TikTok Ads for Law Firms

I was with Jay Berkowitz, author of “The 10 Golden Rules of Online Marketing.” and we talked about TikTok for law firms and why it’s so important.

TikTok has surpassed Google and Facebook to become the number-one site in the world.

Check this book on TikTok Ads that I co-authored with Perry Marshall, who also authored the number one best-selling book on Google ads

Ten Golden Rules
Guide to TikTok

They have over 1 billion average users, and this means TikTok’s no longer just about kids, dancing videos, and the latest song crazes. Over 37% are over 30 years of age and older. The engagement is huge averaging 25.7 hours of engagement, surpassing Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The reason for this transition is anytime a social network is for free, it’s supported by advertising, and the advertising on TikTok is so smart. They’re doing something that none of the other guys are doing, which is allowing us to use other people’s content. So, you can use other people’s content, or you can boost someone else’s post, which is called a spark ad, which is 70% of the advertising on TikTok.

They know that a lot of people that are not happy with Facebook ads want to get to TikTok. So TikTok is capitalizing on that.

From a lawyer’s perspective, Mike Mandel, Ugo Lord, and Julio Ortego, to name a few, have been extremely successful.

Jay Berkowitz gives a couple of quick ideas to get started with TikTok videos and take advantage of this as these guys have.

  • The first thing is you probably want to keep your videos to under one minute. You can go up to three minutes, and most of the guys who are having a lot of success are doing at least one per day. The mindset is you want one of your videos to go viral because then you’ll get a following and will start to get a lot more traction.
  • The other thing is, if you haven’t watched it at all, just start using it as a user. If you watch a lot of these cooking videos, you’ll get a lot of similar cooking videos. Similarly, watch some workout videos, and then you’ll start seeing a lot of workout videos. So if you watch a video to the end and you watch it a couple of times, you’ll start seeing that all the time. So if people are watching legal videos and immigration videos, Julio, for example, will start showing up all the time.
  • And here are some content ideas. If you really want to blow up, you can do things that capture the music and the trends. So you can add the most popular song or add some of the trends. And a lot of the lawyers talk about, if something happens, shared expertise, tips, and tricks and things like that, and explain current events.
  • And then always ask for questions, comments, follows, and likes. Because you want to get engagement. So the algorithm’s going to reward you if your videos get lots of engagement.
  • Use hashtags, TikTok uses these to categorize your video.
  • And last tip, and everyone says this,  done is better than perfect.

On his first paid TikTok ad about the Seven Figure Agency conference, Jay Berkowitz got 103,000 impressions for just $219 by targeting law and legal services. He got 171 clicks, about $1.70 a click, and was able to generate about 16 or 18 registrations.

So what’s the difference between organic TikTok and TikTok ads

There’s a huge difference, but let me first tell you what’s in common – the algorithm. So TikTok’s algorithm, the thing that causes people to go viral, is reading what’s in your background.

So it’s looking at that flag there, it’s looking at that internet marketing book, it’s looking if you’re walking and talking, it recognizes monuments in the background, recognizing friends and using that to figure out who to send content to.

When you look at Facebook, YouTube, or these other traditional social networks, they’re looking at engagement – people who clicked on this also clicked on that.

But facial recognition steps up the algorithm to a new level. So, it almost reads your mind. You’ll be at dinner talking about something and see an ad on TikTok on that subject or whatnot. And you’re like, dang it! I was just talking about that!

TikTok is ten times stronger than that other stuff because… – the Chinese government or they’re listening – but they have that same algorithm in common on the paid and organic sides.

But the paid side has something different because we can boost posts. Now, on Facebook, we used to boost posts, but that was more difficult.

I can boost posts that other people have made. So if one of my clients is succeeding in some way, or they were in an accident, or they took a picture of the check I presented to them, I want to feature them.

I can boost their post. I can use my team members. I can use people in the community because even if you are an attorney, it doesn’t have to be about personal injury. It doesn’t have to be all about the law. It can be just that I’m an upstanding citizen in Atlanta or whatever the city is. And I just want to show who I am as a person because it’s all about the human feeling like you’re connecting with them.

It’s like you’re FaceTiming with them, and I can boost their posts because TikTok knew that people would struggle to make videos. How many lawyers want to make videos? So I Googled a bunch of attorneys, and I also saw what video they were making. Was there a video on YouTube? Was there a video on Facebook? Were they doing Instagram reels? Were they posting videos on LinkedIn and Twitter? Was their video on their website?

Most attorneys are not even making any videos. So what is TikTok thinking? They said, “We know that’s a challenge, so we’ll make it easy. You don’t even have to be on TikTok.”

You can boost other people’s posts. And that’s the whole secret. When you have good word of mouth, when people love you when you have reviews, you can get those people to make videos, and they don’t even have to be on TikTok either; you can post that under their name with their permission of course, and you can boost that.

How to create Spark Ads

Advertising on TikTok is so smart – Spark Ad. They’re doing something that none of the other guys are doing, which is allowing us to use other people’s content. So, a spark ad is when you can use other people’s content or boost someone else’s post, which is 70% of the advertising on TikTok.

Here’s How You Create a Spark Ad

Pull out your phone and open up TikTok. We can do it on a desktop as well. It’s starting with the For You page and plays all the things that it thinks I might be interested in. It’s the most addictive thing. So just be very careful when you get on TikTok.

On my profile, I’ve got these different videos.

TIkTok Ads

I can pin three videos, whichever ones I want. It can be your best videos on the knowledge that you have or promoting your firm or your most viral video. For example, Josh Nelson and I were together in Miami where I interviewed him about the keys to building a seven-figure agency.

And let’s say that this drove me some leads because I’m sharing three things to do when the dog bites or whatever it might be.

Boost Spark Ads

If I come here to the three dots, you can see down here:

TikTok Ads

There are these choices. And I scroll all the way to the right, to the ad settings, which is third to last, to get the ability to generate a code. Hit authorize to generate an ad code and set it for seven days, 30 days, 60, and 365 on the next screen and click ‘Authorize.’ Then save the code that is brought up. Now whoever has this code can boost that post.

TikTok Ads
The choices
TikTok Ads
Ad Settings Button
TikTok Ads
Authorize Ad

Promote Spark Ads

And not only can I give out that code, but I can take any of these posts that I have and promote:

TikTok Ad

What’s your goal? More views, more website visits, or more followers? What do you typically choose? I think that you should choose more video views by default. If you have something that’s worthwhile, you could say website visits, it’s like when you’re running ads on Facebook, how often do you want to do website clicks?

Oh, it’s always better to bring it to the website. maybe they charge you more. Lower in the funnel you go in, the more they charge you. Audience selection, choose your own, or TikTok chooses for you. Who do you think is smarter, the AI or me? I’ll let the AI choose.

And now how much do I wanna spend? I’m gonna put the budget thing all the way to the left and I’ll choose $5 a day. So $5 a day over two days, I’m spending $10, and it’s predicted that I will get 1,200 to 2,600 views of this video. Click ‘Next.” And there’s the ad.

TikTok Ads
Set the Goal
TikTok Ads
Audience selection
TikTok Ads
Budget
TikTok Ads
Start Promotion

Now the ad’s live.

And it could be my top ads, and I have those pinned, just like I pin on Facebook or Twitter; my top tweet or top Facebook. But you see how easy it is to boost a post.

Algo does the job

  1. No crazy targeting or sophisticated campaign set-up is necessary– the super smart algorithm uses your content’s performance. But you could target people in your city. If you’re a personal injury attorney in Dallas and don’t want to be famous worldwide, then just target Dallas and let the system do the rest of the targeting for you. It’s your content. You don’t have to target
  2. Same for spark ads, where you boost someone else’s post (called “creators” no longer “influencers”). You don’t have to be in the videos. They built TikTok from the beginning with this particular insight in mind. People trust what others say more than what you have to say about your own stuff. So you don’t have to make any videos. Instead, you use spark ads to boost what other people have said about you.
  3. Search for pictures on your topic wheel on Google photos that you can re-use on TikTok using its native AI tool, which will assemble these pictures. Give a voice-over for these assembled pictures. For example, if your picture is of Mexican Food, you could say, “Let me tell you what my favorite Mexican food is.”

Follow the Goals – Content – Targeting (#GCT) strategy.

  • What’s the goal? For example, I want to get more lawyers to learn about TikTok and collect their email addresses because I want to send them all my training. I want to send them a book. I want them to learn about TikTok ads and whether or not they work with us because they may or may not be qualified.
  • Make 15-second videos direct-to-face vertical selfie style answering “People Also Ask” questions in Google Search related to your service where you’re saying, “Here are the three things to do when you get pulled over by the cops. One is this, two is this, and three is this. I’m Ethan Ostro. Contact me, and I’ll help you when you get in a car accident.”
  • If you don’t want to show your face, interview other attorneys or your peers, interview the girl at the front desk, and interview your clients about what you know, not as a testimonial. Do stuff where you’re lifting them up. You’re sharing expertise and knowledge. And then, as long as that gets posted to TikTok – to their TikTok, to your TikTok – you don’t even have to be on TikTok.

Other points to note

  • You can just create an ad account and run ads on TikTok without even having a TikTok account. But then everything has to go straight to the website because there’s no profile to click on. If they click on the little circle with your profile, it goes to the website, which it does and is not bad. But I believe in building up organic views and paid views.
  • Subscribe to iCloud, Google Photos, Amazon, and Dropbox at around $10 per month for each. This will help you to automatically upload the pictures from the phone to these drives. By providing access to VAs to these drives, they can repurpose these contents.
  • Measure everything correctly. You’re measuring the performance of the hook. It’s the first two seconds. It doesn’t matter if the rest of what you have to say is great because 99% of the videos that you guys make, people never get there.
Dennis Yu

About the Author

Dennis Yu
Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads.  He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations.You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel.You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.