Building an effective marketing budget can be a challenge for law firms, especially those that are small or have limited budgets to work with. In order to maximize your marketing spend, we recommend not only seeking support from a marketing professional but also that of a specialized financial professional. By working with a specialized bookkeeper for attorneys, you will be able to better understand the return on your investments and determine the best strategies from a financial perspective. Today, we’ll share some common ways that your bookkeeper can help you create and manage your law firm budget effectively.
How to Determine Your Law Firm's Marketing Budget
The most central question any small firm has when it comes to developing a marketing budget is just figuring out how much to spend. Creating a solid overall budget is the first step. We recommend developing and tracking an overall budget monthly to get a better idea of how much your firm can afford to spend on marketing overall. Once you have a handle on what your total marketing spend should be, you can start to itemize the individual marketing expenses and budget for that area specifically.
Why Lawyer Marketing Strategies Need Solid Budget Guidance
Once you have a good number of what you want to spend overall, it’s important to itemize each layer of your law firm marketing budget. Start by identifying which marketing strategies you want to employ and getting quotes from specialists who you can trust. When you have an idea of what each marketing activity will cost your law firm, you can finally sit down and start to determine your priorities in terms of your budget.
If you have been in business for a while and have past data about specific marketing strategies, you will want to bring those numbers into consideration as well, as those can help you decide what projects have produced the best results.
Evaluating Your Law Firm's Marketing ROI
An important part of determining your budget should be considering your ROI. While some activities may not produce a direct ROI metric, others should be easy to track. Here are some activities that are easy to track in terms of ROI:
PPC for Lawyers
Think Google and Facebook ads. Since your marketer can usually tell you what it costs to get someone to click on your site or ad and the conversion rate for that ad, you should have a good idea about what the campaigns will cost to scale.
Direct Mail for Law Firms
You can use specific phone numbers or QR codes on your direct mail to understand the success of your campaigns. This makes direct mail a particularly effective strategy in terms of understanding your ROI.
Lawyer Marketing Websites
There are some websites that connect attorneys with leads. While these websites may not be the most effective marketing strategy, it is pretty easy to determine your ROI for this activity because you can easily attribute the clients you gain to the sites.
There are also some marketing activities that are harder to evaluate when it comes to ROI. They include:
Law Firm Social Media Management
Organic social media marketing drives people to engage with you and your law firm, but it can be tricky to quantify the impact that social media has on your business in terms of ROI. Because social media works based on exposure, understanding which leads are directly attributable to this service can be a challenge.
SEO for Legal Firms
Search engine optimization is a long-game commitment, and it’s not always obvious whether or not you’re getting results. SEO is extremely important for law firms, so don’t skip this activity just because you can’t quantify it. Just be aware that ROI may be more difficult to measure.
How to Build Your Law Firm Marketing Budget Based on ROI
If ROI is difficult to measure on some marketing activities, how do you decide which ones to prioritize? We recommend building a balanced law firm budget that gives your firm the best chance of success. Start with your overall budget and determine what you can afford to spend on each service. Some activities that rely on a bidding structure – like Google or FB ads – might require a significant investment in order to receive any significant return on your investment.
If you’re working with a smaller budget, you may be better off spending money on cheaper but less traceable activities, like social media management or SEO. You will also want to consider marketing actions like branding and website that will help strengthen your other marketing activities down the line.
How Working with a Professional Bookkeeper for Law Firms Can Help You Track and Manage Your Law Firm's Marketing Budget
Overall, the best way to ensure you have a solid marketing strategy and budget is to work with a financial professional who can help you track your spending and evaluate its relative success. With our monthly budgeting add-on, we help our clients see exactly what they’re spending and be able to make actionable and strategic changes based on that data.
