# Trace your last 300 inquiries before you buy more ads

By Ali Peivandizadeh, business growth and AI implementation specialist.
Published Nov 13, 2026. Last checked Nov 13, 2026. Last changed Nov 13, 2026.
Section: Marketing. Verdict: ACT
Who it is for: All practice areas. Solo firms and firms up to 50 lawyers. Owner, intake, office manager.

Before you raise your ad budget, follow your last 300 inquiries from the form or the call to the end. Count how many reached a person, how fast, and how many became signed cases. Fix the largest loss first.

## Why
A marketer described a solar installer that got 10 to 20 inquiries a month. During one campaign it got about 3,300 a month. More inquiries put more load on the same follow-up steps. Her advice is an audit of what happens after the form is sent. A study in Harvard Business Review tested 2,241 US companies with real inquiries. It found that 23% never answered. A law firm can run the same audit on its own intake.

## Steps
1. Export your last 300 inquiries from every source: web forms, calls, chat and ads. Use the last three months if you have fewer.
2. Remove spam, tests and duplicates.
3. For each inquiry, write two times: when it arrived, and when a person first tried to reach the caller.
4. Mark how each one ended. The choices are: no answer from the firm, no answer from the person, not our kind of case, consult booked, or signed.
5. Send one test inquiry through each form and each ad. Time how long it takes to reach a person.
6. Send one more test after hours and one on a Friday evening.
7. Fix the largest loss first. Then decide on the ad budget.

## Cost and time
No cost. About four hours for the office manager or the intake lead.

## The rule to check
An intake record holds what possible clients told the firm. ABA Model Rule 1.18 protects it. Keep the export inside the firm. Do not send the list to an ad agency with names in it.

## What can go wrong
The audit can show that the slow step is a person and not a tool. Give each inquiry one named owner. Agree on a first-call time the firm can keep in its busiest week.

## Sources
- HackerNoon, article by Andra Ciucescu, practitioner article, Nov 10, 2026: https://hackernoon.com/before-you-spend-more-on-ads-find-out-what-happened-to-your-last-300-leads

General information, not legal advice.

Page: https://lawfirmgrowthjournal.com/marketing/trace-your-last-300-inquiries-before-more-ads/