A small law practice needs to make a marketing budget in order to grow and be successful. Attorneys may find it hard to budget for marketing because many have never done it before.
In fact, an ABA survey found only 46% of firms and 14% of solo practitioners said they had a budget for marketing.
Luckily, making a budget doesn’t have to be a hard job. By following a simple set of instructions, the process can be made easier to handle and less complicated.
New Client Acquisition vs. “Old” Client Retention
When budgeting to market a small practice, it’s important to think about two key areas: keeping clients and getting new ones.
Every firm needs to put money into these two areas because they are important for keeping current clients happy and getting new ones.
Acquisition Marketing
Acquisition (prospecting) is all about reaching out to new prospects who have never heard of your practice before. This could mean spending money on targeted advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) or other marketing strategies to help you gain visibility to your desired target audience.
Retention Marketing
Retention marketing focuses on making sure your current clients are happy with the services you offer. This could be done by starting a referral program that gives clients an incentive to tell their friends and family about your practice. You could also spend money on email automation and review requests, which will help you stay in touch with your clients and get useful feedback.
How much money you put into prospecting and retention will depend on what you do and who you want to reach. Truth be told, both should get significant attention from your firm as you can’t have one without the other.
For example, a business attorney who works with entrepreneurs may find efforts to keep clients coming back produces greater ROI, and more money should be spent on this. But a family lawyer may find their ROI grows when they spend money on getting new clients.
It’s important to remember your marketing budget isn’t written in permanent ink and should be able to change as your needs do. You should always monitor how things are going and make changes to your budget based on effectiveness.
How Much Money Should a Small Firm Spend on Online Marketing?
Before setting a budget for online marketing, it’s important to have a clear picture of your avatar’s client lifecycle. The client lifecycle is the path a potential client takes before they become a paying one.
It usually has four steps: becoming aware, becoming interested, making a decision, and taking action. Understanding these stages and the specific marketing campaigns can be used to guide leads through each stage helps you set aside money for each area.
How to Appear Out of Nowhere When Prospects Become Aware
In the awareness stage, for example, you want to make sure potential clients know about your practice and the help you can provide.
For example, a wife may have just learned her husband of six years has been fooling around with his assistant so she’s suddenly facing the realistic prospects of getting a divorce. Yesterday she wasn’t a prospect for your family law practice, whereas today she is. An article or video on your blog about, “The First 5 Things You Should Not Do When Considering a Divorce,” would appeal to her even though she wouldn’t have paid it any mind in the past.
Since it’s impossible to predict with a high degree of certainty when a potential client might become interested in your firm, you have to think more proactively with your marketing strategy.
Investing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a proactive way to raise brand awareness because it can help improve your search rankings and make it more likely leads find your firm through an online search.
When deciding how much money to put toward this step, think about how much attention you’re already getting. Check your website’s traffic and organic search results to see if you get the same amount of visitors each month. If not, it may be best to ramp up on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads or additional keyword phrases for SEO.
How to Build Interest
Once a lead knows about your practice, it’s important to keep their attention and interest. This can be done by giving them useful information, earning their trust, and getting to know them.
One way to do this is to tell interesting stories your leads can relate to and show how much you want to help them through a hard time. This can be done with a pop-up, landing page, or personal blog on your website.
It’s also important to think about hiring a content specialist to help produce valuable content in a way that makes your leads feel connected.
Also, you might want to think about spreading out your budgeted initiatives to reach as much of your desired target audience as possible. This can mean setting aside money for promotional materials, networking events, or other offline marketing strategies that help you meet potential clients and get their attention.
Sometimes old school approaches work best even though online marketing gets the lion’s share of attention and hype.
Help Prospects Make an Informed Decision
At the decision-making stage, it’s important to know what your leads’ needs and concerns are so you can help them take action and work with your company.
One good way to do this is to give them testimonials from happy clients who have used your services before. You can include them on your marketing materials, website(s) and ads to show potential clients how valuable and good your services are.
When allocating resources to the different steps of the sales funnel, it’s important to think about the unique needs and problems that come up at each step.
Let’s say your company is the only one in a certain area, you wouldn’t need to spend as much on brand recognition. But if you see that people who visit your website quickly leave, you may need to spend more money on ways to get their attention and keep them interested.
By understanding the details of the client journey, you can decide where to spend your marketing budget in a more informed way.
Push Them Off the Fence to Take Action
At the action stage, leads do something, like setting up a meeting, registering to download a lead magnet, emailing your firm, or using chatbots to get answers to frequently asked questions during off hours. Look at click-through (CTRs) and conversion rates to figure out how well this step worked.
Make sure your website and other marketing materials have clear calls to action that encourage leads to schedule a consultation or call your office.
Also, think about spending money on follow-up marketing, like email campaigns and retargeting ads, to remind leads about your practice and get them to act.
At the end of the day, you want to help your leads take action and turn into clients. This is where you close the deal and turn leads into paying clients. You can figure this out by counting how many prospects sign up for a Discovery Call and then how many of them qualify and show up for a Strategy Session. Then, how many of them go on to become clients?
Discovery Calls and Strategy Sessions require some manual labor, while the rest are digital and can be handled digitally.
Overall, it’s important to understand the different stages of the sales funnel and the opportunities and problems that come with each stage if you want to set a budget that will work for your digital marketing efforts.
By knowing that each stage needs different strategies and resources, you can make sure your budget is being used in the best way possible.
One way to improve the action stage is to set aside money for lead generation services for lawyers. However, it’s important to check the rules with your state bar association because the American Bar Association has rules about lawyers paying for leads.
How to Calculate What It Costs to Get Consistent Leads
To make a good marketing budget and keep track of your progress, you need to give each lead a monetary value. This helps to determine if your campaigns are giving you a good return on your money (ROI).
Using the number of leads as a metric is a reliable way to figure out how well your marketing is working. One way to figure out how much a lead costs is to divide your entire marketing costs by the lead volume brought in. Usually, this number will be higher when you first start marketing.
But the more marketing and ads you do, the more awareness it generates for your firm. This will make it easier and less expensive to generate consistent leads.
Some More Budget Friendly Marketing Methods
Obviously, there are several cost-effective ways for lawyers to market and advertise. Here are some to consider:
- Maintain a presence on social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook to reach potential clients and raise awareness of your brand. On these sites, you can run advertising campaigns for as little as $10 per day.
- Implement SEO techniques to make your website more visible on search engines. This can be done by researching keywords, using meta tags, and building backlinks.
- Make useful content like blog posts, videos, and infographics potential clients can use to learn more. Put these on your website and in your social media accounts.
- Install email marketing automation and create campaigns to keep in touch with current clients and keep leads interested.
- Go to events, trade shows, and other networking opportunities to meet other professionals in your field and build relationships with them.
- Reach out to newspapers and magazines in your area to see if you can be featured as an expert in your field.
- Leverage referrals to your advantage by giving current clients an incentive to tell their friends and family about your law firm.
- Streamline and automate your marketing efforts by using tools like scheduling tools and legal CRM software that don’t cost a lot of money.
Advertising on social media
Advertising campaigns can be tested on social media sites without spending a lot of money.
Consider the minimum daily budget for LinkedIn advertising is only $10. This means you can try multiple marketing ideas without spending thousands on traditional methods like TV or billboards.
Social media provides a good testing ground to determine what works before investing thousands on a broader campaign. Just be sure to allow a campaign to run long enough to get enough data to make an educated decision on what to tweak and adjust.
It is a more budget friendly way to attract your target audience, whether you do it for free or pay for it. It’s equally important to keep your law firm’s Facebook page active as it is to pay for Facebook advertising.
Consider Outsourcing
As your practice grows, it may be hard to keep up with everything by yourself. Because of this, it’s important to get used to delegating tasks to professionals who aren’t necessarily in the legal field.
For example, if you are not good at marketing and get poor results, consider hiring a consultant to do the work for you.
Alternatively, if you find legal research tasks boring, simply hire a paralegal. This allows you to offload some of the things you don’t enjoy to allow you to concentrate on building your brand.
Of course, this is a no-brainer suggestion, yet most attorneys don’t view hiring marketing consultants in the same light. Why is that?
Outsourcing looks different for each company, but it’s a good way to focus on what you’re most interested in.
Don’t Forget About the Tools You Need
When making out a budget for a small practice, it’s important to set aside money for the tools and resources you’ll need to put your marketing plans into action and keep track of them.
This includes tools for automating social media posts, email campaigns and keeping track of analytics. Find out how much these tools cost and what they can do for you, and make sure to include them in your budget.
Seek Help from Outsiders
Let’s be candid, attorneys tend to be very prideful and believe there is no task they cannot accomplish themselves. Don’t allow pride to interfere with asking for help when you need it. It’s okay. Not all lawyers know a lot about marketing, finances, and running a firm.
It’s important to feel comfortable relying on experts to help improve other parts of your firm, just like they would for your legal help.
Networking is a great way to find out what other professionals think about your budget and get in touch with other professionals who can give you advice and tips.
Getting to know other lawyers and non-legal professionals can help you make long-lasting business connections that will help you in your career.
Consider Time Necessary to Market Effectively
When making your budget, remember to account for the significant time requirement for marketing activities.
Setting aside a certain amount of time each week for marketing, like at least one hour per business day, can help your practice grow significantly in a year or two.
Use templates to help you make a better budget
In addition to setting aside money for different marketing strategies and tools, it’s important to use a budget template to keep track of and organize your spending.
Using a budget template can help you keep track of your money and make sure you don’t spend more than you can afford. There are free marketing budget templates you can find online and change to fit your needs.
Conclusion
Creating a marketing budget for your small law firm may not be the most fun thing to do, but it is important for the growth and success of your practice.
By taking the time to carefully plan and budget for different marketing strategies, you will be able to connect with potential clients who need legal advice. The harder you work and improve your marketing, the more of your desired target audience you will reach, which means more leads and clients you can help. In the end, this will consistently grow your practice.
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