In a modern society like ours, it’s important to establish a digital presence for your business. Whether it’s setting up an Instagram or TikTok account or actually studying digital marketing strategies that you can use to boost your business’ reach, any effort is better than nothing.
That being said, your law firm isn’t an exception. With all the legal services available these days—both online and offline—it’s all the more important to make sure your firm is visible to the people who might need it.
But what is the ideal marketing budget for a small law firm? Let’s go through some of the costs you’ll probably encounter along the way.
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Website Design Costs
One of the biggest things to invest in when marketing your law firm is website design. It’s a landing page for all your potential clients, which is why it’s all the more important to make sure you leave a good and lasting impression.
In this case, you have three options. The first one is creating and designing a website yourself. If you’re a small law firm that’s trying to save money wherever they can, this is a great option, assuming you have the technical expertise to get it done.
Your next option is to hire a freelancer. Go on freelancer websites like Upwork to find web designers for hire from the global talent pool. Freelancers usually have a lower rate than professional design companies. You can expect to get a basic, responsive website for only $1,000–$5,000.
Lastly, you can get in touch with a web design agency. If you recognize that an expert-designed website is vital for growing your business, invest in this option. Expect to spend around $3,000–$10,000 or more depending on the features you want your website to have.
PPC Advertising for Law Firms
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one way to instantly boost your reach among your target audience. The way PPC works is that you “bid” a keyword so that when people search for the word, your law firm will appear on top of the search results.
PPC advertising is great for generating leads for your website which you can eventually convert to paying clients. It’s a quick way to get your law firm on people’s radar and increase the chances of them availing of your services.
AIDA Framework
Before coming up with a marketing budget for your small law firm, here’s a framework that helps you determine your sales funnel or the path that your potential clients will probably take before availing your services.
The first stage is awareness. You won’t be able to grow your business and establish a good reputation if people don’t know about your services. The budget you allocate for awareness depends on how “visible” your business is at the moment.
Go on incognito mode and search for keywords related to your practice. If your ads show up on the top results, you’re most likely doing a good job at this stage. If you don’t see your website, you might want to consider investing more in local search engine optimization (SEO). We’ll get to that later.
The next stage is catching the interest of your leads or potential clients. This could be where a good website design serves its purpose. The goal is to make the experience of navigating through your website as seamless as possible for your leads.
You can also invest in writing articles or providing resources that could help your leads with their inquiries. Establish your reputation as a law firm by letting your leads see your knowledge and expertise in the field. Show your potential clients why they should avail of your services.
The next stage is making a decision. Make it easier for your leads to decide on hiring you. Show them testimonials or reviews of your past clients to give them a better insight into the kind of services that you can offer.
The last stage is action. This could mean getting potential clients to subscribe to your newsletter or give you their contact information for further details. You can also invest in having an automated chat response just so you could immediately follow up on your leads and have a higher chance of converting them into actual clients.
Example PPC Budget
There are many factors that come into play when computing your PPC budget. Let’s say your firm can only handle 10 new clients per month. Your current cost-per-click (CPC) is $5. Your conversion rate is 2% since you’re just starting out.
That means you’ll need 500 leads per month to get 10 new clients. Keeping this in mind, let’s say your target cost-per-lead (CPL) is around $250 per month. This drives up your monthly PPC budget to around $2,500.
Here’s a simple law firm marketing budget template if you’re just starting out. This might help you better understand these numbers.
The beauty of PPC advertising is that you can set your own budget and adjust it anytime. There are no limits to how much you allocate for it to grow your business.
If you see that one strategy works better than the other, you can invest more money into that to make sure it keeps benefitting you.
PPC may be a tricky thing to navigate for complete beginners. But it also gives you a lot of room for improvement. So, don’t worry and just take whatever you can learn from it.
SEO for Law Firms
As mentioned earlier, if you’re trying to boost your site’s reach on search engines, you might want to consider investing in SEO.
Simply put, SEO is a marketing strategy that taps into the relevant keywords for your business so that people find it easier to find you. SEO also focuses on building backlinks to your site to make you more “visible” in search engines and at the same time establish your business’ reputation.
Unlike PPC advertising, SEO is more of a long-term investment. You won’t get immediate results, but if you do it right, SEO can bring you a lot of benefits to your business.
Here’s a guide on SEO for law firms if you’re interested in knowing more about the topic.
Digital Marketing
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Digital marketing is more than just getting clicks to your website. You also have to make sure you’re getting high-quality leads and focus on growing your conversion rate.
Strategies like PPC advertising and SEO can greatly help your business grow. You can either learn these concepts on your own or hire a digital marketing expert to take care of these things for you.
Regardless, you have to carefully plan out your marketing budget to make sure it’s really helping your business grow. Again, here are some things to note about law firm marketing:
- Website design can cost you anywhere from $0–$100,000 depending on the features you want to have for your site.
- PPC advertising gives you immediate results for your ad campaigns. If you’re a small law firm, a $2,500 monthly budget for PPC advertising should be enough to get you started. But again, you can freely adjust this amount according to your needs.
- SEO is also another great marketing strategy for law firms. It doesn’t yield instant results. Rather, it grows your reputation and digital presence over time.
