Note: This post was first published on the Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute blog. 

It’s the classic chicken-and-egg problem: You don’t have money to invest in marketing, but you need marketing to grow. And while there are plenty of studies clearly demonstrating a direct link between law firms’ marketing investment and financial growth, many firms still choose to cut back on marketing when money gets tight.

This was one of the findings from a recent study by the Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute. In the 2018 Dynamic Law Firms Survey, law firms categorized as “static” (no growth or contraction) reduced their marketing spend by 1.7% in 2017. That’s a 5% point difference from “dynamic” (high-growth) firms, which grew their marketing spend by 3.4%.

So why do many law firms still axe the marketing budget first when looking to save money? My guess is that there’s a lack of understanding surrounding the many hidden costs of cutting marketing. Below are seven of these tangible, day-to-day losses and how they impact a law firm long after the financial crunch is over.