How is YOUR Law Firm Keeping Track of Client Intake?

At SLS Consulting, we’re not just about websites. We have a vested interest in our clients’ success and will offer any advice we can to make that happen. One of the most important things that we’ve realized over the years is that the more organized you are, the better you set yourself up for future success. For law firms, organization is definitely important, with one of the most important aspects being how the law firm keeps track of where it’s getting its clients.

A lot of other marketing companies out there will build you a website and help you get that website to rank well. Unfortunately, that’s where their interest typically tends to wane. As long as they’ve helped your site go from page three to page two in the SERPs, they’ve done their job and aren’t overly eager to do anything more for you. While there’s definitely A LOT MORE that goes into making a law firm successful, this is often where the marketing companies and the law firms they work for tend to drift apart.

At SLS, we take things a step or two further. We not only want our clients to rank well, but we want them to continually rank BETTER from one month to the next. Unavoidable Google updates aside, we do everything we can to make sure that our clients improve their search rankings and get in front of as many sets of eyes as possible. To help clients stay on track, we’re always available via phone and often times have regularly scheduled phone conferences with them from one month to the next. Thanks to the aforementioned Google updates, we’ve found that one of the best things a law firm can do to help itself effectively spend its advertising dollars is to meticulously keep track of where each and every client is coming from.

Let’s say that you use paid advertising to help bring clients to your firm. The website you’re paying to advertise with more than likely sends you analytics, but you have to remember that it’s in the best interest of the advertiser to send you the most impressive analytics possible. Whether or not these analytics match up with the number of clients being signed over a given month is often overlooked, and advertising dollars that could possibly be spent more effectively elsewhere are being wasted.

The best advice that we give our clients is to not rely solely on analytics for determining whether or not an advertising service is working. If a potential client turns into an actual client, then it’s a law firm’s responsibility to find out how that client found the firm. Did the client find them on Yelp? On Facebook? Through a Google advertisement? The more law firms can see how clients actually arrive at their doorsteps, the more effective they can direct their advertising efforts.

We advise our clients to be as thorough as possible in finding out exactly where their clients are hearing about them. We’ve been on too many phone conferences where the client tells us that call volume is down, but doesn’t recognize that case intake is actually up. By relying solely on analytics and not patching the entire intake process together, your law firm may be doing a disservice to itself. Keep very detailed client intake records to not only help you streamline your marketing efforts, but to save your firm money in the long run.

How do you keep track of client intake? Let us know in the comments below…