Today I met with a successful lawyer whose marketing budget includes Yellow Pages, TV, and Internet. This multimedia marketing campaign supports a very healthy referral base. As with any firm with a significant multimedia marketing plan, tracking becomes a serious challenge. A client once told me he was sure 50% of his marketing dollars were working, he just couldn’t tell which 50%. So how does a law firm effectively track the return on investment of each of their marketing investments?
1. Deploy unique call tracking numbers.
Each marketing media or advertisement should have a unique call tracking number in order to determine where potential clients found you. Most marketing companies will offer to provide said service, but if you market in more than one media or have multiple expenditures within one media(multiple websites, for example), this will be trivial information that will provide little concrete facts about return on investment. So you have the phone numbers of which people called to find you courtesy call tracking numbers, but the typical client intake results in a manual entry of the clients phone number. This means if the client is calling from work and provides a home or cell phone number when asked, you will not be able to tie that particular client to the media and therefore that medias return on investment. To effectively manage a multimedia marketing campaign one would need a call tracking software of some kind that would enable you to identify the caller through caller ID. Most software will allow you to record the call as well. A good rule of thumb is that on initial contact of the call the receptionist or paralegal taking the call should ask for the clients phone number. It is common practice when you call a business for them to ask for your phone number in the event that the call is disconnected. Be weary of marketing/advertising salespeople who talk about tracking without walking through the logistics of how you intake clients. Without a thorough understanding of how your law firm processes incoming clients, they’re simply trying to move their product.
2. Use detailed client intake forms.
Most every law firm as a client intake forms that at some point towards the bottom of the document will ask “how did you hear about us?” With a multi-media marketing campaign you are likely to hear in big US responses like Yellow Pages, TV or Google. But if your law firm is listed on multiple legal directories and you maintain and optimize three individual websites, what good is that information? Scientists have determined that the human brain thanks graphically rather than textually. You can have logos from the legal directories, small pictures of the form page of your multiple websites, pictures of the cover of the Yellow Pages , pictures of the TV stations or anchor who speaks in proximity to your TV commercial. This pectoral memory recall will be much easier for the client and should result and they are providing more accurate information.
3. Complete client outtake forms.
A client once told me on intake a typical response would be “I got your number from the Yellow Pages;” however, upon outtake(while receiving a sizable settlement check) the client would tell a far more detailed story. They may have seen a TV commercial, viewed the law firm’s website on multiple occasions retrieves the law firms phone number from the Yellow Pages. Now the lawyer has an accurate accounting for the impact of his marketing spend, but who gets whats credit? Fortunately this attorney understood that the only law firm that knows EXACTLY how their clients chose them, haven’t enough business to stay in business. It’s more art than science, but the more information one has the more confident their decisions regarding which medias to keep, and which to cut.
