Making a Murderer…er Marketing Plan PART 1

I don’t do much for my law firm.

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I run a meeting once a week, I hire people when we need to, I hang out with my friends (but my accountant tells me to call them referral sources) and we do fun things (which I am told to call NETWORKING) and I do (or at least oversee) our quarterly planning.

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In December, quarterly planning takes the form of our marketing plan.

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So, because I love to share everything I can and be the weirdo behind the giant wizard head but not in a sneaky way… here I present to you…how I think EVERY Marketing Plan should go.

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Step 0: What Am I Leaving Out?

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I am leaving out what KIND of case(s) you handle.  I have written about that at length in terms of finding your niche and creating your ideal client avatar.

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So, I am setting this part aside, but if you’re not CRYSTAL clear here…do this first.

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Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.  Or more accurately for me and my jokes…consider that your origin story!  Only there is no murder/toxic waste/weird hallucinogenic plants that cause spirit walking needed (but I’m not against the hallucinogenic plants if needed and done responsibly)

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Step 1: How Many CASES Do You Need?

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My firm as currently constructed can handle about 80 PI cases at one time.  We are intentionally a low volume, high touch firm (I can go deeper on this but not in this newsletter) but think more me in a Hawaiian Shirt hosting parties than Better Call Saul or Suits. 

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Our average case takes 239 days to resolve so MATH ALERT (not girl math or boy math, but math math)...if there are 12 months in a year and our cases take 8 months and we divide them, that is 1.5.  In essence that is how often we turn over our full caseload (on average).  If your cases take 3 months you turn them over 4 times.  If they take 2 years you turn them over .5 times a year.

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80 multiplied by 1.5 = 120.  So I need 120 cases for next year.  Boom!  Let’s get ‘em!

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Step 2: How Many Leads Do You Need?

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We close almost 90% of our leads (Contingency fees and warm referrals, don’t stress if your number is lower).  And we cannot resolve about 10% of our cases because of $0 in insurance on the case.  So again, MATH ALERT I KNOW I KNOW.

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To get 120 viable cases I need 132 sign-ups.  (an extra 10%)

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To get 132 sign-ups I need 145(.2) leads.  (an extra 10%)

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And then I am going to pad it a bit and call it 156 leads.

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This means I need 13 leads per month.  Because 156/12 (the # of months in the year) gets me there.  Or 3 a week (156/52).

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And THAT’S IT.

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Seriously.  Do NOT freak out if this # sounds too low.  You can ALWAYS generate more leads (which will cause some problems but different problems…) but you HAVE to hit this number.  If you were a Blues Brother, this would be your mission from God (sunglasses required).

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Step 3: How Much Can I Spend to Get Those Leads?

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For me…my average case value is $28,000 per case and I end up with about 35% of that due to contingency fees (because we get between 33% and 40% on our cases).

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120 x $28,000 = $3,360,000 times 35% = $1,176,000

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I would suggest allotting between 10-20% of your revenue towards marketing.  Closer to 10% if you aren’t trying to grow gross revenue and want to be more profitable, closer to 20% if you are trying to grow top line revenue.

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For the sake of the rest of this newsletter, everything above was true but I am now using fake numbers just to prove the points and make the math easier.

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So let’s call it 15% and go right down the middle.  I now have $176,400 to spend on marketing.  

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It’s also helpful to figure out what your CAC (Cost of Acquisition) needs to be.  In this case it’s $1130.77 a lead or $1470 a case which is my marketing budget divided by the number of leads (156) or number of cases (120) I need.

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This means when I get the 987,642,726 marketing pitches I get every year and they say “you just need ONE case for this to pay for itself…” I know that if it’s not bullshit I can legit spend $1130.77 for a lead or $1470 for a case.  But in an ethical way obviously…not just giving someone the money for a case.

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Yes, I know this is taking too long and I don't want to overload you with these stuffs so keep an eye next week for the continuation of the Murderer...er Marketing Plan.

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Have a great weekend!

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