Creating a marketing budget for your law firm in 2022

1. How much did you spend on marketing in 2021?   
2. What channels (where) did you spend on marketing last year?
3. Where did the majority of your leads come from?
4. Quantifying the results from your previous year marketing can be challenging.   This is important for finding the best areas of opportunity for your market and practice areas.  ***Please remember: Tracking everything, unless you are using a CRM, call tracking, and everyone in your intake process using and updating the CRM, some lead sources will still ‘fall through the cracks’. Tracking is not full-proof, but gives you a solid baseline, if set up and utilized correctly.

First: take the total revenue for 2021, and think of your revenue goal for 2022.  

Next: If you are trying to grow your firm by greater than 20%, I would recommend multiplying your 2022 revenue goal by 5%-10%, and if you want to 2X your revenue, about 20% total marketing spend / total revenue (minus payroll).  Now you know your estimated budget, where do you allocate this spend?

——— Variation 2  ———

First, calculate your total marketing spend from last year, (minus salaries) to your total revenue for the same year.

Next is to think about your business’ goal for 2022 revenue/, take that number and times it by the % you calculated in the previous step to determine an estimated starting point.

Keep in mind: 

High Growth goals come with higher ratios of marketing to revenue spend.   Firms are spending closer to 5% of the total revenue (and up to 20% for extreme growth goals).  Many factors can affect this number, such as the average case value of the areas of law you practice, in the geography you serve.   

How to Calculate your marketing budget for 2022.

1. Calculate your businesses’ goal for 2022 gross revenue.

1. Multiply the Gross Revenue Goal from step 1 X’s .025 or 2.5%
2. This will give you the low-end of the marketing to revenue spend ratio.
   • Keep in mind this number should exclude any salaries for marketing positions in your business.

Now where you should spend is the biggest question I get asked and first, let’s start with breaking down the different options for marketing spend and the pros and cons of each.    Remember, like most complex areas of life, involving people (the goal of marketing is to get more clients), a healthy amount of diversification will generally have better results, overtime. If your looking to get more leads this year call ADSQUIRE, We are an inbound marketing agency exclusively for Lawyers.