Previously, we covered module seven of Good2bSocial’s digital marketing certification, email marketing for law firms. This week, we’re diving into the final module of the course, law firm readership analytics. Good2bSocial’s Digital Marketing Certification provides legal marketers with a framework for understanding digital technologies in the context of marketing and business development for law firms and helps law firms’ assess the baseline knowledge of their staff or potential hires. The course features webinars, articles and videos on key legal marketing topics, including how to measure law firm website analytics.

To prove that legal marketing efforts and the law firm’s investment are paying off, marketing professionals should be tracking various metrics. By checking these metrics regularly, marketers will be able to determine which promotional strategies are most effective, and will have a better idea of how to refine various practices in the future.

Given the numerous ways that law firms can track analytics, it’s difficult to determine how to measure results and determine if the numbers are bad or good. Key metrics law firms should be tracking include total visits, acquisition channels, bounce rates and, most importantly, projected return on investment (ROI).

How to Track Law Firm Readership Analytics

Total visits, sessions and acquisition channels are a few examples of readership analytics for law firms to track. Total visits is a popular metric for law firms to track if they’re looking to get as many views of their thought leadership content as possible.

Readership trends to be on the lookout for include a sudden drop from week to week or a slow decline. Sudden changes may indicate that there may be a technical issue with a page, whereas a slow decline may show that the content needs to be tweaked to fit the law firm’s  target audience better.

Why are New Sessions Important?

New sessions show how many people are returning visitors or are coming to the website for the first time. Tracking new sessions provides an opportunity for legal marketers to determine their goals going forward.

If the firm is looking to improve content and create leads, return visitors are important. If firms are looking to attract new clients, they should be tracking how many new visitors they’ve been getting.

What are Acquisition Channels?

Acquisition channels are how visitors found the site’s content. The specific channels law firms should be tracking include:

•  Direct visitors - These are people who found the site through putting the URL into their browser.

•  Referral visitors - These visitors found the content through clicking a link from another web site or source.

•  Social media visitors - Tracking this metric shows how many visitors found the content through links on social media sites.

•  Organic search visitors - These visitors found the content through clicking a link on a search results page.

• Paid search visitors – These are website visitors obtained through an ad campaign.

These different channels show the success of a law firm’s search engine optimization efforts (SEO), newsletter, and social media performance, allowing legal marketers to adjust their strategy to suit their goals.

Another thing legal marketers should pay attention to is bounce rate. The bounce rate is the percentage of site visitors who visit the site but leave without viewing another page. To lower bounce rate, try adding internal links on pages, posts and sidebars and improving navigation on the site to encourage visitors to visit multiple pages.

Leading Law Firm Web Analytics Tools

The most effective way to obtain analytics is through third party tools. There are a variety of options for legal marketers to use to help measure what is working and what isn’t in marketing campaigns. Here are a few of the most popular options:

1. Google Analytics -  Perhaps the most popular analytics tool, Google’s analytics platform provides a wealth of information useful for legal marketers, including reader behavior and page behavior.

2. SEMRush - SEMRush helps legal marketers understand and manage SEO, social media and paid traffic. It also provides information on keywords and market research.

3. Clicky - Unlike Google Analytics’ Realtime reports which are based on the last 30 minutes of event data, Clicky provides analytics in real time, which allows legal marketers to track trends in readership on an hourly standpoint. This can be helpful if firms are tracking traffic after an event, such as a webinar or conference.

4. Crazy Egg - An analytics tool from KISSmetrics co-owner Neil Patel, Crazy Egg offers tools such as readership heat maps, where visitors clicked on pages, how far users are scrolling on pages and the number of clicks.

While Google Analytics is the most popular option, the other options provide different capabilities that can compliment Google Analytics and help paint a more complete picture of how a law firm’s marketing efforts are performing.

Converting Law Firm Leads as a Measurement of Marketing Success

“Conversions,” or the number of leads that complete an action on a site, are a reflection of how well legal marketing efforts are paying off on a website.

Examples of successful conversions include adding an email address to a mailing list, scheduling an appointment for a consultation or registering for a webinar. If legal marketers want to determine how well their marketing campaigns are doing, tracking what is driving the conversion rate is one way to track what’s working and what’s not.

There are a few different kinds of conversion rates for legal marketers to track. The first place to start is the total conversion rate for a campaign. The higher the total conversion rate, the more successful a campaign is. To calculate the total conversion rate, define a time period and divide the total number of website visitors who have completed an action.

Next, campaign level conversions highlight the level of success of specific marketing campaigns. This metric can be measured through setting up a specific tracking mechanism, which can track individual traffic sources such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google. UTM tracking codes are a way to track specific campaigns. Fyi, UTM stands for Urchin tracking module. They’re snippets of code — attached to the end of a URL used to measure the effectiveness of a digital campaign.

Determining Return on Investment and Client Value

Determining return on investment is another way to gauge the success of law firm marketing campaigns. To do this, legal marketers should compare the money the firm is spending over time with the expected value of the new clients and return business the firm gains over the course of the campaign. Another facet of determining return on investment is client value. This is calculated by determining the amount of money earned from each client over the course of the relationship with the client.

After reviewing analytics and readership metrics, legal marketers should calculate cost per lead and client to determine which marketing channels are giving the firm best value for money. To calculate cost per lead, divide the cost of the marketing campaign by the total number of leads generated by the campaign.

Evaluating ROI and determining client value helps paint a more accurate picture of which legal marketing strategies work best, and how to improve moving forward.

Takeaways for Law Firms Tracking Analytics

By tracking metrics such as return on investment, lead conversion and web traffic, legal marketers are able to better understand what marketing activities work best, and which ones don’t. Understanding analytics helps provide an idea of how to refine legal marketing efforts in the future to generate more leads. Good2bSocial’s Measurement and Analytics course gives legal marketers a good foundation for success. To learn more about the Good2bSocial Academy and the law firm focused topics covered please click here.

To Read Part 1 Good2bSocial Digital Academy for Law Firms -- Inbound Marketing and Client Journey Mapping, click here.

To read Part 2 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Content Marketing Strategy for Law Firms, click here.

To read Part 3 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Developing a Successful Social Media Strategy for Law Firms, click here

To read Part 4 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Paid Social Media Advertising Campaigns for Law Firms, click here

To read Part 5 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Search Engine Optimization for Law Firms, click here.

To read Part 6 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Paid Search Advertising for Law Firms, click here.

To read Part 7  Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Email Marketing for Law Firms, click here

Rachel Popa contributed to this article.