How Much Should Your Law Firm Marketing Budget Be?

This post is for law firms which are already getting clients from their marketing efforts AND that are profitable.

The answer: UNLIMITED. When your marketing works and you understand your cost of customer acquisition per channel and your average revenue per channel, then your budget is unlimited when you have found a way to make a profit.

Now the difficult part here is understanding the metrics. I have yet to meet a single law firm partner who can tell us what their average cost of client acquisition is per channel, the average revenue per client for each channel, and finally the net profit. Sure for some verticals such as personal injury this is difficult to know because each case is very different, but for most "consumer" practice areas the numbers are readily available.

If you do not know these numbers, you can stop reading and work with your CFO and your marketing team to get the numbers. They will give you a lot of clarity and you are going to stop worrying about how much you are spending.

If your marketing for channel X is profitable, then throw more money at it gradually until you see diminishing returns. When you hit that point, you can invest additional dollars in other channels which may be less profitable, but would still increase the overall firm revenue.

If you find something that works, open your wallet. Increase your spend slowly and gradually until you see no more effect than reduce it to your point of comfort then continue riding the wave.