How Legal Services Firms Can Use Analytics to Drive Smarter Marketing
- Ask the Right Questions: Define goals and focus on measurable insights—such as which channels bring the most profitable cases.
- Track Core Metrics: Measure customer acquisition cost, conversion rates, and client lifetime value to see which marketing efforts pay off.
- Turn Data Into Action: Use analytics to optimize ad spend, refine content, and make informed decisions that strengthen long-term firm growth.
According to one recent study, about 45% of legal services firms spend money on remarketing. This means that they reach out again to someone who didn’t become a client, hoping that maybe another interaction will help encourage them to pick up the phone and give the firm a call.
But the one thing this approach doesn’t shed light on is WHY someone may not have become a client in the first place. Was it simply the fact that whatever marketing collateral they encountered the first time didn’t resonate? Did they need a legal services professional but end up going with one of your competitors, thus fulfilling the original need? Do they no longer require assistance with whatever complicated legal matter they had in mind to begin with?
Allocating a certain amount of your marketing budget to blanket remarketing treats all three of those scenarios the same – even though they’re wildly different. If a person needed a lawyer and found one that wasn’t you, they no longer need a lawyer. Because of that, reaching out to them again probably won’t make a difference and will likely result in wasted money.
But if someone was looking for an attorney, saw a blog post or video that you’d created and didn’t connect with it, and is STILL looking for an attorney, that’s an entirely different scenario. Here, you do likely have another chance to convert – but you wouldn’t necessarily know that if you’re still approaching strategy development from a very “one-size-fits-all” lens.
That, in essence, is why analytics are so important – especially within the context of something as imprecise as legal services marketing. Yes, you need to know who you’re trying to reach. But you also need to know exactly the right message to get in front of them at exactly the right time. The data that your legal services firm is creating on a daily basis is already trying to tell you this story. All you need to do is listen.
Start by Asking the Right Questions
Having said all of this, it’s important to acknowledge the difference between learning and learning with strategic intent. Yes, your legal services firm is probably creating more data than it has at literally any point up until now. You know more about your average client than you could have dreamed of a decade ago. But if you don’t have a way to cut through that – to focus on something a bit more specific – the data ultimately won’t do you any good.
So before you go diving into the spreadsheets and dashboards, pause to think about what you actually want to learn. It is tempting to open an analytics tool and start clicking around, but without a clear purpose, you risk drowning in numbers that do not mean anything for your firm.
This is the same principle you follow when preparing for a deposition. You do not just ask random questions – you prepare the ones that will get you the answers you need.
Start by tying your questions directly to your firm’s goals. If you are trying to grow a specific practice area, such as family law or corporate contracts, you might ask which of your marketing channels is bringing in the most inquiries for that service. If you are looking to increase profitability rather than just volume, you might ask which cases have the highest return after factoring in time, expenses, and billing rates. If you want to improve cash flow, you could investigate which sources consistently bring clients who pay invoices promptly and in full.
The point is to make your questions specific and measurable. Instead of asking, “How is our marketing doing?” ask, “Which campaigns brought in at least five new consultations last quarter?” or “Which referral source produced clients with an average case value of over $10,000?”
These targeted questions help you focus on the numbers that matter. Without them, you are like a trial lawyer with no case strategy—lots of material but no clear path to a win.
Determine the Metrics That Matter Most
Once you know what questions you are asking, you need to identify the numbers that can actually answer them. Too many legal services firms make the mistake of tracking everything simply because they can.
That is like preparing for trial by printing out every case ever decided in your jurisdiction – it is technically possible, but you will waste valuable time sifting through irrelevant information.
If you’re not sure where else to begin, you could always start with customer acquisition cost. Otherwise known as CAC for short, this shows you how much you spend to turn a lead into an actual paying client. If ten leads cost you $1,000 and two of them become clients, your acquisition cost is $500 per client. That number becomes a benchmark to measure whether a marketing channel is worth the investment.
Conversion rate is your next essential metric. This is the percentage of leads that become paying clients, and it should be tracked separately for each marketing source. A channel with a lower number of leads but a higher conversion rate may actually be more valuable than one with high traffic but poor follow-through.
Finally, look at client lifetime value. This tells you the total revenue a client brings over the course of your relationship. A client who returns for multiple matters or refers friends and family is far more valuable than a one-time engagement. Likewise, if it costs $200 to acquire a new client, but your average client lifetime value is $2,000, it may be more than worth that initial investment in your mind. What once seemed a bit on the high side suddenly doesn’t seem high at all. Tracking this helps you identify the marketing sources that not only bring in business but also create long-term relationships.
When you put these numbers side by side, the decisions become much clearer. If your pay-per-click ads are producing leads at three times the cost of referrals and those leads convert less often, the data is telling you to redirect your marketing dollars. This is not guesswork – it is the marketing equivalent of proving your case with solid evidence.
In the end, it’s a mistake to assume that you “know better” than what your legal services firm’s data is trying to tell you about your audience. Based on how people interact with the marketing collateral you’re putting out into the world, and what performs at or above your expectations and what fails to meet them, you can learn a great deal.
You can learn where to pull back and where you’re not spending enough money. You can learn more about all the ways in which your audience is evolving and how you’ll need to evolve with them. You’ll better understand not only how to make the most of the business you’re running today, but how to connect that with the one you hope to run five or even ten years from now.
Of course, more data is being created than at any point in human history, so getting to the point where you can make sense of it all can certainly feel like a full-time job. That’s why analytics platforms can be so critical. They lead to better data-driven marketing for legal services firms like yours, which leads to better decision-making across the board.
From its inception, Surefire Local was built to offer the nine most important online marketing tools in one easy-to-manage platform. In addition to the use of business analytics and related tools that can help you create better and more informed content, you also get resources designed for lead generation, local paid ads, content marketing, and more. In one place, you can get insight into calls, monitor your web traffic, measure paid ad and social media campaigns, and more – all so that you can start acting on that insight immediately. You can even get an edge over your competition by discovering the keywords and local search terms they’re using, along with their benchmark performance.
All this leads to a perfect storm in the best possible way. It not only gives you a chance to make better decisions in terms of the legal services marketing content that you’re putting out into the world, but it also helps get your firm in front of as many people in your target audience as possible. That’s what will entice them to pick up the phone and give you a call or walk through your door. Once they do that, your services can speak for themselves – which is a very exciting position to be in.
If you’d like to find out more information about data-driven marketing and using analytics for better decisions in legal services, or if you have any additional questions that you’d like to go over with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t hesitate to contact the Surefire Local team today. You can also click here to attend a Surefire Local demo to get a sense of just how much time such a powerful platform can help you save, all in the name of creating the best business possible moving forward.