Lawyer Monthly - August 2021 Edition

61 AUG 2021 | WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM LawMarketing on the Rise In the last few years, the legal marketing landscape has changed significantly; the days of simply providing a good service and relying on the wheels of the referral network to turn are over. Now everything is more sophisticated, more strategic and more connected both within the online sphere and outside it. As legal marketing becomes more prevalent, marketing budgets have risen, with law firms slowly realising they need to increase their marketing outlay in order to develop their business. This year it has been reported that 62% of legal businesses are looking to increase their focus on marketing efforts and business development – a figure surely inspired by the fact that 41% of law firms that have increased focus and expenditure in marketing have reported it as the single factor that has been most effective in driving new business. It is these figures that have led to a huge increase in legal marketing. According to the 2018 legal report by the Legal Marketing Association and Bloomberg Law, the world’s largest law firm by revenue – Kirkland & Ellis, who earned $4.1 billion dollars in 2019/2020 – will be among those spending 2.67% of their revenue on marketing, which equates to an eye-watering $84.5 million dollars. Whether or not your law firm earns thousands, millions, or indeed billions, the simple truth is that you need to know how to create an effective budget for your marketing. But it is not quite as simple as just throwing money at a problem. The report from the Legal Marketing Association and Bloomberg also contained some very revealing statistics regarding the expectations and realities of lawyers and attorneys when discussing marketing. Nearly half (48%) of respondents felt that their rivals were doing better marketing than their law firms and 91% of lawyers relied on marketers (both in- house and external) to deliver marketing and business services, yet only 19% of those lawyers believed that the size of the budget had hindered growth. But could this reluctance to invest in the right way be why half of their rivals are outperforming them? Building a Law Marketing Budget So how do you decide what you should spend on law marketing? On the next couple pages, we will outline the best practice for creating your own bespoke law budget for your business. A marketing budget that is tailored to your business and that will help you achieve your goals. Let’s take a look at the various factors you need to consider when creating your marketing budget.