Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Video Marketing is something less used by law firms. It is generally prohibitive to do videos for advertising for law firms because of the cost and skill involved. To hire a video production team for a full day can cost $2,000 to $2,500 at least, including editing. This can dramatically increase costs and make advertising unprofitable for lower budgets. How then does a law firm access this inexpensively? Rest assured, our clients receive the Marketlytics® 1K Video Setup which is an instructional document telling you the cost effective equipment buys and a manual to record videos with ease and confidence! In order to receive this system, which can be deployed Australia wide, you need to sign on as a client of Marketlytics. Let us get into why video marketing is effective for lawyers and how to make it work.
Table of Contents
What Platforms Is Your Target Market Watching?
The answer to this question, is it depends! B2B is more likely on LinkedIn, but many consumers are on Facebook! YouTube is frequently neglected, but is the second largest website in the world after Google Search! Almost everyone watches YouTube from all walks of life. If possible, you should be covering multiple channels. However, it is more important to be good at one channel and build trust in the mind and psyche of your audience there. In sum, here is where the majority of your clients will be watching your videos:
- YouTube
Why Are Your Target Market On Those Platforms?
We will now explain what kind of audiences are on those platforms we mentioned.
Facebook & Instagram
Facebook and Instagram remain the biggest social media networks on the planet. Many consumers and laypeople are on these platforms. The everyday consumer nature of these platforms makes this the platform for:
- migration practice
- estate planning and deceased estate administration
- personal injury
- family law
LinkedIn is a growing, healthy social network and its nature makes it the place for business owners and professionals. Organic reach is still very good here and is important for growing a personal brand. Many lawyers hang out here and sometimes, your target market is other lawyers for referrals or otherwise.
The cheapest way to distribute videos on a social network is LinkedIn.
YouTube
YouTube is a search engine for videos. This means there is such a thing as YouTube SEO. YouTube SEO is an untapped resource for law firm lead generation that not many have investigated. So not only can you make a collection of videos your clients like, but have it found on YouTube for them to watch! YouTube has so many channels and videos on just about any topic. This is the platform they use when your clients want answers!
What Is The Secret To Successful Video Marketing?
To be successful, there needs to be a combination of entertainment or intrigue, a secret sauce that makes your videos special. However, that is not the most important ingredient. You are lawyers. You give legal representation and advice. The most important ingredient for successful video marketing for lawyers, is to become an authority. By solving your prospective clients’ problems you become their personal advisor, the professional they trust. They will think of you when they have a legal problem. Law practice is not for entertainment, it is to solve legal issues, so even if you give your videos and interesting twist, it will still need to provide value to the end viewer.
Video Marketing Is Effective For Organic Content
Before we get into advertising, we must highlight that video is not only effective for paid advertising, but organic posting too. The legal industry is slowly adopting videos in their strategy. Here’s an example from JHK Legal:
As you can see, this simple 2-minute video highlights useful information educating the potential client. Their video also receives good engagement and views (30 comments, 658 views). A well executed video can gather great traction on LinkedIn. Alicia Auden is not the only one doing it, Matthew Karakoulakis in Melbourne has been using video very effectively:
Matthew Karakoulakis is an award-winning lawyer of an award-winning law firm, AMK Law! Looking at his videos, there is no need for your practice to do anything overly complicated to achieve return in video marketing!
Our last example is a much loved Australian lawyer, James d’Apice of Coffee And A Case Note fame, here is some of his content:
James started with humble beginnings:
The simplest idea can become the biggest thing. A video podcast is not often executed, and James is one of the few who does his regularly. Podcasts are a great way to cement your branding online.
Why Video Marketing Is Better For Advertising
Videos are actually easier to put together than good image advertising. Here at Marketlytics, the large portion of social media advertising success is driven by video. Why? Crafting catchy, memorable images is a lot harder than making a good video in its planning and execution. The image must have a very high resonance with the viewer. This is hard to achieve. Let us look at some examples of good imagery from Safewill, a software company selling simple wills:
Look how warm this image is. It’s quirky, fun and relevant. It really pulls emotional triggers and tells a story. Safewill have done a really good job with this ad, kudos to them. Now can you imagine the level of difficulty creating multiple ads of this relevance and quality, using images alone? You would need the best stock image library in the world to do this and a creative mind of the best advertisers in the world! The difficulty in the process of searching or coming up with the concept of something at this level is highly difficult.
The reason why video works is that the content of the video is what draws people in! It is the message, a message which resonates with the audience that causes then to respond! Even though video is expensive in general, strategically it is much easier to come up with and execute than an image ad of this level!
The cost of traffic for good ads is very low be it social media or YouTube! You can make what is normally unaffordable, affordable!
Marketlytics broadens your options of using video in your advertising!
What Is Good Video Advertising For Law Firms
Let us continue to use the example of Safewill, they have done a fantastic jobs selling wills online. Not only do they have good images, they have good video too!
“Real people talking about Wills”, what a brilliant way to use testimonials to promote their service! Friends, video is the future of digital advertising! But it is a resonant video that will work. Anything less will undoubtedly fail!
The Psychology Of Successful Advertising Videos
The best marketers understand that there is a concept of “awareness stages”. Each awareness stage needs to be met with a message created specifically for that stage, in order for resonance. Here are all five stages:
Of note, this creates “six audiences” you can reach on social media. Here is our article on Facebook Advertising for lawyers.
Catering to these audiences is an art. For example, in order speak to “problem aware” audiences, you need to address their benefits and anxieties. They need to know a suitable solution exists.
The issue becomes, how can your advertising shift the awareness stages of your audience towards “most aware”? That is why you need a specialist agency like Marketlytics to make this happen!
What Kind Of Video Produces The Best Results and ROI?
For lawyers, animation generally does not perform well. In the end, clients want to know they are making the right decision when choosing a law firm or lawyer. Hence, the best videos are videos of a lawyer speaking. This produces the most trust with viewers. The problem is that the tools to produce studio quality video seem even more out of reach for the everyday lawyer than even hiring an animator!
However, with the advent of mobile phone videography, the business of producing high quality video advertisements is now a step closer than before. At Marketlytics, we guide you to what equipment to use, and filming technique. We make script writing easy with our proven frameworks, discovered through rigorous advertising. We ensure the process of onboarding you and creating the advertising is quick and the time to produce the advertising efficiently carried out.
Case Study From Our Own Agency Advertising
We ourselves at Marketlytics have advertised to get leads for clients! We can reveal some exciting statistics of our experience:
For LinkedIn Ads, which was our platform of choice, the typical Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is 0.5%! That is really low! Here, our best advertising obtained a CTR of 3.57%. Divided by 0.5% and converted to a percentage is 714%! In other words, this Ad is more than 7 times cheaper than the typical rate! We know how to make social media work!
Quality advertising produces more return than ranking well on Google!
Tips For Filming Videos For Law Firm Marketing Purposes
Our journey into video marketing begs the question, how do we do it ourselves? We will not share the secret of the Marketlytics® 1K Video Setup. Only clients get that privilege. However, we will explain some basics of filming videos for yourselves.
You need the following equipment:
- DSLR Camera
- Shotgun microphone
- Bright naturally lit room
- Suitable tripod
By using a DSLR, you can set the quality to HDR. HDR means “High Dynamic Range”, frequently confused with “High Definition Resolution”. HDR enables better contrast and better quality video. At the time of writing, devices internet speed is still not up to scratch, so most phones and many computers only need Full HD or “FHD” Resolution. There’s no point in filming in 4K or higher, it makes the files size too big and the editing process unnecessarily long.
FHD Resolution keeps file size small but high quality. Always use MP4 format in output.
Use “tight framing”, which means close up to the person but having hands still visible, and having a naturally well lit room and shooting during the day really prevents the need for expensive lighting equipment and makes the filming process simply manageable.
Filmora is a relatively cheap and easy to use editing software and you might want to get used to it to edit your footage.
Videography is an art and a science in itself, but best practices make video easy and manageable.
Conclusion
Video is the future of online lead generation. It is easy to consume, attractive and video marketing is set to become the dominant form of advertising expended online within the next few years. We have made it easy to set up and learn how to make videos for marketing purposes, hence why we invented the Marketlytics® 1K Video Setup to simplify and make sense of the video recording process. If you do not like making video, you are missing out badly. If you want a marketing agency that does things differently, please consider Marketlytics for your needs.
All discovery calls are confidential
Is video marketing effective for lawyers
Yes, both in organic and paid efforts
Is video advertising for lawyers easier than image based advertising?
The effort to produce video advertising may seem daunting, but it is a more surefire and effective means of producing winning campaigns than images because images need to be extremely ingenious to stand out in the market, taking enormous creative energy, whereas a video just needs a strong, resonant message
Are they lawyers who do good video advertising?
Yes, but they tend to not be traditional law firms, but software companies, with Safewill being a great example in the estate planning field
What do you need for video marketing as a lawyer?
You need a good camera, microphone and good lighting in a quiet spot
Clarence Ling is the Founder of Marketlytics, and a guerilla marketer. Initially a trained Lawyer and Practice Development Manager, he contributed to the growth of his firm, including implementing software.
Clarence Ling is a Digital Advertising and Analytics Expert. Having a wide range of advertising experience ranging from international real estate, to legal and previously worked in full service marketing agencies, Clarence is a diligent marketer with an eye for detail and a talent for numbers.
Clarence can carefully plan out the best budget levels for the desired outcomes with projections that are more accurate than most.
His background in Analytics enables a clear, big picture assessment of both organic and paid campaigns, enabling maximum efficiency of those digital campaigns. His analytical background brings precise clarity of client or customer interaction and behaviour on online assets.
Clarence’s four fields of practice are Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Email Marketing (EDM). He is best as an Advertiser and is an avid collector of Software As A Service (SaaS) Products, avidly investing in both technology and human capital of Marketlytics.
[…] targeting, which is a very key component, copy and media are vital. Find out why we developed our own approach to video marketing and how it can help you in Facebook Ad… To generate leads on Facebook, the collateral provided is really important and can make or break […]