Stop Judging Your Law Firm Marketing With Your Gut

Published on 04 November 2009 by Jeff Berman in Blog

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gut Stop Judging Your Law Firm Marketing With Your Gut I read a post recently by Seth Godin called When Data And Decisions Collide. Seth discusses the role the internet is playing in presenting us with more concrete data to make informed decisions:

Until recently, most of the decisions we were called on to make were based on hunches, insight and a little bit of data.

It took Ignaz Semmelweis more than twenty years (he died before it happened, actually) to persuade doctors that washing their hands could save the lives of mothers giving birth. He had the data, he had the proof, but that wasn’t enough to change minds.

Data mining and the proximity of the internet to most of what we do is changing the proximity of proof to decision. Now, you don’t need to do a lot of research, the data is just a click away.

What are you going to do when your hunches don’t match the data that’s now pouring in?

The data shows, for example, that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving drunk. It doesn’t feel that way, of course, but will you respect the data and stop, cold turkey?

The data shows that the vast majority of wine drinkers can’t tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $100 bottle. Will that keep you from buying the fancy wine? How much is the placebo effect worth?

What struck me while reading this is how often I talk to law firms that judge the effectiveness of their marketing based on “feelings” and a “hunch”. They do this even when the actual results are right in front of them. Worse yet, they continue to invest in marketing that isn’t working because they choose to ignore the data!

Are You Measuring Your Results?

If you aren’t measuring and tracking your marketing efforts, how do you know if what you are doing is worth your time? How do you know if it’s bringing in more business (the only real measure of the effectiveness of your marketing)? Why continue paying for a directory listing, a yellow page ad, a web marketing company, or a television commercial if it isn’t bringing you in more money than you spend on it? Because you’ve always done it? That isn’t a good enough reason.

Stop Measuring Your Marketing With Your Gut

With the internet, measuring results is easy. There are free analytics services, such as Google Analytics, you can setup to measure everything you can think of and even some things you can’t. It may make sense for your firm to hire a professional to handle measuring and tracking of your marketing efforts. The bottom line is that marketing a law firm is a game of trial, error, and analysis. All too often, lawyers forgo the analysis part and instead “trust their gut”.

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