An associate writes a 500-word blog post in two hours. A partner revises it in about a half hour. Members of the marketing team then spend two hours making additional edits, posting it to the law firm's website, sharing it on social media, and building and sending an e-newsletter around it. There are also costs associated with web hosting, the email marketing system, and maybe even a client relationship management platform.
So, how much did that blog post cost the law firm? Was it worth it?
The only way to know for sure is to measure the return on investment (ROI) of your law firm’s marketing spend.
There are many ways to measure law firm marketing ROI. While the most obvious and necessary is to ask leads and clients how they heard of the law firm on intake calls, it’s important to note that not all law firm marketing success can be measured in new business. This is especially true since strategies like branding, lead generation, cross-marketing, and referrals can be marketing marathons and not sprints. With the plethora of data available from digital marketing, though, there are numerous other ways to gauge law firm marketing dollars’ success.
What is Law Firm Marketing ROI?
Generally, calculating a law firm’s marketing ROI is to measure profit and revenue growth against money spent on marketing initiatives. An ROI measurement can be used to determine all the law firm’s marketing efforts in a lump or on a singular legal marketing campaign.
Typically, businesses of all kinds rely on ROI measurements to justify expenditures. An alternative way to use ROI is to understand what marketing efforts work, and which don’t, and adjust accordingly for a better ROI.
However, in today’s digital marketing landscape, ROI can — and should — be calculated beyond the profit/revenue indicator. We have the tools available to measure reach and engagement and build lasting relationships with prospective clients, job candidates, referral sources, and members of the media. The value of those kinds of ROI should not be dismissed.
Before starting any law firm marketing campaign or initiative, establish a clear understanding of its goal. This could be increased website traffic, lead generation, or attracting top talent. Defining what the marketing efforts are meant to achieve is important in tracking progress and assessing ROI.
Measuring Law Firm Digital Marketing ROI
Here are the key ways to measure if your legal marketing dollars are working for you:
- Website Analytics: So much of a law firm’s digital marketing efforts are linked to the firm’s website. This is because the best information about the firm is there. It’s where thought leadership and news are housed, practice descriptions are posted, and recruitment is centered. From the number of visitors on a specific page to a visitor’s entire journey, website analytics are one of the best ways to measure if a law firm’s marketing dollars are effective.
- Social Media: With in-platform insights, as well as follower counts, social media platforms provide a wealth of insight into your marketing efforts. Create a baseline of the number of followers, likes received on average per post or per week, and other engagement activities. See how different posts perform compared to others in terms of creating the most reach and reaction. This way, you spend more marketing dollars creating social media posts that land on both feet versus falling flat.
- Email Marketing: Today’s email marketing systems give useful feedback on how your content is being received. Basic information includes how many emails are opened by recipients and how many recipients then click on links within the email. When connected to other marketing system data, like website analytics or a client relationship management (CRM) system, you get a clear picture of exactly who is most interested in your communications. These are the people that become warm leads worthy of follow-up contact.
- Link Tracking: All the above digital marketing platforms allow you to home in on the source of the traffic or the engagement. Using link tracking, especially when the same content is shared multiple times and ways, helps you measure not only how that content is performing, but where people are finding it. For example, a legal alert on an important court decision is sent to your contacts in an email, included a few days later in another email, and posted to each of your three social media platforms several times over the course of the month. In addition, it’s a hot topic performing well on Google. By using unique links in each of these uses, such as Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) or converting into bit.ly, you’ll know exactly which source is creating the interest you want, and which isn’t.
- Client Relationship Management System: As mentioned briefly above, when a law firm connects its CRM to its digital marketing efforts, it swings open a wide door to contact insights. Watching a contact’s interactions with the law firm’s marketing will let you know when that contact is a lead and possibly ready to convert into a client.
- Paid Search and Social Ads: When content or other law firm website links are used in digital advertising or boosted posts, the perks include in-depth analytics. Google and social media platforms provide deeper demographic information on your target audience and their behaviors. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of how or if your legal marketing dollars are being used effectively.
Dashboards, like Scorpion’s, make tracking marketing spends and goals easy. From monitoring website traffic to measuring ROI to tracking revenue, these technological tools provide clear reporting to see where those legal marketing dollars are going, and how they’re performing.
