Law firms have used television advertising to successfully promote their practices for decades. As television market share continues to decline, attorneys have increasingly turned their efforts to Internet legal marketing and more specifically, Internet based legal video advertising. These videos may be hosted on the attorney’s official law firm website, law firm blog, or a lawyer’s social media pages or online legal directory. However, many law firms make the mistake of assuming that the general rules and strategies that applied to legal television advertising apply equally to online video advertising. Unfortunately, simply taking a law firm’s TV advertisement and posting it somewhere online is not likely to be effective. This simplistic approach to online law firm video advertising fails to take into account critical factors such as:
• Educational, cultural, social, and economic differences in one’s audience
• Viewer habits and behavior
• How viewers in each medium happen upon legal video advertising
A classic legal television ad often tells a story or builds a scenario and draws the audience in with a developed story. For example, a personal injury law firm might tell an emotional story about someone who was seriously injured and how the firm helped the client. At the end of the advertisement, viewers will receive the name of the law firm and instructions on how to get in touch with an attorney. In most cases, the law firm is not mentioned until the very end of the video segment. In order to be effective, the story must engage the viewer for the duration of the spot. When a viewer watches television, they are typically watching a particular program. It is reasonable to assume that the television viewer will sit through the entire video because the viewer is there to watch a program which will continue after the advertisement.
The assumption that a viewer will watch all of a law firm advertising video online is not an accurate one. Most consumers who surf the web are looking for websites that quickly provide the answer or information they are seeking. Law firm video advertising must quickly get to the point because consumers may navigate away to another website. In these cases, there is no time to develop a story and then disclose the law firm’s identity. The law firm must lead with information that will immediately grab a consumer. A slow build up to the name of the law firm will not be effective
Another factor law firms must consider is, Internet users tend to be slightly more educated and better off socio-economically. Advertising online should take such trends into account. One cannot assume that a television advertisement that is effective and typically reaches all economic, cultural, and social groups will work equally as well online. A law firm needs to understand that effective online video advertising requires the firm to lead with its most compelling message and the name of the firm because they have only 20-30 seconds to convince a viewer to watch the rest of their video advertisement. The bottom line is a law firm needs to consider the specific nature of its online audience when developing online Internet video advertising.
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