What Counts as a Lead?

The first step to reducing cost per law firm lead and improving overall lead quality is identifying all of the

incoming leads. In general, a lead is any piece of information that identifies a potential client or

constitutes a request for legal representation. Here are some examples:

● A phone call to your office

● A walk-in

● A lead from a service like Legal Locator

● Information collected from a contact form on your website

● A message on social media

● A referral from a previous client or a colleague

This is not a complete list. In the interest of strategy, try to consider all of your sources of potential

client information when you're estimating costs.

What Is Cost per Lead?

Cost per lead is the total cost of your lead generation practices divided by the number of leads that you get. This is an important figure. You can combine it with the average revenue generated by your cases to inform many of your business development decisions.

As usual with marketing strategy, it helps to get specific. Let's start with that now.

Estimating the Cost per Lead for Your Practice

You will need to gather some information in order to estimate the average cost per lead coming into your law firm. Look for invoices from lead generation agencies, advertisers, and professional directories. In addition, keep track of the number of hours you spend on the following:

● Your professional blog and website

● Directory profiles

● Q&A websites

● Social media

● Email campaigns

● Direct contact (phone/email/in-person)

Make sure to keep some detailed notes during this stage. You will need to correlate the cost, number of leads generated, and number of clients obtained for each method later.

After all of the information is in front of you, the next step is to add all of your bills together. Next, multiply the staff payroll rate or your personal hourly rate (in the event that you perform the marketing tasks yourself) by the total time expenditure. Finally, divide that number by the total number of leads that you generate from all of those techniques. That should give you an average cost per lead.

Weighting Different Lead Sources

By this time, you will probably have realized that purchasing leads is a relatively inexpensive way to get information about potential new clients for your firm. However, if that is not immediately apparent, you might need to consider the conversion rate for each different lead source.

Total cost per lead does not show the entire picture — the goal is to estimate the total cost of obtaining a new client. To do that, we need to go back to the individual bills and hourly estimates.

This step requires a new figure: your conversion rate. Simply divide the number of clients you get from a technique by the number of leads that technique generates. For example, if an advertising campaign generates 100 leads and you retain 1 of those leads as clients, you have a 1 percent conversion rate (1/100).

In other words, one percent of that ad campaign spending is resulting in new clients. To get one hundred new clients, you would need to spend one hundred times more.

When you examine your conversion rate for purchased leads against the cost per lead, you should find that this is a relatively efficient method of generating new business for your firm. For some specific examples or to better predict your costs, feel free to reach out to us directly.

Considering Corollary Benefits and Future Growth

Leads for lawyers don't generate themselves in a vacuum. When you buy them from a lead generation agency, you are purchasing the product of extensive, large-scale marketing and advertising campaigns. If you set up a pay-per-click ad, you're attempting to generate leads yourself.

When you generate leads yourself via outreach or your website, you are developing what should become a sustainable, low-cost source of business for your firm in the future. The bottom line here is that you probably want a balance between these different approaches.

Advertising provides instant exposure. Lead generation services provide predictable amounts of high-quality leads. Blogs, websites, and professional network development establish low-maintenance sources of intermittent interest.

Which is the best approach for your firm? Try using the statistics that you generated to inform your decision. However, don't lose sight of the fact that you will probably want to set up your sustainable practices now to be able to use them as a foundation later on.

Develop a Long-Term Strategy

Purchasing leads for lawyers is a great approach for any stage of business development. Because things change so quickly, you will want a lead generation agency that is able to change and grow along with you.

Legal Locator is committed to providing qualified, real-time law firm leads on your terms. That includes offering highly flexible plans. You can change the number of leads you get from one month to the next without undue hassle or contractual obligation. We're proud to be part of both the long- and short-term growth of many law firms across the country. We're looking forward to hearing from you — please contact us directly at (888) 312-2953 to talk about how our services might fit into your business development strategy.