It’s the classic “nightmare” first date: The other person didn’t bother to comb their hair and only talks about themselves. There’s no chemistry. The waiter is rude, and it takes forever for your food to come. You’re painfully bored and spend the whole time counting the minutes until you can escape and go home.
Why do we bring it up?
If you think about it, a bad online marketing video can be a lot like a bad first date. The only difference is that, if your videos are bad, nobody is going to sit through them out of politeness. If you don't make a great first impression on your audience by giving them a video that looks great and answers the questions on their minds, they’re going to click away and look for someone who will.
Do the videos on your law firm’s website make your potential clients want to get to know you better? If not, let’s talk about some ways you can start creating videos that offer a great “first date” experience.
Focus on the Other Person: Your Perfect Client
When you’re shooting the videos for your law firm, don’t be the person who just goes on and on about what a great attorney you are. Instead, it's crucial that your videos demonstrate your listening skills.
Pay close attention to what your prospective and current clients are asking. Think about what drove your favorite clients or best cases to you in the past. Take notes and collect data each time a prospective client calls, fills out your contact form, or uses your site's chat feature. The idea is to find out what your potential viewers are interested in by going straight to the source.
What questions do they ask? What are they concerned about? What are their priorities? The answers to those questions should guide the topics of all the videos you shoot. People are more likely to listen to you and react positively when they feel like you understand their needs and can answer their questions clearly.
Put Some Effort Into Your Video’s Appearance
Like it or not, people judge other people on looks—and the same goes for video. If your video is poorly lit or the sound is bad, a lot of potential viewers are going to skip it entirely.
It’s absolutely possible for attorneys to create their own website videos without professional help. But, if you want them to be effective marketing tools for your law firm, it’s vital that those videos look and sound great. If you want to get the most out of your videos, you can work on building an in-house studio space for your firm or calling in a professional video team to handle the shoots for you.
Why should you invest in professionally produced videos when you can quickly shoot a video on your phone, laptop, or desktop computer? The problem with amateur videos is that they usually suffer from quality issues that drive away viewers. These include:
- Poor video and editing quality. It’s hard to sit through a dark, grainy video. It’s hard to stay focused on someone talking for five minutes lit only by the glow of the screen. Weird cuts, long pauses, and irrelevant raw footage only distract from the subject at hand and can be major turn-offs for viewers.
- Poor sound quality. No one wants to crank the volume up just to hear what you’re saying or get blown away by sudden background sounds and screeching feedback noises. People often choose videos so they can listen to the answer to their question. If they have trouble hearing you, they’ll just move on.
- Limited scope & bad angles. Many “homebrew” web videos are shot at fixed angles—and they’re often bad angles. Whether you’re slightly off screen or always looking down at your viewer from above, these bad angles can be distorting and distracting.
- Boring backgrounds. When you shoot a video on your own, you’re limited to the background you have available—your office, a wall, a bookshelf, etc. You miss out on a lot of professional touches, like showing your phone number at the bottom of the screen or using a green screen to add dynamic backgrounds to your video.
- Bad associations. Webcam and phone videos are most popular with amateur bloggers, teens, and 24-7 social media users. As a result, when visitors see a video that was obviously shot by an amateur, many immediately assume that not much time, effort, or thought went into it.
Don’t get us wrong. We know plenty of attorneys that started out creating videos on their phones or home webcams. Some of them still captured attention because they made up for the lack of video quality with the quality of the content they shared in their videos—but just imagine how much more powerful those videos could be with an upgrade in quality!
While we’re talking about appearances, don’t worry if you’re a little camera shy. If you’re new to video creation, our team can guide you through it from beginning to end. We can write a script, coach you through the shoot, put your videos through a professional editing process, and make sure that you look and sound your best. Just talk with us about what you need.
However, don’t feel like you can’t do video marketing just because you don’t want to be on camera. You have options, and we’ve worked with our video clients on all kinds of solutions. For example, you might consider hiring a spokesmodel or shooting a video with a voiceover—these kinds of videos can still be powerful and show off your personality!
The Best Advice: Relax and Just Be Yourself
A lot of attorneys are nervous about starring in their own videos because they’re worried they have to “put on an act” or be something they’re not. Forget about all that. We’ll give you the same advice you get from friends and family members when you’re worried about a first date:
Just be yourself.
Sure, you want to present the best version of yourself, but just be you. If you’re serious, create a serious video. If you’re a laid-back personality, do something more informal. Don’t be afraid to show your potential clients what your law firm is about and what you’re like in person. When you let your true personality, passion, and mindset shine through, you give potential clients a compelling look into what you really bring to the table.
In the end, that’s how you make a connection that convinces viewers to call you, choose you, and tell their friends and family and about you.
Ready to start doing video better (and attracting more clients and cases while you’re at it)? We have the tools you need to make it happen. Request our book, The 8 Biggest Mistakes That Lawyers Make With Video, or get it all done for you with an on-site video shoot package from FWM.
Are You Considering Adding Customized, High Quality Videos To Your Legal Or Medical Website? You Should Be!
In today's fast-paced, highly technical online world, if you're not using unique, customized video to attract new leads and clients you're definitely missing a key component to your marketing strategy. Foster Web Marketing is here to help! Please contact us online or call our office directly at 888.886.0939 to schedule your free consultation with our experienced marketing team. We have been helping clients throughout the United States and internationally since 1998 and are confident we can help you not only reach, but exceed your goals.