How to Create an Effective Law Firm Marketing Budget?

As a beginner in marketing, the most daunting and overwhelming task is to set a budget. We have all been in a situation where ROI was poor, the budget was exhausted, or results were very underwhelming. While the majority of the marketing experts believe that this is due to bad or poor optimization of the campaigns, others believe that allocating insufficient budget might have caused the campaign to fail.

In the case of law firms, budget calculation, and allocation is considered even more crucial. Don’t believe us? Well, here is a simple rundown of the importance of a law firm marketing budget in numbers. Some of the best legal marketing firms to explain the importance of the right budgeting have quoted and confirmed these numbers.

• On average big law firms spend almost 2.4 million on marketing their legal service.
• Legal firms believe that spending more on marketing helps in getting better returns. Over the years, 49% of the firms have increased their marketing budget gradually to meet their revenue expectations.
• To meet their high-profit goals, nearly 83% of the law firms recruit third-party digital marketing services while only 17% have dedicated in-house marketing teams.
• On average, most law firms spend up to 49% of their operational budget on marketing.
• More than 21% of small legal firms hire a consultant or have consulted a marketing expert at least once. This number drops to 5% for solo law firms.

Budget Allocation for Each Phase

Most law firms’ marketing Budget is predefined and they generally stick with what they have already planned. To make things worse, they divide the digital marketing budget based on their preference and not on the base of their niche.

For instance, more customers choose legal services based on Google searches as compared to social media. Yet, social media remains a primary part of the Law Firm Marketing Budget. Even with such an underwhelming response, most law firms do not cut off social media marketing budgets completely.

This is where the phase-based Law Firm Marketing Budget comes in. For each phase of the sales funnel, the focus budget of your brand needs to be different. Since there are four phases of the sales funnel i.e. awareness, interest, decision, and action, the budget is allocated based on these phases rather than the capacity of the company.

Awareness: Spending more money in this phase will make your brand name part of your memory. This is the first yet most important phase where the budget should be kept at a maximum. Using Google ads and a good SEO strategy for ranking your brand will help you get a solid return.

Interest: The second and most crucial part is where your customer knows your brand exists but they have not developed an interest in your services. Spending a budget on building a solid landing page and pop-up ads is very important in this phase.

Decision: Now your customer knows you and has an interest as well but they still need a push to make a decision, so you need to work on building reliability. Using testimonials, reviews, and retargeting ad strategy will be very effective in this stage.

Action: A final stage, this is where the client considers details like location, service area, specialization, and other details. Using conversion campaigns and building a solid call-to-action strategy will help in this phase.

Segmenting Cost-Effective Ways Based On Their Value

Now that you know about the sales funnel, you also need to consider different ways of marketing. Then assign them value based on their effectiveness. The effectiveness of the platforms and different marketing methods also depends on the niche.

Here is a simple rundown of different marketing styles to consider in the case of legal services:

Social Media:

Social media is one of the best marketing platforms and will offer you significant results. However, in the case of legal services, it is not very valuable and the ROI is quite low.

SEO:

One of the best and most effective ways of marketing so far. It has an exceptionally high ROI and you will get long term results. The best thing about search engine optimization is its budgeting factor. You will get organic growth with minimal expenditure.

Google ads:

Google ads are the most recommended and frequently used method of marketing legal services. With Google ads, you will get instant results.

Bottom Line

Although the article has enough details to help, you set your Law Firm Marketing Budget. However, a few things can be a little confusing especially if you are a beginner. It is better to seek help from a consultant or hire a third-party marketing firm like SEO WebMakers.

FAQ’s

1-    How Much An Average Law Firm Marketing Budget Can Be?

There is no hard and fast rule about the marketing budget but experts believe it should be a very small chunk of your overall revenue. A rule of thumb is to only spend somewhere between 2-5%. However, big companies like to go above and beyond spending somewhere between 10 -20% of their revenue as well.

2-    How to Calculate a Law Firm Marketing Budget as a Beginner?

Calculating a law firm’s marketing budget is a lengthy and painstaking process. You need to start with competitors’ analysis and then narrow down your audience. This will offer you a good understanding of the market. Then you can set short-term goals and set average cost per lead and average conversion rate. This will give you a rough estimate of the ROI and you can then allocate the budget accordingly.

3-    How To Cut Cost On A Law Firm Marketing Budget?

Optimization is marketing and a solid organic growth plan can help you cut the cost of your law firm marketing budget but you also need to set realistic goals. A good way to improve the overall ROI while bringing the cost to a minimum is by hiring a third-party expert company that has good marketing experience and a solid reputation in legal marketing.