You don’t need to work in an extremely visual industry to create video content that drives revenue and brings in new business. You don’t even need to hire a fancy, high-tech production team.
Philip Fairley helps law firms and attorneys craft and execute video marketing strategies that resonate with target audiences and yield ROI. He and host Michelle Calcote King discuss how to get started, including equipment, where to find regular content ideas, how to set up a shooting location, and the best distribution channels. They cover how law firms can use videos to create touch points with prospects and explain the different strategies behind lead nurturing and lead generation videos.
Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn
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Who Philip Fairley is
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About The Rainmaker Institute and Rainalytics®
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The types of videos that work (and don’t work) for law firms
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Different methods to shoot, use and distribute short-form and long-form videos
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Essential video equipment to get you started
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How to find content ideas
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Best practices for scripting, recording and distributing videos
About our featured guest
Philip Fairley is president and owner of The Rainmaker Institute, the nation’s largest law firm marketing company that focuses exclusively on client generation, lead conversion and data analytics. During his time at Rainmaker, he co-developed Turbine®, the only software platform that automates the intake process, and Rainalytics®, the only tool that automatically measures all law firm data.
Philip holds degrees from Northwestern University, Wheaton College and Keller Graduate School, is an NCAA Division I National Debate Champion, and is a recognized expert on intake, lead conversion and innovative video marketing. His and Rainmaker’s expertise have been noted and quoted in the ABA Journal, Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, Harvard Management Update, Business Advisor, Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business, and Attorney at Law.
Prior to owning Rainmaker, he was the founder and CEO of two successful companies that specialized in legal tech, cybersecurity and communications. He is married with three children and enjoys the Arizona lifestyle, mountain biking and coaching youth sports.
Rainmaker has helped more than 23,000 attorneys and law firms grow their businesses by learning and implementing its proven marketing and intake strategies.
Resources mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink.
Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.
Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more.
To learn more, visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Philip Fairley: If you go through this simple process like I just laid out, you'll be able to create your own videos and it won't be a big lift.
[00:00:08] Announcer: Welcome to "Spill the Ink," a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now let's get started with the show.
[00:00:25] Michelle Calcote King: Hey everyone, I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm the host and I'm also the Principal and President of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.
So today we're going to talk about video marketing for law firms — how to do it and how to do it well.
Video isn't the first thing you think about when you think about law firms and marketing, but it can be a very successful strategy. It's also exponentially growing in popularity, and multimedia elements are showing up on firm's website, social media, newsletters, and more.
I'm welcoming Philip Fairley to today's episode. He's the president of The Rainmaker Institute. They are a legal marketing firm for small to midsize firms, and they offer an array of services, including, of course, video marketing. Philip also developed Rainalytics®. It's a business intelligence tool that tracks and analyzes firm data. Thanks for being here.
[00:01:22] Philip Fairley: Hey, I appreciate it. I'm always excited to talk about video because you were mentioning it's like, "Hey we're starting to see them show up on websites and multimedia and other things. But yet other industries have been embracing this for the last decade."
[00:01:34] Michelle Calcote King: I know.
[00:01:35] Philip Fairley: But, you know, in full disclosure, Michelle, every industry always says, "Well, our industry is late to the game."
[00:01:42] Michelle Calcote King: I know. Right?
[00:01:43] Philip Fairley: But you know this, being in marketing, we're driving innovation. So I can imagine just like in your company, all the changes daily, weekly, monthly for some. Yeah, but for law firms I will call this new.
[00:01:55] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. I know, right? Yeah.
Well, I gave a little bit of an introduction, but tell me a little bit more about your career and your work at The Rainmaker Institute.
[00:02:03] Philip Fairley: Yeah, so I took over Rainmaker's ownership back in 2017. Rainmaker next year will be 25 years.
[00:02:09] Michelle Calcote King: Wow.
[00:02:10] Philip Fairley: Uh-huh. We were the first in an industry where there was zero competition.
[00:02:14] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:02:15] Philip Fairley: That was a pretty neat place to be, Michelle. But we were doing a lot of coaching and consulting and things like that, where a lot of firms need that and that's where we kind of started out. But in 2017, I took over the company and a couple of the things that really I'm excited about that we've made some changes since then is, like you mentioned, before, we developed Rainalytics — a little play on our name. We love the word Rainmaker because that's what we try to help law firm owners become.
But with Rainalytics, what it does is it plugs into all your software across your firm and it measures all the data into custom dashboards. Now, that's pretty interesting on the surface, but the neat part, what separates this aside from any other reporting or, you know, you got P&L reporting, you have Quickbook-- whatever it may be, right? GA4, Google Analytics 4, right? A lot of reports. But the difference with Rainalytics is we tie that in with monthly meetings with our clients and we interpret numbers for them.
[00:03:15] Michelle Calcote King: Perfect.
[00:03:15] Philip Fairley: Because we have 500 data points. You as the law firm owner, are you going to sort through that and then make sense of it?
[00:03:21] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:22] Philip Fairley: Then data is like an overload. You're like, "I got data everywhere."
[00:03:25] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:03:25] Philip Fairley: So we tell our law firm owners what to do more of and what to do less of by reading the data for them. And I think that's really-- That changes them from being an attorney into a business owner.
And sometimes they only put that hat on one hour a month. You know, the more successful ones wear that hat more frequently than being an attorney, but we love Rainalytics. And the other thing that we did first in our history of Rainmaker is last year we purchased a video company out of California.
[00:03:52] Michelle Calcote King: Oh, okay.
[00:03:53] Philip Fairley: And we'd never purchased or acquired another company in the history of our 24 years and working with 23,000 law firms to date.
It was really exciting because we had the knowledge and the understanding of "Here's how you should be positioning, but we needed somebody to help us execute that. And that's really what I wanted to talk about today because, honestly, the type of videos that are working or not sending out a crew to your firm and getting a set of five or six that are overproduced. These are things that you and your marketing team internally should be doing on your own or in that type of a manner.
And I think that's really the neat, or unique part of what's working in marketing right now because more and more marketers — you may hear this across many industries. They're like, "Hey, when we put out an ad or a marketing campaign and we're like, 'Hey, here's what we do, here's three benefits, like here, set a time.' Right? Or whatever, pitching their services, whether that's legal services or the marketing or whatever it may be. Those aren't resonating. What's resonating with consumers is video; is what we consume. We lay in bed before we go to sleep, we wake up in the morning and we check, right? And all the news and social media-- It's all intertwined and we then find ourselves going to TikTok or Reels or Shorts and sitting there for way too long.
But what's resonating is the approach of tell me you're an attorney without telling me you're an attorney, right?
[00:05:18] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. I love that.
[00:05:20] Philip Fairley: Right, I don't want somebody to fix my probate. I want somebody to tell me what I should be looking at with this probate issue and educating me on it or whatever their issue is.
[00:05:31] Michelle Calcote King: Well, let's talk about that. So we're the same. When we post what we've done testing and we'll post the same post and we'll put one with a static image, one with a video and the engagement is off the charts more on the video.
But, you know when I was coming up in marketing many years ago, you thought of video for things that had a real visual element to them. You know, things that had that something that kind of really popped on video, and law firms don't really have that. You know, they have people in suits and fancy offices, you know?
Let's talk about what kind of video — and I love that you also talked about, it's not the high-production quality anymore. It's, well, one just, you know, iPhones and tech have just kind of brought the tech to the masses. I always tell this story about how I was interviewed for TV a few years ago, and they actually interviewed me on an iPhone and it was on the local news. So
[00:06:23] Philip Fairley: There are movies that-- Remember like five years ago, there was this — I don't even know what it was, but the only people went to see it is because they said "We filmed it all on an iPhone."
[00:06:31] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Yeah. It's wild.
So tell me what kind of videos are working and how are you facilitating that with your clients?
[00:06:39] Philip Fairley: Yeah. There's a couple of things that are kind of what I'd call table stakes with video and multimedia. Like you were mentioning, you need some, what we call 'core videos' on your website. Like your About Us. Every attorney needs to have a profile video and it's not where you went to law school. And if you can film it with your dog or your pet in there, kudos and bonuses. And just trust me, that works. But you need a set of core videos.
And then we kind of divide them up into a couple different areas. And the reason why we know that overproduced videos don't work, and why there's certain areas that you should be focusing on with your video is because with our Rainalytics tool, we track the data. Those overproduced, Law and Order, you know, movie trailer type videos that, you know who's putting them out, and you know how expensive they are, nobody watches them. They just don't. They go to the AMC to go watch those at the theater or Law and Order video, right? The episode. That's not what's resonating.
So you have your core videos and you want to do it. And then you have two other types. One is the most overlooked Michelle, and that's a nurturing. Your nurturing videos will generate more revenue for any law firm than any other video. I don't care if you get a million views on a video. Your nurturing videos will generate more.
And what do I mean by that? Well, you work in the space. Many law firms think that their marketing stops when the phone rings, right? " Hey, marketing worked. Great. Got a lead. Check it off. Track it." You know what? That's false. Your marketing evolves and changes from lead generation to lead nurturing. Because not everybody's ready to set a consult.
[00:08:19] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:08:20] Philip Fairley: So like, if you're in estate planning, your sales cycle could be six months. If you're in criminal defense, it could be two days and then practice areas abound in between.
So the nurturing. What you need to do is if-- Let's say you're a family attorney, don't just say "I practice family law or divorce law." You've got multiple sub-practice areas in there. You've got divorced with children. Divorce without. Divorce with high-net-worth owners. You got mediation. You got contention. You can slice these deeply and the reason you want to do that with your nurturing messaging, other than tracking what practice areas are profitable underneath that, is because then you should be nurturing those leads. The divorced with children, that's an entrepreneur.
And then if they don't set the appointment, or if they do go to the consult and they don't hire you, you need to be nurturing them in a series of 5 to 10 to 15 touches. A couple texts, a couple phone calls, always include phone, but your email messaging should have a case study.
Your first email should be — this is the best one. I love this one. What happens day number one if you're my client? They have no idea what it's like to be a client of a law firm, how the court system works. You know, if you're in bankruptcy that's a real easy content to create. You get a fresh start, no more calls, right? We take everything off you. If you're, you know, trying to protect your family and your children, there's a certain mess. So having these drip videos sparsed in with your emails, those videos are fantastic.
[00:09:53] Michelle Calcote King: Perfect.
[00:09:53] Philip Fairley: Those are more what I would call kind of one-and-dones. You're creating them once, multi-use. Unlike a plastic straw, it's not a single-use. You use those thousands and thousands of times. Just imagine your ROI on them.
[00:10:06] Michelle Calcote King: Right.
[00:10:06] Philip Fairley: But then-- That's more lead nurturing. For lead generation — I also call it 'branding' because you've got to understand--
You know this a lot better than I do. You have the extensive experience in PR and branding and that's your jam. You know the value of that versus a static word versus a picture.
Let's say the word 'boy.' Okay. Then, 'a picture of a boy sitting on a couch, like a three year old boy.' What comes to your mind? Then think of it, 'that boy dribbling a basketball and he hits his dog with it and then he falls over laughing.' What's the impact of that? So with the videos that — other than your kind of core and your nurturing ones — a lot of them are going to kind of fall into a couple of different categories. What I call like the top of the funnel messaging. When you market, the bottom of the funnel messaging is "Here's my software or here's my legal services. Set a time for a consult. Buy my scope."
[00:11:00] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Right.
You're convinced you need an attorney, now you're just trying to decide if I'm the attorney for you. That's bottom of the funnel. Top of the funnel is--
[00:11:09] Philip Fairley: Education.
[00:11:10] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, right. Exactly.
[00:11:11] Philip Fairley: Awareness. As many eyes as you possibly can have. And there's two ways to slice this.
What we like to do is education. Just what I was telling you about before. Like if you're a family attorney in North Carolina, "Hey, did you know that you have to be physically separated for 364 days before you can file for divorce?" Educating them on this. What are the questions that your leads ask you during intake or consult? What are your FAQs? What are people looking for? Those educational ones, those are key.
But you don't just want to go there. One of the strategies that we've stolen from another industry, and that was probably taken from another industry, and that was probably created by TMZ, and that was probably created by The Inquirer in the World Magazine in the eighties. And that's react.
[00:12:04] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:12:05] Philip Fairley: Like for instance, we've got an Orange County, California, family attorney. We were begging him. This is the guy's like, "No I wear a suit and tie. I'm sophisticated." We're like, "Take your tie off. You can keep your jacket. That's okay. Relax. Make it a little bit more normal like you're having a conversation like we are."
But he did a video — because he's in California — "Harry and Megan are going to get divorced in California." He had about 48,000 views within 24 hours.
[00:12:34] Michelle Calcote King: So, okay. This is news to me. I didn't know. Did I, did I miss some celebrity news?
[00:12:40] Philip Fairley: They're not getting divorced. I think they will, right? But what are consumers--? Half the people in the world that are married get divorced, right? So of the half of those people, how many of those married people are interested in pop culture, celebrity...
[00:12:55] Michelle Calcote King: Right? Yeah.
[00:12:55] Philip Fairley: Art culture...? Everybody is, right? Michelle, you'll go down rabbit trails on your own phone and you're like--
[00:13:02] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Easy. Yeah.
[00:13:03] Philip Fairley: Right? I don't even like X, Y, and Z, but why am I watching? It's just the way it is.
[00:13:07] Michelle Calcote King: It's like junk food for the mind, yeah.
[00:13:10] Philip Fairley: It is. But then people are like, "Well, I don't want to get calls from the UK. I can't help anybody with it--" The way that you do that is it raises your brand. And then you talk about if you're in California — since they're in California — here's what they would go through. So he explains to them what their process would be if they get a divorce.
[00:13:27] Michelle Calcote King: Nice. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:29] Philip Fairley: And then you pair that with education and you get some react videos-- Like some of the best ones, like, "A lawyer breaks down this situation." Oh my gosh. "In your particular industry."
I just did one because you know, Oregon — it should be released in probably a week, I think — but Oregon just went through-- Their Supreme Court said, "You don't have to pass the bar to become an attorney." They have alternative ways to become an attorney.
I think that's going to have a lot of traction with law firm owners. What does that mean? They're interested in the pop culture of the legal space.
[00:14:03] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:04] Philip Fairley: But then I follow up with education about "Here's five things you need to know on intake, and here's how to work a consult." And, you know, so--
[00:14:12] Michelle Calcote King: I love that. In the PR industry, we call that 'newsjacking'. So, taking a timely topic and then adding your own analysis to kind of get attention around the topic people are already paying attention to. And then bringing that attention to yourself. Yeah. We do it through the media, but fantastic. Yeah.
[00:14:29] Philip Fairley: And this is kind of a do it at home type of approach to that. But the key is you can't just jack the media two or three times and then stop, right? Because video it's about consistency. Creating consistent video every week, every week and a half.
But then I'd like to share how that works because people don't do it because they're scared and it's a scientific process. It's not an art. It's really not. Let me jump in with this.
[00:14:58] Michelle Calcote King: Please do. Yeah. I'd love to understand that more.
[00:15:00] Philip Fairley: Yeah, the key is consistency. So you break it down into a couple things.
The first thing is you want to have a shoot location. We call it a 'shoot room' and that shouldn't be within your conference room. It looks like a law library with your certificates on the back. Your backyard is great, down the hallway. If you look at the back of ours, you got character, you got a star, you got some trophies in there that I'd like to talk to you about someday. You've got a couple certificates and some fun things and-- Right? And, you know, I'm a, you know, bleeding Chicago Cubs fan.
[00:15:30] Michelle Calcote King: Just a tad bit of a Cubs fan. Yeah.
[00:15:34] Philip Fairley: So bring some character to it. So you want to have a shoot location where you're comfortable with it because you never want to mess around with you. Like, "I'm going to create video. I know exactly where I'm going to create it." And you don't want to do it always at the same place, but start just doing it at your desk. Stand up when you do it. Right? But have something that has character in the background.
Then what you want to do is you want to kind of separate this out into like twice a month, you can do this at doing it twice a month. The first 20, 30 minutes, you set a schedule on your calendar. And if you don't calendar it, you just, you'll get run over. Right? And you're doing the scripting and the content. And then you set a time like for an hour, like two or three days in advance-- Fast forward for that, not too long. So you're like, "Hey, on Monday afternoon I'm going to spend 20, 30 minutes on scripting and coming up with my content. Then on Thursday afternoon, I'm going to do the shoots."
So with the scripting, what we've come up with is templates, Michelle. You can template anything. So we template react videos. We template education videos. We template profile-- So what you can do is think of it as like Mad Libs. You're just filling in the blanks.
[00:16:46] Michelle Calcote King: Right?
[00:16:47] Philip Fairley: So you have a hook at the beginning, right? It's like, "Hey, did you know you had to be physically separated 364 days before filing for divorce in North Carolina?" That's your one or two sentence hook. And the script has that or a place for you to pencil that in.
The next part of the script is your standard intro. Mine is "Hello, I'm Philip Fairley. I'm the president of Rainmaker Institute, and we have grown more law firms into seven and eight figure businesses than anyone else in the U. S."
[00:17:14] Michelle Calcote King: Wow, that's great. Yeah, I love that.
[00:17:17] Philip Fairley: Right? Then the template goes to, "Okay, reiterate the reasons why your hook line is so important for your audience to understand. Here's some examples." Then you're like, "Hey, if you're in this situation and you're looking-- You need to know this why?" Right? And attorneys know this information. Then the next part of the template is. You've got up to three bullet points of data or information. Like, "Here's the first reason. Here's the second reason." Then the third reason should probably be a case study or a story that somebody's experienced in your firm. You don't have to list their name. "Hey, we had somebody that did this. They needed to get quick 'cause they were in the military and getting out of town and they couldn't do this because X."
[00:17:57] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:17:57] Philip Fairley: Right? Whatever your story may be. And then, so you got three points, one of them, hopefully as a case study or a little bit of a story 'cause, you know, Jerry Springer made a career out of that and we pull over on the side to watch car wrecks. People love to hear that stuff, right? It resonates. Not an attorney, makes you a real person. Because there's two types of humans, right? Attorneys and then real people. That's what everybody thinks. They're scared. This humanizes you.
So then at the end of the template, then you have your simple call to action. "Hey, if you're in California and you and your partner are going to be splitting and you have high-net-worth, you're an entrepreneur, you have kids, whatever you're targeting for that video, give us a call here at DiMaggio Law Firm because this is what we specialize in. Here's our information." Right? That's your video.
And so when I say a video, I call it long-form.
[00:18:50] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, I was just going to ask about length for those kind of videos. What are you targeting?
[00:18:54] Philip Fairley: So long-form-- And I want to get to you-- I talked to you about the shoot room and the script, but I want to talk to you about the equipment, too, here in a second.
[00:19:00] Michelle Calcote King: Yes, please.
[00:19:01] Philip Fairley: But the long-form video, five to eight minutes, YouTube.
[00:19:05] Michelle Calcote King: Okay.
[00:19:05] Philip Fairley: Shot horizontally, not vertically with your cell phone.
[00:19:09] Michelle Calcote King: Okay.
[00:19:10] Philip Fairley: Because they want more horizontal widescreen, right? So by then creating this long-form video, you put it up on YouTube.
Then I'll talk to you about the distribution in a second 'cause you have to get eyes on it or else it's like your great website that you created with no SEO and it's like on a back alley, right? Nobody will see it.
So what you need for equipment is a $30 tripod that will snake up to six feet. That's it. You need a plugin mic. In fact, I've got a lapel mic right here if you're watching it on video. It's right here. And there's a cable. No Bluetooth. You'd get crackly sound. The worst thing is you put the effort in and the sound sucks. You got to do it over. Just get a 30-foot cable on this and plug it into your back of your phone because when you shoot and you're in the view of your phone, you should be shooting from the waist up so you can move your hands bigger, they can see you. Right? So you only want to stand three to five feet from your tripod and your camera anyway.
So the neat part is what you do for the shoot location is you put your camera up on your tripod, you plug your mic in, right? You do a quick test and then you hit the record button and you don't stop.
Here's a neat little secret. You'll only find out if you actually do this and I would challenge you to do it. And I'd love to hear if somebody does this because it usually takes them hearing it three or four times to be like, "Okay, I'll try it."
You record in 10 minute chunks. Above 10 minutes it's too-- It takes too long to upload to your cloud. Just record in 10 minute chunks, but don't stop it. You let your editors edit out all the things. You've got your camera on the tripod, you're three to five feet in front of it, so you can see the waist up. And you've got your script that you've already written out two or three days ago. You pull up the script. "Okay. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. I'm gonna go over to the first line." And then you go to the camera, your phone, and you repeat the first line, the hook. And then you look back down at your script. You're like, "Okay, now I need to introduce myself. Okay, no, I don't like that. Okay, I'm gonna do that again. Okay." And you don't hit stop.
[00:21:11] Michelle Calcote King: Keep it rolling and then your editor-- Yeah. Trust me, I've learned to do that myself. 'Cause if you sit there and trying to do it perfectly every time, you're going to kill yourself with doing that and a good editor can put it all together. You'd be surprised what a great editor can do. I'm always impressed.
[00:21:28] Philip Fairley: Yeah. Michelle, you're public speaker. You do this for a living. And so do I. And I still can't even come close. Sometimes I have a problem with two sentences in a row.
[00:21:35] Michelle Calcote King: Right.
[00:21:36] Philip Fairley: It doesn't matter, right?
[00:21:37] Michelle Calcote King: Right.
[00:21:37] Philip Fairley: So then you have your shoot location, you've got the camera up, you've got it plugged in to your lapel. You've got the phone facing you — as long as your phone's two, three years or newer, the camera will be fine, right? And you really don't need to shoot in HD. You probably want to shoot it in 720 because it keeps the compression lower on--
[00:21:55] Michelle Calcote King: But you're shooting it on an iPhone with a lapel mic, and that's it. Yeah.
[00:21:59] Philip Fairley: That's it.
And then you got your script and you look at your script and you go up here and then you repeat and then you come down here and you repeat and then you're done.
Maybe you need to do two sessions of 18 minutes, like a 10 minute chunk and then another eight because you had to redo the last couple--
[00:22:13] Michelle Calcote King: And when you say script, are you talking sort of bullet points?
[00:22:17] Philip Fairley: Yes.
[00:22:17] Michelle Calcote King: Points they want to make not word for word because I think that scares some people off. They're thinking, "Oh, I'm never going to be able to remember all this."
That's how I do it. I do bullet points. And yeah.
[00:22:26] Philip Fairley: I do bullet points. I always script out the hook because that's something you think about and you get clever on.
[00:22:31] Michelle Calcote King: You want to get right, yeah. Got it.
[00:22:33] Philip Fairley: But the rest of them, I'll do a combination of bullet points. 'Cause I'm like, "I know this topic inside out. I know exactly what I want to say. I come up here and say it." Other than that, if you are terrified and you're too many umms you can write out the sentences. It will take you longer, but then you're like, "I just need to repeat one sentence at a time.
[00:22:51] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:22:51] Philip Fairley: And then come down here and "Okay, I can repeat that."
[00:22:54] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, definitely. That's exactly how I do it.
Tell me why landscape orientation versus portrait for those videos.
[00:23:01] Philip Fairley: Because portrait is only made for short-form videos.
[00:23:04] Michelle Calcote King: Short-form. Okay. Got it.
[00:23:05] Philip Fairley: Like TikToks, Reels, Shorts.
[00:23:08] Michelle Calcote King: Your quick social media, snack- sized info. Okay.
[00:23:12] Philip Fairley: But the crazy part is, Michelle, I shake my head when I see law firms creating content just for short-form. It's silly. It's okay. You're going to spend a lot of time on it--
[00:23:22] Michelle Calcote King: What mix do you recommend? Are you heavier on long-form? Tell me about the mix.
[00:23:26] Philip Fairley: Ha. I'm Greek. I want it all. I was pissed that Threads didn't take off because that would be another platform we can distribute content on. I'm like, "I was rooting for them."
That's a great question. Here's what we do. We create the one long-form video a weeK. Sometimes every week and a half, sometimes clients will do four weeks. Sometimes they'll do two or three-- I mean a month, four months. That's ideal. Sometimes if they're busier and they're just starting out maybe two a month, three a month. But what you do is you omnichannel the heck out of everything.
[00:24:03] Michelle Calcote King: So you're breaking up the long-form into the shorter form videos and...? Yeah, got it.
[00:24:08] Philip Fairley: And not just videos. This is the cool part about this approach. This will take care of outside of your SEO and your PR campaigns, which you can parlay that and you should be parlaying that into a video. It will take care of that because you put it through Google Translate, then use like Jasper.ai and it will make it more conversational, and now you have your blog. And if you're want to do keyword SEO search, then you slide those keywords into your blog. Then your newsletter is written for you. Right? And then your social media on every platform. On Monday I'm posting the long-form. Wednesday I'm posting the blog post. Can't do that to TikTok but you can to Instagram or Pinterest or Threads or Twitter or Facebook, right?
Then on Wednesday, you have your editor edit those long-forms into two to six shorts. Each one of those points could probably be cut up into a short-form. Some you'll get a lot, some of you just get a couple. But then on Wednesday, you release one short. Thursday you release the other short. Saturday, you released your last short.
And then it goes on your website, your blog, your newsletter, and then you create videos to do the nurturing. You're like, "Hey, this is a good topic. I know people, they're on the fence about this. So this is my content that I'm going to do and put it out on YouTube," but then I'm going to jam it into my intake software that sends out automatic messages to nurture. So you're multi-purposing it. You multi-purpose it for every stinking platform you possibly can. Right?
[00:25:39] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. So smart.
And how are you helping your clients ideate their topics? Like are you brainstorming with them? How are they coming up with this? And I know every client's different, but talk me through that.
[00:25:52] Philip Fairley: Well, what I shared with you is exactly what we do because we understand that law firm owners, they're all in different phases and evolutions of their business and some have time and some have money, right? I'd rather show you how to do it yourself. And then you're like, "Okay, I don't have-- I know I'm not going to do this. I need an accountability partner that's going to help me drive this and do this really well." But for some smaller attorneys, they want to do this themselves. "Awesome. Here's how you do it."
So we meet with them once a month for 30 minutes and script every single one of their videos for them and with them. We collaborate, we go and look-- Like vidIQ, that's a dirty little secret. That's like Answer the Public from Neil Patel — and if you're marketers, you know what that is — but Answer the Public, you can go out there and find what people are searching for on Google and then create content for that. VidIQ does that for YouTube. They're like, "People are searching for this and there's a lot of content. People are searching for this and there's no content or little." You just make content for that, right?
Then there's ideas everywhere. Talk about pop culture and react, right? We help craft those like Ja Morant, NBA star. He got caught with over the summer, a gun in a strip club twice in a month and a half. Gosh.
[00:27:08] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:27:08] Philip Fairley: We had lawyers that were making videos on this that were taking off and then all of a sudden all their educational videos get double, triple the views, they get more branding and more eyes and the phone calls start coming in, right? That's how it works.
But I feel that It's key to know the content to create. So when we start working with a fresh attorney, we're creating content for their core videos. 'Cause those--
[00:27:32] Michelle Calcote King: Right, you've got to get the foundation laid and then you can start the regular monthly process. Yeah.
[00:27:38] Philip Fairley: A thousand percent.
And then you're like, "Hey, I want to work more on probate or restraining orders or whatever it may be." Then we work with companies that are working with you and be like, "Okay, what are you pushing for on PR? What's your big push for your branding? Okay, let's embrace that and let's start going down that road."
So you kind of start alternating and working with our clients we're watching their numbers and their views and also what they're doing in their other marketing and what they want more of. That's how we kind of tailor. We have a group once a month where all the owners come in and we're-- Not all of them but they can and we'll strategize. "I'm stuck on this" or "What's something good in pop culture?" And we'll share these ideas but then we also meet with them every month specifically for their firm and what they want and what they need. And we're scripting it all for them because if we don't it typically won't get done. And they'll show up for their shoot time with nothing.
[00:28:33] Michelle Calcote King: That's what I find is the number one problem with, you know, law firm marketing in general is just having a structure, a process and then a way to just get it done.
I mean, obviously the strategy has to be right. You know, that's table stakes--
[00:28:47] Philip Fairley: Assuming all that, right?
[00:28:48] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Assuming that, it's just simply getting it done on a regular basis. Kind of building it into the culture of how they do business and what they do and getting them to-- And it's very exciting when they start to think of things without you, you know, prompting them.
[00:29:00] Philip Fairley: When they come to us and they're like, "Hey, I want to do this."
[00:29:02] Michelle Calcote King: "I want to do a video on X." Yeah, that's perfect.
[00:29:05] Philip Fairley: Yeah. They get too hung up on it being a legal brief. You know, you're not going in front of the Supreme Court. Getting it done is better than perfect every single day. I'll bet my money on somebody that's getting it out two or three times or four times a month versus once every other month it's perfect, it looks like a Law and Order reel.
[00:29:22] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Well, and it goes back to people don't want that overly slick video. They want to know that this is a person on the other end of this who is somebody I might want to work with. So it really lends itself to not being perfect.
[00:29:34] Philip Fairley: Oh, absolutely. You're absolutely right. 'Cause that's what we resonate to. So there was one question that I wanted to get back to you about the mix. And I want to make sure you understand that you take these long-form videos and you slice them up to your shorts.
So I'm all in on everything. I'm just not all in on somebody just saying I'm going to be a YouTube star. Then you're going to flop. I'm just going to own social. You know what? Those were one-and-dones, so you better have a lot of one-and-dones. But why not create it once and then take the time, the two to three to four months, it will take you to figure out the system and the process on how to post it, how to format it for every stinking platform you can even think of. Go ask your nieces or the neighborhood kid, they'll tell you like, BeReal. You ever heard of that? No, it's coming. Right? Snapchat. Can't figure out how to do that yet, but you take this long-form video and you reuse it everywhere.
You figure out the process so then when you create it, you know how to shoot it, where to shoot it, you've got your script, you've got your equipment, then you hand it over to your team. They know what you expect for editing and distribution and the schedule. And then all you have to do as the owner? Spend about an hour and a half a month creating content, which it's not art. You don't have to be funny. You don't have to be slick. You can have a face for radio like I do. You'll be all right. Just get over that, but get it done because if you know there's a process, Michelle, then they just start doing it more because they're like, "Okay, well, it's not that hard."
[00:31:08] Michelle Calcote King: Have you had attorneys come to you and say, " You know, I got this new client and they'd mentioned this particular video"? Because I think that's when it gets exciting. You know, when they start to connect what they're doing with actual business. Do you hear that quite a bit?
[00:31:23] Philip Fairley: You know, we're not always asking, "Hey, did you get this lead from...?" Although we track phone calls and leads and different things like that that go through there. But when you start doing these types of videos, You've got to let it percolate for a couple of minutes like SEO. It doesn't take six months, but it takes consistency for a couple months and you will see the ROI.
When we talk to our clients about actual direct ROI linked to those things, it's much easier to do it when we run our ads on social media because, once again, you're not putting in a call tracking number like if you're running a pay-per-click or something like this, and you're not making this heavy-handed call to action video because if you're only talking about your stuff in your firm and things that you do, you're going to run out of content real quick and nobody's going to watch it.
[00:32:15] Michelle Calcote King: No one is going to watch it, yeah.
[00:32:16] Philip Fairley: And then that's where you, if you're tracking your leads and the new leads and qualifications and all those different things you should be doing in your firm. We're seeing within six months of consistency, we're seeing 20, 30 percent uptick in clients.
[00:32:32] Michelle Calcote King: Love that. Fantastic.
[00:32:33] Philip Fairley: And then it decreases the amount of time they spend on their marketing.
[00:32:38] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Well and it's just such a easier lift for an attorney. I've worked with marketers before and they say things like, "Well can you just send me an article?" to an attorney? And I think, "Don't ever do that. They're not--" You know, you've got to facilitate it. You've got to make it easy for them. So if we're writing content, we're doing a Zoom chat, you know, with them. We're not asking them.
[00:32:59] Philip Fairley: You've figured it out.
[00:33:01] Michelle Calcote King: Right. You got to make it a way that fits into their really busy schedules and makes it as easy as possible for them to get done. So, and it really just taps into what's important, which is their expertise and who they are as a professional.
[00:33:14] Philip Fairley: The highest use of their value is not figuring out the logistics or worrying about the nuts and bolts. It's about getting them in front of a camera and repeating one to two sentences at a time and then pushing their image and their brand and their firm everywhere possible.
[00:33:28] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, love that.
Well, this has been fantastic. I mean, you've answered-- I was looking at my questions and you've already answered most of them or all of them for me.
So before we go, if there's one thing you want attorneys to take away when it comes to video marketing, what would that be?
[00:33:45] Philip Fairley: Yeah, that's a really good question. Understand the value of it. Picture on the piece of paper, the word "Boy." And then put in your mind a picture of a boy sitting on a couch with a basketball, looking up at you, cute. That's nice. And then the video of the boy dribbling off the basketball off his dog's head, then falling down laughing about it, and a child's giggle. Which one has more impact?
[00:34:09] Michelle Calcote King: Right.
[00:34:09] Philip Fairley: Video is to impact, attract and convert. So when you understand that your marketing will increase by on average about 28 to 34% — this was by HubSpot — if you include video in your marketing and you understand the power of that. And then just look back at your life. How do you consume video? Then you start to understand. "Okay, great." So if you understand the value of video, then everything else is fine. Like you understood the value of "I want to own my own law firm and this is what I want to practice." Then everything else fell in place after that. You figured it out.
So if you understand the value of video, it's a big blue ocean. If you don't think it's a big opportunity, go to YouTube. The number two search engine owned by the number one search engine, Google, go to YouTube, type in your city-- The bigger the city that you live in or the closer to big city, do that as well. Like Philadelphia. You live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, put in Philadelphia and then put it in your practice area. You'll see a couple videos that are 2, 3, 5 years old, 6 years old, 8 years old, that nobody's watching.
So what I want to do is there's something I'd like to give everybody if that's okay. I can mention it.
[00:35:18] Michelle Calcote King: Please.
[00:35:19] Philip Fairley: In our industry, we call it 'freemiums' like I want to give you something to start you on your journey and this is your videos need to start on YouTube. They need to go there, but that's not the highest ROI platform for your video. Understand that. But they need to start there. They have to be there.
So we have an optimization guide because every law firm-- Like back in the day when we first started creating websites, Michelle, we'd just look at their websites and be like, it's terrible. Now we have auditing tools. Yeah, it's-- Every law firm's YouTube channel, it actually detracts from views.
We had a bunch of old videos on Rainmaker. We created a whole new channel called "Lifestyle Law Firm" — 'cause that's one of the things that we promote — because our old videos were dragging down all of our analytics. So we want to show you what you should be doing with your YouTube channel to start with. It's not hard. So we've got, if you go to therainmakerinstitute.com/optimize.
[00:36:15] Michelle Calcote King: Optimize. Okay, great. We'll put the link in the show notes as well. So that's great. I actually, I'm going to download that myself. I look forward to that.
[00:36:26] Philip Fairley: Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know what? It's just like I was telling you before, like how to set up and shoot and record video, I went to our IP attorney and said, "Can we patent this? Can we trademarl? What can we do? She said, "No. It's clever, but you can't." I'm like, "Oh, it's so good. I really--" 'Cause nobody else is doing this. Nobody else is doing what we've done. And the reason is it took us 5,000 videos in five years to figure this out.
But if you go through this simple process, like I just laid out, you'll be able to create your own videos and it won't be a big lift. It'll be like riding a bike, take a couple minutes at first, you'll get better. But get this optimization guide 'cause you've got to put them on a channel to start with.
[00:37:04] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah and they gotta be found. So, well great. Thank you.
Well, we have been talking to Philip Fairley of the Rainmaker Institute. What's the best way for people to connect with you if they'd like to chat more?
[00:37:15] Philip Fairley: 844-Rainmaker.
[00:37:17] Michelle Calcote King: Awesome.
[00:37:17] Philip Fairley: Give us a call. You can ask for me. And you know, we're under a hundred staff. Everybody knows my name here and I'd love to connect with you and talk. As you can, hope you can tell I'm pretty passionate about this because I've seen it change so many law firms revenue trajectory just by doing something different and adding video into what they're doing.
[00:37:38] Michelle Calcote King: I love it. Well, thank you so much.
[00:37:40] Philip Fairley: Thanks, Michelle. Appreciate the time.
[00:37:44] Announcer: Thanks for listening to "Spill the Ink," a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click "Subscribe" to get future episodes.
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