Do you want to know which of your digital assets yields the highest ROI? The answers are all hidden in plain sight–right behind your metrics. Stay with us to find out which metrics you should be tracking.
According to the Legal Analytics Survey Results 2022, more than half (68%) of legal professionals are using legal analytics. Between 2021 and 2022 that number increased by 7%, take a look:
Law firms are currently leveraging data for business and the practice of law.
In the business of law, here are the top 3 ways law firms use data:
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- 68% of firms use data to pitch or demonstrate expertise to clients
- 50% of firms use data to build competitive intelligence and evaluate new business
- 29% of firms use data to price their services and bids
In the practice of law, here are the top 3 ways law firms use data:
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- 80% of firms use data to build competitive intelligence on judges, parties and opposing counsel
- 73% of firms use data for case assessment
- 63% of firms use data to determine case strategy
From these figures it’s clear that the smartest firms are those that are constantly delivering and growing–are using data to predict their entire strategy, from competitor analysis all the way through case assessment.
Measuring success in marketing is crucial, but with so many metrics available, it can be overwhelming to determine which ones truly matter for a law firm. The good news is, we’ve got you covered. In this post, we dive into the top marketing metrics that every law firm should be tracking to stay ahead of the competition and reach their business goals.
Let’s begin.
The Top Marketing Metrics for Law Firms
The beauty behind a digital marketing investment is that everything is pretty much measurable. But, to help you keep your focus, here are some of the most relevant metrics:
Leads: MQLs and SQLs
This is perhaps one of the most important marketing metrics you need to keep an eye on. Leads, or lead generation, is a good indicator of your future revenue. Leads are paramount because they’re the ones that are taking the jump from being a prospect to a possible case.
As a lead moves through your sales funnel you can broadly categorize them in one of 2 ways:
- Marketing qualified leads – This is a lead that your legal marketing agency designates as most likely to become a customer.
- Sales qualified leads – This lead is past the nurturing stage and is ready to talk to your firm, client services, sales team, or whomever is in charge of your lead intake process.
Cost Per Lead
There are lots of factors that figure into pricing, and thus it usually varies from firm to firm depending on the practice area, legal jurisdiction, level of competition, etc. But, as you invest in more digital assets, you’ll want to know how much a lead is costing you.
The basic formula goes like this:
To get the best response, it’s best to calculate this using a set period of time, e.g. monthly/quarterly, and it’s also best to separate by campaign type, e.g. LSAs campaign, Google Ads, email newsletters etc.
Traffic Sources
If driving customer traffic to your website is a top priority, it’s important to understand the sources of your website traffic and how to maximize each channel for optimal results. To get started, you want to know where the majority of the traffic is coming from.
Because all roads should lead to your website, we’ll focus on web traffic metrics.
- Direct traffic: Users arriving at your website via a browser bookmark or typing the URL directly.
- Organic search: Users arriving at your website through organic non-paid marketing. Most likely, they’re coming in from a search engine like Google.
- Paid search: Users arriving at your website via paid advertisements.
- Referral traffic: Users arriving to your website from an external website that linked a redirect back to you.
Bounce Rate
Besides keeping an eye on traffic, you’ll also want to keep an eye on at what point you are losing traffic, and this is where knowing the bounce rate comes in handy. This is the percentage of visitors that looked into one of your pages but eventually left without interacting or visiting other pages.
Here is the basic formula to get this percentage:
If this sounds like a headache to calculate, worry not. There are all-in-one platforms like LawEval that are designed for law firms looking to get immediate answers like these. With this incredible platform, you can get a compiled overview of your real-time traffic and visitor data from Google Analytics.
ROAS – Return On Ad Spend
If you are investing in legal advertising, then it’s important to track the ROAS. This metric measures the revenue you get per dollar spent. It’s pretty much the same as the ROI except it’s specific to your advertising costs.
For example, if you have a ROAS of $5 you’ll have a ratio of 5:1. That means that your firm is generating ≈$5,000 in revenue for ever ≈$1,000 spent. Because marketing is quite dynamic, the ROAS may change with time, depending on seasonality, level of competition, and quite a few other factors. However, as a best practice, the more relevant your messaging is, the ‘better’ your return will be.
- Total campaign revenue → The revenue brought in from the ad campaigns.
- Total campaign cost → The amount of capital your firm spent on ad campaigns.
Customer Lifetime Value
Previously, we published a blog on the marketing metrics based on the sales funnel and in it we mentioned a few metrics to accurately measure conversion rate.
One of the metrics that was discussed is the CAC, the customer acquisition cost. This refers to the cost incurred by a business to acquire a new customer. CAC is a crucial metric for businesses as it helps them determine the efficiency of their customer acquisition efforts and whether they are generating positive returns on investment.
The formula goes as follows:
- “Sales and Marketing Expense” refers to all expenses incurred in acquiring new customers, including advertising, salaries, benefits, and other related costs.
- The “Number of New Customers Acquired” is the number of new customers gained during a specific period of time e.g. monthly/quarterly/annually. Using these two values, you can calculate the average cost per customer acquired.
Propel Your Firm Forward
The traditional mindset that marketing is ‘creative only’ is long gone. Today, the top marketing leaders and firms are using metrics to evaluate the success of their creatives.
To begin with, if you’d like to dive into more marketing metrics and keep an eye on your entire sales funnel from beginning to end, we recommend you download this FREE printable checklist.
Download the Metrics Checklist
And if you’d like to learn more about data-driven platforms like LawEval, or simply want to know how to stay on top of your digital assets, we’re here to answer all your questions.
