Video is hot. Lawyers who lack video on their websites worry about whether they need it. Of course, vendors have popped up everywhere to solve the video deficit.

You can hire a video production company and it’ll crank out a bunch of slick, professional videos with nice intros and outros. It’ll do all the work required to post the videos on your website and other sites (think YouTube). I know quite a few who do excellent work and make the lawyers look great.

Is Video the Best Use of Your Marketing Dollars?

I’ve always harbored some doubts about video. I’m not down on video. I love video. I watch WAY too much TV. I really think video is an amazing medium. However, I’ve wondered whether it’s the smartest investment of our marketing dollars.

What I question is the use of video when firms lack sufficient textual content on their sites. I’ve visited lawyer sites with all sorts of videos but nothing much in the form of articles, FAQs, or other text. I’ve always wondered whether the video, in the absence of text, works for their firms. Does it generate business?

In doing my research, I’ve sometimes visited the YouTube channels of those same firms. They often embed the videos on their websites but host the videos on YouTube. Interestingly, the view count on YouTube includes the plays on the other sites. Every time someone clicks “play,” the counter goes up by one regardless of whether the viewer is on YouTube or some other site.

What’s interesting about the play count is that it’s often shockingly low. I’ve visited YouTube pages showing that each video has been watched fewer than a couple of hundred times. I’ve even seen videos watched only a few dozen times. I’m often left wondering whether anyone has ever seen the video other than the lawyers and their spouses, mothers, and staff.

Testing the Value of Video vs. Text

Recently, Neil Patel, an amazing marketer and prolific writer, wrote My $45,300 Mistake: How Text Drives More Traffic Than Video Content. Neil explains his investment in video and contrasts it with his investment in text.

Neil launched Quick Sprout University, a free video library of 107 videos, which helps you learn online marketing. He posted the videos as a test to see how video content performed against free software tools and content guides. You can tell from the headline that the video didn’t work nearly as well as the text and tools. Go read his article and check out the University: he creates great, useful material.

Neil’s results don’t lead me to conclude that video is a lost cause. However, they do lead me to believe that text needs to come first. Until we exhaust our ability to provide textual information to site visitors, we’re better off avoiding the investment in video.

Text first, tools next, video last: that’s my approach.

When Video Can Be Useful

But I do continue to think there’s a place for video early in the marketing program. Videos placed on biography pages make a great deal of marketing sense. A video supplements a textual biography in a powerful way. When a visitor comes to a page to get a feeling for a lawyer or other team member, video is far more powerful than text. A video gives you a much fuller sense of a person. I’d encourage video on biography pages even as a site begins to evolve.

In a marketing world filled with aggressive vendors, it’s easy to get distracted before the basics are completed. We’re under a constant barrage from people more interested in selling us something than helping us help our prospective clients. However, it’s imperative to stick with the basics until we’ve exhausted our efforts. Only then does it make sense to explore other avenues for communicating our message.