“We must realize – and act on the realization – that if we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.”
John Doerr, author of Measure What Matters
This quote rings true in many circumstances, but especially in the world of marketing for Personal Injury law firms. There are so many ever changing factors in markets these days that can make it difficult to keep track of what’s working and where dollars may be going to waste. As markets get more competitive and placing ads gets more expensive, closely tracking marketing KPIs is the best way to make sure that you are spending your marketing budget in the way that is most efficient for your law firm and is putting you on the right path towards meeting your goals. Overall, the decisions that you make about marketing will be better informed if they are grounded in data.
To start, make sure that you have an organized marketing calendar in place – something that shows you exactly what TV schedule you are running, social posts you are sharing, community events you are involved in, etc., at any given time. This marketing calendar should be maintained and updated by the firm’s primary marketing coordinator. If you have an organized marketing calendar, it will be easier to compare Key Performance Indicators with what you were doing at the same time. Furthermore, your marketing coordinator needs to be communicating efforts with the rest of the team to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Key Performance Indicators to Track
As case management systems become more advanced, more and more reports are becoming available to law firms. While many of these can be helpful and can give you an in-depth look at your firm’s numbers, they also can be overwhelming. Throughout our years of experience working with law firms to make their marketing more efficient, we have determined the top marketing KPIs that we think every single Personal Injury firm should be tracking. Here are the key performance indicators for marketing that we recommend that you start with:
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- Number of Leads Received by Referral Source: This number should include all leads, regardless of whether or not you wanted to sign the case. Take both objective and subjective referral sources into account.
- Number of No-Contact Leads: These are leads that you have been unable to get in touch with and that you should be pursuing through your chase call procedure. We recommend that you chase these calls for at least 90 days. If you see that a specific lead vendor is continually providing leads that you are unable to get into contact with, you know that you should stop spending money on those leads.
- Want %: This is the percentage of leads that you receive that meet your sign-up criteria and that you would ideally want to sign. The want percentage will differ depending on the case type. If you are getting significantly more “wanted” leads from a specific lead source, you’ll see that it may be worth allocating more budget to that source.
- Conversion %: This is the percentage of wanted leads that you are signing up – this should live at 92.5% or above.
- Number of Social Posts: Keep track of how many social posts you are sharing weekly, total as well as by medium. Additionally, look at which of these posts are getting the most engagement. For example, video posts may lead to more engagement than static posts for your firm. If so, plan to work more videos into your social plan.
- Number of Social Followers: +/- from the previous week’s total across all platforms, as well as by individual platform. You should continually aim to grow your social following.
- Number of Google Reviews Received: Look at the overall number of new reviews, both positive and negative. Also take note of which case managers or attorneys are associated with the clients that are leaving reviews. It is important to respond to reviews on a regular basis. Google likes to see that you are engaged and are paying attention to what people are saying about you. Negative reviews should be responded to immediately and with sincere interest.
- Cost Per Case by Paid Marketing Source: Cost per case will also differ depending on the case type. Do not be too quick to move away from a specific source because the cost per case appears to be the highest – not all cases are equal. Dig deeper into the source to see if this source is sending you bigger cases that are worth paying more for. This can make a huge impact on your firm’s total fees earned.
You should be keeping an eye on these numbers daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. These KPIs can each give you a different insight into things such as what spot types perform well in your market, which community initiatives are garnering the most social engagement, and how well LSAs or other online ads are performing.
Another important aspect of managing Marketing KPIs is ensuring that there is someone at your firm who owns the process of tracking and reporting on these numbers. As they create reports to include these KPIs, they should also be writing a short analysis as well as a recommendation for how to alter marketing efforts or stay the course based on what they are seeing.
Questions? We’re Here to Help
At cj, we specialize in tracking marketing spend/numbers and creating a plan based on that data for your law firm. If there are any KPIs on this list that you are not already tracking and would like help with, please reach out to your brand strategist or to askus@cjadvertising.com. Furthermore, if you would like advice on what your goal should be for things like cost per case or want percentage, we are happy to take a look at your numbers and offer our advice.
