The average law firm marketing budget is between 2-10% of total revenue.
How much are you spending on marketing?
What if I told you that you could increase your ROI without having to increase your marketing budget?
65% of lawyers spend more than half of that marketing budget on online initiatives. That percentage has only increased in the nearly 6 years since this study was published.
More and more, lawyers are taking the plunge into digital marketing to stretch their budget further. Using just two digital marketing strategies, SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you can market your services to the right people and drive more leads to your firm than ever before.
What is the ROI on SEO?
SEO will pay dividends that other forms of marketing never could.
Take billboards as an example of “other forms of marketing”. You’ve probably seen a billboard for a local law firm, maybe even today (unless you live in a country currently advising self-isolation). The average highway billboard will run your small business back anywhere from 1,500-$4,000 per month. Even on the cheaper end, in low-traffic or rural areas, a billboard could cost about $300.
$300 a month doesn’t seem all that bad, but what does that money actually get you?
For that $300, you’ll presumably get the attention of everyone passing by – key word presumably. Who’s to say anyone is even paying attention? Even if you hired an excellent photographer and graphic designer to create an ideal billboard ad (another cost not even factored in to this example), you’d never be able to determine how many people saw your advertisement.
You’d also never be able to determine how many of those people actually found your advertisement relevant.
When it comes to SEO, tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console allow you to track key metrics and determine an exact ROI. A digital marketing firm can help you do this easily.
The return for your investment in SEO averages anywhere from 50-5000%, depending on how much you’re willing to put in, and how much patience you have (SEO takes several months to begin to take effect, sometimes a year before results really begin to show – you’re playing the long game). It’s not uncommon for businesses to 10x their traffic with SEO.
What is the ROI on PPC?
Roughly 41% of all clicks on Google SERPs go to the top three sponsored ads. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you access to this significant portion of total traffic.
Whereas SEO takes time to provide results, PPC allows you to “pay to win.” Give Google some cash and they’ll show your website first for whatever keyword you want. There’s a catch though – those keywords can get EXPENSIVE, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.
A proper PPC campaign begins with keyword research. You probably already have an idea of what kinds of keywords your site needs. In-depth keyword research is crucial. By determining the language used by your target audience, you can bid on only the keywords you need, which means only showing your website to relevant searches.
When done right, PPC advertising yields $2 for every $1 spent on average.
Why is it important to set a monthly budget?
Setting a budget is a crucial step in getting real results from digital marketing. Admittedly, we all hope to receive the largest return on the smallest possible investment, but lofty and poorly-defined goals like this don’t produce results.
Creating a budget allows you to prioritize goals. It also communicates these goals to a marketing firm and allows them to strategize on your behalf. A marketing firm can help you to set this budget – together you can determine how much you are willing to spend and how much you can expect to see in return.
A law firm marketing budget might look something like this:
Don’t have a marketing team?
Check out these 3 things that a law firm with a limited budget can do for little to no money to market their business online successfully:
- Build a Backlink List
- SKAGs in Google Ads
- Blog
