USING METRICS TO MEASURE MARKETING SUCCESS.

• Author: Duffy, Shannon P.

No matter what size your team is, every law firm marketing department needs to incorporate some use of metrics and data analysis to ensure that its strategies are smart and its time is well spent.

Harnessing data and learning how to present it will ensure that law firm leadership trusts the marketing team and is on board with the marketing plan. And good data analysis will ultimately reveal which of your efforts are working and when you're just spinning your wheels.

Those are just a few of the nuggets of wisdom shared in a recent LMA webinar, "How to Analyze Metrics to Enhance Your Firm's Business Development Efforts," presented by Luke Ferrandino, business development director at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and Matthew Olsen, head of business development at Hunton & Williams LLP. Olsen explained that metrics refers to a collection of information that allows you to extract new insights.

In the law firm context, metrics can be useful in analyzing and measuring a host of common efforts, including:

* Business trends

* Capabilities assessments

* Cross-selling

* Lateral integration

* Lateral recruiting

* Lead generation

* Resource allocation

* ROI

* Targeting / prospecting

* Visibility

Ferrandino said the use of data is on the rise because law firms are transitioning to a corporate business model in which decision making is often driven by people who don't have law degrees, but instead operate from a finance or business development background. He gave an example that shared his approach to improving the visibility of his firm's corporate team by compiling data on how frequently his attorneys' names were included in media reports about the deals they had closed as compared to lawyers at competing firms. The resulting chart showed that other firms were doing a better job of getting their names in print.

"This helped us implement a major process change and get firm leadership behind it," he said. Now, whenever a deal is nearing completion, the corporate attorneys provide a list to the marketing team so they can act quickly and secure coverage. As a result, he noted that the percentage of deals in which the lawyers' names appear rose from 40 percent to more than 70 percent.

A Robust Data Set

Olsen discussed his efforts to track leads by compiling a "robust data set" in which his team constantly tracks a large number of factors that come into play in the often lengthy process of pursuing new clients. Maintaining a detailed...