Hard data should inform every step of your marketing journey. But which metrics should your law firm focus on?
One of the major advantages digital marketing has over traditional is the ability to comprehensively track the performance of your efforts. Metrics come in the form of Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, which are concrete figures that contribute to your analysis.
Marketing KPIs are indispensable tools for law firms, offering a data-driven approach to your decision-making. By leveraging these metrics, legal professionals can refine their marketing strategies, enhance client acquisition and retention, and ensure that their efforts align with the firm’s business objectives.
When analyzing your digital marketing strategy, the following 10 KPIs are essential.
Organic Traffic
The journey people take culminates with them signing on as clients begins with finding your website. In the modern digital-first marketplace, this takes the form of an internet search, most often with some variation of the phrase “[your specialty] lawyer near me.”
Measuring your organic traffic gives you a window into the efficacy of your keywords, your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and your overall digital marketing efforts.
Tools such as Google Analytics can give you detailed insights into how your law firm’s website is performing in key areas such as traffic, bounce rate, and conversions.
Bounce Rate
Getting visitors to your site is no good if they leave immediately. This phenomenon is known as “bouncing” and tracking it is your Bounce Rate. This gives you a good idea of how effective your site design is at drawing visitors in and getting them to interact further.
Analytics tools generally calculate your Bounce Rate with a simple equation: Your single-page sessions divided by total sessions and then multiplied by 100. If your Bounce Rate proves high, you’ll need to do some work on your landing pages. Something about them isn’t drawing your visitors in.
Conversion Rate
This metric measures the relationship between Organic Traffic and Leads. While those two look at raw numbers, this metric gives you an idea of how efficiently everything is working together. Your Conversion rate is measured as a ratio of your Leads over your Organic Traffic.
If you’re getting a ton of organic traffic but not converting them into leads, that can point you to specific flaws in your website experience and how it relates to the sales funnel.
Download our free guide: Supercharged SEO for Law Firms for in-depth tips and strategies on how to make sure your website shows up at the top of local searches.
Leads
While the primary purpose of a website used to be simple information, a digital brochure that described a business to curious browsers, the modern site’s purpose is lead generation. Leads are potential clients who contact you. Leads are a direct measure of the health of your firm and integral to your long-term success.
The best way to track leads is with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. As lead generation should be your foremost concern regarding website design, any underperformance should be addressed immediately.
Digital Marketing experts like ours at Lead Science can help you launch, manage, and monitor your digital marketing campaigns, generating more leads and greater ROI.
Acquisition Cost
Gaining clients costs money. This is the entire purpose of your sales and marketing budget, whether it’s your website, traditional advertising, or email campaigns. The goal is to get the cost of a new client as low as possible through the most efficient marketing spend.
Divide your sales and marketing costs within a specific window by the total number of clients acquired within that same window and you have your acquisition cost per client. While this stat isn’t the end of the story, knowing what you’re spending per client is a building block to a high-performing marketing budget.
Revenue
Revenue is the end result of all your sales and marketing efforts. You can not only use it to determine the average revenue gained per client acquired, but also to track your most profitable clients. From there, you can build a profile of your ideal client and gear your overall strategy to those demographics.
With a wealth of analytics at your fingertips, you can track your marketing spend all the way to the leads it generates. You can then adjust your strategy to the segments of the market that do the most for your bottom line.
Using detailed marketing analytics, you can track the value of individual campaigns to see which generate the most income for your law firm.
Customer Lifetime Value
Strongly related to revenue, Customer Lifetime Value gives you the average amount of revenue a single client generates during their business relationship with your firm. If you have trouble with client retention, you might notice this value decreasing.
Customer Lifetime Value is an average, but it gives you a good idea of how much you need to focus on attracting new clients versus working on retaining the ones you do have. Depending on your specialty, and the typical clients you work with, this can vary widely.
Response Time
Looking for a lawyer is never stress-free. No matter your specialty, chances are your clients have recently experienced a traumatic event. Response time becomes one of the most important aspects of client relations.
Response Time measures the period between an individual’s first contact with your firm and your firm’s response. Needless to say, you want this number as small as you can possibly make it. Respect your leads’ time and they will reward you.
Conversion Time
Another measure of efficiency, Conversion Time tracks how long it takes for an interested party to sign on as a client. Think of it as a concrete look at how streamlined your sales funnel is. A long Conversion Time usually betrays a roadblock in the funnel or an inadequately addressed pain point.
In addition, a long Conversion Time might point to places your overall marketing strategy could be improved. If clients are taking a long time to make a decision, it’s possible you’re not making as strong a case as you could.
Return On Investment (ROI)
Nothing is more important than your ROI. Marketing should always be efficient, both from a time and money perspective. Constant monitoring of your ROI gives you a bird’s eye view of your overall efforts.
ROI goes beyond mere financial assessment. It serves as your North Star for strategic decision-making, resource optimization, and the alignment of marketing efforts with your business objectives. By leveraging ROI data, your law firm can foster a results-driven marketing approach, ultimately contributing to sustainable growth and competitiveness in the marketplace.
Gain Actionable Marketing Insights With Lead Science
Improving your marketing requires understanding it. You need to know where you’re being effective as well as where you’re falling short. KPIs are the concrete figures you can look at to determine if you need to be spending more, less, or overhauling your entire strategy. There are as many metrics as stars in the sky, but these ten point to the fundamental aspects of marketing efficacy.
At Lead Science, we have decades of experience generating leads for our clients, with white-glove service and detailed reporting for every step of your journey. Schedule your Discovery Call to learn how we can help take your digital marketing efforts to new heights.
