How much should a law firm spend on marketing?

A mini-guide on how to establish your marketing budget

So, let’s picture the best scenario:

Everything is going just fine with your business. Your law firm has its own branding and identity now and is starting to make a name for itself in the industry. However, in order to really stand out in the competitive legal landscape, you will need to promote your firm via marketing.

The problem is that you do not know how much you should spend on marketing.

Determining just how much of your budget is going into marketing can be quite challenging since it also depends on various factors: the target market, the marketing goals, the marketing platforms that you are going to employ, the size of your firm, and especially the budget available.

First things first: before spending any money, you should establish a marketing plan at least once a year or quarterly.

Why is Marketing Important for your Law Firm?

Marketing plays a crucial role since it is what attracts new and potential customers to your business. When done right, it also allows you to enhance your brand’s visibility and establish credibility within the legal industry.
Additionally, in today’s increasingly competitive legal landscape, marketing can be done in several ways and on several platforms to suit all your clientele’s different tastes.

While traditional methods like referrals still hold value, you should aim to remain competitive, which you can only achieve through a comprehensive marketing plan.
A well-thought-out marketing approach will help ensure a consistent flow of clients and sustain your business’ growth in the long run.

What should you consider for Your Marketing Budget?

1. Your firm size: Larger firms with a wide clientele may have to spend more money on marketing, while smaller firms may be able to rely more on word-of-mouth from social media and networking.
This is especially noteworthy if you are going to focus on particular geographic locations; for example, a firm settled in Portland should not have to spend the same as a business in New York that is struggling to get recognition.
Overall, larger firms should have greater resources to allocate higher marketing budgets. Ideally, general guidelines suggest allocating around 2–5% of the firm’s revenue toward the marketing campaign.

2. Competition: You need to assess the greater competitive landscape to determine how you will highlight your presence. This goes without saying, but if your firm operates in a highly saturated market (like the New York example above), you may require a higher marketing budget to stand out. Studying your competition carefully should help you determine how much you are going to spend.
This also applies to startups or firms that are just barely breaking through in the legal market.

3. Target Audience: Another factor to take into consideration when analyzing your marketing plan:
There are several practice areas to incorporate into your business, and different practices require different marketing approaches.
For marketing to be successful, brands need to study their audience before. Try to research the preferences and habits of your target audience so you can build a marketing strategy that appeals directly to them.
Getting to know your target audience will allow you to positively impact the channels you will utilize and properly determine the costs associated with them. An example would be targeting corporate clients versus reaching individuals. The former should require B2B (business-to-business) marketing efforts, while the latter can benefit from digital advertising.

4. Marketing Goals: When determining your budget, you must set your marketing goals quite clearly. For that, you can outline or map the list of milestones that you want your business to achieve, whether you want to increase your brand awareness and visibility, boost your website traffic, or generate leads. Make sure that all your goals are measurable to evaluate your marketing investments.

Additionally, you should know that traditional methods such as radio spots, billboards, or print ads are much more expensive.

They are also less in touch with younger audiences, so if they are your target audience, maybe your chances will increase with the use of digital marketing platforms such as email, social media, and search engine optimization (SEO). These are both cheaper and more effective.

Other statistics to take into account

According to data, 71% of lawyers secured clients through social media over the past decade.
The budget for that varies depending on factors such as those listed above and on whether your law firm will invest in profile management or digital ads.
However, in general, it is said to cost around $1,000 to $2,000 monthly.

The site Rankings suggest that the best marketing channels for law firms to invest in are SEO, organic social, and paid search.

In the case of SEO, it has the highest return on marketing investment (aka ROI) and the most sustainable long-term results. This means that by employing SEO, your marketing campaign has higher chances of effectiveness and success, affecting your revenue growth in the long run.

Things like your law firm’s practice areas and growth goals are factors to take into consideration too, as personal injury firms need to spend more than family law firms due to the value their cases bring and the competition within the legal market.

Regarding your website, your investment should secure a good experience for the users; remember that it will be the primary link for most people before they decide to hire your services.
See your website as your presentation card, and make sure that it thrives on accessibility for different devices and that it contains all the contact information necessary.
Optimizing your website to bring you customers, however, will not be cheap.
Rankings suggest that you consider a budget of approximately $25,000 to $50,000 as a good range, especially considering that you will also pay for assets such as design, messaging development, copywriting, and a smooth and consistent user experience.

A 2020 study shows that 65% of law firms spend the majority of their marketing budget on online marketing.

However, before going deep into social platforms, you need to ask yourself some questions:

• Which platforms will you choose for branding?
• Are they in tune with the target audience that you will be aiming to reach?
• How will they affect your budget?
• How will you allocate your budget to different digital platforms?
• Are you being properly assisted on these things (if you have no prior experience)?

If anything, you can always hire a Marketing Assistant to help you with this kind of issue. The more care you put into your marketing campaign, the better results you will see in the future.

With all previous information taken into account, bear in mind that there is no definite answer to how much you should be spending on marketing; it is just an estimate.
The general rule of thumb is that they should be between 2% and 18% of their gross revenue, especially if you are just starting and trying different approaches to test the waters.
The exact amount will always vary depending on the firm’s actual circumstances, but having a clear set of goals in mind and your finances in order will always be a good starting point for budgeting and marketing purposes.

You should also consider the total marketing budget as a percentage of your target growth. Never see this spending as wasting your money; although the numbers may seem high, if you want your firm to increase revenue by $200,000 in one year, it will require more effort and maybe more than a few hundred dollars per month on marketing projects.

However, the smarter your marketing plan is, the more fruitful your repayment will be.

Introducing Legal27; An AI-driven Receptionist Team

To streamline your firm’s marketing efforts and enhance client communication for your business, Legal27 offers an innovative AI-driven receptionist service specially tailored for lawyers.
Our AI-powered solution provides excellent customer service and round-the-clock availability, allowing you to optimize your firm’s resources and your time by delegating tiring, time-consuming client tasks to our virtual receptionist. With its aid, you should be able to focus on more important and urgent legal matters.

By employing Legal27’s AI technology, you will embrace client satisfaction, reduce response times, and ensure no client remains unheard.

Some of the services that Legal27 provides are:
✅ Appointment scheduling: The receptionist team can efficiently manage your firm’s appointments, ensuring scheduling that syncs directly with your working calendar. Thus, you can save valuable time and avoid scheduling conflicts.

✅Call Management: Legal27 can handle incoming calls, identifying their purpose, addressing the need for information, and providing it based on the client’s inquiries.

✅Client Intake: The team can collect and organize client information, reducing administrative burdens for you and your associates and ensuring the accuracy of data collection.

✅24/7 availability: Legal27 provides a highly proficient service of understanding, handling, and managing your client’s queries 24 hours a day. It will also never call in sick, making sure you never, ever miss a call from anywhere. The AI-driven receptionist is available round-the-clock!

Contact us today to learn more about our AI-based receptionist services and how we can help your law firm operate more efficiently.