Having a continuous flow of potential clients visit your law firm’s website and having them refer other plaintiffs to you is quite a feat. Where are these visitors coming from? What course has their interaction with your law firm taken since they first visited your site?

When a firm doesn’t recognize how important it is to track leads that come to their website, it is wasting a major opportunity to capitalize on something that is working. By not tracking leads, a substantial amount of marketing money is wasted, and a great deal of information is lost.

To form good marketing strategies and spend your marketing funds wisely, you need to find out exactly how clients are finding your firm. The process of collecting this type of client information helps to generate even more leads that you can turn into clients.

What Exactly is a Campaign?

A lead is a person or company that shows an interest in your goods or services provided. In short, it’s a potential sales contact, a prospective client. Sometimes, a law firm lead is a person who is merely checking out options for a future need. Other times, leads may have an immediate need for legal representation.

The origin of individual leads can vary widely. For example, leads can come from a printed advertisement, a purchased list, a live chat format, a form completed on your website, a referral, or a paid-per-click campaign, just to mention a few. Varying levels of interest spark the creation of a lead, so it’s a good idea to categorize leads when tracking them.

Each lead typically falls into one of these three categories: a warm lead, a cold lead, or a qualified lead. A warm lead is a person who has shown some interest in a service or product by signing up for a newsletter, “following” on social media, or one of the many other methods. A cold lead means your business is contacting someone who has never shown an interest in your service nor reached out for any information. The best type of lead is a qualified lead, like a person who uses a search engine to locate a specific service or product.

What Exactly is a Conversion?

A lead turns into a conversion when the desired action is completed by the lead. For example, you want to motivate a lead to do one or more of the following:

  • Click on a link
  • Fill out a website form
  • Open an email
  • Visit a website
  • Speak with the presenter of an event afterward
  • Respond to a call-to-action that encourages the website visitor to perform a specific action, like “Make a call now” or “Fill out this form.”

Leads get converted in a number of ways, such as a person getting your email and opening it, then clicking on a link that takes the individual to an article. When the lead is finished reading it, he or she may decide to seek further information about your firm, thus fulfilling the call-to-action by completing the online form. A law firm’s ultimate goal is to make the conversion from a lead to a client. Without nurturing a lead, this goal may not be accomplished.

It can take a lot of work for a law firm to nurture a lead to the moment of conversion, but when the process is successful, the time and energy expended are well rewarded. Leads may have unspoken concerns about retaining legal counsel, how expensive it might be, or whether they should try to deal with their legal issues themselves. When a law firm successfully handles these types of concerns and ultimately obtains a client, the difficult process of nurturing that was required pays off.

Consider the following:

  • Studies on lead nurturing have shown that companies prioritizing the process end up generating 50% more qualified leads than those companies who don’t, and they accomplish it at a third of the cost.
  • At least 75% of all leads are not at the buying stage yet. They often sit in the category of warm lead for some time before becoming a qualified lead.
  • Studies have shown that conversions can be increased by 10% through sending personalized emails. Making the extra effort of adding a personal touch makes a difference.
  • Touchpoints include communications or contacts with leads through email, phone calls, and voicemail messages. Several touchpoints from your law firm may be necessary to effectively nurture and achieve conversion. It is common practice for many salespeople to try an average number of touchpoints before they begin experiencing diminishing returns.

Each potential plaintiff’s case is unique, so there is not a cut-and-dried number of touchpoints that are guaranteed to turn a warm lead into a qualified one and then into a client. Interestingly, one study says it takes between two to nine touchpoints, while another suggests the number is somewhere between seven and thirteen.

The sweet spot for your law firm will depend on the field of practice, the surrounding community, and the market’s need. By varying the times and the method of approach for each touchpoint, you will be able to find what works best. When you have found this touchpoint sweet spot, try staying with that number to avoid diminishing returns.

Tracking the Campaign Conversions

So many different marketing techniques are floating around that it can seem overwhelming and complicated to decide which ways you will spend your marketing budget. Emails? Paid search? Traditional media?

This uncertainty is why it’s important to track the way leads are reaching your firm and to determine the reason why yours was chosen. Knowing these things enables you to strategically use your marketing dollars.

Invest in a Customer Relationship Manager

A Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) collects lead information, including the contact’s info, notes from conversations and meetings, birthdays and anniversaries, other important date reminders, and touchpoints.

Among popular CRMs are SharpSpring, Salesforce, Sugar, and Netsuite. There are varying prices and functions, but these platforms can prove to be very effective when properly used. Some will let you correspond with a lead from within the platform. This easily allows you to send personalized emails or customized text messages. The automation and organization of lead information, plus the ability to communicate with leads from the program, make the CRM of great importance to a law firm’s process of lead tracking and conversion. 

Work With an Attorney Campaign Generation Company

Broughton Partners provides legal marketing services for personal injury law firms looking to connect with qualified plaintiffs. Our proprietary acquisition platform tracks leads upon initial contact and our in-house call center reviews leads for lawsuit eligibility. 

We send your law firm retained plaintiffs, but we don’t stop there. We go to another level and pre-package your qualified retainer with the appropriate corresponding documents such as hospital files and history, to help your new relationship and their fight for justice.

Call us today at (800) 949-8904 for a free consultation. Together we can ensure there is No Claimant without a Claim.

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