Marketing campaigns for law firms are not cheap. When you spend hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars attracting clients, but end up with lost leads, the results are wasted money and a low return on investment (ROI). Lost leads are those that are not followed up with, or are not followed up with quickly enough to convert them to a client. Unfortunately, these leads are lost to your competition.

Capturing every lead, or call, helps grow your firm and bring you a higher marketing ROI. Yet all too often, law firms do not know they are losing leads. Here’s how you can determine if you are losing leads, so you can stop the loss and start growing your firm by effectively converting your leads.

Measuring Your Firm’s Lead Loss Rate

In order to market effectively, you must know how many leads you are losing. If you find that you are losing too many, then it is time to re-evaluate your intake process so you can make changes that will help you convert more leads into paying clients.

To calculate your lead loss rate, you must know the total number of leads that your law firm receives during a specified period of time. Then, determine what percent of your leads are successfully captured and converted into clients. The remaining percentage is the number of leads you lose – these are potential clients who end up going to your competition. To calculate the cost of lead loss, multiply the number of lost leads by your average client fee. The number might be quite shocking.

For law firms, the industry standard rate for lead loss is greater than 8%. While this may sound like a low number, it adds up to thousands of dollars of lost revenue. Instead, your firm should be aiming to capture 99% of your leads. By achieving the 99% lead capture rate, you will be retaining nearly all of the qualified incoming leads – increasing your revenue and improving your ROI.

Three Main Ways to Decrease Lead Loss

So, if your law firm’s lost leads numbers are too high, what can you do? Here are three ways to reduce lead loss.

1. Hire Dedicated Intake Specialists

Train intake specialists to know how to properly respond to leads. Have a dedicated professional who will answer the phone quickly, properly record information about leads and schedule the follow-up effectively. This will decrease the number of lost leads by ensuring that none slip through the cracks due to intake handled by untrained staff members.

2. Implement Around-the-Clock Coverage

Set up a system that allows you to respond to leads no matter the hour. This means having someone taking calls or responding to web leads during lunch breaks, holidays, vacations and even natural or other types of disasters. Of course, this isn’t possible for your staff to do, but if you partner with a legal services call center like Alert Communications, you can be responsive 24/7/365.

3. Utilize Advanced Lead Tracking

Finally, track your leads in a more systematic manner. This will minimize the number of lost leads, as it allows you to follow your leads from initial contact with your firm to the conversion phase. A good intake process – combined with advanced lead tracking – will help convert more leads into paying clients, and Alert Communications can help with both.

Tracking your lead loss rate is critical to your law firm’s success. It allows you to identify areas of improvement and make the necessary adjustments to capture more leads. Use the strategies above to understand how many leads you are losing and to take the right steps to optimize your intake process and minimize the loss.