In this section, Richard James will give you a peek into a conversation that occurred with a client on one of their regular monthly calls. At times we may purposely omit the client’s name to protect the innocent (and sometimes the guilty).
Instead of focusing on a single client, I'll be sharing my experience after dealing with hundreds of clients and their marketing teams through the years.
The PCLC, identifying how many leads were generated, and formulating calculations based on the number of potential clients eventually converted are all part of the goal-setting process. For me, however, the primary goal should be to determine the real opportunities in the firm.
Evaluate Your Law Firm Marketing Plan
Create a Tailored Law Firm Marketing Strategy
When marketing online, you need a digital marketing strategy that is tailor-made for law firm practice areas and aligned with your business goals. This is why the services of a reliable law firm business consultant are necessary. US law firm management is not easy, especially when law firm marketing is involved. If you want to get more out of your marketing efforts, it helps to ask the following questions:
- Are we not setting enough appointments once the leads come in?
- Do the appointments not show?
- Do they not hire the firm once they do show?
- Do they not pay their bill after?
- Are the existing clients not referring prospective clients?
Improve Your Law Firm Branding & Design
New customers will conduct searches to seek legal assistance. This is where legal branding and law firm website design can help marketing websites since more of your target market will find you given high search engine rankings. However, in search engine marketing, if the succeeding steps you take are not aligned with your goals, the messaging people will not end up being actual paying clients. There could indeed be a measurable increase in traffic, but you still lose clients to your competitor. Without the above information, your marketer may be fixing the wrong problem.
Set the Right Law Firm Marketing Goals
Average Lead Generation Values
The right marketing company can provide what your practice and business needs. However, behind the best marketing strategies are carefully determined numbers. Effective US law firm management, after all, is all about crunching data and numeric values.
To illustrate my point, we will use a set of numbers based on my experience with an average client. Take, for example, a law office with an average client value is $2500 annually. If they wish to grow their firm to $975,000, we know we need 390 clients a year or 33 new clients each month. Additionally, we know the firm has attracted 25 new clients each month (because 33 would represent a 30% growth over the 25).
Let’s assume we know the firm generated 192 new leads each month. This means they were converting their leads to clients at a rate of 13% (25/192=13). That’s about average for a firm that relies on advertising more than referrals. But it could be better. And this is where the business consulting and marketing services of a professional will be beneficial.
How to Determine the Target Number of New Leads
Now, if you don’t look inside the PCLC and want to grow the leads to generate the number of clients you need, you’d assume you need to generate 58 additional leads per month (192 x 30%). In the case of this firm, their CPL was $75. That means we require $4350/month or $52,000/year in additional marketing funds to achieve our goal. That’s nearly 7% of the gross revenue of the firm. If your net income is 15%, you’ll be committing nearly 50% of your net income to fund your 30% growth target. Now, there’s nothing wrong with committing 50% of your net income to grow the firm, but why do it if you don’t have to?
Let’s look at the PCLC below. This theoretical law firm will generate per month:
- 192 leads
- 96 appointments
- 58 show
- 25 hire
- 15 pay in full
- 20% of their clients refer them business
We’re converting only 50% of the leads into appointments, 60% are showing, and only 43% of the shows are hiring the firm. Additionally, only 60% of their clients are paying in full. For this example, I’m not even going to focus on the referral rate.
Achieve Your Business & Marketing Goals
What a Good Legal Marketing Campaign Looks Like
Good marketing campaigns will help you stand out by boosting your web presence, credibility, and online reputation. A great marketing campaign, however, will help you translate potential customers into actual paying clients. With an expert on US law firm management helping you, you can design and implement a business model that can make the most out of the leads you get from your internet marketing strategy.
How to Get a Positive ROI for Your Law Firm
There is a positive ROI if resources are allotted to the right channels. If we used some of the profit of the hypothetical law firm above…
- To hire and train a true appointment-setter to manage the inbound and outbound phone calls to the unconverted, we could increase the set and show rates.
- If we used that same role to keep current clients on their agreed-to payment plans and increased the number of people who pay the firm, we would increase the annual value per client.
- If we micromanaged the appointment reminder sequence, we could take the show rate from 60% to 70% with little trouble.
- If we invested in sales training for the attorney or meeting with a legal marketing consultant, we could take the hire rate from 43% to 50%.
- If we did what I said and take the set rate from 92 to 115, that’s a modest 20% increase.
- If we increased the show rate to 70%, 80 consults would show.
- If we increased the hire rate to 50%, we’d create 40 new clients a month.
Through these, we will ultimately be able to reach our business goals.
Consult with a Legal Systems Expert Today!
For a law firm to be more profitable, it is important to market online in this evolving world of e-commerce. At the core of effective marketing techniques are online marketing tactics that are apt for your business goals. Remember that not all marketing tools can help increase your online presence and convert your target audience into actual clients.
I know that there are a lot of assumptions made in the example above. But I’ve seen this play out more times than I can count. Focusing on the PCLC first and making sure all the leaky holes are filled will make hitting your goals seem simple. (But keep in mind that measuring the PCLC is an everyday thing, not a once-a-year thing).
Use the fastest growing marketing trends to add more lead sources or invest more in currently performing lead sources to create more leads. Seek help from someone with the consulting and marketing skills for you to have a competitive advantage. With a legal systems expert like Richard James, your firm will grow so quickly; you’ll be tempted to slow it down. Call us to schedule a consultation with a trusted expert.
