how much should a lawyer spend on marketing

What Does the Typical Law Firm Spend On Marketing? Most business advisors recommend spending 2-18% of your gross revenue on marketing. For the legal sector, however, this number falls closer to 7-10%, though this may vary depending on your location and practice type.

Full Answer

What is a reasonable budget for marketing?

Is marketing good for lawyers?

How much should a business pay for marketing?

How much does marketing cost on average?

Is Digital Marketing Illegal?

How do attorneys market themselves?

How much should you spend on digital marketing?

How much should I spend on sales and marketing?

How much do Fortune 500 companies spend on marketing?

How much do freelance digital marketers charge?

Do I need a big budget for digital marketing?

Do You Have a Law Firm Marketing Budget?

Many modern law firms don’t have a set marketing budget in place. Unfortunately, this contributes to a “DIY” approach that can result in a lackluster, ad hoc strategy that fails to produce beneficial results.

Law Firm Marketing by Category

While it’s important to establish the need for an overall marketing budget, that’s just step one. Since there are so many unique channels and methods for law firm marketing, it’s also crucial to set specific budgets for each marketing category.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing content for search engine results pages (SERP). A qualified SEO expert can assist law firms with:

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing involves the creation of content for social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Before investing heavily in any one platform, it’s important to know which one resonates with a firm’s target market or audience. The decision may depend on demographic data.

Website Development

It’s incredibly difficult to grow, scale, and leverage other marketing methods without a professional website. As a result, this is a primary area of investment for law firms.

Branding

Branding is a broad marketing category that includes both large and small activities. Branding tasks might include:

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is the use of digital content and advertisements to drive results. In relation to digital marketing, most paid advertising is Pay Per Click, or PPC. Paid advertising also takes place on social media channels where potential clients spend their time.

How much do law firms spend on marketing?

Most law firms that do have marketing budgets spend between 2 and 15% of their revenue on their marketing output, with the majority of outlays skewing more towards the lower end of those figures. But if you are a smaller firm spending at that lower end, the odds are that your marketing might not deliver the results you desire. Effective legal marketing budgets should be based on your individual law firms and a variety of factors. It is also vital to remember that a smaller marketing budget well spent is better than a bigger marketing budget used poorly.

Why do law firms spend so little on marketing?

That is because one of the reasons that the top law firms spend a small percentage on marketing is because, as a proportion of their revenue, the figures are a lot bigger due to the size of their revenue (and, crucially, their profit margins – more margin means more money for marketing). For a company that turns over £100,000 annually, a mere £3,000 for the year is probably not going to serve you very well in a competitive marketing environment.

How has legal marketing changed?

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.

Why is it important to increase your marketing budget?

If your clients fall into the latter category, it would also be good practice to increase your marketing budget, because higher value clients tend to need more convincing to go to a new law firm, and marketing can be an excellent way to begin and build your profile with them and eventually welcome them on board as a new customer.

Why do personal injury lawyers need to have more budget?

For example, a personal injury law firm will need to allow more budget for marketing than an estate planning firm because the market is that much more competitive and therefore expensive to market in. By utilising this chart as a guide, we can easily calculate the increase or reduction in budget depending on your business’s area of legal practice.

How much money do established companies spend?

As a general rule across business (if we ignore the legal marketing averages, which we know are quite low), it is commonly accepted that established companies will spend between 6-12% of their gross revenue, and new businesses will spend significantly more (between 12-20%) to allow them to gain a foothold in the market and become an established brand.

Is there more law firms in New York than Dallas?

As you can see, there are three times as many law firms in New York than in Dallas, and over 80% more attorneys in practice – many of whom are vying for the same customers as your law firm. You need to consider how this impacts your budget, because it is clear that a law firm in New York is going to have to spend more than one operating in Dallas due to the competition already present in the area.

There is No Golden Number

Unfortunately, the ideal amount of spending on marketing is different for every firm. Highly competitive areas like Personal Injury should spend more, while cryptocurrency attorneys (or some other highly specified area of law) do not need to spend as much.

Efficiency and Effectiveness

on your practice area and the location of your firm, but above all else, you need to be able to know what’s working and what’s not . Otherwise, you’ll never get better at marketing.

The Most Underused Resource

Some marketing tools don’t cost any time or money, and many lawyers overlook the most helpful resource to getting new clients: your existing clients.

How Much Should a Law Firm Spend on Marketing?

If you want to move the needle, plan to spend $5,000 – $10,000 per month on marketing at your firm. To get numerous cases from PPC advertising, plan to scale to $15,000, $30,000, and beyond.

How Much Should a Law Firm Spend on SEO?

Plan to spend $3,000 – $6,000 per month, depending on the level of service you need, the competitive overview of your region and niche, and other factors. You will no doubt receive countless emails pitching attorney SEO services for $1,000 per month or less, but you will literally get what you pay for.

How Much Should Law Firms Spend on PPC Advertising?

High volume, low fee law firms, like divorce or immigration attorneys, can get a decent number of clients with only $1,000 – $5,000 per month on Google Ads, depending on your location. Personal injury firms, if they want multiple high value cases from PPC ads each month, may need to spend $6,000 – $10,000+.

Majux Can Help You Make Informed Budgeting Decisions

We’ve helped hundreds of lawyers at Majux, both with SEO for personal injury lawyers and more, and we can give you insights that will shape your marketing budget. Furthermore, we aren’t motivated to try and inflate your PPC budget.

How much do law firms spend on marketing?

Smaller law firms tend to spend between 5-10% on their marketing, again depending upon their marketing strategy, areas of practice as well as how well their intake and sales processes are dialled in.

Why do some areas of law spend less on marketing?

Some areas of law, like estate planning, real estate and family law tend can tend to spend less on marketing due to the nature of these areas of law and their sources for client acquisition. These areas of practice tend to do very well, generating new clients and cases from referrals and hence require less expenditures on marketing.

How to measure marketing performance?

The different marketing channels you invest in, online and offline should be set up in such as way that you can measure the performance of each channel accurately. Generally, it’s best to invest in advertising and marketing where you can measure the direct result of your investment and efforts. Above all other metrics, there are 3 that you’ll want to focus on measuring the most stringently: 1 Cost per Lead (or Client) Acquisition 2 Quantity and Quality of Leads 3 Consistency of Leads

What is first contact law?

According to Law Technology Today, law firms take 3 or more days to respond to initial messages from new leads and potential clients 42% of the time and 35% of instances, phone calls from leads aren’t answered.

How does marketing work in law?

Marketing, generally works and can be explained by physics principles such as momentum and inertia. Marketing can take time to pay off and therefore, when your firm’s budget permits, there are several stages of your law firm marketing funnel that require adequate investment.

How to reduce cost per lead?

The same immigration lawyer, investing more time to promote and market their firm first-hand could dramatically reduce the cost per lead by hosting live Q&A video streams or calls on Facebook or YouTube, effectively running a webinar. They could also network with other immigration attorneys and practitioners in other areas of law to build and develop their referral sources. The trade-off is between cost per lead in addition to volume of new clients and the amount of billable or revenue generating hours they spend on case work.

How much of your time is spent on marketing and business development?

When you’re a vested partner or driven associated for a small, business and corporate law firm, around 15-20% of your time can be taken up with marketing and business development activities. Other sources and areas of law report more. Some lawyers and managing partner focus primarily on marketing and operations rather than actually practicing the law.

Law Firm Spending on Legal Marketing

Running a firm is no easy task. On top of the legal side, you also need to be familiar with the business side of things, including customer reception, attracting new clients, and convincing them to hire you.

How to Determine your Marketing Budget

Before you learn about search engine optimization, conversion rates, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), you should figure out how much you can spend on your marketing campaign.

Final Thoughts

Marketing teams and firms bring a wealth of experience to the table. A trusted marketing partner can assist a law firm in weighing these elements and determining where it should fall within the 2-12 percent range of gross income.

How much does a law firm spend on overhead?

According to a study done by Law Crossing, law firms typically spend about 45-50% of their revenues on overhead.**

Why spend more than 8%?

You have to spend more than the 8% if you are looking to significantly increase your caseload and revenues.