Marketing Analytics: Not Just Numbers, Insights

There are many case management software solutions out there and most of them claim to offer marketing analytics. But what does that term really mean? There are a few ways to look at it, but here’s how we define marketing analytics at GrowPath:

Marketing Analytics: Data-driven insights that helps law firm leaders maximize the effectiveness of their marketing and return on investment.

Data Versus Analytics, or Static Reports Versus Actionable Reports

A static report isn’t boring, but more accurately inert. It’s raw data. It’s iron ore when what you want is a sharp knife.

The opposite end of the spectrum is a good or actionable report. The difference between a dumb report and an actionable report is in the analysis. How does your software help you analyze all the data it collects for you? Does it give you dumb reports that are pretty (i.e., pretty dumb reports)?

Any analytics can retrieve a list of open cases, for example, but you want analytics that can finely compare marketing channels by ROI – and automatically send you a report.

Just One Example of How Marketing Analytics (aka Insights) Should Drive Your Business Decisions

So, if data points on their own aren’t an analysis, how can we make it an analysis? You can get reports on the number on intake calls, the number and types of cases you signed, how long the conversion took, and what marketing channels were referenced in the intake, but none of them tell you much by themselves.

Here’s an example. GrowPath constructs and compiles a Comprehensive Intake Report. It can incorporate:

• Number of quality intakes/leads over a given timeframe (cases you wanted to sign)
• Type of intakes/leads (subsets of your practice you want tracked, or simply multiple practices)
• Number of conversions (and in what timeframe)
• Source of the call (television, etc., indexed to when the call came in)
• Type of intake by source (what marketing initiative is drawing what cases)
• Demography information

Analysis happens when you can see all that data assembled together in context of each other. You can literally see things you can do to fine-tune your approach. For example, the number of leads from a source means little unless you can cross-reference it with the quality of leads from that source. Based on that deeper data, you can allocate your marketing spend most effectively to attract the type and quality of cases that can put your firm over the top.

Two-Minute Exercise

So let’s test your software. It shouldn’t take you more than two minutes to find these data points. Set your timer (or ask your smartphone to set one) and then get into your software, find the following information, and write it down real quick.

• # of total intakes in the last 24 hours
• # of those intakes of specific case types/practice areas if applicable
• # of those intakes you converted
• marketing channel that prompted the calls
• one demographic datapoint (just pick one)

Did you do it? Did you have to go to more than one page to get the numbers? The more pages you had to search, the more reports you just read. If these were all on the same page, you have the makings of an actionable report.

And if they were all presented to you clearly in context with one another, so you could clearly see what you needed to do, you probably have GrowPath – and understand marketing analytics just fine. Here are some more actionable reports you might want to look at (if you haven’t already).