Tips for Success If You’re Hiring a Marketing Agency
By Next Level Pod on July 20th, 2022 in Uncategorized
It’s very easy for marketing agencies to mislead law firm owners.
Whether that’s through deceptive marketing, misrepresenting their services, or overcharging, you have to be very careful who you trust to take care of your marketing.
You also need to be prepared before hiring a firm to help you. There are things you have to understand about your own firm, what kind of agency would be the best fit for you, and what to expect when it comes to working with a marketing agency. This will prepare you to make the best decision and spend your law firm’s money wisely.
Through our many years in this industry, we’ve witnessed the ups and downs of law firms working with digital marketing agencies. Here is an overview of the best tips for success we have learned.
Know Your Goals
Firstly, you need to know what your goal as a law firm is. Don’t look to a marketing agency to help determine where you want your firm to go in the future. Whether it’s financial goals or figuring out the specific problems you want to help people with, think through this process before you call around looking for marketing help.
Intake Process
Secondly, get your intake process organized. Intake is your sales process and it needs to be well understood. Otherwise, you’re not going to get as much out of your marketing investment.
If you have a marketing agency sending tons of prospective clients to your law firm but can’t follow up with those clients and get them through the intake process in an organized manner, you won’t get as many leads following through.
Other Metrics
Some other metrics are great to be able to share with a marketing agency. For example, what’s your average caseload? Additionally, what is your capacity? You need to figure out how many clients you can handle a month so your marketing agency doesn’t send you too many leads.
Ideal Client and Marketing Partner
Something you should get crystal clear on before hiring a digital marketing agency is who your ideal client is. What really excites you? What do you stand for and stand against? What kind of things do you love to work on?
Additionally, you need to figure out what kind of marketing partner you’re looking for. There are many different kinds of agencies out there. For instance, are you looking for full strategy guidance or just someone to get some basic things done?
Budgeting for Marketing
Look back on your last year and add up everything you spent on marketing, even little one-off projects. From here, you can decide if you want to or have the ability to spend more than that on marketing the following year or want to keep that budget the same. We usually recommend for law firms that their marketing budget is around 7% to 15% of their revenue but this will differ from firm to firm.
Once you set your budget, communicate it clearly to the marketing agencies you’re looking into. Find one that aligns well with your firm’s stage of business and current budget.If you want to learn more about hiring a digital marketing agency including what to look for in a contract, check out Episode 051: Things to Know Before Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency.