Paul W. Carlson, CPA (00:02):
Hey, this is Paul Carlson, CPA with Law Firm Velocity. We're making a series of videos that... Hi, this is Paul Carlson, CPA with Law Firm Velocity. We're making a series of videos that discuss how to use a lead report in driving firm revenue. So this first video is going to talk about the introduction to the report and how to use the report. The second video is going to show how to edit Clio Grow settings to provide the report. And in the third video is going to be an Excel Magic video that will show how to clean up the giant export that comes out of Clio Grow into this report. So we have an example report where we have three leads and just a summary of the status of the lead and details on where the lead came from. So the idea of this report is to actively monitor the number of leads that come into the firm and exactly where the leads came from.
(01:12):
Field, so lead type, this is the type of the lead. They're going to be Google ads, AVO ads, referrals, returning clients, direct outreach. It's just how did the type of category of the lead, the lead source is going to be a person or further detail associated with the lead type. So if we have a Google ad and we're very detailed with our tracking, maybe we want to know that this lead came from a specific campaign. Returning client usually doesn't have a lead source, for referrals, that the lead source is the person who made the referral into the firm. Originator, this is the person who did something within the firm to generate the lead. So Google ad, usually there's not someone inside the firm that's going to get credit because it's just an overall firm process for a returning client that sometimes there will be an associate within the firm that either worked with a client closely or chose to follow up with something, and from that created an additional matter.
(02:21):
So we're going to give them credit. And then others, if it's referral based marketing that someone within the firm is actively maintaining relationships with referral partners, and so they will get credit as the lead originator. Lead status notes, so this is where we're going to keep track of little notes and details on the specific lead. So example here is for Google Ads, we want to use some sort of tool to objectively track where the lead came from. So one tool firms will use as CallRail, and with that tool you get specific landing pages and specific phone numbers that we can use to identify exactly where the lead came from. Created is the date that the lead was created within Clio Grow. And then here's our matter status. And so this is where this lead, we've already won the work. These two leads are in process, and then primary contact is the client associated with the lead.
(03:25):
So now that we have this detail, what do we do with it? So the first step is we want to look at the report weekly with a couple of different lenses. So one, we want to look at this report and make sure that all of the lead source data is correct, that getting this detail is a pain. And so it's very easy to forget or people will skip tracking this detail. And what happens is it'll be a couple months later, the firm is in a marketing slump and no one knows where leads have come from or what's going on, to understand why leads have slowed. And then we try to dig into this and the data's missing. And so now you're flying blind that you don't have that history to understand where you are. So we want someone to create this report for us every week.
(04:14):
Whoever's responsible for sales and marketing within the firm should review this report to make sure that all this detail is here. Once you can consistently get the report with the detail, then you want to start challenging leads that don't look right. So on this Google Ad campaign, say, I don't think that this really came from CallRail. Can you show me the detail or give me some backup to prove that that's right. So consistently challenge the accuracy of this report to make sure that people just aren't taking shortcuts and entering things that are easy. So we're getting current and correct data. Next step is to monitor open leads. So you would create a different version of this report. So it's only going to include leads that are an open status, and maybe you would calculate an age that would subtract today's date from the created date.
(05:12):
So it would tell you that this lead is seven days old and then this lead is maybe 15 days old. And if that makes sense or not, you can start to pursue the leads that are getting stale. Idea is we don't want leads to go into the system, no one follows up and the client just falls off. Especially if you read some of the Clio statistics on law firm follow-up that so many leads just go unanswered after a week that we can certainly do better than that.
(05:42):
The other thing you want to keep an eye on every week is just the win and loss detail that, look for trends, is there something happening where we're losing more leads that it just doesn't make sense? And so we need to go back and push into the system. Then the monthly uses are, we're going to have a bigger bucket of this that we want to start taking a look at. Clio Accounting can be a valuable tool in tracking the financial impact of lead generation efforts and ensuring that your firm's revenue data is accurately aligned with marketing initiatives. ROI on paid advertising that in working with firms, one of our favorite pickles is a firm will turn on Google Ads and they'll pay a couple thousand dollars a month for Google Ads, but no one will really objectively measure if those ads are actually bringing in good leads.
(06:23):
And so now it's been a year, we've spent $20,000 on Google Ads, and now we want to start asking like, well, are they doing anything? And we don't know. So then we have to turn on tracking and pay for the ads for three more months and then see if it's really helping or not. So if there's any sort of paid advertising campaigns, you want a very clean objective process through CallRail or Phone Wagon or some other tool to know exactly which leads you're getting from that process and then run those leads through a CRM so you can understand exactly your outcomes from each lead. And so if AdWords is working great for your firm, we want to go ahead and turn up the ads and generate more leads. If they're not working, we want to turn those ads off pretty quick and try something else.
(07:15):
For a lot of firms should have a good volume of returning clients that if the firm does good work and the firm is doing our newsletter and other follow-up to stay in front of the client that we should be getting returning clients, we should be getting work from returning clients or we should be getting client referrals. And so this will tell us if we're staying in front of our clients and if we're providing a good service where people were, prior clients are comfortable with the firm to introduce other friends, come back for additional work. If the firm is doing referral marketing, so Madeline talks to person D on a consistent, consistent basis, has a cadence in place where we're doing our six to eight touch points every year to maintain that relationship.
(08:13):
We want to make sure that we're getting leads from that connection. And if we're not, we might want to interact with a person last or go back and talk with that referral partner to see what's going on. So this gives us clear feedback on the number of referrals we're getting from each referral partner. Then finally, we want to use this report to monitor associate marketing results. Some firms will expect associates to generate their own leads with this. We can objectively track the number of leads each associate is generating each week and each month. That is just really easy to hire associates. They'll say, yes, I want to do marketing, I'll do business development.
(08:57):
But then it really doesn't pan out that without this type of objective tracking, it can be a couple of years later before we realize that this associate is getting paid based on generating their own work, but they're not, and so their compensation is off. And with that, this is an introduction of how to use this leads report. Follow up interviews or follow up videos will be on how to set up Clio Grow and then how to edit the file. Thanks. Bye-Bye.
