Andrew Stickel

The Question:

I want to run Facebook ads for an ebook for a child custody law firm to get emails.

My Answer:

Is there any targeting I can do aside from age, location? Okay, so correct me if I’m wrong but I think you’re trying to run Facebook ads to promote an ebook for child custody. And you’re just trying to gather email addresses and you want to know what the targeting is.

The Title of The Book

The title of the ebook has to be some really juicy topic, almost clickbait. I hate saying clickbait but it is what it is. You’re trying to get somebody to click on your stuff, so what you need to do is either write on a really good topic and your ad needs to be really good.

How to Target Your Audience

And then you need to figure out what to target. Obviously, you can target age, location, and gender. The other thing you can target on Facebook is whether they have kids. I think you can actually break it down. Do they have a newborn, do they have toddlers and do they have elementary school-age, middle school-age, high school-age, or adult children.

So you can use all those different things. But one of the things that I really like doing is creating a really, really juicy topic that will naturally attract people that are in my demographic. Then I create a custom audience, so what I’ll do is to make sure to use a Facebook pixel.

I’ll use a really good ad, a really good topic to get them on the page, and then the pixel is going to basically start building this custom audience of everyone that went to that page. And then you’ll have this custom audience that basically consists of the people that you want to attract, and then you build a look-alike audience off of that.

What I Would Do

That’s probably how I would do it. It’s always a little difficult to start, just because of the fact that you can’t select child custody issues. There was one thing that we did for a personal injury attorney that was really interesting though.

I didn’t think it was going work, but we tried it and it worked. We just used the interest ‘personal injury attorneys,’ so I wonder if Facebook is always changing. I haven’t looked for a while; I don’t know if they have any interest for divorce or family law attorneys or anything like that, but you might want to check different interests like that.

That’s probably the best way to do it. Have a really, really good blog topic that’s going to attract them and then create a Facebook custom audience with those people and then do a lookalike audience.

I saw something today that made me feel frustrated. Actually, I see this all the time and lawyers are often victims of this, so I wanted to tell you about it.

There is one of the Google guys, like a PR, he puts out a lot of information from Google, and his name is John Mueller. Somebody asked him about a Google partnership search engine optimization company, that’s a company that does search engine optimization, and that has a partnership for search engine optimization with Google.

What’s The Issue With Google “Partnerships”?

There are all these marketing companies out there that will tell you, “Oh, we’re Google certified, we’ve got all these partnerships with Google,” and it’s a lie. There is no such thing as a Google search engine optimization partner, so if any marketing company comes to you and tells you, “Oh yeah, we’ve got this partnership with Google.” They’re lying.

What It Takes To Get That “Certification”

Okay, so maybe they’re not exactly lying, but they’re misleading you. They could have a Google partnership with AdWords, but a Google partner with AdWords is a joke. All you have to do is take this 100-question test, and you can literally Google the answer to every question on the test. It’s a joke.

It’s a marketing gimmick. Do not hire someone based on the fact that they say that they have this special relationship with Google because they do not have a special relationship with Google. They’ve got a certification that everyone has. I used to have it too.

I don’t have it anymore just because it doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t even bother renewing my certification or my Google partner status, just because it’s a joke.

The Truth About Special “Relationships” With Google

If you’re talking to a search engine optimization company and they say, “We have a special relationship with Google that allows us to get better rankings,” or get better links or whatever it is, run as fast as you can the other direction. There’s no such thing.

I already knew there wasn’t, but John Mueller from Google just confirmed that there is no such partnership with Google. There’s my quick little PSA. If anyone is telling you they have a partnership with Google for search engine optimization, they’re lying.

Here’s a question I was asked: Can you recommend a tool for auto posting on social media platforms?

We use Buffer, which is pretty good. Before that, we used to use Hootsuite. I don’t know why we switched. Someone on my team suggested that we switch to Buffer from Hootsuite and we switched.

Buffer or Hootsuite

They both did the same type of thing. So if you’re going to use that and you use Hootsuite or Buffer, you’ll find that they work pretty well. Just be careful.
I think you can even schedule inside of Facebook if you want to. But I would just use Buffer or Hootsuite.

Does Google rank SSL websites higher?

What Is An SSL Website? 

I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed this before, but when you go to a website in the browser window at the top, it’s going to say, https://www.google.com. There’s a padlock to the left, and that means that the website is utilizing an SSL certificate.

This is basically a level of encryption that secures the connection and makes it so that any information transmitted through the website cannot be hacked. It protects a lot of other things as well. I don’t know all the ins and outs of exactly what else it does. But I know that it protects from vulnerabilities. It protects from hacking. It protects the website and it protects the user.

Is It a Ranking Factor?

So a couple years ago, Google started making this a ranking factor because they’re kind of valuing security. So if your website is http://www.google.com, it is not using a secure SSL certificate. The only way you can be sure it’s using it is if your URL re-directs to https.

Now, if you’re not using the secure SSL certificate, you’ll probably see an error or a warning sign in Chrome now. So if you look at the top of the browser like you’re on Facebook right now, I’m looking at the Facebook window and they are very clearly padlocked.

But if Facebook was not using an SSL certificate then there’d probably be a warning (and there would not be a padlock). I think now Chrome actually warns you when you go to websites that do not use https.

Should You Use A SSL Certificate And Https?

So, yes, absolutely,100%, make sure your website is using https. It’s very simple to do. I don’t know how to do it but I have a service team that does it for me.

Any web developer that you have or any web management company that you have should be able to do it. First of all, if they haven’t done this for you, fire them and find a new company.

How to Get An SSL Certificate?

Second of all, if you go to another company to replace the company you just fired because they didn’t have your website on an SSL certificate, then any company can do this really easily. You can do it through Cloudflare. There are several ways to do it. Again, I’m not an expert; I don’t really do it myself, but I know it’s important and I have people who do it for me.

So, yes, it is a ranking factor. It is not going to make you go from number 25 to number 1 right away. But Google has so many ranking factors. The more you can check off, the better. So if you can take care of the easy ones that you’re in control of, like the SSL certificate, there’s no reason not to do it.

It’s definitely part of the ranking algorithm. I’m not sure how big of a problem it is, but it is part of it. And they’ve come out and said that it is a part of the ranking algorithm and you should use it. Otherwise, people are going to get errors and warning messages when they go to your website.

About a month ago, I read a book called Web Copy That Sells by Maria Veloso. It’s a great book if you’re interested in marketing or sales or the psychology behind what makes people buy things and how impactful words can be.

One thing that I got from this is a cool hack that I’ve been playing around with it lately. It’s worked 100% of the time, and I think that this will work for lawyers in their consultations, especially because it’s worked for me.

The Psychology Behind Buying Things From People That You Like

Veloso is an advocate of the principle that you tend to buy things from people that you like. For example, I’m sure you’ve been approached by a friend or someone in your office who has a child selling girl scout cookies.

Typically, what happens is that they pass the order form around. Just recently, my daughter and her softball team were selling Super Bowl squares. They sold other things too, including shirts and bumper stickers and all kinds of stuff to support their softball team.

Most of the time people are not necessarily interested in buying a bumper sticker for a softball team, but they’re interested in helping out someone that they like. What happens is because somebody you like is asking you for something, you typically end up buying it, just to support them.

There’s some psychology behind that. People typically will buy things from people that they like. What you have to remember is the way that you make people like you is by the way that you make them feel. People rarely remember what you say, but they always remember how you made them feel.

How To Use This Principle To Get More Clients

One little hack that I’ve been using that has been working really well is when you first start talking to somebody, always give them a compliment. It doesn’t matter what it is. Compliment something about them, and that’s automatically going to put them in a good mood and make them like you right away.

When a consultation comes in, give them a compliment right off the bat. Then, when you go to talk to them later, they’re much more likely to hire you because you started off with a compliment.

Psychologically, people buy things from people they like, and they like people who compliment them. So, this is just a little psychological hack. Try this out for the next couple of consultations that you have. Immediately start with a compliment and let me know what your close rate is.