How much does law firm marketing cost?

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One of the first questions law firms ask us is, “how much should we be spending on marketing?”

Unfortunately, there isn’t one standard answer. A three-partner family law firm looking for instructions within 15 miles of its office doesn’t need the same budget as a national personal injury firm competing for some of the most expensive searches on Google. However, there is also a point where trying to keep the budget too low makes it difficult to achieve anything meaningful.

At BSD Legal Marketing, we generally think £2,000 per month is a more realistic starting point for a law firm wanting a proper ongoing marketing strategy. Some firms will need to spend considerably more, particularly where they operate in a competitive market, want rapid growth or are targeting several services and locations.

The more useful question, therefore, isn’t simply “what does law firm marketing cost?”

It should be:

“What do we need to invest to generate the type and volume of work we actually want?”

How much should a law firm spend on marketing?

There are plenty of percentages quoted online about how much businesses should allocate to marketing. However, we don’t find them particularly useful for law firms. Two firms with identical turnover can have completely different objectives.

One may have an established reputation, strong referral network and good organic Google rankings. The other might have just opened an office in a new geographic location and be competing against firms that have dominated the local market for decades. Their marketing budgets shouldn’t be the same simply because their turnover happens to be similar.

As a rough guide, we would look at monthly investment along these lines:

These figures are only a guide. PPC advertising spend, for example, would usually be paid directly to Google in addition to the cost of managing the campaign.

The right law firm spend on marketing depends on what needs to be achieved rather than what happens to fit neatly into a predetermined package.

Why we think £2,000 per month is a more realistic starting point

We have previously offered smaller marketing packages ourselves. The problem is that expectations don’t necessarily shrink with the fee. A law firm paying £750 per month may still want to rank for competitive searches, publish regular content, improve its website, generate enquiries and understand what its competitors are doing. There simply isn’t enough time within that budget to do all of those things properly.

A good legal digital marketing campaign can involve keyword and competitor research, technical SEO, service pages, location content, articles, website improvements, conversion tracking, analytics, reporting and ongoing changes based on what is actually working. That is before you add PPC, email marketing or social media.

We would rather recommend a budget that gives the campaign a reasonable opportunity to work than take a smaller monthly fee and spread it across too many different activities.

What affects the cost of law firm marketing?

The biggest factor is usually the market you are trying to enter.

Practice area

Some legal services are considerably harder to market than others. A firm trying to generate national personal injury enquiries is competing against major law firms, claims businesses and websites that have invested heavily in search marketing for years.

A niche commercial firm targeting a very specific type of dispute may have a much smaller potential audience, but each successful instruction could be worth considerably more. The economics of each practice area therefore need to be considered separately.

Geographic location

Location matters too. Trying to rank for a service in a smaller town may require substantially less investment than trying to appear prominently for the same service in Manchester, Birmingham or London.

That doesn’t mean firms in major cities can’t compete. It means their marketing strategies need to reflect the level of competition they are facing.

Starting position

A well-established website with hundreds of quality pages, good backlinks and strong existing rankings is very different from a website launched three months ago. We recently worked on a new law firm website that had only been established in June. Expectations for that site have to be different from those for a domain that has been building authority for 15 years.

Marketing should therefore be judged against where the firm started as well as where it wants to go.

Marketing spend versus buying cases and leads

This is an area we think more firms should examine. We speak to law firms that spend significant amounts purchasing leads or cases from third parties, including claims management companies.

Figures of £10,000 to £50,000 per month are not unusual in some areas, such as personal injury. The headline number of leads delivered doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story either. From conversations we have with firms, it is possible for substantial monthly expenditure to result in only a relatively small number of cases actually being accepted.

To illustrate the point, a firm’s position might look something like this:

These aren’t industry averages and shouldn’t be treated as benchmarks. They simply illustrate the economics we see firms dealing with, i.e. significant expenditure can sometimes translate into surprisingly few accepted cases.

This doesn’t necessarily mean buying leads or using a claims management company is a bad strategy. It can provide immediate access to work and may be highly profitable where the numbers stack up. The question we encourage firms to ask is:

“What would happen if some of that money were invested in generating our own enquiries?”

Buying work versus building your own source of enquiries

If a firm spends £20,000 every month buying work, that amounts to £240,000 per year. If the firm stops spending, the flow of opportunities is likely to stop too.

Now imagine that the firm redirected even £5,000 per month towards improving its own website, SEO, content and paid search campaigns. After a year, it would have invested £60,000 into its own marketing infrastructure.

That could include substantial new service content, stronger local visibility, better Google rankings, improved conversion tracking, landing pages, PPC data and a website designed around generating enquiries. Unlike an individual purchased lead, much of that work remains with the firm.

An article that ranks well on Google can continue bringing people to the website. A strong service page can generate enquiries repeatedly. PPC data can tell the firm which searches actually produce clients. A recognised brand can increase direct enquiries and referrals.

It is for this reason that building your own acquisition channels can be particularly cost effective over the longer term. It isn’t necessarily a choice between one and the other, either.

A firm could continue purchasing work while gradually increasing the proportion of its cases generated through its own marketing. The objective is to ultimately reduce dependence.

What should be included in a legal marketing budget?

We don’t think firms should divide their budget equally between every available channel. The right mix depends on where their clients actually come from.

For many firms, search remains particularly important because somebody searching Google for “divorce solicitor near me” or “employment solicitor Manchester” is demonstrating considerably more immediate intent than somebody who happens to see a law firm’s LinkedIn post.

That doesn’t make social media unimportant. It can be excellent for building reputation, demonstrating expertise and keeping the firm visible to existing contacts and referral partners. But every piece of marketing activity should have a reason for being there.

A £3,000 monthly budget split between SEO, PPC, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, email, video and PR may achieve less than concentrating that same amount on the two channels most likely to produce instructions.

Good marketing strategies involve deciding what not to spend money on as much as deciding what to do.

How quickly should law firm marketing generate results?

This depends heavily on the channel. PPC can start generating traffic almost immediately, although campaigns normally need time and data before they become efficient.

SEO is different, however. If a firm wants to rank organically in a competitive market, we would usually expect to work over a period of months rather than weeks. New websites can take longer, particularly when competing with established firms. That is one reason we generally recommend at least a six-month commitment to SEO.

It gives enough time to create and improve content, address technical issues, monitor rankings and enquiries, and adjust the strategy based on actual performance. Marketing shouldn’t simply consist of publishing four blogs every month and hoping something happens.

How should you judge whether your marketing budget is working?

Traffic is useful, but traffic isn’t the objective. Neither are rankings. Ultimately, a law firm needs to know whether its marketing is contributing to profitable instructions.

We therefore look at measures including:

• where enquiries came from;
• which pages generate enquiries;
• which services attract potential clients;
• how many enquiries become accepted cases;
• the value of those cases; and
• the cost of acquiring them.

This becomes particularly important when comparing marketing with third-party lead generation. If you spend £15,000 on purchased leads and accept three matters, while £5,000 of your own marketing generates five, the number of raw leads becomes almost irrelevant. Cost per accepted case is far more useful.

How much should your firm spend?

For most firms looking to outsource a meaningful part of their marketing, we would suggest thinking in terms of £2,000+ per month, rather than trying to buy a complete marketing department for a few hundred pounds. For firms in highly competitive areas, the appropriate figure may be considerably higher.

But bigger marketing budgets aren’t automatically better. The aim should be to understand where the firm’s most profitable work comes from and invest accordingly.

If you’re already spending £10,000, £20,000 or even £50,000 per month acquiring work through third parties, we’d particularly recommend looking at how much of that investment is building something the firm actually owns. You don’t necessarily need to stop buying cases tomorrow. But over time, having your own reliable source of enquiries puts the firm in a much stronger position.

Speak to BSD Legal Marketing

BSD Legal Marketing works exclusively within the legal sector. We help law firms understand where their marketing budget is best spent and build strategies around the work they actually want to attract.

That can include digital marketing, SEO, PPC, content, website development and wider marketing strategy.

If you’re considering increasing your marketing investment, or you’re currently spending significant amounts purchasing work and want to explore generating more enquiries directly, speak to us.

We’ll look at where you are now, what you’re spending and what you’re trying to achieve before recommending a strategy.