Page 25 - NC Triangle Vol 7 No 2

BRIAN CRAIG | Legal Marketing
Metrics Are Your Firm’s North Star
Word of mouth and referrals remain the primary ways law rms get new clients. But over 30% of new business comes from the web.
And the referrals? e rst thing they’ll do is a quick internet search for your rm and see how you present yourself online.
WHY METRICS ARE IMPORTANT
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” management consultant Peter Drucker famously said. is holds true in business, whether you are looking at your rm’s overall key performance indicators or your law rm marketing ones.
With the investment law rms are putting into their digital marketing budget, it’s critical to properly track where these dollars are going, and what return you’re getting for them.
Many rms nd themselves spending hundreds or thousands of dollars per month, without a clear picture of what return their rm is getting for it. What area should you spend money on? What metrics matter with the goals you have for your rm? It’s easy to get caught up in details that don’t get you any closer to your goal of a high- performing law practice.
at’s why it’s important to keep an eye on your entire client experience – how you answer the phone, how you communicate with clients, how you welcome them into your o ce – even down to the small details, like what their favorite drink is, can help make your clients feel right at home.
WHAT YOU SHOULD BE TRACKING
When it comes down to it, only a few metrics truly matter for an executive summary of your law rm marketing. How many people contacted my rm through my marketing e orts?
• Which ones became clients?
• Which channel did they each come through?
From these simple metrics, you’ll be able to determine the answers to how to plan and allocate your future spending:
• Which channels brought the most revenue to the rm? • Which channels are the most pro table?
• Which ones aren’t working?
Below is a sample of a month of advertising. Organic is tra c generated from online searches. Pay per click is ads purchases on Google or Facebook. e online ads are banner ads purchased on Avvo or other legal-speci c sites.
Quantifying your marketing spend allows you to see trends, measure progress, and develop strategies.
DEFINING SUCCESS
First, you need to de ne success for your rm to have a successful campaign. For a large family law rm, that may be 50+ new signed cases per month. For a small personal injury rm, maybe that’s one or two solid cases per month.
Next, look at your past numbers. How many people contacted your rm? How many of those were cases that fell within your practice areas? How many of those became clients?
Visits
Forms Generated Revenue From Cases
Cost/Acquisition
5,742
91
$ 166,800
$ 42.65
(Clicks) 292
32
$ 29,280
$ 178.66
3
$ 800 $ 600
Organic
Pay Per Click
Online Ads
Calls Generated
48
27
4
New Cases Signed
68
24
1
Campaign Cost
$ 2,900
$ 4,288
$ 600
From that number, you can extrapolate the number of leads you need your marketing e orts to generate – with the number of leads, you will be able to give a solid goal to your marketing team and come up with a plan to hit the goal with the most e cient use of your marketing dollars.
IMPROVING YOUR CHANCES
ere are a number of holes in the funnel to keep an eye out for. Variables all the way from the rst time the contact hears your name through when they’ve hired you and you’ve nished up your work can either improve or hurt your conversion numbers.
From this (admittedly simple) example, we can see that the organic is by far the most e ective, the PPC is signi cantly less e ective, and the online ad campaign should probably be cancelled. If this trend continued, we would have clear data to move some marketing spend to the campaign with a lower CPA and could get more return from marketing spend.
Once you have these key building blocks in place, you can work more e ectively on your marketing plan and spend your dollars in the place where they can give you the best return on your investment.
Brian Craig is the founder and CEO of LegalScapes, a full-service digital marketing agency that works solely with law rms. With over 15 years of experience in online marketing, Brian helps lawyers across the United States get more clients through the Internet. When not working with clients, you’ll nd him playing basketball, going to Carolina games, and planning the next adventure with his wife and two daughters. Drop Brian a line at brian@ legalscapes.com, call (919) 646-8707, or visit us on the web at www.legalscapes.com.
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