Law firm marketing is a full-circle proposition, and should include strategies for not just generating leads, but also managing those leads so they eventually turn into paying clients.

Here are some tips on how to manage the leads coming into your law firm so you can convert them into clients:

Have a lead management platform. A comprehensive law firm marketing program that embraces multiple marketing techniques – SEO, email marketing, social media, blogs, etc. – means leads come in from many different sources. If you don’t have an automated way to deal with them, they slip through the cracks and all that hard work and financial investment was for nothing.

Among many things, a marketing automation system allows you to:

• Identify, track and engage prospects online

• Segment your prospects for targeted messaging

• Nurture leads through drip email campaigns with no human intervention necessary

• Create and manage lead-generating landing pages

• Measure the revenue contribution of every email, e-newsletter or other marketing effort

Have a lead management strategy. Once a lead comes in, what happens to it? You need a system in place that nurtures the lead through the sales process and people who are accountable for that system. Our experience has shown us that many law firms have the wrong people answering prospect calls. You don’t want people handling your intake process who have a customer service background; you want people who have sold stuff over the telephone.

This is best done by people who are particularly skilled at responding to leads. According to research by InsideSales.com, your intake team must be able to respond to leads within five minutes of the initial call and follow up with those who don’t schedule an appointment or retain you after the first meeting at least six times.

Analyze your lead sources. You need to track what programs are bringing in the most leads so you can duplicate what works and get rid of what is not working. When someone calls your office, one of the first questions your staff should be asking is how they found you.  If the answer is they discovered you on the Internet, ask them what search terms they used.  If they saw an ad, ask them where.  If they say that someone referred them, ask them who.

Segment and score your leads. Not every lead has the same value. Someone who is a past client is a better lead than someone shopping around. Someone who downloaded your free report is a better lead than a website visitor.

Circle back. There are always some leads that fall by the wayside in the sales process, but don’t automatically count them out. Circle back in a timely fashion and find out what prevented a sale from happening so you can overcome that.