Understanding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Legal Marketing

Just as the practice of law isn’t subjective, neither is the measurement of business results. If you aren’t tracking specific metrics and numbers, how will you know what’s working and what isn’t with respect to your marketing strategies? This is where key performance indicators (KPIs) come into play. Here’s why KPIs are vital in law firm marketing and how you can make sense of them.

What Are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are specific data points used to measure progress and success within a business. Each KPI is a measurement tied to a particular goal, such as leads, engagement, or conversions.

According to KPI.org, the essential data your business collects helps track progress, supports strategies, and measures success. But there are countless KPIs your law firm can track, and some may be more useful than others. In addition to committing to this strategy, you’ll also need to choose the right metrics.

Why KPIs Are Critical in Law Firm Marketing

Setting goals and tracking performance are basic elements of a successful business enterprise. This includes your legal marketing strategy. Instead of just investing in marketing and hoping for great results, here are some of the reasons why KPIs are vital to your marketing strategy.

Measure Performance

You can collect a ton of data and never use any of it. One of the benefits of choosing specific KPIs is that you are designating certain data points you will measure, which are tied to your firm’s goals.

Create Accountability

Once you identify your list of KPIs, you can also decide who will be responsible for driving those results. Will it be someone within your firm, an outside agency, or a combination of the two?

Enable Predictability

Without leveraging the right KPIs, your law firm may be left wondering why one marketing strategy or another isn’t working the way you expected. KPIs allow for better predictability of results moving into the future.

Allow Tracking

Once you’ve chosen your KPIs and created a reliable monitoring system, tracking these metrics becomes seamless. You can get these figures reported to you monthly or quarterly and use them to make more informed business decisions.

Making Sense of KPIs in Legal Marketing

Not sure which KPIs are right for your law firm? There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. While there are some marketing KPIs every law firm should track, others will depend on your firm’s goals and priorities. Here is a list of the most commonly tracked legal marketing KPIs.

1. Return on Investment

Return on investment (ROI) is one of the most critical metrics for law firm marketing because it helps your business ensure it’s getting the most value for its marketing dollars. For example, if your firm spends $50,000 on a new marketing campaign that generates $150,000 in new revenue, your ROI would be 200%.

2. Client Acquisition Cost

Your client acquisition cost (CAC) is a figure you probably want to know for the sake of your legal marketing budget. This is an average of how much it costs your law firm to acquire a new client. You can determine this by taking the total marketing spend for a specified period divided by the number of clients acquired during that same period.

3. Customer Lifetime Value

Depending on your practice area, you may wish to track a customer’s lifetime value (CLV). This is the total revenue you’ll generate from a client over the course of their relationship with your law firm. This can take into account any follow-up services or additional services you might provide.

4. Click-Through Rate

Your click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of website impressions that result in a click. For example, if your website shows up 100 times in organic search results and you get 20 clicks, your CTR is 20%. This is an excellent gauge of various digital marketing strategies like ads and social media campaigns.

5. Engagement Rate

Your engagement rate measures the actual interaction your content receives on social media, blog posts, and email campaigns. This can include metrics like comments, likes, click-throughs, and shares. Engagement is an excellent metric if your firm is looking to build brand recognition online.

6. Website Conversion Rate

Also called the traffic-to-lead ratio, this KPI will quickly tell you the number of website visitors who convert into actual leads for your law firm. The higher the ratio, the better. You can also use this to track different content pieces and campaigns to determine what visitors find more compelling.

7. Bounce Rate

It would be helpful to know if some website visitors are simply turning around and leaving your website shortly after arriving. Your bounce rate can give a good indication of your site’s attractiveness and usability for potential leads. A high bounce rate means your site or its content isn’t engaging visitors quickly enough.

8. Email Open Rate

If your law firm uses email marketing, this KPI is a must. It’s a simple calculation telling you the percentage of email recipients who actually click “open” on your email messages. Some of the factors that influence your open rate include the subject line, preview text, time sent, personalization, and more.

9. Organic Traffic

Most potential clients will begin their search for an attorney using a search engine, usually Google. They might enter a term like “Montgomery car accident lawyer” or “Charlotte divorce attorney.” This metric will tell you about the success of your local search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

10. Referrals In & Out

Many attorneys work hard to cultivate professional relationships with others in the legal profession, which can lead to lucrative referral business. While the results will vary depending on your particular practice area, this is something you should track so you can gauge the success of your efforts.

Get Help Monitoring Your Legal Marketing KPIs

Selecting and monitoring KPIs is a vital part of a successful digital marketing strategy. These measurements allow your firm to make quick adjustments when something isn’t producing results and leverage successful strategies for even bigger gains. But you don’t have to do these things on your own.

Too Darn Loud Legal Marketing specializes in helping law firms boost their online visibility to get more qualified leads and increase overall revenue. We offer customized digital marketing solutions, meaning we only recommend the strategies that will produce positive results. Call us today at (800) 864-1764 or contact us online to schedule a free initial consultation.