There is an interesting discussion over on LinkedIn’s Marketing the Law Firm group about how much a law firm’s marketing budget should be. Numbers like 5%, 8% or 3% are being thrown around. I’m not saying that any of those are right or wrong.

What I suggest is that your budgeting process should start with a marketing plan that is zero-based. If you leave out salaries and overhead of marketing staff (which many would argue you cannot really do), then the marketing expenditures should start at 0% until you’ve done the darn plan on how it will be spent and on what.

You really shouldn’t start with a percentage of revenues and then sit around navel staring trying to figure how to spend it. Been there and done that, and as the saying goes that ain’t no way to run a railroad …… or a law firm. Unfortunately, too many firms do exactly that.

That reminded me that I had done a post on the topic a while back (turns out it was in January 2005, the second week of this blog’s existence). Here’s the link. What I stated then I stand by today. PLAN FIRST! Then put the dollars to it. What percentage that needs to be should be based on what needs to get done.

P.S. Unfortunately, Kerry Randall mentioned in my earlier post is now deceased, and the link to his article no longer works.