How Law Firms Can Use Video Marketing Strategically

How Law Firms Can Use Video Marketing Effectively & Strategically | 2023 LMA Annual Conference Recap

April 27, 2023

We’ve been making the case for video marketing for a while and are even more committed to the cause after this year’s Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference in Hollywood, FL!

LMA’s overarching theme for dedicated legal marketers at the conference was the importance of amplifying your voice and impact, and video marketing is a guaranteed way to do just that!

By Aries Founder and Digital Marketing Strategist, Jessica Aries, and Executive Producer and Founder of Kates Media, Rob Kates, were asked to build and present a session on the ways law firms can effectively and strategically use video marketing in 2023 and beyond, and we’re giving you all those details.

Let’s get to it!

Law Firm Video Marketing Objectives Covered Here

How to build a video marketing strategy that sets your firm apart and generates visibility for your law firm’s services.
Insight into what prospective clients care about and how to better build video content that gets the attention of your target audience.
How to generate buy-in with your law firm leadership to launch your first video campaign.

Marketing Strategy for Engaging Law Firm Videos

Take Advantage of the World’s Second-Largest Search Engine

If we had a dollar for every time a law firm Partner told us they wanted to rank on Google…

If you’ve been a part of a legal marketing team for any amount of time, we’d bet you’ve heard this request too, and you might even have allocated a big chunk of your marketing budget for Google Ads. While that’s perfectly ok, we want to let you know that you might not get the highest ROI on those paid ads if you’re not posting video content strategically on a certain platform.

Guess what platform is the second most utilized search engine (behind Google), is owned by Google, and whose algorithms work to boost ranking on Google. It’s a platform used by 80% of the Am Law 200 firms…

YouTube Videos!

YouTube helps your video marketing strategy and makes it possible to:

Find out what your target audience is searching
Build chapters into your video content
Publicize your efforts with links and icons
Create videos of various lengths
Repurpose valuable existing law firm content such as webinars and white papers
Get insight on performance metrics

There are a number of best practices and ways to optimize your law firm channel on YouTube, and we’ve broken them down for you here: Law Firm Video: How to Build the Best YouTube Channel.

When it comes to boosting your brand, you know that consistency is key! If you’re taking the time to develop legal marketing videos on one platform, you will only hit your maximum ROI if you post across other social media channels regularly.

While it might be a controversial topic with the talking heads on the news, short-form video platforms like TikTok are here to stay and are a crucial part of a law firm’s video marketing strategy.

This isn’t just a passing phase or a strategy we found via crystal ball. We’ve had a massive influx of law firms approach us over the past year to help them create targeted TikToks, Instagram Reels, and Facebook videos. And guess what… those law firms are, in fact, routinely booking prospect calls and engaging with new clients who found them on those platforms.

We could go on endlessly about the powers of short-form video adapted for various platforms and cross-posted to boost visibility, encourage engagement, and build credibility, but this is a quick recap. Plus, we’ve already broken down all the details for you on the best practices and strategies of short-form video marketing for lawyers:

We highly recommend taking a deep dive into these resources, as well as our entire Video Marketing Hub for Lawyers. Fair warning, though: once you realize how powerful these platforms and your attorney’s video marketing efforts are, you’ll be inclined to talk endlessly about making video content a pillar of your law firm marketing plan.

What Existing Clients, New Clients, and Prospective Clients Care About

Many firms mistakenly jump into video marketing with glossy tours of their new offices, overworked and out-of-touch virtual holiday cards, or a lengthy reel of rankings and awards that most potential clients know (or care) little about.

So what do potential clients care about? Authenticity.

Your audience wants an authentic version of your law firm and attorneys. And at their core, they want what your clients want: help. Paying clients seek legal services because they’re not equipped to understand or apply the law. Show them that you are!

Great ways to promote your expertise, build rapport, and genuinely connect with your audience with lawyer video marketing are:

Video testimonials from actual clients you’ve helped with a particular legal matter
Professional videos of your attorneys describing their practice areas and their experience
Explainer videos that break down a complex service your legal practice provides into digestible bites
How to videos on legal processes
Personal background of your attorneys, why they decided to practice law
And even video advertising that highlights your firm’s differentiators and willingness to serve
Educational content you’ve presented at conferences
Video of client alerts and news feeds that already live on your law firm’s website
Practice area overviews from a law firm website in video format

Inform Your Strategy

In addition to ensuring your legal videos are valuable and authentic to your audience, to enhance your legal video strategy, review viewer data such as location, age range, and traffic source to optimize content for your audience.

Metrics and data should be your guides for creating effective law firm videos. If you’re taking the time and spending resources to incorporate video into your marketing strategy and produce high-quality branded videos, you should use the traffic data to inform your legal marketing strategies. This should be done for video and across all aspects of your marketing efforts.

Need a little help with which metrics to measure? We’ve got you covered. Check out this breakdown of 4 digital marketing metrics that help you get a better understanding of what your audience cares about:

4 Digital Marketing Metrics to Measure | Your Scorecard for Success

Whatever your clients’ unique needs may be and whatever the topic is that drives them to seek out and engage with your content, the bottom line is:

The future of all content marketing is video-first.
Everyone has their own brand and will need to utilize videos to promote it.
Authenticity will become the new currency with online video.

Get Law Firm Leadership On Board with Video Marketing for Lawyers

Legal marketing departments are usually ahead of the trends and have been pushing their firms to incorporate video into their outreach strategies for a while. It’s leadership that is often the push-back on the issue of creating marketing videos as a strategy.

We get it. Regardless of firm size, most of the legal industry tends to toe the line, and stick to what they’ve always done. They only break from their standard marketing practices if and when the big firms do it. So, what are other law firms doing? Which of the big law firms are using video, and in what ways are they optimizing their reach?

Over 80% of Am Law 200 firms recognize the importance of having a branded YouTube channel and promoting their firm via online video. Yeah, the big names in the business are doing it because it’s effective, and we have the stats to back it up.

Kates Media and By Aries spent over a year collecting details, data, and gleaning insight on how Big Law is using video marketing for lawyers, and we’ve wrapped it all up into a nice package for you.

Gain access to the statistics you need to show the value of video to your firm.

Download our Slide Deck for Making the Case for YouTube Videos.

It has all the data and details that matter most to law firm leadership. It clearly demonstrates that the future of content marketing for lawyers is video marketing for lawyers. It’s time to jump aboard the video concept train before it leaves you in the dust!

Whew! We hope this “short recap” of our effective video marketing for lawyers session at the 2023 LMA Annual Conference was helpful. We know it can be overwhelming to dive headlong into a new marketing strategy like law firm video marketing, but remember these points when making your case for video content in an effective marketing strategy:

Master how to build video marketing strategies that set your firm apart and generate visibility for your firm’s services.
Gain insight into what clients care about and how to build better video content that gets their attention.
Learn how to generate buy-in with your law firm leadership to launch your first video campaign.

It’s also important to recognize when you need to engage with outside support to supplement your in-house marketing team with high-quality video that reaches your audience and serves a purpose. The By Aries team is always here to perfect your digital presence, including video marketing.

From digital audits to campaign strategy, creating video scripts, and a professional video editor, we are your go-to video marketers! We’re equipped and excited to partner with professional service providers like legal professionals to help them reach their clients and grow their law practice with effective marketing videos that make an impact.

Learn more about the support By Aries can provide, and schedule a call to discuss your goals with online marketing.