Video Marketing for Law Firms

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a professional-quality video is priceless.

For law firms looking to attract new clients online, videos are crucial. Research shows that modern consumers overwhelmingly prefer watching videos over reading text, looking at infographics, or any other method of learning about new products or services.

Give your prospective clients what they want with NextLevel's law firm video marketing services.

How Video Marketing Works

Video marketing is the use of videos for the purpose of promoting your services. When a law firm creates an effective video and makes it widely available online, the audience is limitless.

What kind of marketing videos work best for law firms?

• Branding videos
• Answers to frequently asked questions
• Testimonials from your past clients

Whatever kind of marketing video you choose to create, know that it is a process. You need to plan your video (better yet, plan a whole video marketing strategy), coordinate the filming, edit the footage, and publish or promote the video.

Where to Use Video Marketing

The options for where you publish your law firm marketing videos are endless. You certainly want your videos on your website, where they can persuade visitors to contact you for legal help.

Many law firms create their own YouTube channel. The Google-owned social media site also happens to be a thriving search engine, second only to Google itself in popularity. Other video streaming sites, like Vimeo, Veoh, and Metacafe can also help publicize your videos.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media channels are ideal for sharing your videos. Cross-promoting your videos on your social media profiles can also help you build your audience on these networks.

Why Video Marketing Is Important

Video is the marketing tool of the future. The sooner law firms embrace it, the better equipped they will be to thrive for years to come.

You can't even check your personal Facebook news feed or run a Google search without encountering videos. Far from the market being oversaturated, researchers have found that consumers in all industries anticipate even more videos to come.

Your ideal clients don't just tolerate marketing videos - they expect and prefer them.

How Law Firms Can - and Should - Use Video

Video is a powerful and versatile tool for attorneys. Some ways law firms should use video include:

• Introducing client leads to your attorneys and your firm
• Developing a brand image and reputation that makes your law firm recognizable
• Educating viewers about general legal matters, and especially answering the questions your ideal clients are likely to have
• Proving your results and quality of service through client testimonials

Done right, video can help your law firm increase website traffic, generate leads, garner backlinks, build social media audiences, keep current clients informed and satisfied, and so much more.

Who Is Using Video Marketing?

The great thing about platforms like YouTube is that they allow everyone the opportunity to share videos. Businesses of all sizes and in all industries use video marketing. However, for law firms, the standards for video marketing are higher.

Viewers expect more professionalism from attorneys - even solo practice or small firm attorneys - than they expect out of other industries. A poorly-filmed or poorly-edited video might be fine for a mom-and-pop store or an independent restaurant, but for law firms, quality is of the utmost importance. A substandard video can erode your online reputation - and even viewers' opinions of your real-life professional reputation.

Don't Fall Behind Your Competitors

Your competitors are already using video to bring in countless new clients. In fact, 87 percent of companies use video for marketing purposes. If you're not making videos, then you're simply falling behind.

The good news is that just because your competitors are using video marketing doesn't mean they're doing it right. There's still time to catch up and, with the right video marketing plan and professional implementation, take the lead.

The Biggest Video Mistakes Law Firms Make

Many law firms use video in their marketing efforts, but not many use it effectively. Lawyers who try to create their own videos without professional involvement, or who outsource their video needs to mediocre companies, are prone to making big mistakes in their video marketing.

Quantity, Not Quality

If your video marketing company is more concerned with selling you video services in bulk than with properly planning, filming, and editing a single video for the best results, you have to wonder how much your investment is really benefiting you. It's great to have plenty of videos to share with your audience, but not at the expense of quality.

It's better for a law firm to have a handful of great videos that show you as personable, knowledgeable, and authentic than to have 100 videos that fail to communicate anything of substance to viewers.

Too Long to Hold Viewers' Attention

Just because audiences online are eager to look at videos doesn't mean that they want to sit through unnecessarily long videos. Short clips are ideal for busy searchers who want valuable information fast. If you're regularly making videos that are longer than two or three minutes, there's a chance you're not spending your money or your audience's time effectively.

Videos That Say Nothing

Value is the key factor in whether your videos resonate with your ideal clients or simply annoy them. If your video purports to answer a question, make sure it actually answers the question. The answer to every question shouldn't simply be, "you need to hire a lawyer."

A video that says nothing is too long even if it's only 10 seconds. Viewers who are really interested in the topic - the ones you're hoping to acquire as clients - will gladly watch a couple minutes of video if the content is helpful and you present it in a way that is engaging.

Same Old, Same Old

An unfortunate consequence of so many law firms focusing on quantity over quality in their video marketing is that far too many attorney videos look and sound the same. Everything from the words lawyers use to background screens and background music leaves viewers with a strong sense of déjà vu, not to mention boredom.

As exciting as your video is to you, it's not the first law firm video your potential client has ever seen. If you can't say something interesting, show something different, or put some real personality into your video, viewers will stop listening and start looking for a law firm that stands out from the rest.

This doesn't mean that viewers expect moviemaking masterpieces out of your two-minute marketing video. What it means is that it takes real consideration and planning to make an effective law firm video.

Trying Too Hard to Be Authentic

In their efforts to do something different and prove that they're authentic, some attorneys turn their backs on professional video marketing in favor of making their own vlog-style videos with a webcam or their smartphone camera.

The result is that their videos are different. They're just not good.

Image and sound quality suffer. The background is unappealing. Editing is inferior, if it occurs at all. Ultimately, the finished video looks haphazard, unprofessional, and cheap. That's not the first impression you want to make on the clients you would like to represent.

Is Video Marketing Effective?

Done right, video marketing can transform your law firm's online presence. That means:

• Making your name a recognizable brand
• Bringing you client leads that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise
• Establishing you as an authority in the legal community

Yet just making a few videos won't accomplish all of these incredible results. To maximize the effectiveness of your video marketing efforts, you need more than a camera and a YouTube channel. You need a strategy.

Integrate Videos Into Your Comprehensive Marketing Strategy

When it comes to video marketing, most law firms can't handle everything in-house. It's expected and even recommended that you outsource the filming and editing of your videos. Just be careful who you're outsourcing to.

A number of video marketing companies, including some focused on law firm marketing, pride themselves on offering video services exclusively. They promote themselves in a way that makes their limited services sound like a good thing.

Yet you want your law firm's marketing videos to be an effective part of your larger marketing strategy, not entities separate unto themselves. Your videos should help you achieve your marketing goals, not just look fancy or flashy.

You need style and substance for a great law firm marketing video. With no real marketing strategy to guide them, your videos will lack the substance needed to be an asset to your online presence.

Don't trust your video marketing to just anybody. NextLevel's experienced in-house video department develops a video content plan tailored to your law firm's unique needs and strengths and integrates that plan into your overall marketing strategy. You're never stuck trying to coordinate different teams to get your marketing messages on the same page or paying for videos that won't advance your law firm's progress.

NextLevel's Top-Notch Video Marketing for Law Firms

Since NextLevel's founding in 2012, we have offered top-of-the-line video marketing solutions for law firms. Clients describe our videos as "beautiful" and "effective" and love that we personalize their marketing strategies and video content.

We start by getting to know your firm and doing a deep-dive into research in your practice area, geographic location, competition, and existing web presence. Your customized strategic video content plan is based on data, best practices, and what our senior-level legal marketing consultants have learned over years of experience in the industry.

Every video we create for our clients shows why people looking for a lawyer should hire you personally, not just any attorney. We work hard to help you instantly build trust and admiration with viewers by showing them what makes you an expert in your field and a trustworthy, likeable individual they will want to do business with.

The reality is that no one likes needing to hire a lawyer - but when prospective clients like you on a personal level, it knocks your competitors off the playing field.

Law Firm Video Marketing FAQ

How Do Videos Affect SEO?

Adding quality videos to your on-site and off-site online channels can only help your search engine optimization, or SEO.

For one thing, Google has an entire section of search results devoted exclusively to video results. This makes FAQ videos particularly valuable, especially when optimized the right way.

Including videos on your law firm's site does more than bring in web traffic. It also keeps visitors on your site longer as they watch your video. This improves a metric known as "dwell time" or "time on site," which tells Google that people who visit your site are finding value in your content. As your visitors' time on site increases, your rankings in search results improve.

What Is a Video Marketing Strategy?

"Let's make a video" isn't a strategy. A fully-developed video marketing strategy involves identifying distinct goals with progress that you can measure as well as all of the steps needed to accomplish those goals.

Video strategy matters because producing videos is time-consuming and expensive. You don't want to sink your money and your valuable time into recording videos haphazardly, without a plan for what you want them to accomplish or how you want to use them.

If your law firm video marketing service immediately says, "Let's start shooting," that's a red flag that you're not getting the strategic video marketing campaign you deserve. Either there's no plan at all or the plan is merely a formula the company applies to every law firm. You can't expect exceptional results from cookie-cutter videos.

How Much Does Video Marketing Cost?

Videos are among the more expensive types of digital marketing content to produce, but they also add plenty of value. How much you'll pay, and how much you'll get out of your investment, depends on the video service you choose to work with.

When a law firm video marketing service offers flat pricing, you know that you're not getting a strategy or product that's customized to your needs. NextLevel will work with you to develop a custom quote for video and other marketing services that fits your firm and your budget perfectly. Our clients who previously worked with large attorney marketing agencies have been consistently surprised at how much better service and results our boutique agency is able to provide for less money than they're used to spending.

What Are the Stages of Creating a Law Firm Marketing Video?

NextLevel's legal marketing consultants and in-house video department work together to oversee every stage of developing your law firm videos. This means there's no extra work you need to do and nothing for you to coordinate. Our work covers every aspect of your videos:

• Pre-production
• Production
• Post-production
• Video optimization

We take the hassle out of making videos to promote your practice.

How Can Video Marketing Help Your Law Firm?

Whatever you're looking for out of your digital marketing efforts - more clients, more brand recognition, better SEO performance - video is a proven and versatile way to get it. NextLevel's superior video strategies and products have gotten our clients real results. Find out what our videos could do for your law firm!