have published your page, you can still make changes. You can make them by going into your page settings.

Once you have published, you can begin working on your first Facebook ad campaign.

Set Up Your Facebook Personal Injury Ad Campaign

Before you create your first ad for Facebook, you have to understand how the platform structures its campaigns. On Facebook, that includes:

• Ad set
• Campaigns
• Ad

Your Facebook ad campaign will contain your ad sets and ads. You will also choose an objective for each campaign. The ad set will have the types of ads you want to run along with your target audience.

Finally, each ad itself will contain your images, video, text, and call-to-action buttons.

One ad campaign can have multiple ad sets. This capacity allows you to test various target audiences and to see how ads perform against one another. 

When you set up an ads campaign for your personal injury law firm, there are three categories for your objectives — awareness, consideration, and conversion. You will be able to delve into more detailed options once you select your objective.

Applying Your Objectives to Your Facebook Personal Injury Ads Campaign

This step is one of the trickiest parts of the process. Often, marketing teams get this wrong. Then, they blame the platform for their ad campaign failures. It's important to start with the understanding that people don't go to Facebook to buy things. Facebook isn't Google. 

People go to Facebook to connect with friends and family, consume entertaining content, and catch up with people. You have to customize your Facebook ads to those behaviors. 

Think of your campaign objectives as the starting point for building a sales funnel. So you may create some ads to grab attention. Other ads will continue engaging. Finally, you will have a couple of ads that are made to convert.

Here is a breakdown of the Facebook campaign objectives as sales funnel stages:

Awareness

This stage aligns with the top of the sales funnel. Essentially, you need to grab attention before anything else. Doing so will help you earn traffic to your website and a wider audience for your Facebook page. A good strategy is to build ad content around your expertise and trending topics.

Imagine that a major product liability injury case has been in the news in your area. You could create an informative post on that and link to the local news story. Then, promote that post while the story is still hot.

Remember that for brand awareness, your focus should be on showing your legal expertise. For example, choose videos to use for personal injury Facebook ads that answer frequently asked questions. This step isn't the stage to be overly promotional. You simply want to create awareness and trust.

Consideration

This objective aligns more closely with mid-funnel prospects. They are interested in working with a personal injury attorney. Now, you are giving them reasons to consider you.

Here, you might create ads for a very specific audience. For example, you can offer a whitepaper to download about peoples' rights when they are injured on another person's property. Then, you can add a lead capture form to gate that content.

Remarketing is very important here, so concentrate on getting an email address.

Conversion

You've created ads that draw attention and earned some leads with others. Now, you have to create ads that are optimized for conversions. This work might include convincing people to contact your law firm directly, set an appointment for a free consultation, or hire you to handle a case for them.

Your Facebook ads should be optimized to earn as many conversions as possible. The content of your ad, images, and other elements should all be carefully composed to motivate people to contract your legal services or learn more about your practice.

Conversion is the stage to create a powerful call to action. Avoid generic button text like "click here." Instead, make things more actionable by having prospects contact you or download additional information.

Analyzing Visitor's Intent

Once you start marketing on Facebook, consider using an analytics tool to monitor traffic and behavior on your website. What you want to note is the difference in behavior between various sources such as Google Ads, organic search, and Facebook.

You will probably notice some stark differences in behavior based on that traffic source. These differences are often caused by user intent.

If someone clicks through to your page via a search ad or an organic search result, they are actively searching for something relevant to your law firm. You should probably expect lower bounce rates and higher conversions.

That isn't the case with visitors from Facebook. First, you have to consider two possibilities: they may have tapped or clicked your ad in error, or they may have landed on your website intentionally.

Obviously, the second option is best. However, even with an intentional clicking, you may not receive the same level of engagement. The visitor may not act to contact you or stay on the page for very long.

This reality all relates to how people use Facebook. They may be passing the time, scrolling, sharing memes or other content, or just playing games. Chances are that they don't need a lawyer right now.

It's important to remember these differences in intent when you are evaluating your campaigns. It would be a mistake to declare a Facebook ad campaign a failure simply because you don't see similar metrics to other types of campaigns.

So why did they click? They may have clicked because someone they know needs an attorney. They may have been considering having a PI attorney look into something for them as well, even if they weren't actively searching for attorneys.

In any case, keep that casual intent in mind when you manage your campaigns and when you analyze how effective they are. Also, remember that someone who finds one of your ads engaging now may remember your law firm later when their search intent is a bit more focused.

Selecting Your Target Audience

Selecting Your Target Audience

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The tools that Facebook provides for ad targeting are much more focused than what you will find for search ads. While search ad algorithms can match you with prospects who are looking for your services, they don't allow you to target different audience groups.

Here are some of the targeting options you will have on Facebook:

• Location: You can use this targeting for Facebook and search ads. This approach ensures that your ads are only visible to people who are local to your law firm.
• Gender: Interest in personal injury lawyers is not limited to any one gender. However, you may get a better response to some of your ad content from people who identify as one gender. In that case, you can adjust the targeting for that ad to that gender.
• Age: This is one targeting option that may be more relevant to certain categories of personal injury law than it is for others. For example, if you handle birth-related injuries, that would be a better fit for people between the age of 20 and 45. If you handle nursing home abuse, then you would target an older audience.
• Job Title: This could be helpful if you handle workplace-related injuries. Certain jobs are associated with more risk and injury. These include roofers and jobs that involve driving. You can use ad targeting to reach people who have these high-risk jobs, especially if you specialize in those industries.
• Interest: Targeting people based on interests can be lucrative for personal injury lawyers. Certain hobbies can put people at higher risk of being injured.

For example, someone who follows pages related to boating could be a good target for your ads if you specialize in marine-related injuries. When you target that interest, people who follow boating pages are more likely to see your ads.

• Behavior: This targeting shows ads to people based on their behavior. For example, you can target people who have viewed your Facebook video ads for personal injury lawyers previously. You can also target device usage, prior purchases, and other factors.
• Lookalike Audiences vs. Custom Audiences vs. Saved Audiences: You can create three types of audiences for your ads: saved, custom, and lookalike. For a saved audience, you use the targeting options that Facebook offers. For example, you can build a virtual geo-fence to build an audience of people in a certain area.

For custom audiences, you will use a Facebook pixel to retarget people who have previously engaged with your sponsored posts. These are going to be warm leads. Your ads for this audience group should focus on relationship building and nurturing.

Finally, you can build a lookalike audience. This set is the audience that most closely resembles your current clients. They will have the same demographics, interests, and behaviors.

These are cold leads but also very likely to be interested in your services. To use this audience, set your current clients as a custom audience. Facebook will pick up that audience's attributes, then share your ads with people who have similar interests.

Choosing a Type of Facebook Ads for Personal Injury Law Firms

Now that you have a solid understanding of the Facebook advertising structure, you can work on applying what you know to create ad campaigns for your own personal injury legal services.

Before you dive in, it helps to remember that you will get the best results if you are willing to try new ideas and test them out. Expect some failure, and don't give up right away.

Persistence is particularly important when you are advertising a business that isn't considered to be fun or exciting. Personal injury law falls in that category. People aren't going to seek out Facebook content on this topic for entertainment. They have to need an attorney. You will have to find creative ways to keep your audience engaged.

Keep this in mind as you review some different options you have when you advertise your personal injury law office on Facebook.

Photo Ads

You can use single-image ads on Facebook. These ads work well for most placements. Image ads work very well for building brand awareness, increasing your reach, and earning engagement.

The most effective images will be real pictures of your staff, your law firm, and yourself. This approach creates a sense of authenticity and increases trust. If you want more than one image, then you can use an image carousel, slideshow, or collection ad.

Carousel Ads

You can use a carousel ad to tell a compelling story one image at a time. Each such ad can use between two and ten pictures to share with your audience. Carousel ads can also have videos — users simply swipe through.

One way to use a carousel ad is to show various specialties within personal injury. For example, you can create a carousel to showcase expertise in different legal categories, such as workplace accidents and vehicle-related injuries.

Slideshow Ads

You can use a slideshow if you want to share several images and add motion that makes them more engaging — you can even use stills from an existing video to create a slideshow. A slideshow doesn't take up too many resources. It can be a good option for an audience that may not have a strong internet connection.

Video Ads

Video is the most engaging content format on Facebook. This reality applies to advertising as well. If you are trying to reach mobile users, lawyer video marketing is even more effective. Video ads have a wide reach, earn plenty of engagement, and have strong conversion numbers.

The most effective videos are short and packed with good information. You have less than two seconds to make a positive impression.

Don't forget about accessibility. Use captions so that more people can consume your content. Videos with captions also have better viewing metrics.

Instant Experience Ads

These were once called Canvas Ads. An instant experience ad is specifically created for mobile. It loads much faster than a mobile web page. These ads also use the Facebook pixel for retargeting. If you use instant experience, there is a form template that you can include for gathering important lead capture information.

Boost a post

One of the most effective advertising methods is to simply share posts. If you have a Facebook business page, you can pay to boost your posts. This approach simply involves paying Facebook to have your ad shown to a wider audience.

Boosting is a great way to advertise your injury law firm on Facebook. People are there to casually consume content in their feeds that seems interesting to them. By paying to promote your blog content, you can share useful content with a relevant audience. Additionally, the comments section can be a source of shares and mentions to engage an even wider audience.

When you simply share a post, it reaches very few of your followers. Worse, that number has gone down significantly in the last decade. With post boosting, you can reach a similar audience to one that you would with a paid advertising campaign.

Advertisement via Email

This approach is often used by lawyers who go out on their own after law school graduation. However, you can use email lead magnets as a tool to reach out to people before they need a personal injury lawyer and to implement some quality control on your website traffic.

Since most social media users will not be interested in contacting you when they first see your ad, you need a way to get them to be available for contact later. One way to do that is to offer something like a guide to nursing home abuse and the rights of the elderly in exchange for their name and email address.

Retarget Options

Sometimes, you are better off narrowing your focus. Rather than investing money in an ad that will be shown to several thousands of people, dial things in a bit. Retarget those who have previously visited your website. You can track people from any source, including AdWords or organic search.

Using this method, your ads may cost as little as a dollar each day. Of course, your budget will determine exactly how many people your retargeting ads reach. This approach will help you to generate leads from previous site visitors who may need a reminder to engage with your firm again.

Provide Personal Injury Facebook Ad Copy

You will need to write copy for nearly every Facebook ad type. Each ad may have different areas where you will need to add text. Additionally, there are different specifications for different ad types. These can impact character limits. Know these as you are writing your ad copy.

Remember that the most important aspect of writing advertising copy is to share something valuable to your target audience. Then, create a call to action that is easy to understand.

The call to action is so important on Facebook ads that there is a specific text box just for this purpose. Remember that you may customize your CTA button so that it stands out and ensures you are able to reach your goals.

Think of Your Personal Injury Ad Budget

You have to set a budget for your Facebook ads — just like you would with Bing or Google. This amount is the total that you are willing to spend. You may set your budget for the lifetime of your Facebook ad campaign or choose a daily budget. It's easy to change your budget whenever you want. You will never exceed the budget that you have set.

The amount you pay will depend on your objective. You are only charged when a prospect takes an action that works toward your chosen objective.

Let's say that you have opted to expand your reach. In that case, you will be charged for impressions. This coverage will include anyone who simply happens to scroll by. If you choose lead generation, then you will be charged according to a pay-per-click model.

With Facebook ads, you are also required to bid — just like for search ads.

Measure Your Personal Injury Facebook Ad Results

Don't rely on your own assumptions about your Facebook ad campaigns. Instead, use real data by monitoring campaign performance. This approach will give you the insights you need to identify what needs to be optimized and what is working well.

The Facebook ads manager tool allows you to track your campaign performance. You can use filters such as dates or objectives and drill down to specific ad sets and ads.

You should pay very close attention to metrics like:

• Cost per click
• Impressions
• Cost per conversion
• Link clicks

By watching your metrics closely, you can get a feel for what is working best.

Summary: Facebook Ads for Your Personal Injury Law Firm

Facebook advertising is an excellent tool for any personal injury law firm marketing team to engage with a wider audience, increase leads, and drive website traffic. However, it's important to take a patient and strategic approach here.

Facebook and Google are starkly different from one another. It doesn't make sense to expect the same performance from ad campaigns on either platform. Instead, it's important to understand user intent and build Facebook ad campaigns around that.

Developing this understanding is definitely a complex undertaking. Fortunately, there are helpful resources available. If you need assistance, consider working with a high-performance law firm SEO agency. A skilled marketing team can assist you with creating a Facebook ad strategy that works with the goals you have set for your personal injury law firm.