Business Strategy & Development, Digital Marketing
When you’re consistently tracking your marketing metrics, you can make changes quickly and in ways that leverage your best performing tactics. Here’s how you develop a plan that gives you the latitude to make these iterations and make sure that you’re getting the results you want.
Start with prioritizing your goals.
Many times, organizations write massive, 100-page marketing plans that end up sitting on a shelf. While the research and market knowledge you gain from one of these plans is valuable, sometimes it’s difficult to figure out just where to start to put everything in action. By periodically identifying your top 3 marketing goals and focusing on those, the never-ending list of marketing to-dos becomes manageable and measurable.
For example –
Goal – Sign a significant number of new personal injury clients.
What do we need to know?
- What does significant mean?
- What specific type of personal injury case?
- Can we do this sustainably without overwhelming our resources?
What do we do with the answers?
- Set measurable goals
- Formulate our story and identify our market
- Set staffing goals and allocate resources
Who are we talking to?
- Local press in practice area
- Other attorneys (referrals)
- Community members
What are we saying?
- We are trusted authorities to provide their market with resources
- We are partners with whom other attorneys can have a mutually beneficial business relationship
- We are their neighbors, friends, family. And they can trust us when their in trouble
How are we saying it?
- Personal | We know what their interests and priorities are and speak to those. Not a script.
- Conversational | We make navigating the legal system easy.
- Empathy | Telling a personal story and building a personal connection to show we care.
Where?
- Email / mail
- Personal Conversations
- Industry groups
- Existing clients / Annual Report
- Media coverage
When is this going to happen?
Ongoing with quarterly reviews and benchmarks
What is success?
- Meeting goal milestones or identifying pivots
- Positive feedback from clients
- Increased brand recognition
- Increased media coverage
Then, make sure you’re measuring the right things.
If you search on your favorite search engine for “Marketing Metrics” (go ahead, I’ll wait right here), you’ll find no shortage of metrics. But the reality is that you don’t need all of them. And you may even need different metrics at different times in your law firm’s practice. It’s absolutely okay to adjust what you’re using to measure success if you’re finding you’re not getting the information you need. One way to see if you’re using the right metrics is to ask yourself a few questions –
| What do I want to know? | How do I find this information | What is the metric? | What do I do with this information? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Example – I want to know if my paid Facebook ads are worth what I’m paying. | Set up these Facebook ads with a custom URL and phone number to track conversions. | Average revenue per client – Cost per client acquisition for Facebook PPC ads |
|
Make changes quickly and frequently
This is where iterating your marketing efforts can really pay off. You may start tracking your metrics and after 3 months find you’re just not seeing what you were hoping to see. So, you may change your metric to see how the same tactics effect another part of your business.
…Or you may change your tactics altogether to see if the outcome moves closer to your goal.
…Or you may even change the goal.
And since you’re working off your identified priorities, you don’t have to go back and constantly revise that 100-page marketing plan.
Remember that metrics are people too.
When you’re talking about target markets, user personas, and demographics it’s easy to forget that these represent real people. But when you make a practice of iterating your marketing, you get the chance to take a closer look at your “market” and see the people who belong to it. Market research through surveys, panel discussions, or workshops are valuable for learning more about your target market and iterating your strategy. Former clients provide feedback about their client experience. And you get a chance to test out marketing tactics with a smaller audience before rolling it out to the world.
Note: This is the 4th article in a 4-part series. Want to read the rest? Check them out here –
[Part 1] The Marketing Metric You Should be Tracking (But Probably Aren’t)
[Part 2] What is a Client’s Value to Your Law Firm?
[Part 3] How To : Identify How Your Clients are Finding You
You’re here –> Iterating Your Marketing Efforts for Best Results
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