Measuring and tracking business performance is critical to the success of your law firm, and there are dozens of key performance indicators that can be used by marketing professionals.

But first, what is a KPI?

A KPI, or Key Performance Indicator, is a piece of quantifiable data used to gauge the success of business performance. For example, in marketing, we use KPIs to help us identify specific campaign objectives, indicate progress during, and measure effectiveness at the end of a campaign.

You do not know where to start ? We’ve identified five essential digital marketing KPIs that you should add to your reporting arsenal now.

1. Click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of impressions that result in a click. For example, if your campaign gets 100 impressions and five clicks, your CTR is 5%.

CTR can be used to gauge success in many aspects of digital marketing, including email, social media, and paid digital advertising. CTR tells you what messaging is working and what isn’t. A higher CTR means users found your content highly relevant, while a lower CTR means users found your content less relevant.

There isn’t necessarily a target percentage that you should hit with your CTR. Instead, use this KPI to compare the performance of your campaigns and learn how to speak to your audience over time.

2. Engagement rate

Engagement rate measures how much interaction your social media content or email campaigns are gaining relative to how well it reaches your target audience. This can include metrics such as comments, shares, or clicks.

There are several ways to dive into the engagement rate. (This Hootsuite article offers a deeper dive.) To get started, start by looking at engagement rate by reach, which takes into account all possible engagements (likes, clicks, shares, comments, etc.) against to the total number of impressions. For example, you may have 100 impressions on a social media post, but 3 comments, 20 likes, 2 shares, and 1 click. This means that your engagement rate is 26%. The benchmark for your engagement rate will vary depending on the platform.

Measuring your engagement rate is important for letting you know how well your content is being received by your audience. Your engagement rate can also help inform your future content strategy and messaging.

3. Customers influenced by marketing

Marketing-influenced customers (MIC) is the total number of new customers, or customers, who interact with your marketing divided by the total number of new customers during the same time period.

If you have 100 new customers in a month and 70 of them interact with your marketing campaigns, your MIC percentage is 70%.

Just like CTR, there is no set benchmark percentage that you should achieve with your MIC. Instead, use this metric to help you refine your marketing strategy.

Since marketing often works interchangeably with business development (or sales), this metric indicates the influence of marketing in the BD process. MIC demonstrates how effective your marketing strategy is at nurturing new leads and whether campaigns are getting noticed or failing to create the desired impact.

4. Incoming Referrals, Outgoing Referrals

Many attorneys work hard to cultivate referrals as an important source of business. Evaluating the number of referrals coming into your firm versus the number of referrals you’ve sent to other law firms or related professionals can indicate whether or not your networking efforts are paying off.

There is no “one size fits all” number of referrals that should come in or go out of your law firm. These numbers vary not only from firm to firm, but also from practice area to practice or from lawyer to lawyer within the same firm. Some law firms, such as consumer-facing plaintiff firms, may have more referrals than a corporate M&A firm.

Marketing and business development departments should work together and with company management to set a goal for inbound and outbound referrals and a way to track whether or not those goals are met.

For example, if a partner attends 5 bar association networking events to develop their relationships with other lawyers, perhaps that partner would set a goal for their practice to receive three referrals and give two. .

5. Return on investment

Return on investment (or ROI) is one of the most important metrics for law firm marketing and business development departments.

ROI tells you the profit or loss of your marketing efforts by following this formula:

ROI = ((revenue – cost) / cost) * 100

Your law firm invests a lot of time and money in marketing efforts and it is crucial for your business operations to measure losses so that you can correctly forecast marketing expenses in the future.

BONUS: admission rate

For law firms, the Admission Rate is the number of new clients who contacted your firm by phone, website, email, or chat divided by the number of impressions. For example, if you have 100 impressions or leads, and 30 of them contact the business, becoming customers, your take rate is 30%.

There is no benchmark admission rate percentage that your company should achieve. Instead, your company should use this metric to indicate how well your overall strategic marketing plan is generating leads and generating new business.

Measuring your admission rate can help you understand which initiatives are attracting more leads, which channels are outperforming others, and where you need to update your messaging. For example, your social media initiatives may be getting hundreds of impressions and zero qualified leads, but your Google ad campaigns are driving the lion’s share of your organic admission rate.

BONUS: email bounce rate

Email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that could not be delivered. While some bounces are “soft” (may eventually be delivered), many email bounces are hard (may never be delivered).

The benchmark for a reasonable email bounce rate is 2%. So, for example, if you send 100 emails and 2 of them cannot be delivered, your bounce rate is 2%. If your email bounce rate is above 2%, there is cause for concern.

A high hard bounce rate impacts your overall email sending reputation, indicates your database or CRM needs a cleanup, and means prospects and customers aren’t getting your message. .

Don’t know where to start?

Start with the fruits at hand.

Choose one of the KPIs from this list that aligns with your company’s strategic goals and objectives, with data that you or your marketing department can easily obtain.

Just like your marketing initiatives, your KPIs should evolve with regular reporting to accurately measure your success.