Digital Marketing

Content is the only thing that matters in a digital marketing strategy. You got to have great content. Let’s say your marketing is dialed in and you’re running Facebook ads, or even Google AdWords or a website. But if your content is just talking about you, then you’re not going to have great results.

What Happens If You Create Really Good Content

If you create good content that provides value and helps people, then you will get great results. Content is my strategy. I don’t know that I’m going to market attorneys for the rest of my life.

But for the rest of my marketing career, it’s going to be about creating content and providing value. That’s what it’s going to be, there’s just no other way to do it.

How To Leave The Competition In The Dust

The nice part about it is that if you’re willing to create the content, 99% of the people out there are not willing to create the content or they’re too afraid to.

It’s really easy. Most people will just make excuses, and they won’t do it. While they’re busy making their excuses, if you’re creating content, then you’re getting the clients. That’s all that matters.

The Question:

How long should my video content be? I know you recommend five minutes or five minutes or more for Facebook but what about other videos? Is there a sweet spot for length?

My Answer:

Okay, so the five minutes video is really just for one specific strategy. Honestly, I always say videos need to be as long as they need to be effective. You don’t want a video to drag on and to very just need to be as long as they need to be to be effective. You don’t want to video to drag on and to just be rambling.

Focus On Making Your Videos Effective

You want to basically make sure that your videos are actually effective. So, I wouldn’t worry about a specific length.

If you watch my videos, you’ll see that I’ve got some videos that, if it’s just a quick tip it’s like one to two minutes, maybe two to three minutes. If it’s a more in-depth post, it’s five to 12 minutes long.

Don’t Overthink Your Videos

A lot of times, people overthink videos like, what’s the background, what shirt am I wearing, how long does it need to be, different things like that.

Focus On Providing Value

And the reality is that if you just get on there and you provide value, then that’s the most important thing. If you provide consistent value in your videos then what you’ll find is that the videos end up being the length that they need to be.

I couldn’t tell you really how long my videos are, some of my videos are really short some videos are 20 minutes long. But basically, if you provide value and just focus on creating really good content, then the length will work itself out.

The Only Exception…

The only time I pay attention to video length is when I’m actually doing something like I said before with the authority branding strategy. I’ve covered that strategy many times but basically, that’s the only time I worry about video length.

So don’t worry about it. Just create really good content and just make sure you don’t ramble. I’m guilty of rambling too, I ramble a lot. So, that’s it.

Somebody asked me this: “I keep getting pitched by private vendors who are selling leads. Why would anyone buy leads as opposed to getting them from PPC?”

Well, I don’t know. I mean, there are definitely some vendors that are decent at selling leads. The problem with buying leads is that often a vendor comes to you and says, “Hey, we’ll sell you some personal injury leads in Denver” or wherever you happen to be, maybe in Boston.

The Problem With Buying Leads…

And the problem is that they sell them to you and they also sell them to three or four other attorneys as well. So it becomes a race of who’s the first person to get to the lead. And then, on top of that, you can also annoy the leads because all these different attorneys are contacting them.

Many years ago, I filled out an application to see if I qualified for a mortgage. And for the next three weeks I was getting phone calls left and right for all of these different mortgages from all these different lenders. It really got to the point where I didn’t answer any of them because I was so annoyed by the entire process.

Buying Leads Vs. Getting Leads Through PPC

I’ve also heard the leads are not necessarily as high quality as they should be or as they would be if you did PPC. So the reason why anyone would buy leads as opposed to getting them from PPC is that it’s easier. I mean, honestly, that’s really what it comes down to.

With PPC, you’ve got to put in some work and you’ve got to test ads, you’ve got to build landing pages, you’ve got to do all this stuff. And someone may not really know what they’re doing. The Google AdWords dashboard can look like the dashboard of a fighter jet. So that would be why some lawyers buy leads.

Then again, I don’t really know too many lead vendors that do a really good job. I might have a partnership soon with a lead vendor though that does some really interesting and unique stuff and might be able to sell some leads that way.

Are Attorneys Even Permitted To Buy Leads?

The question also asked, I didn’t think attorneys were permitted to just buy the leads and solicit them. How do these companies even exist? I don’t know, to be honest with you. I’m not really in the lead generation business. I don’t really sell leads, so I don’t know what all the rules are.  But I would definitely check with your local bar association.

You Can Also Find Your Own Leads

There are also ways you can find your own leads. For example, if you go to Instagram and you search hash tag rear-ended, you can find people that have been rear-ended, or rather that have had their cars rear-ended.

And the lead generation company could reach out to them and say, Hey, I saw you got rear-ended. Would you like me to put you in touch with an attorney? And then if they say, Sure, and they give you their contact information. You can buy that lead and contact them.

Is that against the rules or not? I really don’t know. You’d have to figure out where they’re getting the leads from and all that type of stuff. You’d have to talk to the Bar Association. I would definitely look into where the leads are coming from. Especially if you’re going to buy leads.

This is my first video of 2019, so I wanted to show you a really, really cool trick that can help your Facebook ads and posts and whatever you’re doing on social media. It can even help your Facebook messages if you want to use them. This will make them stand out.

If you saw it in my video on YouTube, you’ll understand it a little bit more once I actually show the demo video. But if you saw it on Facebook, then you would have noticed that the text, the actual Facebook post that was promoting this video in the Facebook group, is bold and italic.

How To Make Your Facebook Posts Stand Out

And there’s no setting on Facebook that allows you to create the bold and italic font. So how did I do this? But more importantly, why did I do this?

Create a Pattern Interrupt

Now the reason that I did this is that on Facebook and really marketing in general, you need to create a pattern interrupt with everything that you do. What is a pattern interrupt? People are on their phones and they’re scrolling and scrolling.

You’ve got to do something that’s going to be different. Something that makes you pop out, that makes you grab their attention so that they actually pay attention to what you’re trying to say. And that’s why I do certain things.

I Use Red Bars

I put red bars across the top of my videos or actually put text in there that actually calls out the people that I want to see my videos such as lawyers. A lot of my videos, especially my ads, they have the text in red.

It says, Hey lawyers. And that’s because I’m targeting lawyers. So what you can do with this font on Facebook is that you can make a bold text, you can make italicized text, and you can change the font.

You can do all kinds of cool stuff on Facebook, but most people don’t know how to do it. It’s super simple though. So I’m going to hop over to my computer real quick and I’m going to show you exactly step by step how to do it. So check this out.

How to Create Bold And Italicized Text

I’m going to show you how to make a really cool looking Facebook post that has bold text and italicized font and all types of stuff like that. So here is actually the post that I’m going to use to promote this very video in the lawyer marketing Facebook group.

By the way, if you’re watching this on YouTube and you’re not yet a member of the Lawyer Marketing Facebook group, go to Facebook.com, search lawyer marketing and you’ll see an image that looks like this and join the group. It’s a really cool group. All my videos go to this group first before they ever make it to YouTube.

The Demo

So now I want to change this a little bit. I’m going to go to a website that provides a Unicode text converter, which is pretty neat. Let me show you exactly what this is.

So, the first line of this is this: Want to learn how to make your Facebook posts stand out?

I’m going to copy that. Then I’m going to come to this other website right here. I’m going to paste it right there and you have to click “show.” Now what’s cool about this is that you can take any of these fonts.

I look at all these that are really cool. You can make your text upside down. I mean there are so many different cool things. You can put boxes around it. I’m not going to go crazy. I think some of these are actually kind of hard to read but play around with it.

So let’s go with this. So I’m going to replace this text with this. Then this video is for you. And now just paste it in here. Learn how to make the font bold or italic. Let’s make the font in your Facebook posts and ads bold or italic, or change the font altogether.

How To Use This Technique

Now you can see it posted just like that. Now I normally wouldn’t do three different things. I’d probably use this as the headline because I think that this is a little distracting when everything is a different font. But I might use this as the headline. And then use regular font for the rest of it. So that’s how you do it.

It can be a challenge to find speeding ticket clients on Facebook when the demographics of the target audience is literally anyone who drives.

They’re similar to car accidents, which are difficult to target as well because everybody drives a car, so anybody can get a speeding ticket, and anybody can get into a car accident. What you have to do is what I’d call dog whistle marketing. Here’s the strategy.

First, You Target Your Preferred Audience

What you have to do is you create your preferred audience. For example, you like representing people ages 35 through 45, or you like representing people ages 40 through 65 because they typically have better driving records and have more money to pay. Therefore, you want to narrow it down to some sort of demographic.

I like trying to narrow it to about 10 years if possible, like 35 to 44, something like that. Then, you create some sort of video, a high-value video. In the video, you talk about all the different ways that you help clients beat speeding tickets.

Make A High-Value Video

You could make a video about the five major mistakes people make once they get a speeding ticket. Or, five mistakes people make when getting a speeding ticket. Or, five mistakes people make when fighting a speeding ticket that could actually cost them more money.

When I was in college, a buddy of mine got a speeding ticket and he tried to fight it. I think the ticket was like $160, and the fine ended up increasing to $300 or something. I don’t remember the circumstances, but you can kind of scare them or put out some alarming information.

You’re going to create a video that’s at least five minutes long. What you’re going to do is you’re going to create a video that provides value, pure value.

It’s going to say something like three mistakes people make when fighting their speeding ticket. Or it’s going to say, five reasons why it makes sense to hire a lawyer if you get a speeding ticket, rather than go into court and risking that, the cop does show up.

Why The Video Needs To Be Five Minutes Long

Basically, you would create a high-value video. When you create this high-value video, you want it to be five minutes long. The reason for that is you want to go into Facebook and create a custom audience of people that watched at least 25% of this high-value video.

The Big Red Bar

Then, you’re going to run this video to your avatar. And there’s another thing you want to do… I don’t know if you’ve noticed a lot of my videos, but I have a red bar at the top.

Why? It’s called a pattern interrupt. It gets your attention even if you don’t hear the audio because it’s a big red bar.

I also use emojis because they don’t count as text. If you have too much text on your videos, then Facebook will not show them.

You can say something like got a speeding ticket? And you can even have a picture or an Emoji of a car or a police officer. There is a lot of different emojis that you can use.

Create A Custom Audience

Next, you’re going to run that video to your avatar for about four or five days. You also want to go into Facebook audiences, and you want to create a custom audience of people that watched 25% or more of that video.

Now, here’s why you want to do this. Like I said, you want to make sure the video is at least five minutes long. If somebody stops and watches a video that is five minutes long, and they watched at least 25% of it, that means they watched for a minute and 15 seconds. That’s an eternity on Facebook.

Nobody is stopping and watching that video unless they’re really interested in that subject. It’s probably because they’ve got a speeding ticket.

Then you take everyone who watched that video and run a second video to them. The second video can be another high-value video and should be another five minutes long, talking about why you want to make sure that you have a lawyer that handles your speeding tickets.

What To Do Next

You’re only showing that video to people that watched 25% of the first video. So, now you’re going to have an audience that has watched 25% your first video, and then 25% of your second video.

The Third Video

Finally, you’re going to create a third video. That one is going to say, “Hey, listen, I’m attorney Mike Smith. You probably got a speeding ticket. I know you’ve seen a couple of my videos. Why don’t you click the link below, fill out the form and we’ll take care of it for you rather than risk…”

You basically make your pitch right then. So, that’s kind of how you do it. What you do if you have this really wide audience and then you narrow it down and then you make your pitch.