Are The Video Content on Your Law Website strategized Correctly?

As the digital marketing landscape evolves, most (if not all) businesses are getting a wider opportunity to attract, engage, convert, and retain their target audience into a loyal base of customers. New trends arising regularly is resulting in brands aggressively competing to create more captivating and shareable content.

While many trends come and go, take, certain trends or practices prevail which helps businesses market themselves successfully

One such trend is video marketing, which takes visual content to one step ahead in devising a strategy to engage the target audience better. From it being a secondary marketing tool for communication with consumers to marketers, eventually realizing the significance of incorporating video in their marketing campaigns, they have become the prime focus of the marketing tactics and how!

Do you know how much content is being consumed via video, and what is the scope of it?

If given a choice between text and video, over 72% would prefer knowing further about the products and services through a video.

Per Brightcove’s Video Marketing Survey, 23% of people, that includes 30% of the millennials are interested in products and services that have a video accompanied by a link to guide them towards the purchase further. What keeps 66% of millennials engaged in a brand is the video on their social feed.

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Speaking of the scope of video marketing, per The State of Video marketing 2018, 83% of marketers consider video as a potent tool for enhancing brand awareness and driving potential customers to their websites.

If we look at how the marketing sector plans to invest in growing their base with videos, then IAB Video Ad Spend Study suggests there has been an escalation of 53% since 2016, and there has been an escalation of 34% from 2017 in the number of business planning to utilize video as a marketing tool.

How can it benefit your legal marketing website?

Every industry at the moment is looking for ways to leverage video adequately to escalate their growth and profit, and the legal sector is no exception here. Albeit slowly, but the video is becoming one of the most prominent legal marketing trends in 2019.

But before we divulge into the benefits of video marketing to the legal industry, let me ask you a question: Have you got a website for your legal practice?

If no, then that should be your primary goal and the first step towards marketing your proficiency to the qualified audience. Remember only hire a team of certified professionals to ensure that your website is designed and developed aligning your goals and objectives with what your target audience is looking for.

Having said that, allow me to shed some light on the benefits of incorporating video in your legal marketing strategies:

• Increase visibility: With Google giving preference to the website with high-quality video over those that don't have one, it is only profitable to create video content as your website will be placed at the top of the SERP, preferably. This will help your website rank better in the organic search results, enhancing visibility from the client seeking legal services.
• Bolsters client engagement: Engagement is one of the biggest challenges that legal practice s faces while marketing themselves online. Since videos provide vital information about the services being offered in those seconds or minutes, it is a more engaging tool than any other visual marketing technique being implemented at the moment. The kind of impact i.e., trust and connection that is forged by the videos, cannot build by printed images or texts. If done right, with an easy going yet insightful content with a format that can be easily comprehended by the audience.
• Screen potential clients: An adequately created video will better help those searching on the web understand the field in which your proffer legal help. Take, for instance; you are a personal injury lawyer who has created videos about the significance and why your firm stands out of the crowd in ensuring justice is brought to the victim. Now, these videos will help decrease the number of unnecessary call to your office that ends up with, "No Sir, we do not provide criminal defense/divorce/will and estate service.". Hence videos will only bring qualified candidates to your doorstep.
• Increase time on the page: While all it takes is a scroll to skim through the words or images on the website, having a video, on the other hand, requires one to convenience=citrate and listen to what is being proffered. This will significantly increase the time spent by the visitors on the landing page. Videos will help you connect and stick with the potential clients who might reach out to hire your legal service.
• Maximize return on investment: A professional video of attorney profile, firm introduction, or practice area videos has the potential to deliver a powerful impact on the client's mind at an emotional level. The next time they will think of legal service, your name will instantly come to their mind because of what part of your legal service has stuck with them.

Now that you are well acquainted with the benefits of utilizing video content to expand your reach and boost your profitability; let's discuss some tips that can substantiate the success of your video marketing strategy:

• Educate the clients: You will have a lot of information to share regarding a specific legal sector, and your potential clients will have numerous questions regarding the same. Why not use a video to create a question and answer session, wherein you can resolve general queries of the potential clients? You can also use a live video streaming app for talking live with your clients and answer their general queries. This will build your authority, and you will be seen as an expert in the respective area of practice.
• Incorporate webinars: Webinars have been gaining quick popularity in the community and should be leveraged by your legal practice to strengthen the authority online. Upload copy of webinar on youtube, export the presentation to PDF and upload it on leading presentation platform for maximum visibility.
• Talk to your audience: Remember, you are reaching out to your audience through video marketing and talking to them. Address the audience as the first person using you and not them. This will help change viewers perspective of you and your practice. This will help increase engagement with your content.
• Upload it on social media platforms: There are a plethora of social media platforms with millions and billions of users. You need to determine the efficacy of each in bringing traffic and engagement to your practice's website and accordingly upload the video on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. Furthermore, make it a point to advertise and promote these videos on your LinkedIn company and personal profile to boost overall engagement.
• Embed your video to the website: First impression matter and when this is being said in context with the site, it is how your homepage looks. Embedding video (introduction, welcome, attorney profile) to your homepage will give the potential clients a better insight into your legal practice, establishing a connection stronger than the text.
• Be consistent: Consistency is the key to mastery, and in the case of online marketing, the authority. Post educational videos consistently periodically. Look for the keyword being targeted by the competitors and used frequently by the target audience in their searches to create video content that will deliver more strategically. Consistency will help build trust, authority, and give you expert status in the respective field.

Mistakes that you should avoid while using video as a marketing tool:

• Making lengthy videos: While it is understandable that you, as a lawyer, must have a lot of legal information pertaining to your field, to share with the potential clients, this doesn't mean that you have to. There is a difference between educating and being boring. You do not want to be the latter, so stay straightforward, keep the message clear and video short.
• Not using SEO for your video: Not using SEO techniques to enhance the visibility of your video and practice's work can hamper the impact of your efforts. Link a relevant post with the video, add a description, tags to your video to ensure they appear in the search results, add schema markup so that Google can include you in the search results, etc.
• Wrong placement of CTA and links: The attention span of online users, which as per the Microsoft 2015 report, is shorter than that of a goldfish, which is not a surprise since we have a lot of content on the internet to consume. Why would you risk placing the most critical information just anywhere or not provide a proper call to action? Provide a clear call to action which clients can easily find. Also, make sure to keep the vital information, in the beginning, to better educate your target audience about the video and york legal practice.

As mentioned above, the legal sector might be slow in catching up with the latest marketing trend, considering the nature of their job, but once they do, they will be able to forge and foster long term strategic relationship with the clients.