You have your marketing budget and campaigns. Everything seems to be laid out and you are looking forward to a successful business. However, things don’t end up the way you anticipated. Why? You missed one last aspect to keep an eye on and those are your law firm marketing KPIs.
As they say, your first time is almost always going to be a failure. Your marketing campaigns? No matter how much you planned them, there is a strong possibility that they don’t go as expected.
So, what should you do? Should you just sit it out and wait for things to settle?
Do that and you are looking at a business that is going down a spiral staircase. It won’t just fall, it will plummet.
Instead, you should put in the effort to make sure that you learn from your mistakes. When things don’t go according to plan, learn, build, and grow from it. As long as a mistake is only done once, they are a learning opportunity and a part of the business process.
The question now is, how do you know that one aspect of your law firm marketing needs improvement?
It doesn’t necessarily mean that it is failing, you already know what to do. When do you say that it is the content? How do you know that it is the marketing mediums?
Three letters: KPI.
KPI stands for key performance indicator. These are measurable values that will tell you whether or not your campaign is doing the work that it should.
There is more than one KPI. For your law firm, know what are the most vital so you can concentrate your energy on them.
Table of Contents
The Most Basic Law Firm Marketing KPIs: Organic Traffic
The first and most basic KPI is organic traffic. These are the number of visits your website gains through search engine, more specifically Google, searches.
It’s basic logic, if people don’t visit your site, then they have no way of knowing about your service. In turn, you don’t create leads nor clients. In short, your business will fail.
What you want is to grow your organic traffic. There is only one thing to remember: the more, the better.
There is nothing wrong with strong organic traffic. The only time you should be worried is when there isn’t enough of them.
If you are doing your marketing campaigns right, such as SEO and creating quality content, it is easy for your website to pop up on the first page of search engine results. The faster you get seen; the more people tend to click on your site.
With that said, if your organic traffic is below your expectation and cannot sustain your law firm, it is time to work on a lot of things.
Lead Generation
It is important to keep track of organic traffic because it shows how easily you get seen. However, traffic is not everything. Not every visitor matters. Some are just there for a short read while others stay longer because they are genuinely curious of your service.
What you want is the latter. You want people who have the potential to seek your services. They may not be completely sold just yet, but at least the only thing left for you to do is to convince them.
So, how do you make your marketing campaigns so effective that it allows you to generate leads?
The answer is not so simple, but long story short, it is all about targeted content. There are articles that are searched by every average citizen, then there are ones that are more inclined to people who are actually in the market for a lawyer.
Organic traffic is great, but if only a small fraction of it translates to actual leads, that is enough to say that there is room for improvement. It can be that you should rethink the types of content you are creating, or making your website more intuitive and engaging that those who are actually in the market for a lawyer are easily hooked into your offers.
At the end of the day, what you want the most are leads, but the question is, when do you say a visitor is a lead?
- Check how long they stay on your website. Longer stays mean they are engaging with your content.
- If they give you their email addresses.
- When they make the effort to send a message, inquire, or comment.
Crucial Law Firm Marketing KPIs: Conversion to Clients
This KPI is not too far off from the previous one. When you have narrowed down your visitors to leads, it is time to narrow down your leads to clients.
Among your generated leads, not all are going to be clients. Some are not going to be convinced and then there are ones who found a better choice. Your goal is to make sure to convert as much leads as you can to actual clients.
Just like visitors, leads are only as good if they become actual paying customers.
If the number of clients is only a fraction of your leads, then you are surely doing something wrong. Leads are already people who are in the market for your service and they have put the effort to reach out to you. Technically, the only work left to do is convincing them.
With that said, it should already be a given that almost all leads convert to clients. If that isn’t the case for you, you might want to rethink all your marketing content. Are they convincing enough? Is it easy for clients to finalize their deal with you? And so many more.
A key point to remember, even the slightest inconvenience can push away a lead. So, respond fast and engage faster.
Sales Per Client
If you already have a client, the question is, how much does one spend on your law firm? Do they seek the top-of-the-line services or are they there just for introductory legal counsel?
Take a look at what marketing campaigns bring certain types of people. For example, if most who found your law firm through social media only seek legal counsel, maybe it’s time to decrease your marketing budget for it.
Your sales dictate how sustainable a law firm marketing strategy is. You can’t keep on investing hugely on one, only to bring in clients that only settle for the base price. What you end up with is a revenue that is barely even enough to suffice marketing expenses.
The point of knowing sales per client is to make your marketing campaigns more effective. For every dollar spent, how much more do you get in return?
Cost of Acquisition is One of the Strong Law Firm Marketing KPIs
Sales per client dictates how much money you get from them. Cost of acquisition is how much money you spend for each of them.
To know this, you take all your marketing expenses and the number of clients you gained in a certain time frame. Divide all your costs with the total number of clients and you get the value you are looking for.
Why is this important? You might be spending too much, on average, per client without you even knowing it.
The goal is to keep the cost of acquisition as little as possible, but if that is not the case, there may be one reason for it. You are investing on the wrong marketing strategies. So, you end up spending a lot for small returns.
What you want is to rethink your campaigns. Which among all brings the most clients and out of all of them, which is the most expensive?
On average, if your acquisition cost is more than 33% of your sales per client, it is imperative to make necessary changes.
In Conclusion
There are a lot of KPIs you can track in the business world, all the more when it comes to law firms. However, this list talks about the most important out of all of them. As long as you master every single one by heart, you can come up with the right conclusions that will allow you to further improve your marketing.
As mentioned, this is already a shortened list, and by no means does this look anywhere near short. It would be understandable if it will take you time to get used to tracking KPIs. However, if you need assistance or simply don’t have the time to start from the ground up, you can always seek the help of the best digital marketing agencies. Contact us today for a free strategy consultation.
