Hello and a hearty welcome to LawBARDs latest Five Things video. Do you want to get more out of your law firm's marketing budget and campaigns? To find and retain clients and control costs, it is essential to understand and track your firm’s marketing performance. Today we are going to talk about five types of metrics that you should be tracking and reviewing regarding your digital marketing efforts, including your website, Google Ad Words, and social media.
KPIs or key performance indicators are measurable targets that indicate how a business is performing in terms of meeting specific goals. The following KPIs are focused on digital marketing and digital advertising and will help you understand if the specific efforts are working and helping to drive more business or if you are just wasting money.
- Website Metrics
- Lead Generation and Conversion Rate
- Cost per Acquisition
- Search Engine Performance
- Return on Investment
First up, we have website traffic and engagement metrics including Unique Visitors, Page Views, Time on Site, and Bounce Rates. These are the most basic website metrics and are easily available in your website analytics platform, whether it's Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or something else. If your website is managed and hosted by an external party, ask them to see the analytics. These metrics indicate how well your website is attracting new visitors and keeping them interested.
Next, we have lead generation and conversion metrics including the number of leads generated by a specific tactic or campaign and the lead-to-client conversion rate. These two metrics work together to tell the entire story. It’s great if your tactics and campaigns are driving a lot of leads, but this alone does not tell the entire story. It’s the conversion of the lead into client metrics that fills in the gap. It’s highly possible that you can get a lot of potential clients but perhaps you aren’t converting due to a poor intake system or busy staff. It’s also possible that while you are getting a lot of leads, they aren’t the types of clients or cases that you want. Conversely, it’s possible that you don’t get many leads, but you convert most of these.
Third are the metrics regarding acquisition costs. Determining the acquisition cost is very easy but very important. You calculate acquisition costs by dividing the total marketing spend for a specific tactic of strategy by the number of new clients. Doing this enables you to compare the success of various tactics or campaigns for efficiency and effectiveness.
Fourth is search engine performance for targeted keywords. While your website may drive a lot of traffic, you want to make sure that it is driving traffic against specific keywords germane to your practice areas. To track keyword performance, you want to understand the position of the of your site on the search engine results page or SERP. Given that Google typically has over 85% of the US search traffic, you want to be focused on your performance there. Also, keep in mind that when looking at SERPs, you will see both organic listings and paid listings, which are labeled as ads. High rankings increase visibility to potential clients searching for legal services. Also, it’s important for most law firm practices to include a geographical component, such as city, town or county when looking at SERP performance as most law firm searches include a location in the search term.
Finally, return on investment, ROI. ROI is calculated by dividing the revenue generated from the marketing activity, minus the marketing cost, divided by the marketing cost. This overarching metric helps law firms determine which marketing channels and campaigns are most effective. It's crucial for optimizing marketing spend and focusing on the most profitable strategies.
So, that’s it for this episode of Law BARD’s Five Things. Be sure to check back for future episodes of LawBARDs Five Things and other information that can help improve your law firm’s performance For any questions, feel free to reach out to us at info@lawbard.com. Thanks for tuning in and have a great day!
