Law Firm Marketing Budgeting: Allocating Resources Effectively

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Law firms are businesses, and they are incredibly competitive ones. To sustain and grow the business, they need to spend money on marketing to attract new clients. The amount of money your law firm needs to spend will depend on a variety of factors. Even if you arrive at a single figure for your budget, how you allocate your legal marketing resources can make the difference between success and wasting your firm’s cash. 

How Much Do Law Firms Spend on Digital Marketing?

Before you decide how much you’re going to spend on legal marketing, consider what is the norm for your industry. According to a 2021 Justia survey, law firms spend between 2-20% of their annual revenue on digital marketing. 

The size of your firm could determine what’s most appropriate. For example, larger firms tend to spend 10% or more of their revenue on digital marketing, while smaller firms keep that figure to around 5%. 

Choosing the Right Legal Marketing Spend for Your Firm

In addition to the size of your law firm, it’s also important to consider your practice area. For example, personal injury law is the most costly area of law to market because it is so competitive. On the other hand, you might find it more affordable to market your services if your practice areas are business law, real estate law, or even estate planning. 

It’s essential that you choose a legal marketing spend that is right for you. Another important consideration is your return on investment. After all, it will be much easier to decide on a larger marketing spend if you know those dollars will produce results. 

How to Allocate Your Legal Marketing Resources Effectively

Law firms of every size and shape need to determine which marketing channels to use in their legal marketing campaigns. Here are some of the most common marketing strategies law firms use that produce the best results:

Website Design & Development

In a 2020 ABA survey, nearly 87% of law firms reported having a website, but only 59% of solo attorneys confirmed they used a website for digital marketing. Unfortunately, just having a website in a highly competitive environment isn’t good enough. 

Your firm needs an attractive, engaging website that is optimized for the search engines and local search. If your site doesn’t provide a good experience that helps potential clients connect with you, your firm can lose valuable opportunities. This should be your top priority when allocating your marketing dollars. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is another area of legal marketing you don’t want to ignore. Law firm SEO involves many different strategies to ensure your firm’s website shows up in search engine results. 

In addition to making adjustments to your website and building strategic links, it’s critical that you focus on local SEO if you want to attract clients from a specific geographic area. To do this, you will need to have an optimized Google Business Profile, get online feedback from clients, and get listed in legal directories. 

Content Marketing

Content marketing is an indispensable part of any effective digital marketing strategy. This often goes hand-in-hand with SEO, as your legal marketing team will create ongoing content that incorporates high-value keyword phrases that will help your website rank better and create natural link-building opportunities. This content will also attract more prospective clients to your website, giving you an opportunity to convert them to paid clients. 

Social Media Marketing

If you want to connect with your target audience, it’s generally helpful to spend time engaging with them on social sites. After all, a majority of people devote a significant amount of time browsing these sites, reading or watching content, and discovering brands that can help them solve issues. 

Social media marketing can help your law firm create brand awareness. When you establish yourself as an authority in your field on social sites, people will know where to turn when they need the services you provide. 

Paid Advertising

Your law firm might also wish to devote some of its resources to paid pads. These include Google ads and social media ads. With Google Ads, you pay-per-click, and with social media ads, you often pay based on a bidding system. 

One of the benefits of paid advertising is that you can achieve fast results while you wait for other strategies, like content marketing, to take hold. Another benefit is that paid advertising allows you to target your ads based on demographics and geographic location. 

Creating Your Law Firm’s Marketing Budget

As you think about creating a marketing budget for your law firm, it may be helpful to apply some basic metrics used in formulating a budget and allocating resources. You can start with a basic formula to define how much of your revenue you will dedicate to marketing. 

Company revenue X Marketing percentage / 12

So, if your gross annual revenue is $1 million per year and you want to allot 10% to marketing, your monthly marketing budget would be $8,333.

$1,000,000 x 0.10 /12 = $8,333

From this baseline figure, you can adjust the percentage you dedicate to marketing as well as the way you allocate your marketing dollars for each channel (SEO, social media, PPC, etc.). It is essential that you establish digital marketing goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) so you know what strategies are working and can make quick adjustments to ensure you don’t waste your firm’s marketing dollars. 

Partner With a Digital Marketing Agency That Will Provide the Best Value

If you want to achieve the best possible results that fit your budget, it makes sense to work with a professional. An experienced digital marketing agency knows how to deliver the best value for any budget and will focus only on strategies designed to produce results. 

At Too Darn Loud, you can have peace of mind knowing your digital marketing strategy is in professional and budget-conscious hands. Our team of seasoned digital marketing specialists will develop a strategy that will get your firm found and chosen by its target audience and improve its overall results. To learn more, contact us today to schedule a free initial consultation and website evaluation. 

It’s Time to Get Started on Your 2024 Marketing Plan

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Another year seems to have flown by, and many businesses are already considering their goals and strategies for the coming year. To ensure your law firm is spending its marketing dollars wisely and getting the best possible results, a well-thought-out plan is a good idea. Here are a few things to think about and some steps you can take to get started on your 2024 marketing plan.

What is a Law Firm Marketing Plan?

Your law firm’s marketing plan is a place to document and define the goals and strategies you wish to pursue for a given period, usually the coming year. Your marketing plan defines what you want to accomplish, who your law firm is targeting with its efforts, your budget, the strategies you plan to use, and the various roles and responsibilities of people who will execute the plan.

Why Your Law Firm Needs a Marketing Plan

It doesn’t matter whether you are running a large law firm or are a sole practitioner — you still need a marketing plan. It’s the glue that connects your strategies together and ensures you are focusing on the right activities at the right time. Here are some of the benefits of having a legal marketing plan.

  1. It helps you create measurable goals.

Your legal marketing plan ensures you create goals that align with your firm’s overall business objectives. Going even further, it allows you to designate key performance indicators (KPIs) to track each of your marketing initiatives.

  1. It helps identify your target audience.

Your firm can waste a lot of time, effort, and marketing dollars on strategies that don’t reach the right audience. Your marketing is an excellent tool for defining who your target audience is and how you can customize your firm’s message to reach this demographic.

  1. It pushes you to create and stick with a budget. 

The last thing you want to do is spend money on the wrong marketing strategies or not know where your marketing dollars are going. A marketing plan pushes you to create a detailed marketing budget and designate how those marketing dollars will be spent.

  1. It provides marketing consistency. 

If you post new blog content or social media updates only occasionally, you won’t be as effective at creating a connection with your audience or building authority as you would be if you were more consistent.

  1. It can serve as a strong motivator. 

Because your plan outlines your goals and creates a roadmap to achieve them, it can serve as a powerful motivator for your team to stick with your winning strategies.

  1. A plan makes your firm more competitive. 

You can be sure the most successful law firms in your area are making legal marketing a priority and executing their strategies with a solid plan. By doing the same, you are ensuring your firm remains as competitive as possible.

  1. It can make your law firm proactive in its strategies. 

Being reactive to market trends or conditions isn’t a successful legal marketing strategy. Having a plan in place allows your firm to be proactive and take advantage of various opportunities to achieve better results.

Top Trends in Legal Marketing to Watch in 2024

One thing that is a constant with digital marketing is that strategies continue to evolve, and what the search engines prioritize can change from year to year. It’s always interesting to consider what the new year will have in store for digital marketing. Here are a few trends you can expect to see in 2024 and beyond.

  1. Use of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

There is a right way and a wrong way to use machine learning and AI for digital marketing. The wrong way is to expect these solutions to do the work for you effectively. They won’t produce the results you want. But they will deliver more accurate and in-depth insights about your target audience so you can optimize your campaigns.

  1. Growth of Social Media Advertising

Social media use among consumers remains strong. People still use social networks to stay in touch with people they know as well as to learn about and make connections with brands. In 2024, advertising on social media will become more personalized and interactive.

  1. Increased Role of Video Advertising

Consumers are watching more and more video content online, which makes this channel ideal for marketing in 2024. Marketers will continue to use video to create brand awareness and boost engagement across various online channels.

  1. Emphasis on First-Party Data

Marketers are placing more emphasis on first-party data due to increased privacy concerns and a need to gain consumer trust. This type of data offers greater reliability, accuracy, and regulatory compliance, as well as improves the user experience.

Putting Together Your Law Firm’s 2024 Marketing Plan

It’s a good idea to take a close look at your law firm’s marketing strategy at least once per year. Without an annual marketing plan, things can get confusing and more costly than necessary. To make creating your plan easier, here’s a list of of the steps you’ll want to include in the process.

  1. Conduct a Marketing Audit

If you aren’t sure where you stand, it will be challenging to create a comprehensive legal marketing plan. For this reason, you may wish to start with a marketing audit that delivers a snapshot of where your business is currently at and an analysis of the effectiveness of any marketing strategies.

  1. Perform Market Research

In addition to examining the state of your current marketing efforts, it’s also essential to research the market in general. This will include taking a look at various trends in the overall digital marketplace and your local area. Specific attention must be paid to the competition. Specifically, where does your firm stand regarding market share in local search results?

  1. Understand Your Audience

If you haven’t spent a lot of time defining your target audience, this is an excellent opportunity to delve into this subject. Legal marketing won’t be effective if you don’t have an intimate understanding of your target client’s wants and needs. Going further, your website and content must match your target visitor’s intent, which can vary depending on your practice area. For example, some potential clients are interested in “how to get out of a DUI,” while others want to know “how to set up a living trust.”

  1. Establish Your Goals and Objectives

Early in your marketing plan, you’ll want to create a list of goals and objectives. What is your purpose for marketing your law firm? For many, it’s to get more clients. But this is a process that includes increasing your online visibility and building trust with your audience. You can create specific objectives tied to each strategy, such as gaining a certain number of social media followers per month, a particular click-through rate, or various local search rankings.

  1. Create Your Budget

If you haven’t already done so, it’s vital that you create a realistic budget that can help your law firm achieve its marketing goals and objectives. If you aren’t sure how much to allocate for marketing, you may wish to consult with your digital marketing agency for guidance.

  1. Map Out Your Messages

Your messaging is tied to your law firm’s branding and marketing strategy. Ideally, what you have to say and the things your law firm stands for will set it apart from the competition. Your marketing plan should define how your messaging will be incorporated into your website, content, social media posts, and more.

  1. Outline Your Strategies

A successful marketing plan is comprised of many different strategies. Your practice area, goals, and target audience will influence this decision. For example, if you are a criminal defense lawyer who serves a lot of younger clients, you may wish to focus heavily on social media. Most law firms, however, will want to use a combination of strategies, including having a strong law firm website, ongoing blog content, video marketing, and more.

  1. Measure Performance

Those goals you established at the beginning of the process play an important role in the success of your overall marketing strategy. You can identify one more key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the performance of each of your goals. Each KPI allows you to benchmark your progress. At various intervals throughout the year, these metrics give your firm valuable insights that enable you to make adjustments when something isn’t working or take advantage of new opportunities.

Take Your Legal Marketing Strategy to the Next Level

Now that you understand the importance of having a digital marketing plan for your law firm and some of the steps to create one, you’re probably ready to take some decisive action. We can help. Too Darn Loud Legal Marketing specializes in results-driven digital marketing solutions for legal professionals. We can help your firm boost awareness, create value, and improve its results throughout 2024 and beyond. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and website evaluation. We can be reached at (800) 649-1764.

7 Reasons Your Law Firm Marketing Plan Isn’t Working

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Managing a successful law practice requires a specific strategy. When you take a case, your firm wouldn’t waste thousands of dollars on unnecessary investigations, discovery, and litigation. But many law firms waste that much, if not more, on ineffective legal marketing.

The business of law is incredibly competitive, so marketing is critical. But there are many approaches to marketing, some more effective than others. If you aren’t getting the results you want and need, there’s certainly a reason — or several. Here are seven reasons your law firm marketing plan isn’t working.

Why Isn’t Your Law Firm’s Marketing Plan Working?

  1. You Don’t Have a Well-Defined Strategy.

If you don’t have a well-defined strategy in place, you are simply relying on luck to produce the results you need. This is rarely a recipe for success. For example, many law firms decide they’re going to invest in tactics (like social media marketing) but do so without a comprehensive marketing strategy.

Your firm needs a clear strategy that outlines a framework for achieving specific goals that includes a plan to measure success. Many businesses use what are called SMART goals, which are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. From there, determine what strategies you will use to achieve each goal and the key performance indicators you need to measure progress and success.

Having a solid marketing strategy in place is critical. But it must be unique to your law firm — not your competitor’s plan or a cookie-cutter plan some agency hands out to everyone. This study shows that implementing generic marketing strategies isn’t effective.

Your legal marketing strategy must be tailored to your law firm’s needs and goals. If you haven’t been working from a well-defined strategy, it’s time to start.

  1. You’re Targeting the Wrong Audience.

If your marketing isn’t reaching the right people, it’s not going to produce positive results. Even if you have an outstanding website and great messaging, you’ll be unhappy with your results if you’re not reaching the people who are most likely to need your firm’s legal services.

Instead of trying to reach the broadest audience possible, it’s often a better strategy to narrow your focus. Of course, many law firms have multiple target audiences, such as those that offer different practice areas like criminal defense and family law. In these cases, it’s best to create multiple unique client personas to help guide your marketing strategies.

When creating client personas, it’s important to be as specific as possible. This includes things like age, location, academic background, and more. In addition to creating different client personas, law firms must focus on a customer’s particular wants and needs. Specifically, what problem is each group facing, and how can your firm help solve it?

  1. You Haven’t Considered Your Law Firm’s Branding.

If you aren’t getting the client referrals you want from your digital marketing efforts, it could be because of your branding. Customers and clients want to work with businesses they know, trust, and like.

It’s essential that you build a brand that positions your law firm and its attorneys as knowledgeable in their practice areas and approachable. If potential clients aren’t convinced that you are trustworthy or that you have the ability to solve their problems, they’ll hire someone else.

Your law firm’s branding is how you distinguish yourself from your competitors. It includes things like your logo and taglines. It also includes your value proposition, which is the overarching promise you intend to deliver to every client, whether that be aggressive defense, compassionate advocacy, cost-effective representation, or something else equally compelling.

  1. Your Law Firm’s Website Is Lacking. 

You might feel as if you’ve done enough by creating a website for your law firm. But a website alone isn’t enough to produce the results you want. After all, there were nearly 2 billion websites in existence as of January 2023, according to StatsFind. How is yours going to stand out?

Fortunately, you only need to outperform your competitors. But even that can be challenging in some markets. Consumers increasingly turn to search engines to research answers to questions and find local businesses to help them solve problems. And searching for a lawyer is no different. When someone needs a lawyer, whether to defend them against criminal charges, file for divorce, create a will, or something else, you must have a website that accomplishes several goals:

  • It tells a client how you can help them solve their problem
  • It explains why you are qualified to take on their case
  • It is easy to navigate
  • It loads fast and is secure
  • It is attractive and engaging

In short, your website is your firm’s digital front door because it’s often the first contact a potential client has with your law firm. It needs to count.

  1. You Aren’t Investing in Legal SEO. 

In addition to having an engaging website, your law firm must make search engine optimization (SEO) a priority. This is a series of actions and strategies that make your website and content more attractive to the search engines (i.e., Google), which will help get your site found by your target audience.

You may be able to find plenty of SEO tactics online, but these strategies must be used correctly for them to be effective. For example, Google is known for penalizing websites that use some aggressive or otherwise dishonest strategies meant to achieve quick results.

To get a meaningful and lasting outcome, you need an ongoing SEO strategy. First, your website must have the proper on-page and off-page SEO elements that will get it noticed by the search engines and your target audience. You will also need to post ongoing content that includes relevant keywords to provide better search results for your users. This content can be in the form of blog posts, videos, white papers, and more. The content you post should aim to solve the problems your potential clients are most likely to have.

  1. You’re Ignoring Social Media. 

It’s not enough for your law firm to have a Facebook page. Depending on your audience, you also need to have a strong social media presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

According to Pew Research, roughly 72% of the public is using some type of social media to connect with one another, share information, engage with content, and stay entertained. Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the most-used social platforms among U.S. adults.

If your law firm isn’t using social medial to promote its business, you’re missing an opportunity to boost your online visibility and grow your business. Take a close peek at any of these major platforms, and you’re almost guaranteed to find that your competitors are already actively using them. In fact, a recent Attorney at Work social media survey revealed that 70% of law firms have made social media marketing part of their overall strategy.

When approached correctly, social media marketing can elevate your entire digital marketing strategy. Specifically, it will help raise brand awareness, build trust and credibility in your firm, attract new clients, help you retain existing ones, and improve your SEO.

  1. You’ve Failed to Set Benchmarks and Track Results.

Successful legal marketing requires a commitment of resources. Unfortunately, you’ll never be “done” marketing your law firm if you want to continue to produce amazing results. One mistake many law firms make is quitting too soon or failing to make proper adjustments to their strategy as they go along.

You’ll never understand what’s working and what isn’t if you don’t establish benchmarks and track your results. Digital analytics demonstrate the effectiveness of your campaigns, but you must track the proper key performance indicators (KPIs) for those figures to be meaningful.

When you begin your legal marketing campaign, you’ll want to clarify the top things you want to accomplish and identify some KPIs that align with those goals. If you want to increase engagement, a KPI might be “page views.”

Failing to track your results would hold your law firm back from making improvements to its strategy. It would also prevent your business from taking advantage of any opportunities the data might uncover.

Bonus Reason — You Aren’t Working With the Right Legal Marketing Agency

Marketing isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. You didn’t go to law school to become a digital marketer, and there are plenty of professionals who can help elevate your business while you focus on representing your client’s interests. When you work with Too Darn Loud Legal Marketing, you can feel confident knowing your digital marketing strategy is in the right hands.

Our team of experienced legal marketing experts will take the time to understand your firm’s business and specific goals. We will develop a digital marketing strategy that will get your firm found and chosen by its target client base and improve bottom-line results.

If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to us for a free website evaluation. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about our top-rated legal marketing services.

Builds Credibility and Trust

People want to hire a lawyer and law firm that they trust will solve their most pressing legal issues. Your legal marketing strategy can build credibility and trust by demonstrating the attorney’s knowledge of the law and background in helping others resolve a wide range of legal matters. When website visitors get answers to their questions, they begin to trust that your firm can provide the assistance they need.

Improves SEO Rankings

One of the goals of law firm marketing is to show up in the search engines ahead of your competitors for various search terms, like “divorce lawyer near me,” “car accident attorney in Birmingham,” or “estate planning in Mobile.” A well-organized and written law firm website will also answer many frequently asked questions, which improves rankings.

When your website appears in organic (free) search results, potential clients are more likely to click on those results to learn more about your law firm. Your investment in SEO can pay off for your business long term.

Give us a call at (800) 649-1764 or reach out to us online to schedule a free initial consultation.

The Importance of Design in Law Firm Websites

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In the past, if you needed to hire a lawyer you opened the phone book and searched it’s pages for the most eye catching ad. Today, potential clients search out an attorney the same way they look for restaurants and the best brand of shoes – with an online search. From the consumer’s perspective, your website is your law firm. It sets you apart by creating a lasting first impression of who you are and how well you can satisfy a client’s legal needs.

Website design is vital to capturing a visitor’s attention and communicating the right message. Your window of opportunity is very small. You only have a few seconds to persuade a visitor to give your firm a chance. Your online presence is an integral part of your marketing and your legal practice as a whole.

Why It’s Important to Have a Great Law Firm Website

Now that roughly 95% of the U.S. population is online, it’s a safe bet that your target audience is searching for your services. And your website can make it easier for them to find you, trust you, and ultimately, hire you.

If you haven’t gotten serious about law firm marketing in the past, it’s time to begin paying it some attention. Unless your website is better than your competitors on many levels, there’s a good chance you’re losing potential clients without even knowing it.

Here are a few of the reasons why it’s important to make law firm website design a priority:

  • Your Website Directly Represents Your Brand

Every law firm has a brand, whether it realizes it or not. The real question is, how well do you control the message, or is the market doing it for you?

If your website design is outdated and visitors have a hard time finding what they need, this is a direct reflection on your business. And it doesn’t place you in a positive light. According to one UK study, 70% of online users refuse to purchase from a business with poor website design.

Most consumers show up on your virtual doorstep knowing nothing about you, meaning they’ve found you through some generic search term such as “how to beat a DUI in Mississippi.” You have a short time to make a first impression, and a modern, engaging, and visually appealing website can help you accomplish this.

  • Helps You Stand Out from the Competition

There are roughly 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S., so the competition is fierce. Statistics show that consumers will visit about 4 or 5 law firm websites before deciding which one they will contact.

Most people who are dealing with a legal issue are frustrated and looking for a combination of answers and encouragement. Overall, they’ve probably never hired a lawyer before, so they have no idea what to expect.

The best way to stand out from the crowd is to provide the information they want and the compassion they need. Let them know what to expect, that you have the experience and skills necessary to help and give them the next steps to take to get started.

  • Boosts Your Organic Rankings

It’s going to be tough for potential clients to learn about your law firm if you don’t have any online visibility. Specifically, your firm’s website needs to show up in the results when someone searches for a “divorce lawyer near me” or asks Google, “how can I appeal an SSDI claim denial?”

A properly designed website will be optimized for the correct keywords to help you achieve some of those valuable organic rankings. It will also pay attention to technical SEO items like page speed, mobile-friendliness, HTML tags, navigation, and link-building.

  • Improves the User Experience

A good website design delivers a positive user experience (UX). This is something that can also impact your rankings because Google has made it clear that providing a positive UX is one of its latest priorities.

But what does that mean? Specifically, your content should match the intent of the searcher. In other words, if a person is searching for an estate planning attorney, it would be a poor experience if they were taken to a personal injury page.

Great website design delivers what it promises quickly and efficiently. And this builds trust with both the search engines and your potential clients.

  • Maximizes Your Conversions

While driving traffic to your website is essential, it’s even more important to get those visitors to call your law firm or submit their information through your contact form. That’s the only way you’ll ever make the connection that will lead to signing up new clients and growing your business.

Great website design is about much more than just getting your website to the top of Google’s search results. If you hit number one for all your targeted keywords, this is an incredible accomplishment. Having tons of people visit and read your blog is also noteworthy. But, neither of these is adding anything to your bottom-line results.

Your website should be structured in such a way that it continually guides visitors to contact your law firm for further assistance. There should be a sense of urgency built into some of your content that warns visitors about the potential consequences of trying to handle a matter on their own or waiting too long to act. Further, there should be plenty of calls to action giving the reader clear direction about how to contact your firm to get the help they need.

Take Action to Bring Your Law Firm Website to Life

You probably already know how competitive the market is for law firms. Getting your business to stand out from the crowd has a lot to do with the quality of your online presence. This starts with your law firm’s website design.

First impressions are vital, which is why you should consider professional assistance when planning and designing a website. At Too Darn Loud Legal Marketing Group, we specialize in creating beautiful, engaging, and functional custom law firm websites that are geared toward your target audience. Contact us today for a free consultation to review our top web designs and learn how our services can help your law firm improve its results.