Nicole Black, The Daily Record Newswire
By now, most lawyers understand the power of online marketing, but many are still unsure how to go about using online tools to effectively and affordably reach potential clients. Oftentimes, lawyers struggle to find the proper balance between promoting their practices and creating content that is discoverable by search engines while simultaneously providing information that is both interesting and helpful to legal consumers.
Developing an online marketing strategy is not an easy proposition when it comes to written content, and things become even more complicated when lawyers venture into video marketing. Many lawyers have no idea where to start or what to say.
Fortunately, there are a few lawyers who have been very successful in this arena, one of whom is Gerry Oginski, a New York City medical malpractice attorney. I recently caught up with Gerry and asked his advice for lawyers who were interested in creating online videos to reach potential clients.
By way of backdrop, Gerry first explained how he began to use video marketing for his solo practice.
“It was 2006 and this new site came online that accepted user generated content — it was called YouTube. Maybe you’ve heard of it,” he laughed. “But the only law-related videos I could find on YouTube were lawyer commercials, which were pointless. They weren’t teaching anyone anything. So I decided to create a video that taught potential clients something they didn’t know.
“My first video was awful. It was 6 minutes long, grainy and dark, and explained how to hire a New York medical malpractice attorney. Remarkably, despite the poor video quality, I received lots of calls from people who’d viewed it,” he said.
He quickly realized he’d hit upon a successful marketing formula — providing legal consumers with much-needed information about the litigation process — that worked well for his practice. So well that, according to Gerry, he’s now made over 1,000 videos (online: www.youtube.com/user/lawmed1).
“Now fast forward 8 years and I have over 1,100 videos to market my solo practice. These videos have directly accounted for 8.5 million dollars of settlements. In fact, it was such a successful endeavor for my firm that I started a business, The Lawyer’s Video Studio, to help other lawyers learn how to make video marketing work for their practice,” he said.
According to Gerry, video marketing is a great way for attorneys to stand out from the crowd: “Online video marketing makes you more approachable so that legal consumers who are looking for information online feel more comfortable reaching out to you to learn more. They love the fact that you’re available and teaching them something they don’t know compared to your competitors who aren’t doing anything like that.”
Of course one of the most difficult parts about creating online content, whether written or video, is deciding what to discuss that will interest potential clients. However, it’s not as hard as you might initially think.
“There are so many different ways to skin the cat to come up with ideas that will interest legal consumers, Gerry explained. “The legal process is confusing. So teach them how it works. Think about the hundreds of steps that occur in a case from start to finish. Write down every step of the process from when they first call you to the very end of the case. You’ll find that all of sudden you’ve got tons of great content and that the hundreds of different steps are are great fodder for blog posts, FAQs, videos and more.”
So if you’ve been considering video marketing and wondering whether it might work for your law practice, wonder no more. Instead, pull out a notepad, outline the steps — from start to finish — of cases that you handle, and then get started. Create interesting content that will simplify and explain the legal process to your potential clients.
And then who knows? They might just pick up the phone and call in order to learn more information from you. So give it a shot and see. It never hurts to try.
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Nicole Black is a director at MyCase.com, a cloud-based law practice management platform. She is also of counsel to Fiandach & Fiandach in Rochester and is a GigaOM Pro analyst. She is the author of the ABA book “Cloud Computing for Lawyers,” coauthors the ABA book “Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier,” and co-authors “Criminal Law in New York,” a West-Thomson treatise. She speaks regularly at conferences regarding the intersection of law and technology. She publishes three legal blogs and can be reached at niki@mycase.com.
