Which Marketing Activities Are Most Influential in the Decision to Hire an Attorney or Law Firm?

At A.L.T. Legal Professionals Marketing Group, we wanted to know what types of marketing activities (including referrals and personal networking) influenced the people who, in the past, have actually had to decide on which attorney or law firm to hire. Hence, we conducted an online survey, the objectives of which were two-fold: To determine which marketing and business development activities played a role in individuals’ decision to hire or contract with a particular attorney/law firm To ascertain the level of influence each of these activities had in the decision-making process Request a copy of this free report.

Measuring Return on Legal Marketing Investment: Tracking Clients Through Multiple Exposures

As we have discussed, one of the biggest mistakes that law firms make is acting on the assumption that individuals or businesses become clients of a firm through a single exposure.

Is this true?

Sometimes.  But more often than not, prospects become clients through several exposures.

At our agency, we have found that some law practices are hesitant to invest in marketing or business development because their clients come through word-of-mouth.  The phenomena of “word-of-mouth” is wonderful when it happens and one which we will address in a later blog post. But it is foolish to think that even “word-of-mouth” exists in a vacuum. Even the individual who is referred to a law firm by a trusted friend, will in all likelihood still visit the firm’s website or look at the firm’s brochure. If the message conveyed in these vehicles is inconsistent with how the firm and its services was described by the friend, a disconnect is created that can limit the opportunity for a successful lead conversion. In this case, the potential client has been exposed to two “touchpoints,” neither of which is reinforcing or underscoring the other.  Similarly, when exposures reinforce one another, it stands to reason that the overall perception of the firm (and hence the likelihood of converting the prospect into a client) is enhanced. In many ways, this is the very essence of integrated marketing.

In tracking the ROI of an integrated legal marketing campaign, it is important to consider all of the ways in which each client was exposed to the firm. But taking such an approach also creates some logistical problems. For example, if one wished to ascertain the ROI of an advertising campaign, most would assume that the standard formula {(Revenue – Advertising Expenses)/Advertising Expenses} would suffice.  However, this would fail to account for all of the other ways in which new clients may have learned more about the firm. Were they aware of the recent new case the firm was handling? Did they visit the web site? Did someone refer the firm or justify the decision to contract with it? Were they introduced to one of the firm’s attorneys?

Another way to look at this is to question why millions of dollars are allocated every year for marketing materials and activities that unto themselves, may generate zero new revenue. A new firm logo is created, a strictly “image” advertising campaign is initiated, an expensive brochure is produced. Why? The answer lies in the fact that when executed well, they make other elements of the overall marketing program work that much more effectively.

The interesting thing is that if one could determine the relative contribution of each marketing “touchpoint” to the firm’s overall revenue growth, one would then be in a much better decision to determine the “value” of specific marketing elements. For example, today, creating a new web site can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. How can the legal marketer know how much he or she should invest in that site?  How important is it that it “look right” and how much is lost if the decision is made to skimp on the expenditure?

Traditionally, there have been no ways of which we are aware, for tracking the business development process across multiple touchpoints and in such a holistic manner. Thus there is no real formula that truly captures the legal “purchasing” process. To do so would require determining how much of a new client’s revenue was due to exposure to an ad versus how much from the referral of a trusted friend.  And in more complex cases, it might require allocating new client revenue amongst a PR campaign, a firm brochure, a web site, a seminar, a referral from a trusted friend and still another referral from an already existing current client of the firm.

In the coming weeks, we will discuss more about how such a methodology might be put into place. 

Next Week:  Dissecting Direct Revenue, Aggregate Revenue and Revenue Generated Through Word-of-Mouth

Measuring Return on Legal Marketing Investment: The 3 Mistakes Law Firms Make

Last week we discussed how, when it comes to ascertaining the return on their marketing investments, law firms rarely, if ever, obtain useable information Much of this has to do with the nature of selling services, the role of word-of-mouth, the difficulty in measuring certain types of marketing tools (e.g., brochures, articles) and the cost of the time involved in implementing marketing programs.

However, much of this also has to do with some faulty premises law firms make in attempting to get a true picture of the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives. 

The first of these lies in the manner by which law firms go about interpreting results. Typically, law firms will decide to implement a marketing initiative and then at some later point, assess whether this activity “succeeded” or “failed” in generating new revenue for the firm. For example, they will look at how much money was allocated for a seminar or an advertising campaign, see how many new clients came of it and how much new revenue these clients brought in. The calculations are easy to make. How much money did a particular initiative cost and how much did it bring in? If the numbers don’t meet the firm’s anticipated projections or goals, the effort is declared a failure with the odds of ever implementing a similar, second attempt dramatically reduced.

What is the mistake these firms are making?  They are assuming that each and every marketing initiative they undertake exists in a vacuum – that the seminar is the only exposure the prospect has to the firm, that the television viewer’s only contact with that firm comes through the viewing of its commercial, etc. In truth, most communications, and certainly most successful communications are in fact successful, because the prospect has been exposed to a message a number of times and in a variety of ways.

An individual who registered for a seminar may have seen an ad or a press release for the event or perhaps even been told about it by a friend. He or she then attended the seminar and came away with a positive or negative impression of the attorney who made the presentation. After the seminar, that individual went home, and in wanting to learn more about the firm, decides to check out the firm’s web site. Then, at the first appointment, while sitting in the waiting area, that potential prospect starts to read one of the firm brochures strategically placed upright on a credenza in the room.  Thus, prior to actually retaining the firm, that individual has been exposed to a representation of it somewhere between 4 and 7 times.

It’s no different for the television commercial or the direct mail piece or the press release or the Facebook page or any other type of vehicle – including personal referrals from friends and associates. Individuals can be and are exposed to a law firm any number of times. This can work either to the firm’s advantage or at times, even to its disadvantage. Consider the individual who meets an attorney at a networking event in which they engage in a long discussion on a matter of particular interest to the prospect (first exposure). When that prospect goes home, he visits the firm’s website, only to discover that the firm makes no mention whatsoever of the kinds of services in which he is interested. Here, the potential of a second quality exposure has been lost. The prospect now may have some doubts as to the credibility of that attorney simply because the firm’s expertise on the issue has not been adequately conveyed in the site. In this particular case, the web site would not have been the factor that generated the case for the attorney (that being their meeting at the event), but it might have been instrumental in turning that prospect into a client. The attorney’s probable take away from this sequence is that their encounter didn’t go as well as he had thought (and thus either that face-to-face networking is not his strength or that the prospect was not a serious lead), when in fact it was the lack of rich content in a non-awareness generating vehicle (the web site) that was responsible for the failure to close the sale.

To fully appreciate the importance of how marketing tools are intertwined, consider a situation in which one is solicited on the telephone to apply for a credit card the name of which is not well known. Chances are the response rate will be relatively low. Now consider a telephone solicitation effort for a highly branded card such as Visa or Discover. The response rate will in all likelihood be considerably higher. Why is that? It’s because the advertising has built awareness  (and credibility) for the product even though it may have not have directly spawned any direct leads on its own.  In this case, the branded advertising campaign served as a facilitator for the telemarketing effort.

Because of the misconception of measuring only direct leads/clients, law firms then make a second crucial mistake. They ask that new prospect “Where did you find out about us?”  The individual then says something akin to, “I saw your ad,” “I Googled you on the web,” or “I attended your seminar,” etc. The response is duly noted and the revenue from that new client is credited towards whatever activity was cited in the response.

What the law firm should be doing instead is prompting the new prospect/client to, as best as he can, name all the areas in which he’s seen, read, heard, learned about the firm. By “all,” we are not just referring to outreach vehicles such as ads, mailings, seminars, articles, pay-per-click campaigns, etc., but also to referral sources – other firm clients or associates of the prospect, who may have mentioned the firm.  By capturing this data, we can begin to get a much better picture of what is working and what is not and as important, what combination of activities is working most effectively together.

To implement such an intake process is where we come to the third mistake that law firms make – and that is failing to actually have an intake process and/or requiring strict adherence to one. The objection to adhering to what really amounts to a one-question survey (i.e., “Check all the ways in which you’ve learned about our firm”) is usually one of logistics as though adding this extra burden to the originating attorney, administrator, paralegal or clerical person would be unfair and cumbersome.

The net takeaway? We should not assume marketing activities work in a vacuum or that new business is generated in a single direct way. Second, ask the one right question.  Finally, demand strict adherence to this process.

Next Week: The Problems with Current Return on Marketing Investment Models

Measuring Return on Legal Marketing Investment: Why Law Firms Don’t Get Useable Information

If there is a single sentiment that we have heard most often in over 20 years as legal marketing consultants, it has been expressed by the question, “How do I know if this marketing effort will work?” The laments,  “We tried that and it didn’t work,” and “Most of our business comes through word-of-mouth,” would be right up there as well.

As we begin a new year, I thought it would be a good idea to explore how legal marketers can get a better handle on what strategies and marketing vehicles pay out and which are less profitable.  By accurately measuring the effects of their marketing efforts, law firms will be better equipped to develop meaningful and growth-oriented business development initiatives.

I encourage everyone to lend their voice to this discussion as determining the effectiveness of legal marketing is imperative for practice growth.  Unfortunately, it is a topic that is either often misunderstood or ignored altogether.

Why Measuring Return on Marketing Investment is Difficult

To understand where legal marketers miss the boat on measuring return on marketing investment, it is important to get a handle on why measuring such return is so difficult to begin with.

First, unlike marketers of consumer products, legal marketers do not have a wealth of measurement tools at their disposal.

Second, the large disparity in the number of clients/customers of a particular product versus those of a law firm makes traditional analysis of return-on-investment much less accurate for this latter type of enterprise.

Third, word-of-mouth referrals play a much larger role in how someone finds a lawyer, a doctor or a financial planner then in how they determine what brand of cereal to buy.

Fourth, some activities have traditionally not been easily measured. Creating a brochure, developing a new web site, writing an article for a trade publication may not actually make the phones ring, yet we know instinctively that they play a part in the overall growth of the firm.  We just don’t know how big a part.

Fifth, in legal marketing, attorney “time” is a major marketing cost element. Very few methodologies capture this significant business development expense.

Finally, and perhaps the most important reason why measuring the return on a law firm’s marketing investment is so difficult lies, as we shall see, in some faulty premises on the part of legal marketers themselves.

Next week we’ll take a look at some of these faulty premises -- mistakes law firms make that prevent them from getting a true picture of their business development initiatives.

And after that, in the weeks ahead, we will outline how law firms can get a much better handle on knowing from exactly where their business stems and how they can use this data to make informed decisions about future growth programs.

Next Week:

Measuring Marketing ROI: The 3 Mistakes Law Firms Make

The Most Boring, Though Critical, But Often Overlooked Part of the Legal Marketing Process

One of the most overlooked parts of the legal marketing process is also its simplest – the creation and utilization of new client intake. In all the years that we have worked with law firm clients of all sizes, it still baffles me that some law firms still show a reluctance to obtain the kind of data that can help them make important decisions.

While most law firms may know their click-through rates, directory page rankings and how much new revenue came in at any given time,  many still do not know whether those clicks turned into leads that turned into clients; whether the efforts at high page ranking were worth the time and money; or which marketing/business activities spurred that new revenue.

The new client intake form is critical if firm management wishes to know whether different parts of the firm’s business-building efforts are working and to what degree. Besides the obvious name, phone number, address data that will be collected, law firms should probe to get a deeper understanding as to how and why prospects came to them.  Where did the prospect learn about the firm? Was it from more than one source? Was a referral involved?  Did they take the time to visit the firm’s site? What message resonated with them? All of these questions are vital if the firm is serious about making better marketing-related decisions in the future.

I believe that law practices often initiate their marketing efforts with good intentions, but then fail to commit to tracking the results of these programs. Even when such information is available, there is often a reluctance to examine what the data is actually conveying. For example a pay-per-click campaign may have netted 5 new clients and $60,000 in revenue, but what good is that if the campaign itself cost $100,000? Similarly, how efficient is being ranked number one on Google if the efforts are not just justified by the revenue generated?  Conversely, might certain business building initiatives be serving a worthwhile purpose even if they are not “paying out” immediately? Is that new firm brochure really a waste of firm money, simply because none of the new clients mentioned it during intake?

Law practices should take a page out of the playbook of businesses that manufacture or sell products. Most have a pretty good idea as to how their marketing programs are doing. Similarly, it’s important that law practices create processes that offer measures of accountability.