Law Firm Marketing Agency
During this economic downturn, we hear advisors everywhere reminding folks to diversify their financial portfolios. It’s true for marketing, too!
It’s no secret that volatility is the price of admission when it comes to lead generation. While the market, the algorithms, and your audience’s interests can change on a dime, there’s good news: you can take steps to manage risk by controlling your own decisions through diversification. But first you need to know if you’re over-leveraged in any one area.
Here’s what you need to know about balancing a lead-gen portfolio, including the two main types of volatility you can manage, four questions to help you assess your risk, and examples of how to re-balance your lead-gen portfolio.
Why diversifying your lead-gen portfolio can help manage volatility
There are two types of volatility you can manage by diversifying your lead-gen portfolio.
Algorithms: First, let’s face the reality that most channels have some sort of volatility. As the algorithms change, your results may change, too. For example, Google rolls out a core update that causes your site to go from the first page to the fifth page of results…you will take a hit.
Budget: Your firm’s budget may seem like a sure thing, but would you be prepared to bet your ongoing success on it? What if one of your partners falls ill and can’t bring in billable work? If your marketing budget got slashed in half, would you lose your ability to generate leads?
Start with a risk assessment
If you’re unsure how much you should be concerned, perform a brief risk assessment.
Lead-gen risk assessment:
- Where do I get my leads? Do a channel breakdown by percentage.
- Where do I get my best leads? Figure out which channels are most likely to convert.
- What am I paying for these leads? Do a cost-per-lead (CPL) by channel.
- What factors impact my success on these channels? This might be spend for a PPC campaign or even your physical presence at a weekly networking meeting.
At the end of this exercise, you may find that you get 70% of your leads from PPC and the major factor (a large budget) may put your business development efforts at risk.
How to rebalance your lead-gen portfolio
If your firm is over-reliant on certain sources for lead-gen, we want to rebalance your channel portfolio.
- Over-reliant on paid leads? Think about investing in organic, which is less volatile if marketing budgets are slashed.
- Too dependent on one referral source (like the financial advisor who is on the same floor in your office building)? Seek out a network of other similar professionals or invest in digital lead gen.
- Surprised about where your new leads are coming from? Get some help understanding dark social and start looking for patterns.
Of course, this is the ultimate reminder that you can’t manage or assess risk without lead tracking. If you cannot confidently answer the above questions, then you may have a problem with lead tracking. This is fixable—and now is a great time to start using data to improve the way you track leads and grow your business.
Review and next steps
Volatility is inherent—law firms are not immune from the economic downturn. But you can be proactive by balancing your lead-gen investments across multiple channels.
Start with a risk assessment to get a clear picture of your lead-gen ecosystem. Figure out where your best leads come from, how many leads come from each source, how much you’re paying for those leads, and what factors impact your success.
Then, get help rebalancing your approach to protect your firm against bad weather in the future. While we can’t do much about a bull or bear market, we can help you wrangle the beast of online marketing.