Dear Socially Stephanie,
First, a little about me: I am a family lawyer. I have just embarked on a content marketing campaign and have done a little blogging, and I have a small but growing social presence. So far, the results have been promising. Previously I have spent a lot of money on Google Adwords, but recently I noticed the price increasing like crazy. I don't want to give up on Google Ads, but I do want to redistribute some of my budget into social advertising. Any ideas?
Money To Burn In Boise
Dear Money To Burn,
I'm glad to hear that you're adding a little advertising to your regular plan, for some extra oomph! Unlike the old days of online marketing, today, people arrive at a business through multiple online sources. You're definitely hedging your bets in a smart way.
So now let's have a little chat about advertising. In today's online world, you have a ton of choices. But remember, when it comes to online marketing, and more specifically social media marketing, you want to swim in the same pool as your customers. That's the first step in defining where you want to advertise: who is your audience and where do they spend their time online?
As a family lawyer in Boise, a large portion of your clients may be mothers in Idaho. Right? The nice thing about social advertising is that you can get super targeted. If you know who your current customers are, you can probably make some reasonable deductions about who your future clients will be. Furthermore, since you're already engaging in a content marketing campaign, you should probably know what messaging works best, what messaging will really hook 'em and pull 'em in. Think about what type of content produces the best leads for you. Leads are what we're chasing after here. This is going to be important in deciding what, where, and how to advertise.
You've got a few options. With your audience of mothers and fathers, Facebook might be a good fit to test out some ads. Plus, you can really nail down who you want seeing the advertisement.
Do you want "separated" parents to see your ad? No problem. How about a mother who cares for her aging parents? You can do that, too. The beauty of Facebook advertising lies in the data that Facebook has on each and every one of us. Plus, you can target different ads to different audiences to promote different services. The system is customizable based on your needs. If you do go this route, make sure you set up different landing pages with lead capture forms for the different services so you can market accordingly. That's important. So really get in there and cover your bases.
If you're interested in promoting to your current network, you can also engage in a promoted post. This is a very cost effective way to boost the impressions on a certain Facebook post. Make sure you click the "share to friends of fans" button to ensure the most exposure possible. And don't forget to include a link back to your site here, because click-throughs tend to be high.
So, Money To Burn, you ready for the next part? Excellent. Here we go.
Twitter-aka, your next best bet. What I like about Twitter advertising is that you can promote specific Tweets and direct traffic to a dedicated landing page. Like Facebook, Twitter also allows you to target people based on who they follow, where they live and what they Tweet about. Your success here is going to rely on how well you know your audience. While this is a good option, a better option for lead generation would be Twitter's new Lead Generation cards. You have to be advertising a Tweet to use them, but they allow you to capture emails within Twitter. Brilliance!
Now that we know what you can do, let's quickly go over what not to waste time on. If you're a family lawyer, I'm not entirely sure that LinkedIn is going to be your breadwinner. (If you were a contracts lawyer, however, this would be a perfect fit for you.) And as a last tip, blog ads...*shrug* They're old hat. Because they aren't geo-targeted, and you can only practice law in Idaho, this is probably a waste of money.
Remember, your advertising is only as good as the people you can target. So get in there and dig deep. Your potentials are out there!
Good luck!
Socially,
Stephanie
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Illustration by Jesse Wells