Andrew Stickel

The question

“Is there a way to target family-owned businesses on Facebook as opposed to startups?”

My answer

If I’m trying to find established businesses rather than people that are just starting their own business, I would use Facebook targeting. There’s a great way that helps you narrow audiences on Facebook. 

Targeting interests

First, I would start by targeting interests that entrepreneurs would have. And there are so many different ones. For example, there are magazines, like Forbes, and different celebrities like Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Robbins. 

And then you can use a modifier that basically says “narrow audience further.” And one thing you could do because typically, an established business will probably make more money. It depends on whether Facebook is allowing this. It goes in and out. But sometimes you can target people that are in a certain income bracket. 

Another way to target established businesses

Now, another and probably the better way to do this is to create content that startups would not be interested in, but established businesses would be interested in. I would create a video, maybe a 5-minute video, and it would explain a solution to a problem that a startup would not have, but an established business would have.

This video could be something about how to revive dead email lists, or how to get sales from clients that have not bought anything from you for 2 years. Pick something that has some sort of prerequisite.

Create a custom audience

Now go into the Facebook audience, into business.facebook.com, and create a custom audience. Your custom audience is going to be comprised of people that watched 25% or more of that video.

Then run that video as an ad. And, as I said, it’s 5 minutes long. So, if you’re running an ad targeting entrepreneurs, and you’re keeping track of the people that watch more than 25% of the video that startups would not care about, but established businesses would care about, you’re starting to filter these people out.

Build your list

And as you’re doing that, you’re basically building your list of people that are running established businesses while it’s eliminating a lot of the startup traffic. Then, when you want to run your other ads, just target that custom audience. This means simply targeting people that watch 25% of that video. 

Create a lookalike audience

And once you have around 1000 people in your audience, you can create a lookalike audience and that’ll work even better. Technically, you can start by creating a lookalike audience with 100 people in your audience, but it works better with 1000 or more. 

This strategy works really well. You can do it by basically targeting all entrepreneurs and then making sure that your content filters out the start-ups. So that’s 2 different ways to do it. Both work very well.

What I do

I do this type of strategy all the time when I’m trying to target personal injury attorneys. I’ll put up a video, “Here’s How Personal Injury Attorneys Can Get Car Accident Leads.” If you’re a divorce attorney, you’re probably not going to watch that video. So, I can basically just say anyone that watches 25% of that video is probably a personal injury attorney, and I’m going to target them with personal injury type content. 

The question

“I’m looking for a service that can call leads and connect them with my firm immediately after they fill out a lead form online. Does a service like this exist?”

My answer

I think there are a few of them. We personally use LeadOwl for my clients. We run Facebook ads for a lot of different law firms, and we run ads for car accidents, for bike accidents, for divorce, and… We’re doing so many different ones. We’ve also been generating really cheap cases for PI.

LeadOwl

Here’s what we do: we run Facebook lead ads directly to a service called LeadOwl. That’s LeadOwl — it’s Lead and then Owl, like the bird. It goes on your phone and it ties directly into Facebook ads. 

So the second a lead comes in, you get a notification on your phone that says you’ve got a lead. And then what you can do is you can touch it on your phone, and then it’ll open up the lead and with the touch of a button, you can hit “Call” or “Text Message” or “Email.”

The importance of speed

Now, the reason this is important is that if you’re running Facebook ads and you’re running direct lead ads, it’s absolutely essential that you get back to them as quickly as possible. 

Because you have to remember, when somebody’s on Facebook, they’re scrolling through, they see your post, they watch your video, and they read your ad. They click “Contact me,” they fill out the form, and then they move back on with their life.

So you’ve got to make sure that you get in touch with them in 5 minutes. You got to get in touch with them fast. So what’s cool about LeadOwl is that you can install the software on an unlimited number of phones. That way, you can have it on your phone, your partner’s phone, your secretary’s phone, your assistant’s phone, and you can have it on whoever’s phone. So whenever a lead comes in, you can make sure that somebody answers it.

The benefits of canned text messages

Or you can text them and start a text conversation if you want. And what’s cool is that you can save canned text messages. If you’re in court, you’re obviously not going to pick up the phone, but you can pull out your phone and you can hit “Text Message” real quick. 

You can use that canned text message, so you don’t actually have to type out a text message, and it will still contact that lead. It’s super important that you get in touch with leads really fast.

More about LeadOwl

I don’t know what other services are out there. The one that we use is LeadOwl. All of our clients are on it. Everyone seems to like it. I don’t have any affiliation with it. But I do know the guy that runs it. Dan Henry is the one that owns it. 

If there’s any other lead service out there, let me know. Leave it in the comments below. I’d love to check them out because LeadOwl is all I’ve ever seen, and it works great.

The question

“I’m a personal injury attorney. How do I choose the right name for my Facebook group to attract clients?”

My answer

First of all, you have to figure out what type of clients are you looking for. I recommend that you niche down. This is something I talk about in my course. It’s the Social Media Marketing for Lawyers Master Class, and I go really into detail on this. 

I also have free training. It’s an hour long and talks about this exact strategy. It actually gives a lot of examples of personal injury scenarios, and you can check that out at lawyermasterclass.com.

Niche down

You need to niche down and you need to figure out who you’re actually going after. You don’t want to be seen as a jack of all trades (and master of none). So if you’re going for car accidents, maybe go for parents of teen drivers or Uber drivers. Or you can go for construction workers or motorcycle riders.

How to choose the name of the group

Don’t make the actual name of the group about injury. Instead, focus on the type of group that people can identify with. So, for example, I wouldn’t name a group for parents of teen drivers “Teen Drivers — Injured Teen Drivers.” Nobody wants to think about their son or daughter getting injured in a car accident. 

But, you could name it something like, “Parents of Teen Drivers in California,” or “Motorcycle Riders United,” or “Bikers United,” or “Uber Drivers of San Francisco,” or “New York City Construction Workers.” 

Name it something where people can self-identify. So when they look at the title of that group, they can say, “Oh, I’m one of those, and I can join –” and they’ll join that group.

Another approach

Here’s another thing I’ve been doing lately. We have a client in Tennessee or somebody who’s in my coaching program. His group is just about general legal questions and he’s using some of the strategies from my course. He’s also getting a lot of clients from that group. 

A crime watch group example

But here’s what I’ve wanted to do for a long time: I’m in Lakeland, Florida. There’s a group called 863 Crime Watch, that’s what it is. 863 is the area code in Lakeland.

And what’s crazy is that it started out with the intention of being a neighborhood watch group. But now, anytime anything happens in Lakeland, people immediately go into this group and start posting about it. 

For example, “Accident on XYZ highway,” or “Stay off this road,” or, “Why are the police helicopters circling over this park?” And it’s crazy because anytime we want to know what’s going on, it’s always posted in this group.

Why this is a great concept for attorneys

So, what’s cool about that is that if you’re an attorney or a criminal defense attorney, you could start a group like this and basically make it like a neighborhood watch thing. First of all, you’re the authority talking about all of this stuff. 

And basically, anytime anything happens, you just put in your two cents, and people will start to pay attention to you. That’s a great way to do it. 

And then, another one of my clients, he is doing the legal questions thing, and he’s having a lot of really good luck with it. 

Here’s the key

So, the idea is you don’t necessarily make it about you. Don’t make it about injuries. Name it something that people can actually self-identify with: “Parents of Teen Drivers,” “Uber Drivers,” “Immigrants in Las Vegas.” 

Now, there are some exceptions to this rule. For example, my group is called “Lawyer Marketing.” But lawyers can self-identify as lawyers, and marketing is the topic of the group. So, it still kind of falls in there, and that’s the idea.