How to Decide What to Scale, What to Fix & What to Stop Paying ForWith Molly McGrath
Your marketing budget should not be based on what you spent last year, what your competitor is doing, or what your marketing vendor says you "should" be spending.
It should be based on
what is actually producing profitable signed clients for your law firm.In this final September Marketing Power Hour, we're bringing everything from the month together and answering the question law firm owners struggle with every time they're building a budget:
Where should the NEXT marketing dollar go?Because cutting marketing that isn't immediately producing can be just as dangerous as continuing to pour money into something that isn't working.
SEO may require patience. Paid ads may need optimization. A referral strategy may take months to mature. A campaign generating plenty of leads may actually be working—but your intake team isn't converting them.
So how do you know when to
stay the course, fix the breakdown, increase the investment, or shut it down?
We're going to teach you how to evaluate your marketing channels like an investment portfolio rather than a collection of random expenses.
We'll look beyond leads and clicks and examine the entire path from
marketing spend → qualified lead → consultation → signed client → collected revenue → profitability.We'll also address one of the most dangerous questions in law firm marketing:
"Is this marketing working?"Because the answer can't come exclusively from the vendor you're paying to tell you it is.
You need your own data, your own scorecard, and your own definition of success.
You'll leave knowing how to:
- Identify which marketing investments deserve MORE budget.
- Recognize when a campaign needs optimization rather than cancellation.
- Determine whether poor ROI is actually a marketing, intake, sales, or tracking problem.
- Compare marketing channels based on signed clients and revenue—not vanity metrics.
- Establish clear thresholds for Scale, Fix, Watch, or Stop.
- Evaluate new marketing opportunities without chasing every shiny object.
- Build your next marketing budget around evidence instead of emotion.
- Make confident decisions when a vendor asks you to increase your spend.
The goal isn't to spend less on marketing.
It's to stop spending blindly.By the end of this session, you should be able to look at every meaningful line item in your marketing budget and make a decision:
SCALE IT. FIX IT. WATCH IT. OR STOP IT.Because once you know your numbers, have the right people in the right seats, and hold your vendors accountable, the final step is putting more money behind what actually grows the firm—and having the discipline to stop funding what doesn't.