How do I know if my marketing is working?

One of the challenges for marketing and business development professionals in law firms is showing the value of the campaigns and initiatives they undertake and ultimately the return on investment.

While the mindset has shifted in commercial law firms towards realising that doing a good legal job for your client does not guarantee that you will retain or attract business—it is actually what the client expects and pays for—the onus on proving what does win business has been pushed to marketing and business development professionals, or to specific partners.

But what has transformed this for law firms—and marketers in general—is the new breed of digital tools that link marketing activity with business development.

It is no longer a case of half of my marketing works, I just don’t know which half.

These tools are low cost (some are even free to license), easy to use and they help you pull together detailed data on the performance of your marketing efforts and relate that to whether a client or prospect subsequently instructs the firm.

For that reason, these software tools integrate with your client database or CRM.

What is a CRM? If you don’t know then you are not alone as It still surprises us the number of mid-sized commercial law firms in Europe and Asia-Pacific that do not have a modern Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. If that applies to your firm, please see my post on why you need to get one – including the fact that some of these are even free to license so there is no reason not to.

And while larger law firms may have a CRM such as Salesforce, they are not always using it effectively to support marketing, or they are unaware that they can upgrade it to track marketing activity and business development efforts.

We surveyed London’s largest law firms at the end of last year using a software identifier that tracks websites and it shows that while everyone has Google Analytics, few have ventured into adopting the tools we are about to discuss (see table below).

Firms need to use data to drive their marketing efforts; not only to measure success and report back to management but because those on the end of those efforts – clients and prospects – do not want to be spammed by different departments on the same day or receive the latest report if it is not relevant to them.

In my last post, I talked about the need to get these updates right because in a recent survey only 8% of a sample of general counsel and heads of legal said that their law firms deliver timely and relevant content.

The new marketing tools cannot write good updates for you. But what is common to these marketing packages is the insight they give you into client behaviour.

Assessing marketing performance

Through marketing analytics software, you gain the ability to see when and where clients are engaging with your content (is it social, website, through events?), what companies are most interested in, and the identity of new companies reading your insights.

Unlike Google Analytics or some legal publisher services, you get to see the actual person from your database who is viewing your material and not just where they work or their country of origin. And that is recorded every time that a client comes on to your site or opens your emails or reads your social media posts.

Through such tools you can even add contacts directly to your database if a recipient clicks a link in one of your marketing emails.

Some of our clients are impressed not only by the power of what is available on the market but also how little these tools cost.

We recommend and use one package called HubSpot, which has one huge advantage of being free at the basic level (more on that shortly) and includes a free CRM.

And everything is GDPR compliant… something HubSpot has worked heavily on with its legal team.

Other options open to marketers using these tools are the ability to create bespoke landing pages (eg registration for events that you organise or to display a report online which you have launched), and pop-up forms to capture data or send further content to those reading your site. While different providers and consultants offer these items in the legal market as add-ons to your site or CRMs, HubSpot brings all these functionalities together in one place. And the tools are easy to use: you pick from templates for newsletters or landing pages, which requires neither coding nor tech knowledge.

And if you have a CRM already, you can just add HubSpot Marketing because it integrates with all the major CRMs in the market.

Proving the concept

In my last article, I referred to the four ‘P’s for law firms to undertake successful content marketing: Purpose, Planning, Production and People.

CRM and Marketing software like HubSpot now offer you a fifth ‘P’: Proof that your marketing and business development efforts are working.

In your CRM, you can track prospects from when they first engaged with the firm’s content (eg through a webinar you organised) to meetings with partners and subsequent instructions from that prospect to the firm.

Demonstrating to a hesitant lawyer that their article has received attention from important clients or has attracted new companies, which you can show through a simple HubSpot report, reassures that lawyer that their non-billable time has been well spent. It is a long way from Google Analytics and getting a spike in web traffic in certain countries but not knowing what that really means.

And while the firm should be speaking to clients regularly on areas of law where they might want training or insights or a report, tools like HubSpot allow you to monitor client behaviour across all your marketing channels without being intrusive or having to take up client time.

Having a complete overview of the firm’s billable and/or non-billable contact with a client, and understanding where that client or prospect has shown interest in the firm’s content and insights, will arm lawyers with the knowledge to open up new conversations, put together tailored presentations and send out articles or updates that resonate with that client. It also informs the marketing department where the best opportunities for cross-selling lie if content is shared with other departments or contacts within a client.

If the best thought leadership informs clients and prospects of risks and opportunities that they were not aware of, then marketing software is the best way to nurture and convert that interest into actual instructions. By blending the two, you will be able to demonstrate a clear return on your marketing investment.

*For a free demonstration of how a CRM works or to discuss what marketing tools are available, click here to arrange a meeting with one of our partners.