Knowing how to market your law office is part of running your business. But legal marketing can be an overwhelming process if you do not know how to manage your budget. Furthermore, now that marketing is a fundamental investment for law firms and businesses, failure to properly monitor your marketing spending can have costly consequences.
Effective management of your legal marketing budget can help you maintain good cash flow for your law firm. Having more control over your cash can help you contain your marketing spending and save more money for unexpected expenses.
You can follow simple yet effective steps to control your legal marketing expenses better. Read on below to know how to manage your law firm’s advertising costs.
Monitor Expenses
You should promote a culture of meticulous expenditure monitoring in your law firm. This can help you get the most value out of every dollar you invest in marketing your services. You should determine what makes up your budget and be aware of where your money goes at any point in time. Ensure there are policies to prevent going over the legal marketing budget.
Meticulously tracking metrics and return on investment (ROI) can help you and your marketers stay within the set spending limit. You should also keep complete records of your expenses to know what percentage of each expenditure may be deductible as a business expense for tax purposes. This tip does not only contribute to a well-managed legal marketing budget, but it also helps you maintain a good cash flow.
Get Professional Help
You can always tap a professional agency or an advertising expert to help you in your marketing efforts. They have the experience, software, tools, and insights to produce high-yield campaigns.Working with an advertising expert eliminates the guesswork. It lets you outsource critical tasks to those who understand your marketing needs better.
If you are struggling with managing your legal marketing expenditures, you can reach out to payments management service providers. These companies offer a payments management solution that can provide excellent visibility on your legal marketing team’s spending. With this solution, you will have more control over your law firm’s advertising expenses.
Trying to do everything on your own can be counterproductive in the long run. Reaching out to professionals can help you save critical time, money, effort, and resources.
Do Not Be Afraid To Invest
To secure the most value out of your legal marketing budget, you need effective promotion campaigns. However, you need to meet client expectations to succeed. Investing in marketing can help stabilise and possibly boost your law firm’s revenue. Instead of cutting your legal advertising budget, focus on aligning your investments with clients and customer retention, growth, and acquisition.
To help in this effort, ask yourself the following questions:
- What are the goals we want to achieve?
- What are the tasks we need to complete to accomplish our goal?
- What are the leading and lagging indicators?
- How can we demonstrate our law firm’s ability to meet client needs?
- Are we successfully showcasing our value to existing and prospective clients through our marketing efforts?
Cutting down your advertising budget could hurt your legal marketing efforts. Because you have less cash to spend, you may be left out of business conversations. This issue may cause experienced peers and prospective new hires to look elsewhere.
Measure Results
It is crucial to observe and evaluate which marketing campaigns work best for your law firm. You need to use data analytics tools to accurately determine the strategies that give your company the best value. When analysing performance, the marketing metrics to consider are web traffic, engagement, incoming leads, and sales.
Look Out For Budgetary Opportunities
This tip can help your law firm maintain a positive cash flow even after costly legal marketing campaigns. Evolving client demands can create space in the company’s marketing budgets to explore untapped opportunities. For every business, especially for legal services providers that differ greatly from one another, there is an opportunity to grow intelligently in certain areas where business leaders will be able to facilitate growth.
These simple opportunities can be in the form of acquiring top talent at a lower cost or moving into new markets that were not on your radar before. You can take advantage of these openings by considering new projects that may be unique to your practice area.
Some of these campaigns may include:
- Automation technology
- Pro bono projects
- Client requests
- Law practice business development lessons and training
- Internal events
- Gamification initiatives
- Sponsorships
- Summer associate programs
- Coaching of individual lawyers
- Diversity, anti-racism, and inclusive initiatives
Instead of investing in traditional print or unfocused advertising, you should create a legal marketing plan for more targeted promotional campaigns. Take the opportunity to strategically improve any marketing activity your team is required to present. Being flexible when planning allows you to take advantage of budgetary opportunities while strengthening existing campaigns.
Legal marketing is not a stagnant process. Instead, it is a moving landscape that needs your utmost attention. You need to monitor your metrics to know if you can meet your goals. Paying attention to your marketing plan can allow you to adjust and improve your initiatives accordingly.
