Facebook gives lawyers the power to connect directly with potential clients-that is, if they can find them.

The key to legal marketing on Facebook is defining the right target audience in Ads Manager.

A properly defined target audience will view your ads as highly relevant and will be more likely to convert.

However, if a law firm only targets people who are not in need of legal services, the campaign will be a disaster.

Fortunately, there’s a sneaky trick that lawyers can use to narrow their audience and target relevant users on Facebook.

The Best Way For Law Firms to Advertise on Facebook

Ads Manager allows law firms to target people who have recently been in a specific location as opposed to targeting them based on their current zip code or city.

Select this option the next time that you are ready to launch an ad campaign.

The hardest part of this strategy is determining which location to target.

Ask yourself where potential clients spend a lot of their time right before they start contacting attorneys.

People who are in need of a personal injury attorney may spend time at a hospital, whereas people who are in need of a criminal defense attorney may be in jail.

Therefore, if you are a criminal defense attorney, you will need to target one of the local jails.

Enter the address of the jail into Ads Manager.

Once the campaign is launched, the ad will only be shown to users who have been within one mile of the jail’s address over the last seven days.

Why “Recent Location” Advertising on Facebook Works For Lawyers

To illustrate why this strategy works, consider a criminal defense attorney who works in Atlanta.

If he chooses “Atlanta, GA” as his location target, there’s no way of knowing whether the ad will be shown to people in need of a criminal defense attorney.

The majority of people who see the ad would have no interest in contacting an attorney, so this would be a waste of the attorney’s money.

The relevant location feature would significantly reduce the size of the attorney’s target audience.

Instead of targeting the entire city of Atlanta, he would only be targeting people who have spent time within one mile of the local jail.

Although some people who see the ad may have been near the jail for other reasons, most of the people who are targeted will be in need of legal services.

Therefore, this strategy is not only more effective than traditional Facebook targeting, it’s also more cost-efficient.