5 Tips on Creating Your Own Legal Marketing Videos

Creating a video (or a video series) as part of your legal marketing strategy is an excellent way to market your firm. Video gives your law firm a simple and shareable way to communicate its brand and message. And video content can also produce a strong return on your investment.

Like many small businesses, you might not have an in-house production studio or much time to waste in learning about creating your own video content. Fortunately, it’s not that difficult. Even if you don’t have a lot of experience in video production, you can create something that will bring your law firm lasting results.

Now more than ever, people are choosing a law firm based on the quality of their digital presence. One of the ways you can get the attention of people searching for legal help online is through video content. After all, about one billion hours of video content is consumed on YouTube daily. Video marketing is an excellent way to highlight your law firm’s brand and your attorney’s credentials, boost your SEO, and convert leads into clients.

Five Tips on Creating Your Own Law Firm Videos

If you’ve never made a professional video before, the prospect can be intimidating. But, never fear, with a little time and effort you can be producing professional looking videos for your website and internet marketing program.

Aside from following a few simple rules, it’s fairly easy to create professional looking videos. Here are five practical video tips that can get you started creating your own legal marketing videos.

1. Plan Your Video Content

When it comes to video marketing, your content is much more important than your quality. That’s not to say you should completely ignore quality. But you should certainly spend a good amount of time properly planning your content. Start with these tips:

• Identify your target audience – Since it’s not possible to create a video that speaks to everyone, define your ideal viewer group. Are they recent accident victims? People going through a divorce? Families who have suffered a loss? Having this group defined will help you with the next steps in the process.
• Outline your goals – What would you like to achieve with your video? Do you want to build brand awareness? Are you trying to drive conversions? Would you like to teach viewers something? Define your goals before you move on.
• Outline your content – Now that you know who your audience is and what you’d like to accomplish, create an outline for your video. You don’t necessarily need to create a script. But you can do so if this makes you more comfortable. Most people do fine with a general outline that they can follow so that they don’t miss important points.

2. Choose the Right Background

Avoid making your video’s background an afterthought. The background for your video can either help you tell your story or take away from it by being too distracting. Your two options are:

• Real backgrounds – These include a real-life environment such as an outdoor location or your law office. This is often a good option for law firm videos as long as the area you use isn’t messy or cluttered.
• Fake backgrounds – These backgrounds include things like curtains and green screens. They work well for consistency, but they can be challenging to work with.

Whichever background you choose, make sure that it is in harmony with your foreground. In other words, it shouldn’t clash or blend so much that the video puts people to sleep.

3. Have the Proper Tools

This is the area that intimidates most amateur videographers. But it shouldn’t. Here’s what you need to know.

• Video camera – You don’t need to buy a new camera or phone to shoot quality online videos. If you have a late model iPhone or Android phone, you can get by just fine with these items.
• Sound – If viewers are struggling to hear your message, your efforts will go to waste. Instead of using your phone’s or camera’s built-in mic, it’s a good idea to invest in an external mic to capture the audio for your video.
• Lighting – Lighting is another important consideration. Natural light works best with video, so use a room that gets a lot of light through big or multiple windows. If this isn’t possible, you can add light with table lamps or ceiling lights.

4. Film Your Video

Before filming your video, do a few practice runs so that you are comfortable with your message.

• Film in small segments – It’s easier to film in short takes so that you have less to remember and more chances to reshoot something you don’t like.
• Use the power of emotion – Emotions are what drive viewers to take action. You can connect with viewers by telling stories and being relatable in your videos. What you don’t want to do is be too salesy. People pick up on this immediately, and most don’t like it.
• Include a Call to Action (CTA) – No matter what type of message you deliver, one of your goals should be to get new business. Let viewers know how they can contact you for more information and what your law firm can do to help.

5. Spend Time on Post Production

Once you’ve filmed your video, there’s still a bit of work to do before you can post it. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on fancy editing software, you can choose a free option to learn the ropes first. Some excellent free editing software solutions include:

• Lightworks
• Hitfilm Express
• Shotcut

No matter which option you choose, make sure you optimize your video for search with relevant tags and a keyword-rich title. Also, consider including closed captions for those who wish to view the videos without sound.

Too Darn Loud Legal Marketing Specializes in Video Marketing for Law Firms

Whether you’d like to make your own law firm videos or would prefer to have us else handle those details, the right digital marketing partner can make sure you get the most out of your video marketing strategy. Too Darn Loud Legal Marketing has extensive experience with video marketing for law firms.

We can help you post and market your existing videos or produce new ones. Contact us today for a free consultation to learn more about our video services and our comprehensive legal marketing services for law firms. We can be reached online through our contact form or call us at (800) 649-1764.