When asked about the top challenges of practicing law since the pandemic began, an American Bar Association survey found 52% of law professionals felt that acquiring new client business is the most significant difficulty faced by law firms.

But most practices don’t have the resources to significantly expand their client acquisition efforts, which means you need to make the most of the client acquisition efforts you do have — marketing.

How? Assess which ads, keywords, and campaigns work best and generate the most leads in need of your law firm’s services. Uncover these insights by testing out your own tactics, gathering client feedback, and tracking lead attribution to see what’s engaging your target audience — so you can focus on the marketing activities that result in a steady stream of new clients and help to land high-value cases.

Start with smaller budgets and scale up the top performers

One way to test out a new marketing channel or tactic for your law firm is to run a pilot program first to see how well it performs for your audience and how many quality leads it brings in. You’ll be able to see initial results and use them to decide whether you want to continue — without wasting valuable resources on an unproven tactic.

Potential pilot campaigns could be:

• Marketing on a new social channel, like LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook
• Running paid promotions on a social channel for the first time
• Targeting a new keyword for your Google Ads
• Running an ad in a local print magazine

Set a small test budget when you’re running a new ad campaign or promoting content for the first time on a new social channel. For example, say you want to explore posting on Instagram for the first time. Instead of dedicating the maximum budget possible to a brand new channel for your firm, start with something smaller, and gauge what kind of performance you’re getting first.

Your own test budget will depend on the size of your legal practice and the type of campaign you’re trying to test. Growth Collective recommends starting with $200-$300 when testing a new channel or strategy. Test out your new campaign for a month and take note of how it performs with your audience.

Pay close attention to key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates for signing clients and cost-per-click (CPC) on digital channels (which are notoriously high for legal advertising). Focus on KPIs that matter most to you and the quality of leads coming through to get a true idea of how impactful a new campaign really is for your practice.

If your new strategy doesn’t work, you’ll know early on and won’t waste money running a fully-fledged campaign just for it to fall flat. If a new strategy does work, you can build it out and dedicate more budget to it, increase your ad spend, or start posting content more frequently.

A/B test variables in each of your channels

A/B testing is a great way to see which aspects of your existing marketing tactics are delivering a strong ROI — calls into your law firm’s intake phone line, for example, and ultimately, signed contracts — and which can be improved. You begin an A/B test by isolating one very specific variable in your marketing and testing two different versions side by side. A/B testing helps you optimize each tactic and figure out what specific changes are going to resonate with your audience, so you can bring in more leads with strong cases.

There’s practically no end to the list of variables you can A/B test. Some common ones include:

• Keywords
• Target audience filters for ads
• Email subject lines
• Call-to-action (CTA) button colors
• CTA button language
• Google Ad background images

A/B tests are a great method because they’re relatively low effort and can give you insights almost immediately. Here are four easy steps for running an A/B test yourself:

1. Select one variable to change. Decide if you want to test CTA button colors in an email or different types of imagery in a brochure. Create two versions that reflect those changes.
2. Split your audience in half and launch version A to one half and version B to the other. Launch your test with different audience groups, such as two separate email lists for personal injury and for divorce legal representation, or simply run two different ads side-by-side on Google or out-of-home (like a billboard).
3. Measure relevant metrics. Use metrics like click-through rates and conversions to client retainers to decide your winner. You can also use software like call tracking to determine which version in your A/B test is bringing in leads who are actually in need of a lawyer for both digital and traditional media.
4. Implement changes. Based on those results, move forward with the version that’s creating more conversions and generating more leads for your practice.

Related reading: 5 surprising legal marketing statistics, and what they mean for your law firm

Run client or audience surveys

Surveys are tools you can use to pose questions to your audience anonymously and receive feedback related to your law firm, marketing and client acquisition tactics, and client satisfaction. They can help you get a pulse on how familiar people are with your practice and how loyal your clients are to figure out if your marketing strategy is making a tangible impact.

They also give you a chance to gather feedback on your client experience to uncover which marketing touchpoints have the most value in terms of generating the highest quality leads.

You can deploy surveys at various points along the client journey to test your marketing. Send quarterly or yearly surveys to your email contacts asking which educational content pieces they find most helpful. Run a quick survey after appointments that asks clients what influenced their decision to book a consultation with you to find out if your new marketing campaign is directly delivering those high-quality leads who are interested in your legal services.

Run a survey using a tool like Google Surveys, Typeform, or SurveyMonkey to test your law firm’s recognition and recall among your target audience. Your survey might ask respondents to name all of the practices they can think of in your field of law or ask them to check off law firm names they recognize from a provided list.

Apply insights from survey results to adjust marketing tactics, so they’re more effective. If you’ve been running ads and results aren’t showing great recall, you know you need to adjust messaging or try different marketing channels.

Further reading: Voice of the Customer in law firm marketing: What it is and how to capture it

Track and attribute leads to marketing tactics

The ultimate goal for all of your testing — and your final marketing strategy — should be bringing in qualified leads that are in need of a lawyer in your particular field, and have the strongest cases. Find out which activities are bringing in the highest quality leads through marketing attribution.

Use marketing attribution and call tracking software to directly uncover which marketing channels, tactics, campaigns, and ads are driving calls to your firm. Pinpoint exactly what qualified leads are interacting with along your buyer’s journey to see which materials have the highest value for you. Amplify those tactics to bring in more inquiries, and steer away from tactics and channels that are not driving the same quality phone calls to your firm.

According to Clio’s 2019 Legal Trends Report, 68% of respondents say that they first reach out to law firms by phone. Because potential clients are more likely to initially reach out to you with a phone call, you need a way to comb through all of those calls to identify leads who are the best fit for your practice — and you’ve got to do it quickly since 79% of potential clients expect you to respond within 24 hours. Call Tracking from CallRail can help you track and analyze your calls to prioritize leads with the best cases, so you can respond quickly and get them booked for consultations.

You can also add software to CallRail Call Tracking that automatically surfaces insights from your conversations. That way, you can find out not only what sparked a client to call you in the first place but also which calls are resulting in actual services retained. Use Conversation Intelligence to understand which calls are the most valuable to your practice based on key words in the conversations and how you can drive more of them by optimizing the tactics that led them to pick up the phone.

Seventy-nine percent of SMB survey respondents (including legal firms) stated that they’d gained better visibility into high-performing and low-performing tactics with CallRail. Use call tracking software like CallRail to find out which tactics are bringing in qualified leads, improve lead quality, and drive a higher ROI for your marketing tactics.

Download the definitive guide to take the guesswork out of wondering if your marketing tactics and campaigns are working for your law firm. Or, get start right away with a free trial of CallRail today.