Video Marketing for Law Firms

Videos can give an extra boost to your law firm´s SEO, increase website traffic and engagement on social media. Most law firms are still not taking advantage of all these benefits and most of them think that it takes too much time. What most firms do not consider is that now than ever before, potential clients are likely to select a law firm based on the quality and messaging of their online presence. Video marketing is, therefore, a tool worth the investment if you want to differentiate your law firm from the competition.

Why should you Use Video Marketing for your Law Firm?

On average 1 billion hours of Youtube videos are seen on a daily basis, therefore your business is being put at a competitive disadvantage if it is not growing digitally. Through video content, you are building trust with current and potential clients and you are guaranteed to increase your law firm’s overall visibility. If you are still not convinced below we give you more reasons why your law firm should be investing in video marketing:

How can you improve your video marketing strategy?

To help your law firm take the first steps to build a successful marketing strategy we have prepared a list of techniques and real-world tips to achieve your video marketing goals.

1. Keyword Research

As with content strategies, video content requires research and effort. In essence, you need to understand what type of content is more likely to be consumed by your visitors. To be able to do that you can use simple search tools such as Google or Youtube. You just type in search terms connected to your practice areas and these search engines will suggest variations of the same term.

If you want to go more in-depth with your keyword research you can use Google Chrome extensions such as TubeBuddy Tags to see what keywords your competitors are using. Another tool you can use is YT Cockpit to see keyword suggestions for a topic you want to create content for.

Once you have identified the content you want to create you have now the tools to optimize it and create the video for it.

2. Preparing a script

Video marketing is a great tool to make an emotional connection with your clients. It is very important to prepare a good script if you want to effectively connect with your audience at an intellectual and emotional level. A good script should include:

• List of topics you will cover
• Introduce the subject of the video if you are preparing a how-to video
• Be conversational
• Prepare short sentences and to the point
• Use simple language and avoid legal jargon

3. Develop a content strategy

If you are at an early stage sales funnel your customer is likely to be searching for content that will help them solve a specific matter. Now at this point in time visitors are not interested in your corporate videos, they want to find information regarding your services and they want to receive more information regarding a specific legal matter. Instead, try to create a video addressing a possible legal matter and providing more information about it. When you are starting with your video content strategy tailor your videos to provide as much information as possible to convince your viewers that you are the law firm to go with for their case.

4. Create high-quality videos for your homepage

Videos are a great tool to accompany your branding package and inform users why they should select your law firm. This time is when you can use all the corporate style video branding to show visitors what type of law firm they are dealing with. Basically, your video should include:

• Unique selling point
• Demostrate credibility and authority
• Behind-the-scenes life at your law firm
• Showcase your office and location
• Let your personnel speak for your law firm

5. Record customer testimonials or case studies

Let’s say potential customers have reviewed your informative videos and homepage and they are about to make the important decision of whom to hire. A great way to convince them is by showing testimonials of other clients and how your law firm has helped them. The social proof derived from previous customers talking positively about your firm is going to help you achieve better conversion results.

6. Create Video Interviews with Lawyers at your Firm

Let the lawyers at your firm explain what they specialize in, their success stories and what process they follow when they approach a case. Clients want to have control and know better about the expertise your lawyers have in a specific area. Through video, you can provide all that information and a lot more details making a personal connection with your customers.

7. Create Vlogs

This type of videos does not necessarily be highly polished and their purpose is to share thoughts and insights. Vlogs are highly focused on a particular topic and you can highlight:

• Recent cases or courtroom experiences
• Interesting client experience without disclosing private information
• Opinions and thoughts about a new change in legislation
• Tips for your target audience
• A tour of your office

8. Add Call to action in your videos

Every time you publish a video you are providing relevant information to your customer but you also guide them toward the next steps to do. Let’s say you have a couple of videos explaining how to set up a company in a specific country. You have now provided that information, therefore the next logical step is to encourage your users to contact your law firm for further questions they might have. This is something it can be done for instance at the end of each video and be part of your signature. Unless you have mentioned several times the call to action having a short contact phrase or banner at the end of the videos it is not to “salesy”.

9. Distribute videos on social media platforms

Once you have finished editing your videos, it is time to have a distribution strategy in place. You can add videos to your homepage, landing pages, youtube channels or other social platforms you are using to create awareness about your law firm.

10. Optimize your Videos for Youtube

When you have prepared the content strategies you have spent an incredible amount of time trying to optimize it to rank higher on search engines. Youtube as a search engine for videos has also some tricks that if followed your videos will rank higher:

• Video Title: should include your main target keywords.
• Video Description: should be 200 words or more and include keywords.
• Video Tags. Youtube recommends including tags for your videos. Usually, you would select between 5-10 tags to inform the visitors the category type of your video.
• Repeat the same process for each video. Mention your keywords in the title, description and tags. Now make sure that the same topic addressed in the video is related to the keywords added, otherwise Youtube will penalize you.

11. Prepare long video when it can be justified

On average it is recommended to keep videos short, specifically under 2 minutes. This might work when you have to make a short introduction of your law firm, team or services. What if you want to make a video explaining the processes of one of the services you provide? Or want to give more information and guidance about how to handle a specific case? The 2 minutes rule might not apply in cases in which there is more time required to explain a topic. You might consider a mix of long and short vides but under any circumstance do not sacrifice the quality of the videos because of time limitations.

Conclusion

More than 70% of potential customers are watching videos already so you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity to advertise your firm. By having a clear video strategy in mind you can get more exposure, trust and clients. When producing videos you can either use an online video maker to make videos or hire a digital marketing agency to produce videos for you.