Competition in the legal industry has never been fiercer.
When every firm talks about their years of experience, care for their clients, and dedication to justice, how can you stand out?
When your prospective clients are shopping around online, checking out every one of your competitor’s sites, and reading review after review, how can your law firm encourage them to commit to your firm?
Increasingly, the answer is video.
High-quality video can help you build your law firm’s brand as well as get you more clients, but you can’t just hit “record” on your phone and hope to deliver meaningful results.
This article will guide you through actionable strategies to build your law firm’s brand and get more clients with video.
We’ll cover:
Why video marketing for law firms
Building your brand with video
- Running a Facebook Ad campaign
- Creating a retargeting ad campaign
- Publishing educational video content
Getting more clients with video
- Creating a high-quality brand video
- Creating a client testimonial video
- Creating an attorney profile video
Let’s get started.
Why Video Marketing for Law Firms?
Can video help you to stand out from the 1,350,000 other lawyers in the US? Can it help you to build your brand? Can it drive your prospective clients to sign on the dotted line?
The answer is yes. Definitely.
- Video increases recall: Viewers remember 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text.
- People prefer video to any other content: 72% of prospective clients would rather learn about a service by way of video than any other content type.
- People search for video: Nearly 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.
Crisp has dozens of success stories from law firms just like yours who have used video to effectively do all the things above.
For instance…
The McCraw Law Group is a personal injury firm in Texas. Founder Lin McCraw’s practice is “dedicated to helping those seriously injured or defrauded to make financial, physical, and emotional recoveries.”
While Lin wasn’t struggling with awareness, his challenge was turning warm prospects into paying clients.
So, in partnership with Crisp Video, Lin created a video that showed (clearly and emotively) who Lin was and why he practices law. After seeing the video, he was confident the McCraw Law Group would be the obvious choice.
And he was right.
The video went live in December. Up to that point in the year, they had been converting about ten new personal injury cases a month.
In January, McCraw Law Group generated 24 accepted cases.
The brand video is credited with delivering a 100% increase in cases signed.
You can see their law firm’s brand video here:
In Lin McCraw’s own words…
“Video is here to stay. Do it right and the return should be even greater as the public more and more makes credibility decisions about you based on your video presence, while those who refuse to adjust will continue to split up an increasingly small number to non-tech savvy consumers.” (Source)
Building your Brand With Video
Before you can get a single client to hire you, they need to know you exist.
Remember, you’re competing with more than 1,350,000 lawyers in the US.
Unless you can build your brand, you’re just another lawyer in a snappy suit.
So there are two steps here:
- We need to increase your law firm’s brand recognition (the number of prospective clients who know you exist).
- We need to create a positive association with your brand (those prospective clients need to like you).
Build your Brand with Video Strategy #1: Run a Facebook Video Ad Campaign
Facebook has more than 2.4 billion monthly users, and Instagram (which has a connected advertising platform) has more than 1 billion. Between them, they offer the most promising collection of prospective clients you’ll ever see. Engaging with those people is the best way to build your brand and increase the number of people who know you exist.
Here’s a simplified walkthrough for creating a Facebook video ad campaign:
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- Step 1: Start your Facebook ad creation by choosing Brand Awareness from the campaign objectives.
- Step 2: Select your target ad audience and placements.
- Step 3: Select (or agree to) “Optimization for Ad Delivery” as “Ad Recall Lift.”
- Step 4: Select “Single Image or Video” from the ad format options.
- Step 5: Import your shortened brand video. Our recommendation is to avoid Facebook’s video template feature, as importing a complete video generally gives a better result.
- Step 6: Make sure your video meets the requirements for the locations and platforms on which it will be seen.
- Step 7: Set your ad’s tracking (though our goal here is to increase brand awareness and recall) and click “Confirm.”
That’s it. You’re good to go!
Facebook video advertising top tips:
- Add subtitles. 85% of videos watched on Facebook and Instagram are watched without sound.
- Optimize for mobile. More than 50% of videos watched on Facebook and Instagram are watched on phones.
If you want a professional marketing team to handle your law firm’s Facebook video ad campaign, learn more about Crisp Social Stack.
Build your Brand with Video Strategy #2: Create a Video Retargeting Ad Campaign
An optimized Facebook and Instagram video ad campaign will make people aware of your law firm and drive visitors to your website, but that doesn’t mean they’ll book a consultation, or even remember you.
Typically, even from ad traffic, about 92% of first-time website visitors don’t take the action you want them to. But that doesn’t mean you have to be forgotten. To build your brand, you need to build your brand recall. And there’s no better way to do that than with a retargeting ad campaign.
How does a retargeting ad campaign work?
Have you ever visited an ecommerce site and looked at a product, decided against buying, and then seen that product on Facebook or in a Google Ad later that day or week?
If so, you’ve been retargeted.
Retargeting works by adding a small snippet of code (called a cookie) onto your website visitor’s browser. If you’ve ever cleared your browser’s cookies, you’ve removed the ability for a website to track you.
Retargeting website visitors can be an extremely effective way to build your brand awareness and recall online.
Here’s a simplified walkthrough for creating a Facebook video retargeting ad campaign:
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- Step 1: Make sure you’ve added Facebook’s tracking pixel to your law firm’s website.
- Step 2: Create a custom audience on Facebook. Select “Website” as your audience source.
- Step 3: Exclude website visitors outside your target demographic location (this means you won’t pay to show your Louisville-based law firm to people in Seattle who happened to visit your site).
- Step 4: Either make sure your Facebook pixel is only triggered on your consultation page (to only show to prospective clients) or import, and then exclude, a CSV list of existing clients.
- Step 5: Confirm you’re optimizing your retargeting ad for Ad Recall Lift.
- Step 6: Import your shortened brand video (optimized for mobile and with subtitles).
- Step 7: Click confirm, and you’re good to go!
Important note on retargeting ads: You may not see major traffic from your retargeting ad campaign, and you may feel like you’re wasting ad budget.
Before you hit “stop,” remember that the goal of this campaign isn’t to drive direct click-throughs from your ad. It’s to increase brand awareness and recall. When your prospective clients are making the decision about which law firm to choose, being top of mind is as important as any other determining factor.
Our recommendation is this:
- Run a retargeting campaign for a full month to all your website traffic.
- If you have fewer website visitors, extend the campaign until your ads have been seen by at least 1,000 unique viewers.
- Stop your retargeting campaign for the same amount of time as it was shown (or until the same amount of traffic hasn’t been affected by your ads).
- Compare the two periods, paying particular care to website conversion rates and visitors with multiple sessions.
Build your Brand with Video Strategy #3: Publish Educational Video Content
The advertising campaigns above built awareness and brand recall.
But (unless your ad’s video was amazing), you won’t necessarily have created much positive brand association.
For that, we need to give your prospective clients value.
Now, you know that the legal process is a complicated one. Most prospective clients don’t fully understand their rights, whether they have a case, or (if they do have a case) how it might play out.
The best way to help them (and your firm’s positive association in their eyes) is to create educational video content.
Now, written content (blogging, an ebook, etc.) is all well and good.
But video is better.
In fact, when text and video are both offered, 72% of website visitors would rather watch the video than read. And video viewers are 95% more likely to recall the page’s or video’s call to action after watching a video, compared to 10% when reading it.
Consider as well that an educational video shows your face (remember, we’re trying to differentiate you from your law firm’s competitors, here).
Showing your face emphasizes you, not the firm you represent.
To illustrate what we’re talking about, here’s an educational video example from Crone Law Firm: “Is Retaliation at Work Illegal?”
To start creating videos that build your law firm’s brand online, connect with a legal video marketing strategist from Crisp.
Getting More Clients With Video
Now that you’ve built your brand awareness and positive brand association, you’re halfway there. The other half, though — the “getting them to sign on the dotted line” part — is a bit trickier. This section will give you three of the best ways to turn prospective clients into clients with video.
Get More Clients with Video Strategy #1: Create a High-Quality Brand Video
Firstly, you need a brand video. There’s no getting around it.
A brand video accomplishes a few things:
- It tells your story, differentiating you as an individual with a history and a reason you practice. This helps prospective clients connect with you.
- It shows that you’re not just another law firm. You have a personality, a laugh, a compelling argument for what you bring to the table that no other law firm does.
- It enables you to showcase your previous clients. This works wonders in developing trust because, let’s face it, you’re not the most objective source of information for your own firm.
- A high-quality video, at face value, shows you’re a professional. This isn’t a video shot in your office with an iPhone. B-roll, compelling music, multiple camera angles, and a professional production team work with you to create something truly different.
For example, here’s a law firm brand video example from Gracia & Mintz, Attorneys at Law:
Create Client Testimonial Videos
While client testimonials are a critical component of a good brand video, they aren’t the only focus. Yet hearing from your previous clients can be the difference between someone choosing you over a competitor. Think about it: when you’re choosing a restaurant, are you more likely to select the empty one or the one with a line out the door?
Testimonials (like full restaurants) provide validation from people like your prospective clients. This is especially powerful in the legal sector, where the stories of your past clients will resonate with prospective new ones. Your firm’s ability to help them can have a powerful emotional impact on making their decision.
For instance, this client testimonial video example comes from Chaffin Luhana LLP:
Create Attorney Profile Videos
The most successful law firms can experience a growth plateau. They have awareness (even localized saturation), but they struggle to grow beyond a certain level. Often, it’s their very success which is at fault. As they grow, they become faceless firms with little personality and less individuality.
But prospective clients want an attorney who will be dedicated to them — an individual they can call when things are hard. During a protracted legal battle, people want someone they know and are confident will have their back when the going gets tough.
That’s why attorney profile videos are so important: they show (no matter how big your firm is) that you’re still made up of caring individuals.
This attorney profile video example comes from the Shannon Law Group, and focuses on Joseph Shannon’s individual story:
If you’re looking for a professional team to produce videos like these for your firm, connect with an expert legal marketing strategist from Crisp.
Conclusion
Now that you have an understanding of how video can help your law firm grow and get clients, it’s up to you to take action.
Video can be the differentiation factor your firm needs to really stand out — a way to engage and connect with your prospective clients on a personal level.
So, will you invest in video, or stick with what you know?
To incorporate legal video into your marketing strategy, connect with a Crisp legal marketing strategist for a one-on-one strategy session today.
