The Whack-a-Mole Approach:
When I was a kid I loved playing Whack-a-Mole at the arcade. I remember grabbing the little hammer – and giving it all I had, blasting those mole heads as hard as I could.
The trouble, of course, is that I never knew where the Mole would be.
My strategy was simply to whack as hard as I could, as many times as I could, wherever I could- all over the board.
Sometimes my strategy worked, and other times, it was an abysmal failure. In the end, it didn’t really matter because playing the game was fun, win or lose, and all I was out was a quarter.
However, when it comes to your firm’s online marketing strategies, the whack-a-mole philosophy is hardly the best approach.
The Data-Driven Approach:
If you want to Grow and Scale a Successful Law Firm, there’s just no substitute for being Data Driven. You need to know your numbers – your cost per case, your average fees, your critical KPIs and ROIs.
To determine if your marketing efforts are costing you too much, you need to know your data: The sweet spot: For most any Marketing Strategy, you should aim for a 6:1 Ratio – For every dollar you spend on marketing, you should get at least $6.00 back. If your acquisition cost is $2k per case, then you should be generating at least $12K in average fees for those cases. If your average PI fee is $30K, then you should be spending no more than $5K on marketing to get that case in the door. Cost per Cases ( CPCs) higher than a 6:1 ROI needs to be evaluated critically.
Being Data Driven gives you clarity –
In today’s market, law firm owners have a host of online marketing opportunities and strategies available; You can push out Organic and Paid Social Media posts and run ads on platforms like FB, Tick-Tok, and Instagram. You can build up your GMB and Google Maps and Online Reviews, in hopes of landing a coveted spot on the Google 3-pack; You can create informative and engaging lead magnets, do PPC, and so forth….
Law Firm owners have so many current online marketing options that it’s difficult to know where to place your money, time, and energy, in order to stand out from the competition and sign more cases.
Consequently, it’s tempting to try an all-court press approach, kind of like Whack-a-mole, investing in every online strategy you hear about, and hoping something works.
But to the extent possible, your Marketing Efforts should be data-driven, so you can determine what’s working and what’s not – what strategies to keep and what to scrap – what to leave as is, and what to invest in more heavily.
To be clear, some marketing efforts are virtually impossible to quantify, like Billboards, wrapped vehicles, and organic social media posts. In these cases, you put your image, and message out there, and hope it draws interest. Studies show you have to “touch” a prospect multiple times before they are ready to reach out to you directly, so these unquantifiable touches are important.
Track What You Can:
However, to the extent that you can, start putting methods in place to track your marketing strategies.
Whenever you can, add Lead magnets in your online ads and posts, with forms the prospect can fill out, and numbers they can call or text.
Create landing pages that you can push traffic to and then track.
Use systems such as Marchex Call Tracking, CallFire, or CallRail that will help you track, evaluate, and optimize your efforts. These services can track and record calls and texts, track web form fills, determine the source of calls, and more, so you can see where your leads, calls, and cases are really coming from.
By knowing what is working, you can better determine which Marketing Strategies and campaigns to continue to invest in and which to abort.
Being Data Driven is one of the Keys to Law Firm Growth and Success.
Start Tracking your Marketing Efforts today, so you can have the Data you need to make your wisest marketing decisions tomorrow.
***For more strategies to help you take your law firm to the Next LEVEL in 2023, Register for PILMMA’s 2023 Legal Marketing & Management Super Summit in New Orleans – May 2023. Register now and lock in the lowest rates of the year!
