KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are important metrics that can help law firms understand how successful their marketing strategies are. Whether it’s tracking website clicks, analyzing cost per lead, or assessing conversion rates, it’s vital to understand your progress so you can assess your work and build upon your success.

One of the benefits of digital marketing, whether it’s your website, email newsletters, or your LinkedIn posts, is that you can tap into metrics regularly and understand what’s working and what isn’t—and then adjust as needed.

Many law firms have limited marketing budgets, so quantifying what’s working and what the real ROI is for your efforts isn’t just about increasing your ad budgets. It helps you grow your law firm faster and deliver better services to your clients.

Not sure where to start tracking your KPIs? We have a few suggestions for you.

Important digital marketing KPIs to track

Subject-specific, targeted content marketing for law firms creates excellent engagement. Tracking your KPIs gives you the tools to measure your success and attract your target audience.

Click-thru rates and conversion rates

When a law firm creates a blog post or posts a piece of content on social media, the firm can track and guide the reader from the blog or social media post to a landing page on the website designed to receive traffic from that particular marketing campaign. This creates a direct line between the marketing effort and the arrival of prospects on the page.

The number of visitors clicking through to the landing page is your law firm’s click-thru rate. The percentage of visitors who go on to complete a form on the page, call, or email is your law firm’s conversion rate.

A law firm may wonder how much these efforts cost and how to calculate this process. This is where acquisition costs come into play.

Acquisition costs

To find their acquisition cost, a law firm may take the entire cost of creating and executing a marketing campaign and divide it by the number of clients they bring into the firm through that campaign.

If the campaign cost $5,000 and the firm brought in 10 new clients, then the acquisition cost is $500 per client (meaning that they spent $500 for each new client they brought in).  After completing this calculation, the firm can then calculate its return on investment (ROI) and determine the campaign’s worth.

Return on investment (ROI)

To understand the income generated by the campaign, the law firm may do another calculation. If the campaign cost $5,000 and the firm brought in only five new clients, but each client brought in $3,000 of new revenue, then the firm brought in $15,000 dollars and made $10,000 on its investment of $5,000.

Calculating ROI can help you understand whether your marketing efforts are bringing your firm a profit—and what the profit margin on your ad spend is.

Average time of conversion

Targeted marketing can draw the prospective client into contacting the firm and becoming a paying client. The time it takes for a lead to move from their first contact with your firm to becoming a paying client is the average time of conversion.

Understanding the average time of conversion is helpful because it gives you a better understanding of how efficiently your marketing moves potential clients through the sales funnel.

Although a lower time to conversion is almost always worth striving for, your law firm’s average conversion time may vary depending on your practice areas and target audiences. An estate planning law firm targeting millennials might have a longer time to conversion than a personal injury law firm specializing in slip and fall accidents.

Making sense of your KPIs

Your KPIs should always be tailored to the specific type of marketing that you’re doing, your law firm’s goals, and, of course, your bandwidth. Setting up tracking and analytics can take time and energy, and that’s why some law firms may choose to work with a consultant to help them assess their marketing KPIs and their marketing strategies. Other law firms dedicate a certain amount of time to assessing KPIs internally, especially if they have marketing staff in place.

Marketing KPIs may seem intimidating, but by focusing on these key KPIs, you can take steps toward optimizing your marketing campaigns, understanding how your clients interact with your marketing, and bringing in new business.