Data Analytics For Law Firms: 12 Valuable Metrics Legal Marketers Should Track

As a legal marketer in a data-driven world, you’re no doubt aware of the fact that there are a variety of data analytics and metrics that need to be tracked to understand your law firm’s marketing performance. The key to using data to make better decisions is pulling the correct data and seeing each metric as part of a bigger picture. Every individual metric tells a short story of its own, but when taken together, these metrics give an insightful and consolidated glimpse into overall marketing performance. Here are 12 metrics that we recommend legal marketers keep an eye on:

1. Return on Marketing Investment

This is probably the most important metric for legal marketing teams to track. You’ll want to understand each campaign individually, of course, but you should also monitor the return on all marketing investments, which requires taking into account spending such as salaries. See: How to Measure the ROI of Your Law Firm’s Digital Marketing Campaigns.

2. New Clients

At the basis of any marketing measurement is the question “Are marketing efforts netting us new clients?” For example, high engagement but low client acquisition can point to a fundamental gap in your law firm’s digital marketing strategy. Develop a baseline and then measure this incrementally.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Traffic

SEO is constantly evolving but always a critical component of your digital strategy due to its cost efficiency. Thus, it’s important to keep a very close eye on things as even a small change month-over-month can represent an area that will lead to underperformance. It’s essential to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to SEO. Download our complimentary eBook to learn more about SEO tips and tricks for law firm websites.

Related: [On Demand Webinar] SEO Lesson Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic

4. Time Spent on Site/ Average Session Duration & Bounce Rate

To know how interested visitors are, you should track how long they remain on your site and on certain pages. Review page performance and note which pages have a high bounce rate (anything above 50% is considered high and of low performance). If the average time per session is low, or the bounce rate is high, there are changes you need to make on your website to better engage your audience.

5. Google Analytics Landing Page Performance for Optimization

This metric helps legal marketers to see whether or not their target audience is being directed to their landing pages. Looking at performance over time, this metric encompasses sessions, engaged visitors, and bounce rate.

6. Email List Performance

Manage overall email performance by tracking items like open rate and click-through rate versus the number of emails sent. Campaign Monitor has reported on 2022 email benchmarks.

7. Social Traffic, Conversations & Leads

Understand which social platforms are performing best for your firm. Read our checklist for effective social media measurement and analytics for law firms.

8. Web Traffic Targets

Each month, pull this data to review as a team. It breaks down channels such as organic search, paid search, referral, social, etc. It’s important to review the associated statistics such as time on site and number of sessions so that you can allocate budget and resources to your best-performing channels.

9. Traffic by Device

You’re likely to see more and more traffic going mobile, which means that you need to adjust your strategy accordingly. Regularly review the devices visitors are using, and make sure to implement tactics like responsive design to better engage mobile users.

10. Traffic by Source

Where exactly are your website visitors coming from? With all of the platforms available, it’s crucial to understand which are actually driving visits and leads to your site. Use this information to narrow down the best places to spend time and add content.

11. Returning Visitors vs. New Visitors

You need to understand how relevant your web content is over time. Multiple visits show that people keep coming back (which means they find the content valuable). This is an especially important data point for content management, such as blogs or your resource page. 

12. Conversion Rate

Analyzing the conversion rate is crucial to understanding how effectively your website or landing pages turn visitors into leads or clients. This metric can provide insights into the effectiveness of your call-to-action strategies and overall user experience. Regularly monitor and optimize your conversion rate for better marketing outcomes.

Takeaway

The 12 metrics we’ve listed above should give any legal marketer a clear picture of digital marketing performance. Clearly, there is no shortage of metrics to track but what you should track and focus on will depend on your law firm’s overall marketing and business objectives.

Contact us today if you need help measuring and applying data intelligence to your law firm’s digital marketing strategy.

Updated and Republished from April 9th, 2021.