Law Firm Marketing Agency
Ranking high in the SERP is a serious accomplishment, but rankings won’t pay the bills. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to congratulate yourself on ranking without correlating it with revenue—and many SEO agencies fail to link the two.
Today, we’re breaking down the relationship between visibility and revenue. You deserve to get clear data from your marketing agency about how campaigns are impacting your bottom line. Spending money on ads and content is not just an ego exercise!
Here’s what you need to know about your ranking’s impact on revenue and which metrics can help you correlate rankings with revenue so you know you’re spending good money on the intended ROI.
More visibility doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue
Let’s talk about visibility for a moment.
Visibility in the SERP is probably the metric that you’ve heard the most about. It may be the outcome you’ve prioritized, and it might be the thing that your SEO agency is working toward and reporting on. That’s because visibility earns you more chances to get clicks.
Chasing visibility is a worthwhile goal—but only if it’s correlated to revenue.
How could visibility not be correlated with revenue?
Well, you might be asked to try to rank for certain trending keywords. However, these keywords may not be appropriate to your business goals. Visibility could be inconsequential for two reasons: 1) you don’t rank for the right keywords, and 2) you don’t have an effective system to capture leads from that visibility.
Most SEO agencies provide monthly reports that detail how keywords are performing and trending. They deliver on the marketing angle but they fall short by failing to consider the business’s strategic and financial goals.
Don’t be fooled by reports from an agency showing you higher in the SERP. Look for data that ties your visibility to revenue. At Omnizant, we care about growing your business so our account managers are always focusing on data that showcases how a campaign is impacting your bottom line.
Stay on track by paying attention to key metrics
Now that you know there’s no guaranteed connection between ranking and revenue, let’s dive into a few key metrics that can help you clarify and connect the two.
Start with your internal marketing team and research the following:
Conversion rate: To get an accurate figure, divide the total number of conversions by the total number of interactions.
While leads are important, not all leads will result in revenue. So we need to take this exercise one step further; how many leads will actually turn into paying clients? For this data point, you might take the total number of people who submitted a “Book a Consult” inquiry and find the number of people who actually signed your retainer agreement after the free consult. Don’t overestimate here! A lot of firms tell us it’s 80% when the real figure is closer to 15%.
Target CPL: Your Cost-Per-Lead is a critical metric that allows you to spend wisely on acquiring new business. Your ideal cost per lead should be informed by the profit per customer. This may vary for different types of cases, since some bring in more revenue.
To arrive at this figure, consider the lifetime value of the customer (average contingency fee).
Now, try to put a number on how much this will cost your firm. List each of these as a percentage of your revenue: support staff personnel costs, overhead costs (usually around 40% of annual gross revenue), and marketing costs (usually around 10% of revenue).
Finally, identify a target profit margin as a percentage. We tend to see a range between 20 to 45% in the legal industry, though your margin may be higher if you are a solo practitioner and you don’t pay rent on an office space.
Revenue goal: How many new cases do you want? Express this as revenue.
Great! Now it’s time to check in with your SEO agency.
In addition to rankings and traffic from organic, here are a few of the metrics your agency should be tracking on behalf of your law firm:
- Target number of first-time callers per month (based on your revenue goals and conversion rates)
- Traffic to first-time call ratio (Depending on your preferred method of communication, you may want to change this; for example, you may want to look at traffic to form submissions.)
- Cost per first-time call
- Target traffic numbers to get enough calls to achieve revenue
Monitor this data on a month-to-month basis to understand if you’re on track to make a return on investment and achieve your growth goals.
Not getting the results you need? Not loving the quality of the reports from your current agency? It might be time to cancel your agreement with your current marketing agency. We don’t make this recommendation lightly, but it’s absolutely essential that your agency is presenting firm data that correlates your revenue with your rankings—otherwise, what’s the point?
Review and next steps
Running a law firm is stressful! Marketing is another layer of noise on top of the daily demands of satisfying clients. Unfortunately, we see a lot of law firms being taken advantage of by agencies that just don’t understand the business implications of their campaigns.
Digital marketing is a core competence for the Omnizant team. We’re driven by data and we deliver with accountability. As marketing experts who specialize in working with law firms, we know how to help lawyers succeed in the digital space by connecting every campaign to a revenue goal.
Don’t worry and wait—you deserve better from your marketing agency. Reach out for a consultation and find out how much you’ll achieve with skilled support.