Which Marketing KPIs Are Best for Lawyers to Track?
While practicing law is typically more of an art than a science, the successful marketing of your law practice will involve numbers. If you don’t track specific numbers and metrics, you won’t know what marketing tactics are working and which ones aren’t. It will be challenging to determine your next move and ensure that your law firm is growing. Without looking at your marketing numbers and acting accordingly, you risk your success and many opportunities as an attorney. Like it or not, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is an essential part of any marketing plan, whether you are in a law firm or running a solo practice.
Which Marketing KPIs Matter?
If you are like most busy attorneys, you want to know which KPIs are the most valuable and effective to track. You don’t want to waste your time with ones that won’t help you grow your business. However, different firms will have various objectives in mind. As such, there’s no standard list of KPIs to track for every law firm. But several core metrics can provide deeper insight into your firm’s performance and client relationships, which are imperative to improving your law firm and drawing in more clients.
As with any business, marketing helps generate leads and capture your target audience’s interest. Acquiring as many new clients as possible generates reliable income for the firm. Focusing on these KPIs will help you as you consistently search for new clients:
- Calls to conversions
- Social media engagement
- Number of website visitors per month
- Traffic from referrals
- Landing page conversion rates
- Email marketing performance
- Cost per customer acquisition
- Lifetime customer value
Deciding Which KPIs are Most Valuable for Your Law Firm
Since your firm isn’t like every other law firm, don’t forget that not all KPIs will be useful for your firm. Tracking and studying every indicator available can be counterproductive, overwhelming, and time-consuming. Before deciding which firm-specific KPIs you should measure, first consider your law firm’s unique overall goals and how you define success.
Consider the following questions before looking at specific KPIs:
- What do you need to measure?
Determine what type of information delivers valuable insight into your law firm’s performance and what data is necessary to provide that information.
- What data do you already have?
Starting with data you already have available in your firm’s practice management system is an effective and less time-consuming way to track and analyze data. Once you do this, you can decide if you want to track additional data and what types. Remember, you can’t measure what you don’t track.
- What are your targets?
Do you practice an area of law where it’s possible and practical to have repeat clients? For example, are you a criminal defense attorney who hopes each client is only with you once? Or are you representing business clients who may need you multiple times?
Each firm must identify its own targets before determining which KPIs to measure since they are unique to every practice. For instance, your target for client acquisition cost will be identified by the type of law you practice and the return on investment you receive per client.
Plan, Do, Check, and Act
Now that you know which metrics to track, follow the old management model of plan, do, check, and act by following these six steps:
- Pick KPIs based on your firm’s goals.
- Set targets that are measurable and arise from your firm’s goals.
- Track data for each KPI— most will require a few months of data to identify valuable trends.
- Run KPI reports monthly and analyze them promptly.
- Make decisions and take corrective action based on your findings— your analysis and action should align with the firm’s goals.
- Repeat the steps. Revisit your KPIs, ensuring you track the right metrics, set appropriate targets, and see if your efforts impacted your goals.
