Are you working on a marketing budget for your firm? Many law firms will have success because at some point most people will need a lawyer. However, some firms may struggle with finding ways to market themselves. Let’s face it, law work is a little harder to market than other job fields.

Therefore, you should consider finding unique ways to stand out against other competitors in your area. Here are some tips you should consider for setting up a marketing budget and ensuring marketing success.

Set up Finances Before Starting The Marketing Budget

“Be realistic about what you can spend on marketing. When working at a company interested in marketing, they usually have their own accounts that are dedicated solely to expenses for it. Which makes it easier to be able to write off some of the expenses from your taxable income.

Depending on how you’ve structured your Law Firm, you may want to have a professional handling your bookkeeping and preparing the tax returns for the business.

Be smart about focusing your budget on effective techniques to accomplish your three- to twelve-month goals using your chosen marketing tactics. Along with this, you need to be sure to think about your target customers and what makes your service unique. Then you can look into how to focus your reach.

Social media accounts for your business are a good place to start, you want to build relationships with the people interacting with your brand if you’re going to be spending a good amount on your marketing budget.”

-Sacha Ferrandi, CEO and Co-founder at Source Capital

Stay Afloat Against Competitors And Their Marketing Budget

“When it comes to small law firms, retention marketing is crucial, as it reminds your former clients about your existence and shows your business is relevant. Retention marketing is important because at some point people may need your services again or remember to refer your firm to others.

Investing a portion of your marketing budget in order to keep your firm on top of clients’ minds will pay off when they need you again or want to recommend you to a friend. It costs 7x more to get a new client than to retain an existing one, so for every $7 spent on acquiring new clients, put $1 towards retention marketing.

It’s best to create a marketing budget around the percentage of your target growth. With the extremely competitive industry, investing too little can backfire because your competitors will spend more than you.

The recommendation is to spend around $2000 a month to ensure your spending is seeing results and your firm is staying afloat against competitors.”

-Jason Brandt, Customer Success Director at Podopolo

Determine Competition

“The first thing to consider when creating a marketing budget for your law firm is what type of law your firm practices. Various types of laws will cost a different amount to market based on the competition in the space.

For example, a personal injury lawyer might be more competitive in marketing than a firm whose clients are government agencies and larger organizations.

Attorneys that require new clients regularly will find that a larger budget will need to be cut out for marketing spending to reach the target audience. For firms whose practice relies on B2B can spend less money targeting exact clients.”

– Adrian Pereira, Co-Founder at Eco Pea Co.

Understand The Sales Funnel

“An important part of creating a marketing budget is understanding the sales funnel and allocating parts of the budget to different areas along the funnel.

The sales funnel refers to the model customers go through, from discovering your firm to signing a contract. At the highest level, your firm will want to target a broad audience with things like paid ads, social media, and infographics.

Typically about half of the budget will be spent here generating leads. As customers trickle down the funnel, the strategy shifts to adding value with things such as case studies and blog posts.

In the end, marketing efforts focus on conversion where the least amount of your budget will be focused on targeting prospects.”

– Angie Snow, Director of Customer & Product Training at ServiceTitan

Consider Space For Adjustments In Your Marketing Budget

“Once you have your marketing budget outlined, you will want to keep in mind that it is not set in stone. Once your campaign is launched, you will be provided with valuable feedback telling you what worked and which areas could use improvement.

Marketing is all about adapting to the market and learning about your audience.

Moving forward, you may want to consider reallocating funds to different tactics or adjusting total spending to better fit your key performance indicators.

Your first marketing budget will teach you a lot about maximizing return on investment for your firm moving forward.”

-Adrien Dissous, Global SVP of Marketing at Babo Botanicals

Include Digital Marketing

“Without including digital marketing into your budget, your leads won’t know about your firm, and your sales funnel will come to a halt. This all boils down to brand awareness and your firm’s online presence. Investing time and money into improving your website’s SEO (search engine optimization) is crucial.

By improving SEO, you increase your site’s search ranking and traffic, eventually resulting in garnering potential leads. It’s also a good idea to put yourself in your lead’s shoes when thinking about site optimization.

What will catch their attention? Why should they choose you? Is your site accessible to your target audience? It may cost some money to improve your site’s SEO, but it’s worth it if it means you’re reaching a wider audience.”

-Joe Spector, Founder and CEO of Dutch

Choose Your Marketing Mediums

“When it comes to your marketing budget, one key aspect is to figure out where and how you want to advertise. This step will likely come after you determine your target audience. For example, if your average client is in their late 20s to early 30s, you can consider using social media for your marketing campaigns.

If your clientele is typically middle-aged, perhaps you might choose to utilize radio channels for your advertisements. Once you can figure out where you will be running your marketing campaigns, you can get quoted for prices to advertise on the particular channels.

Thus, this is one factor that you should certainly consider when creating your budget for your small law firm.”

– David Ring, Senior Marketing Manager at MCT Trading

Research Your Target Audience Before Starting The Marketing Budget

An essential part of creating a marketing plan is understanding the target audience you’re trying to reach. Reaching the perfect audience gives you the highest chance of a significant return on your investment, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve conducted enough research to know what advertisement channels will reach them most effectively.

Utilize public data from advertising channels such as which demographics use specific social media platforms, which demographics live in certain areas, and which demographics visit certain websites.

With this information, you can be sure to allocate the correct portion of your budget to the right advertising platforms.

-William Armitage, Co-founder of BestOdds

Know What Will Drive ROI

“One of the best ways to create your marketing budget, if you’re a small law firm, is always to know your ROI or return on investment.

When coming up with strategies to build or invest your funds, you must figure out what’s effective for the consumers and people who matter to you and then reach out to them in a cost-effective way that can be observable as well!

Before you create a general marketing budget, you should take a few minutes and calculate your ROI for all of your funds. You need to be able to estimate the sales that will be generated from every proposed marketing effort before you agree to proceed with any marketing, advertisement, or any big spending campaigns.”

-James Burati, SVP of Sales and Marketing at 1-800-Pack-Rat

Consider the Cost of Lead Acquisition In Your Marketing Budget

“Through your marketing channels, you should be able to figure out how much it costs in order to acquire leads.

To do so, consider all of the channels and tactics you are using to market your firm – tv commercials, internet ads, social media campaigns, and physical ads are some of the channels that you must take into account.

By looking at how much it costs to acquire a new lead, you can see what kinds of advertisements and marketing tactics are more effective. This will help show you what you should invest more money and time into.”

-Jacob Dayan, CEO of Community Tax

Monitor Campaign Progress

“Monitor the results that have come from any marketing campaigns you’ve started in the past, and learn from your mistakes. It’s difficult to predict what type of marketing tactics will work best for your business, so be sure to reflect on your past results.

Doing so will allow you to avoid certain marketing tactics moving forward and ensure you continue to use any ideas that worked well.

Utilize platforms such as Google Analytics, Instagram Analytics, Facebook Analytics, and others to see your performance and what audience your campaigns are reaching most.

Another way to track your results is to offer unique UTM codes for various ads to see what platforms or campaigns are driving the most traffic.”

-Tom Mumford, Co-Founder at Undergrads

Measure the Quantity and Quality of Leads

“When looking at your marketing channels, you must also consider how many leads it generates for your firm every month. From here, you can also measure the quality of your lead generation and the case value of these leads.

For example, having a low cost per lead acquisition for a channel that generates a lot of leads may seem great at first, but it may not be ideal if it’s converting a low number of leads into clients.

Ensure that your marketing channels are as effective as possible by making sure your target audience and messages are accurate for your area of practice.”

-Chris Hunter, Director of Customer Relations at ServiceTitan

Apply for Business Awards

“When you are a small law firm, it’s difficult to gather recognition than these larger firms with even larger marketing budgets. One way you can leverage your size as a small firm is a way that you connect with your clients on an individual level.

There are many different business awards based on industry and location so take the time to apply for them to give your firm extra credibility and notoriety. Clients want to choose a firm that values their case while also wanting a credible and trustworthy firm. These awards can be huge for your marketing efforts.”

-Brandon Brown, CEO of GRIN

Invest in Outsourcing

“At every step of your law firm’s development, you can potentially benefit from outsourcing various responsibilities.

If you’re new, it’s unlikely that you or your partners have all the skills needed to run every form of your business, most pertinently marketing. Bringing on a consultant or agency to guide your marketing strategy can be a major boon for getting a foothold.

Even after your firm becomes more established and you have a better idea of how to create successful marketing strategies on your own, you can still benefit from outsourcing work.

As operations scale up, things like accounting or bookkeeping can expand beyond the realm of what your team can manage. At this stage, you can turn to outsource those responsibilities to focus on expanding your business in the ways that play to your strengths.”

-Bill Lyons, CEO of Griffin Funding

From applying for business awards to understanding your target audience, these tips should help you know where to start.

Remember, marketing takes time and some trial and error, so budgeting should naturally follow once you find the perfect marketing technique. You can create success through organic marketing, so take a leap of faith and see what works for your law firm.

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How to Create a Marketing Budget for Small Law Firms?