Utilizing PPC to Market Your Law Firm
Keeping up with the fastest-growing marketing trends can be a big hurdle. If you want your business to grow, you need someone with the right consultancy and marketing skills. Your marketing team should know what tactics will work and can give ROI from the marketing budget you spend.
The goal is to market to your target audience and meet them where they are. Your business goals should always include being more profitable while giving your clients the services they need. Show that through the marketing strategies you employ.
For marketing and business consultancy needs, get a team who can help your law firm. Call us at Richard James, Your Practice Mastered today.
US Law Firm Management and Your Marketing Plan
Many lawyers fail to see the importance of a good marketing program, while others know that they should have one but simply cannot proceed. Closely tied to this is effective US law firm management. Both marketing online and offline requires extensive market research. This is why you need a legal consultant with extensive experience in marketing plans.
If you want to market your law firm more effectively, you need a marketer who can help work on a digital strategy that is suited for your needs and preference. Marketing tools are, from the name itself, tools that must be used by people who know how to use them. You will need a digital marketing agency that offers reliable marketing services and a legal systems expert who can help with US law firm management.
To have a higher chance of reaching their business objectives, law firms must integrate appropriate marketing solutions and engage in well-planned marketing activities. Remember, the most effective marketing tool for your firm is one that suits your practice and meets your specific business needs.
Attorney Marketing Efforts and Mathematics
A very important aspect of successful marketing is tracking and looking at measurable results. For anyone new to EA Nation (Entrepreneurial Attorney Nation) or for those of you who may have missed it, here is what I believe:
- I believe that marketing activities encompass advertising and sales. Furthermore, effective marketing bridges the gap between the two.
- I believe good marketing is fifty percent math, thirty percent systems, and only twenty percent new ideas.
- When someone tells me they’ve created a “new” marketing idea, I often find they are mistaken. What they’ve done is rebirth an old idea, using a new medium.
- To be clear, that doesn’t make their discovery ineffective, on the contrary, often these discoveries are quite effective. However, “effective” doesn’t mean they are “new”.
- But I digress . . . back to my point. Marketing is fifty percent math. Here is the good news. The “math” I’m speaking of is arithmetic. Simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
We don’t need to understand complicated formulas or worry about knowing what a cosine is and how we’d use it in real life. In short, we don’t need to be mathematicians. Some attorneys will breathe a sigh of relief reading this, as they chose law, in part, to avoid math.
Arithmetic is simple and can be mastered, quickly. One reason I love working with attorneys is that they are an intelligent group, and once they figure out how simple the math is, they tend to catch on quickly.
Looking at a Pay Per Call Marketing Campaign
I previously provided advice regarding one of our member’s marketing campaigns they were curious about. I hope that when you read it, you will start to understand how simple and vital the math of marketing is. Below is a snapshot of that conversation.
Client
“Last week, I spent $2,610.70. We got 7 appointments from this spend. $373 per appointment. What do your numbers look like?”
Comments from fellow members
“Wow – that seems incredibly high”
- This is a very common response when attorneys begin to measure the math of their marketing. As you’ll see later, while the numbers are slightly higher than average, they are not out of line with what is acceptable.
“How many leads did you get … and how many hires … give us all the numbers, not just the ugly ones”
- One of the benefits of Partners Club is that members will hold other members accountable for complete transparency to the PCLC (Perfect Client Life Cycle). Accountability to the truth is something all small business owners need. Iron sharpens iron.
“I do ZERO pay per click, only Google ‘pay per call', which is my number one lead source. I've always felt pay per click was lighting money on fire”
- The keyword here is “felt”. Sometimes it’s good to go with our “gut” feeling. However, for marketing purposes, before making a decision, I trust math as my compass.
“I’ve never done pay per call. Do you limit the ads to only show during business hours or all with someone taking the calls at night?”
- This is an additional side benefit of Partners Club, one comment breeds curiosity from other members about how action kils fear.
Client
“28 calls total. 7 said the wrong number. 5 hung up. 7 were good phone consults. 4 were duplicate calls. 1 existing client. 1 asked about an area of law we don't handle. 2 said they would call back before they hung up. 1 call dropped.”
Of the 7 appointments:
- Hired – Weak Chapter 13, has not filed tax returns since 2011
- Hired – Good Chapter 13, potential 4900 attorney fees
- Hired – Chapter 7, potential 1625 attorney fees
- Hired – Filed Chapter 13, potential 4950 attorney fees
- Not Qualified – Large business case, we did not take the case
- Not Qualified – Wanted us to open/reopen the old case with a different law firm, we said no
- No show – For Chapter 13 sign appointment
Commentary from Richard James
When I hear this case study, here's what my mind “sees.”
I’ll first magnify the funnel to 100 Sets. Here's the math:
- 400 leads = 100 Sets @ $373 per set ($37,300)
- 70 percent show rate, 60 percent hire-rate (42) = $37,000/42=$923.5 CPC (Cost Per Client)
At first glance, that appears to be high. I'd typically like to see bankruptcy client acquisition less than $600. Then, looking at the particular campaign, client value can be seen through the following:
- 3 Chapter 13 @ $4000 + 1 Chapter 7 @ $2000 = $14,000
- $14,000 ÷ 4 = $3500
- $3500 ÷ $923 = 3.79 Multiple on investment or 26% of gross revenues
It's a little high, but acceptable. Referrals will reduce the total marketing spend to acceptable levels.
Leads and Increasing Conversion
At first glance, it appears there is an opportunity to set more appointments as the set rate is only 25%. But the lead source is sending over leads that are not as qualified. So, we need to manage the ad to see if we can improve.
I would not stop using this lead source, but I would play with the ad to see if I could increase conversion. I would inspect the abandoned phone call rate and listen to a sample of the calls (10 or more) to make sure they are being answered properly. I'd see if we could improve conversion. I would consider this a successful oil well, but the pumping could be improved.
Here’s a larger point. Not every lead source we have will produce a six-to-one ROI. Most will not. If we want to grow our business online, we have to take the singles with the triples and home runs. The key is to know the basic arithmetic. And making sure that is applied in your marketing strategies.
The Need for a Legal Systems Expert
Many lawyers have a difficult time defining the difference between marketing and advertising. It seemed as if people used the terms interchangeably, and no one could give me a good answer. So, I created my own. For me, I believe that marketing is the umbrella where advertising, sales, and customer service reside.
Additionally, business consultancy and marketing services are both crucial to achieving marketing success. Your marketing team should be able to employ a digital marketing strategy that can help you improve your credibility and online presence. Specifically, a marketing firm specializing in SEO services can help you grow your business through increased inbound website traffic.
Any marketing technique you choose should allow you to keep up with the evolving digital world. The right marketing company can take care of your web design, web content, and your search engine rankings. At the same time, an experienced legal systems expert can make sure that crucial aspects of US law firm management are given due attention.
Call us at Richard James, Your Practice Mastered
For your marketing efforts to translate to marketing success, it is not enough to simply show potential customers the law services you provide. Personalization of your website design, branding, improving the customer journey: all these are meant to make clients start calling or messaging you for inquiries, and eventually retaining you after seeing that you can give what they need: improving the customer journey.
For marketing to be successful, it is vital to make sure to present your law firm as trustworthy and competent. Show how clients can, and why clients should get your law services. Get in touch with our team at Richard James, Your Practice Mastered for reliable consulting and marketing solutions.
If you want to have your best month ever, contact our legal management consultant Richard James or schedule a 1-on-1 consulting today.
