Law Firm Marketing Agency
With the sky-high cost of clicks for legal search terms, launching and maintaining a paid search campaign can be intimidating. One of the most common questions I am asked is how attorneys can better measure the return on investment (ROI) of their campaigns. While goals may vary,
- Count Your Leads – An accurate and complete count of leads generated by your paid search campaign is the foundation of all measurement. In addition to counting site visitors who contact you via a website form, it is equally important to track calls with tracking phone numbers. I understand a clients’ reluctance to replace the phone number on their website, but this is what makes it possible to track numbers of paid visitors. You should remember that you can retain your own phone number for the majority of visitors, changing it only for paid visitors. This allows for advanced data collection while keeping your well-known phone number still visible on the site. Collecting this information helps optimize your campaign by better allocating budget to keywords that are actually generating leads.
- Know Your Cost – Once lead tracking is in place, you can easily determine your cost per lead by simply dividing your overall budget by the number of leads generated. With an intelligently designed campaign, you can also see your cost per lead for specific practice areas or services, allowing for more detailed analysis and campaign optimization.
- Determining the Value – Now it’s time to combine the new information with some existing data from your firm. Specifically: How many leads does it typically take to secure a new client? What is the average value of a client? Multiplying your cost per lead by the number of leads typically necessary to secure a client will let you know how much each new paid search client is costing your firm. Comparing this to the average value of a new client will quantify the value of the campaign. Don’t worry if you don’t have this information, you can always start with estimates and adjust as the new data is collected.
Given the complexity of current paid search platforms, it’s certainly possible to collect far more granular data, but simply following these steps should help you better understand the value being delivered by paid search.
As Director of Visibility Services for Zola Media, Robert Schmid leads the marketing team tasked with providing world class digital marketing services to the clients of Zola Media. His responsibilities include strategic planning,