Hey, everybody. Andy Stickel here, author of How to Get More Law Firm Clients Without Losing Time and Money or Getting Screwed By a Marketing Company”. Today, we are going to talk about the three most common law firm advertising mistakes that I see on a regular basis and how you can avoid them. Now, before we get started, scroll down and let me know in the comments what your most common mistake is that you make. I’d love to hear from you. And by the way, click the subscribe button down below and click the bell icon so that you’re alerted every time I create new content. 

Now, a lot of times when I start working with a new law firm and I start looking at their ads, I’m able to make some small adjustments that will actually increase the performance of the ad. These are the three most common things that I see. 

Number One Most Common Mistake – Talking To Everyone

The first most common law firm advertising mistake – and this could be on Facebook, this could be on Google, this could be anywhere – is talking to everyone. There’s an old saying that says that when you talk to everyone, you’re actually talking to no one. Let me give you an example. If I were just to create a video that said, “Hey, anyone who has been in a car accident…”, that’s kind of broad but you’re kind of really talking to anybody. Because anyone, from all walks of life, as long as you drive a car, can be in a car accident. And actually, even if you don’t drive a car, you can still be in a car accident because you can be a passenger in a car. So that’s not really good. But if you were to say, “Hey, bikers. Here’s some information about a motorcycle accident…” or if you were to say, “Hey, cyclists. Here’s what you do after you get hit by a car on your bicycle…” or “Hey, parents of teen drivers…”, then what you can do is you can actually start identifying specific groups of people, start identifying problems that are exclusive to those groups of people, and then you can start creating content that speaks directly to them. And what happens is your audience gets small but your message also gets much more personalized. If I created a video about law firm advertising mistakes versus general business marketing advertising mistakes, law firms are much more specific to lawyers. I’m not speaking to everyone. 

A better way to do it, if I wanted to get even more niche, would be “Personal Injury Lawyer Law Firm Marketing Mistakes” or “Bankruptcy Attorney Law Firm Marketing Mistakes.” That would be even better. And I could even go a step further. “Law Firm Marketing Mistakes That You’re Making in Your Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Campaign.” You can really, really niche down. Although that’s probably a little too niche for me. But my point is that you should try to pick a niche of a specific type of person that you’re talking to. So what I always think about is think about the person that you’re talking to and don’t think about the specific case. Because if you just think about the case, then you’re not going to be thinking about the person. And the people are the ones that have the problems. Not the cases. The cases don’t have problems. So that’s #1. The #1 most common mistake that I see is talking to everyone. You want to make sure that you want to be talking to a specific type of person. 

Number Two Most Common Mistake – Talking About Yourself

Now, the second most common law firm advertising mistake that I see is talking about yourself. I see lawyers do this all the time talking about how many cases they’ve won and how many verdicts and settlements they’ve got and then all the awards and they’re Super Lawyers and Martindale-Hubbell and AV-rated and Lawyers of Distinction and all this other stuff that nobody cares about except for you. And the reason why is because everyone’s favorite subject is themselves. So there’s a life hack in there. If you want to have success, then you have to take an interest in other people and don’t talk about yourself. So if I created this video right now and I said, “Let me tell you why I’m such a great law firm marketer” and then I talked about all these different things and all these clients that I’ve had success with and all these testimonials that I have and all that type of stuff but I didn’t actually give you any information that you can actually benefit from, you would have already switched to another video by this point. So what’s really, really important is that you talk about the viewer, not yourself. They do not care about you. They care about themselves. Everyone’s favorite topic is themselves. So when your life is hacked, you can use that to your advantage and understand that if you talk about yourself, your potential clients don’t care. But if you talk about them and what’s in it for them, why they should actually pay your video, why they should pay attention to their ad, why they should click, why they should call you, why they should hire you, then you’ll get much, much better results. So that is the second biggest mistake that I see lawyers making all the time. You’re talking about you. You need to be talking about them. 

Number Three Most Common Mistake – Not Solving Problems In Your Ads

Now, the third and final mistake that I see lawyers making all the time is you’re not solving problems in your ads. That is one of the biggest things. A lot of times, ads are just blatant advertisements where you’re going to talk to a broad audience about yourself and your law firm and your accomplishments. But what we’ve already learned is that we want to talk to a specific group of people and we want to talk about them. So what’s the easiest way to do this? Well, the easiest way to do this is to figure out who is it that you’re serving, what do you care about and what problems do they have and then create videos that provide solutions to those problems. Now, the general rule of thumb is that if you help people solve small problems, then they will hire you later to solve the big problem. So you don’t have to worry that you’re going to give away all the information and then the clients are just going to go ahead, basically take the videos and go do it themselves. That’s not going to happen. Instead, what’s going to happen is they’re going to see all the content that you put out. They’re going to get value from it. It’s going to build goodwill. It’s going to create top of the mind awareness. And you’re going to show them that you actually are the right attorney to help them. So by doing that, by solving problems, you’re actually separating yourself from everybody else. Because everybody else is just talking about themselves to the entire audience. But when you’re talking to a specific group of people and talking about the specific problems they have and offering solutions to those problems, that is when you will get the best result. So to recap, if you’re talking to everybody, if you’re just talking about yourself, and you’re not solving problems, your ads are going to have a significantly lower impact than if you pick a specific group, you talk about them and what they can get out of this and then you solve their problems in your ads. So I hope this video was helpful. And hopefully, in your videos and in your law firm ads, you can avoid these three very, very common mistakes. Now, if you want to learn more about getting more clients for your law firm, feel free to pick up a free copy of my book. You can go to the link below or go to freebookforlawyers.com and grab a copy of How to Get More Law Firm Clients Without Losing Time and Money or Getting Screwed By a Marketing Company. If you have questions at all, please leave them in the comments below or send me a message and I will happily get back to you. I hope you guys have a good day. We’ll talk soon.