A lot of you may have seen the ad that I’ve been recently running where I’m giving away a free cheat sheet, that teaches lawyers the three secrets to getting more clients using social media. I recently recorded a video to show you step by step, so you can understand maybe how to frame an offer.
I learned this method from Dan Henry, who helped me with this process by directing and filming this video. The elements I’ll be discussing are mostly from his method. Some of it is taken from other places, but I wanted to give him some credit because he is actually the one that directed this video for me.
As you can see, there are eight elements to this ad and I’m going to pull up Final Cut Pro to show you these eight elements and what they are. The first thing that I want to point out is that this video starts with a Pattern Interrupt.
Element #1: Pattern Interrupt
Pattern interrupt refers to when you’re scrolling through your newsfeed, there’s a lot of stuff to see. Something has to get your attention and snap you out of the mundane.
Now, I added a big red bar that says, “Hey Lawyers!” If you can see the beginning, I start with a gavel and a red bar that grabs your attention, “Hey Lawyers, it’s Andy Stickel again. Buy now…”
As you can see, it’s something that’s a little different and that you wouldn’t see every day. It’s a little gimmicky, but it gets attention, and that’s what’s really important, especially because these bars at the top work really well.
I initially had bars at the top and bottom that said, “Hey Lawyers!” at the top and then “Do This” at the bottom, but Facebook limits the amount of text you display. The issue at hand is that they actually will stop displaying your ads at some point, and sure enough, they stopped displaying my ads.
So, I got rid of the bottom bar, and I made this last ad a square ad. This ad is actually 1000 x 750, but the most important part is the pattern interrupt, because if you don’t get their attention, then they’re not going to. No one is going to pay attention to your ad or to your video.
Element #2: Desire
The second element is desire, and this means that you need to clearly state the thing that they want. Now, take a look at how I do that in this video. “Hey Lawyers, do you want more law clients? More cases and more income?”
Law clients, more cases and more income, that’s the three things that most lawyers want, especially more income. You’ve got their attention, and now you are talking about the exact thing that they desire and want.
Element #3: Introduction With Credibility
After this, you’re going to do an Introduction with Credibility. Now, let me show you mine. “My name is Andrew Stickel and I don’t own a suit, but what I do do is I help more than fifty law firms get more clients from the most unlikely of sources, social media.”
The funny part about that is that I don’t own a suit. When I went to Dan’s house, I was not expecting to record a video for lawyers, so as you can see, I’m just wearing a t-shirt. Dan was worried that people were going to think I was there to do his plumbing, rather than to work with lawyers. So, the “I don’t wear a suit” was created on the fly. You need some sort of quick introduction that gives you the credibility.
If you have appeared on TV, or things like that, you could even include that. For me, I didn’t have any clips handy, so I made sure to say, “Hey, I’ve been working with more than fifty law firms helping them get clients using social media!”
Element #4: Story
The next element you’ll see in this video is a story. Now, what you typically need to do is tell a story. The reason I like stories is because people relate to stories more so than just facts and figures.
So, watch how I told a story about a client that I am working with. “Let me give you an example. I have a client named Aaron. He is an estate planning lawyer from Washington D.C. He’s tried for a year to get leads from social media and he’s failed time and time again. And the reason why…”
Elements #5 & #6: Old Method & Opportunity Switch
Old Method and Opportunity Switch are number 5, and number 6 and these are actually very similar. In an ideal scenario, it’s easy to sell somebody when you give them a new opportunity. For example, improvement offers rarely work.
If I were to say, “Hey, you’ve been using Facebook, but here’s a better way to use Facebook.” This is not going to work because it sounds like I’ve already done that, it’s not going to work. But what I’m doing is telling you, here’s a different way to use Facebook, but when you start, you start with the old method. What I’m going to do is tell the story about the old method and why it didn’t work.
Here’s how I did that, “Why is because he is using an old but very common method that most people use all the time. The reason he wasn’t having much success with Facebook is because he was doing the same thing every lawyer does over and over and over again. And he got lost in the shuffle. What we do…”
Okay, so now, I’m going into the new opportunity and am talking about what we do, this is the opportunity switch. Now, you’re probably wondering how do I apply this to my law firm, and it’s actually very easy. You just have to be a bit creative and think about how can you give the services that you offer a new twist.
For example, let’s say you’re an estate planning attorney. What you can do is could create some sort of new product or way that families can get their estates done and use that as the new opportunity. It doesn’t even have to be a new opportunity, it just has to be packaged as a new opportunity.
Maybe you could create some sort of product that is a Family Legacy Plan, or if you’re a bankruptcy attorney, maybe the Stress Relief 2000. Basically, something that takes what they’ve been doing, and says the reason why it’s not working.
Here’s a great example for a bankruptcy attorney. You can say, “Listen, you pay your minimum payments every month over and over again, and the balances never seem to go down, and you’ve got creditors calling you, and all that kind of stuff. That’s the old way you’ve been doing it. The new way you can do it is to file for bankruptcy and reconsolidate all your bills. You will have one payment that stops the creditors and it’s a better opportunity.”
In that example, you’re taking the old method, and you’re replacing it with a new opportunity. There’s a lot of different opportunities, you just have to be creative. When you do this, it works really well.
Here’s an example of how I talk about my new opportunity, “What we do is we use one very specific type of ad and instead of creating post after post after post, we create one specific post and the important part about this post is that it works so well that not only does it bring in more leads, but it brings in high quality leads which leads to more cases, and more cases lead to more revenue. If you…”
Element #7: Offer
The next element is going to be the Offer. There’s the concept of traffic you control versus traffic that you don’t control versus traffic that you own. All of this is traffic you want to eventually convert into traffic that you own. Now, the way that you do that is to get the email address.
Typically, you would create a blog post that talks about a new opportunity and put it on your website, and then they link to the blog post, or you would create a Facebook post and then boost the post that talks about the new opportunity.
What I do, and what I suggest you do, is create a PDF that discusses the new opportunity. The way that the audience gets the PDF is by entering their email address, and they have to opt-in. If you are running this with a Facebook ad campaign, like I am, you’ve now converted traffic that you control, into traffic that you own.
Now, here’s my offer, “If you would like to download a 100% no-cost, step-by-step cheat sheet that shows you exactly how he does this click the link…” Please note, don’t ever say “free” on Facebook, but instead, say “no cost.” Facebook is very particular about any financial claims made on their site.
Also, never make any guarantees about any sort of outcome whatsoever. If you want to talk about an outcome, just talk about an outcome that you’ve gotten a client in the past. It doesn’t have to be a real outcome, but you could say, “this is the method I used to get four leads for my client…”
Element #8: Provide Instructions
The last thing you want to do is provide instructions to let them know what to expect. In my ad, I told them to go to the screen, enter your email address, and it’s going to come to you in your inbox.
Here’s how I worded this, “Click the link included with this ad, enter your email address in the box, and we’ll send a copy right to your inbox. If you want more law clients’, then you need this cheat sheet. Click the link and download it now,” with the graphic at the end being designed to make them click the link.
Use These 8 Elements In Your Next Facebook Video Ad
These eight steps are really the most important keys to a successful Facebook ad. Here are a few other things that I’ve done. I’ve made the video very contrasty, so that is has a very interesting look and stands out a little bit. I have also added music in the background, similar to that of driving music. You can get music like this online for around $19 for it.
In the end, once you break an ad down with these principles, it becomes quite easy to create ads, offers, etc.