This 2012 Legal Market Survey Report from Avvo, Inc. and LexBlog indicates an already strong and still-growing interest in content marketing as a way for law firms to promote services and connect with potential clients. The report provides insight into legal marketing trends and strategies currently employed by lawyers, also indicating how and where video can help a law firm gain attention and clients.
These potential clients are now doing their research online, whereas they once may have been more apt to take word-of-mouth advice. A law firm’s website used to function simply as an online brochure and hardly played an actual function within business development, but now those sites are now just as (or more) valuable than other business development tools. The sites are now publishing platforms for attorney-generated content and are useful tools for attorneys to individually brand and market themselves.
In this regard, attorneys are advised, based on success stories, to include bios on the sites, in the form of video, podcasts, photo galleries, etc. The survey reports that 56%–70% of the traffic on a law firm’s website occurs in the attorney bios section and 90% of General Counsel say that attorney bios are the most important content on law firm websites, and are visited most. The bios should be personalized, aiming to emotionally connect with people they’ve never met face-to-face. It’s a way to introduce yourself to potential clients.
Here’s how video bios can help, specifically:
A brief introductory video can serve as a face-to-face meeting. “You hire the lawyer, not the firm,” as the saying goes. Video is an effective way to introduce each member of your firm, detailing their specialties in law, allowing them to discuss cases to the extent they’re able, and will allow your potential clients to familiarize themselves with the lawyers they’ll be hiring. Building the brand of each individual lawyer strengthens the marketing power of the entire firms.
Quality video on your site indicates to potential clients that you are a quality law firm, ahead of the industry curve. A video is also very likely to improve engagement on your social media profile. More and more often, corporate counsel is found not through recommendations from friends at the club or word of mouth, but through social media like LinkedIn and others.
The numbers indicate that this field is just starting to really burst open, with heightened growth expected in the coming months and years. We’ll leave you with a few more stats on video performance for law firms:
- 73 percent of consumers want a feel for a lawyer’s personality before contacting the firm. More than any other medium, video engages viewers.
- According to the research, consumers typically visit an average of almost 5 websites (4.8) before choosing an attorney online. That number decreases to 1.8, however, when those sites contain video.
- An estimated 100,000 law firms have launched video channels for marketing purposes on YouTube.
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