In his article, Top Ten Ways To Waste Money Marketing Your Practice, John L. Remsen, Jr., provides great insights into several commonly implemented marketing activities that typically don’t pan-out. However, some of these efforts do work, for some lawyers, some of the time.
One lawyer’s effective marketing strategy is another lawyer’s money pit.
While, in a general sense, I agree with John’s list, different lawyer marketing activities will have different results for different folks. Yes, even golf outings can be a lucrative source of new clients.
That is why trying to make a general assessment about the quality of any particular marketing effort across the board, really doesn’t make sense. That is not to say that there aren’t general rules and principles that typically produce better results than others, there most certainly are.
The point is that you need to make an assessment of the quality of your own lawyer marketing efforts. The question always becomes, how do you measure those efforts efficiently and effectively? I mean afterall, you went to law school to be a lawyer, not a marketer (although aside from psychology and theater, a good marketing background can be one of the most helpful educations to a lawyer).
Somewhere along the way, you’ve probably heard someone say something like this, “This strategy will produce the most ROI.” While you might think you have a good handle on this concept, and what it means to your firm, you are probably still paying money for lawyer marketing services that aren’t producing good “ROI” for you.
Before we figure out why you are paying money for poorly performing marketing efforts, let’s pick at this concept of “ROI.”
What are ROI and ROAS anyway?
The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines ROI as:
“Acronym for Return On Investment, the amount of money you make on your ads compared to the amount of money you spend on your ads. For example, if you spend $100 on PPC ads and make $150 from those ads, then your ROI would be 50%. (Calculated as: ($150 – $100) / 100 = $50 / 100 = 50%.) The higher your ROI, the more successful your advertising, although some practitioners in search advertising consider ROAS a more useful metric, as it breaks down cost and expenses by conversions per advertising dollar spent.”
“ROAS” is defined as follows:
“Acronym for Return On Advertising Spending, the profit generated by ad campaign conversions per dollar spent on advertising expenses. Calculated by dividing advertising-driven profit by ad spending.”
In English, for every dollar you spend on marketing/advertising, you need to figure how many dollars you are bringining in. Pretty simple right? Ok, so maybe it looks easier on paper than in practice.
Why does it seem like I am spending more money than I am generating?
Unfortunately, it’s probably not just your perception. Most likely, you are spending more money on some of your lawyer marketing efforts than those efforts are generating. So why is this happening?
The two most common reasons are:
1. You’re not measuring the performance of your lawyer marketing efforts.
or
2. You’re tracking your lawyer marketing with the wrong metrics.
Measure my lawyer marketing efforts, what?
If you’re not measuring your efforts, than I have some bad news and some good news for you.
The bad news is that it is very likely that you are wasting money on poorly performing marketing and advertising campaigns. Unless you just happen to stumble upon the perfect solution for you (which is extremely rare), you are probably losing money somewhere.
Even if you’re one of the few lucky ones, if you aren’t measuring the performance of your marketing and advertising, you simply can’t maximize their efficiency and effectiveness.
The good news, is that you have been “getting-by” without measuring. Therefore, by implementing a method for measuring these efforts, you will make more money.
So, how do you measure performance? First, don’t go out and spend thousands of dollars on consultants, software, and “secret lawyer marketing weapons.”
Instead, look for solutions that have “trackability” built-in. One of the revolutionizing capabilities of internet marketing and advertising is their built-in trackability. Here are a few obvious ones:
1. Search Engine Marketing.
2. Firm Blog/Website.
3. Ads on industry-specific sites.
Each of these can be easily, and economically, tracked with regard to performance. Once you have systems in place for tracking, the next step is to figure out what to measure.
I know exactly how my advertising is performing, I have the number-one spot for all my relevant keywords!
If you think, “having the number-one spot” for your pay-per-click ads is the core metric for the perfomance of your paid search ads, turn off your campaigns now! You are hemhorraging money!
Without trying to explain all the nuances of marketing metrics, web analytics, etc, I want you to focus on figuring out one number for each of your marketing efforts:
Over the course of a year, how much did you pay in marketing per new client acquisition?
Admittedly, this will be more difficult to do for some lawyer marketing efforts than others. But do your best, it will make you money.
For example, figure out what you pay per year for your yellow pages ad. Then, figure out how many new clients the yellow pages generated for you in that year (obviously, you need an effective way to measure this, perhaps you ask this question on your intake interview sheet).
Now simply divide the cost of the ad by the number of new clients.
If that number is greater than the value of your firm’s average case/client, stop paying for the ad!
I promise you that you will be surprised on how much money you are spending on these “tried-and-true” methods per client. Don’t be afraid to cut the chord on inefficient marketing. Exposure, traffic, impressions, etc. don’t mean anything if they aren’t turning into new clients for your firm.
Photo by: Rob Lee
AttorneySync is a law firm Internet marketing consultancy that specializes in law firm websites, legal blogs, and professional law firm seo strategies. 
