Law firm marketing goals that can actually fail

A goal with no number and no date is a wish. A goal bigger than the market is a different failure and a more common one: Indianapolis has 1,900 personal injury searches a month, so a goal of 200 new injury inquiries a month asks for more than one in ten of every such search in the city.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

What makes a marketing goal capable of failing?

Four properties, and a goal missing any one of them cannot be judged at the review.

1. A number. Not more, not improved, not stronger. A quantity somebody could count.
2. A date. The day it is read, fixed in advance, so that the reading is not moved to the month the answer looks better.
3. A named holder. One person who reports it. Not a department.
4. A stated source of evidence. Where the number will be read from, named before anybody starts. If nobody can say which system holds it, the goal is already unmeasurable and no amount of effort will change that.

The damaging admission: we will not agree to a goal expressed as a ranking position or as a number of matters won. Nobody controls Google's results, and the matters figure depends on intake, fees and capacity, none of which we touch. That means we decline the goal most firms actually want to set, which is a commercial cost to us and the honest position. Of the 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, 8 claimed a guarantee of some kind.

How do you check a goal against the size of your own market?

Divide the goal by the total number of searches your city produces for that practice area in a month. If the answer is uncomfortable, the goal is not ambitious, it is unavailable.

All rows measured 3 August 2026 from Google Ads monthly volume and cost per click. The right-hand column is arithmetic — twenty divided by the volume beside it — and it is deliberately not a conversion rate. It says what share of everybody in the city who searches for that kind of lawyer, across all firms, the goal would represent. The dataset treats family and divorce as one category.

Read the bottom row. Twenty new business-law inquiries a month in Indianapolis would be nearly one in eight of every business-attorney search the city produces, before a single one of them chooses this firm over the others. That is not a stretch target. It is a goal that cannot be reached through search at any budget, and a firm that sets it will spend a year failing at something that was never available, then conclude that search does not work.

The same twenty in criminal defense is under one per cent of city searches and is an entirely different proposition. The goal did not change. The market did.

What does a goal look like rewritten so it can be judged?

Shorter, smaller, and attached to a system somebody can open.

The left column is what most firms bring to the meeting, and every sentence in it is agreeable. That is the problem: nobody can be wrong, so nobody can be held to anything, and the review in December becomes a conversation about effort.

Notice that three of the five right-hand goals are about producing or recording something rather than about achieving an outcome. That is deliberate, and it is what an honest first-year goal looks like. The outcome goals become available in the second year, once the firm has its own history to set them against.

What is the abandonment condition, and when is it written?

The observable event that ends the line, agreed on the same day as the goal, by the same two people.

An abandonment condition is not a target and not a threshold for success. It is the sentence that stops the argument: if this specific thing has not happened by this specific date, the line stops and the money moves, and nobody has to win a debate about it in the meeting.

Three that work, because each names an event somebody outside the firm could verify:

• If the pages are not live by month four, this goal is abandoned. A build that has not shipped cannot be judged and should not be extended quietly.
• If impressions on the named search terms are still at zero at month six, this goal is abandoned. Zero at that point means the pages are not being shown at all, which is a different and more serious problem than performing badly.
• If the intake log has not recorded a source for every new matter by the end of the year, the goal is abandoned and the following year's goal is not set. Without the record, next year is opinion.

Writing these in January is the point. A condition agreed after a disappointing quarter is a justification, not a rule, and everyone in the room knows it.

Which goals should a firm refuse to set at all?

Four, and refusing them is more useful than achieving them.

A ranking position. Nobody controls it, and a supplier who promises one is either unable to keep the promise or attaching it to a search term nobody uses.

A number of matters attributed to search. A person who read three pages in March and rang in July after a friend mentioned the firm is a referral in every system, correctly, and the pages get no credit. Attributing matters precisely means inventing the attribution.

A percentage increase on a small base. Two clicks becoming three is a fifty per cent rise, which is arithmetic rather than news. Set the goal in whole numbers.

Anything expressed as a share of a market you cannot measure. A firm that cannot see the size of its own market cannot know whether the share it is asking for exists.

Our own commitments are of the kind we ask firms to set: a Practice Sprint at $1,450 and a build tier at $2,900, fixed and published, no minimum term. We never charge per inquiry, per case or per matter. US lawyer advertising runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently in each state.

Which suppliers set goals for you, and do they publish a price?

Three sit close to this search, and one of the three published a price.

onthemap.com, lawyerist.com and legal500.com were all in the set of 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026. Of those three, onthemap.com had a price on the page we read and the other two did not. Across the whole 40, 12 published a price at all, 5 of those showed only a "from" figure, 8 claimed a guarantee of some kind, and 1 offered work with no minimum term. Nothing further is asserted about any of the three; the benchmark recorded whether a figure appeared on the page as published, on that date.

Where one of them is the better choice: a firm that wants somebody to set its goals for it, from outside, is asking for something we decline to sell. A supplier willing to attach a number to an outcome will be easier to agree with in January and harder to hold in December, and a firm that genuinely wants that trade should make it knowingly rather than by accident.

Before you shortlist anyone

Of the 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, twelve published a price and one offered work with no minimum term. Three of them are named above.

The free report gives you the full count, named, so you can repeat it rather than take ours. It also shows how many people search for your practice areas in your town, and what those clicks cost to buy at Google's own prices.

Get the report — five questions, about two minutes →

No call required. Our own prices are on that page.

Where should I read next?

Two cities where the feasibility arithmetic runs very differently: law firm marketing boston and denver law firm marketing, plus a smaller market again in law firm marketing charleston.

If the goal is a build goal rather than an outcome goal: small law firm seo.

And on where firms publish the thinking behind a goal: law firm marketing blogs.

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