Most Firms Spend 15% on Online Marketing
Professional services firms spent 15% of their marketing budgets on websites and other online marketing activities in 2005, according to a Forrester Research study. 
Online marketing was the second-biggest budget item, trailing only in-person marketing events, which consumed 26% of their marketing budgets. (Click on the image to see it full-size.
It makes sense to me that most of the budget is invested in face-to-face events. A rainmaker told me "new business comes in belly-to-belly," and he had the belly to go with the big book of business.
However, I recommend law firms spend more on online marketing. Your Web site should be generating leads for your while you're working, sleeping, at lunch, on vacation or traveling. We already know that law firm Web sites are the single most effective marketing tool employed by corporate, transactional and defense firms, according to new research. Web sites surpassed seminars and presentations on the list of most effective marketing tactics.
How much does your firm spend on its ornate reception area, which may have 10 to 20 prospective clients go through it monthly? You should spend ten times that on your Web site, where thousands of people can visit per month.
According to Edwin Hastings and Robert Buday of The Bloom Group, "the best professional services websites that we studied were great informers of their firm's expertise with interactive tools that accelerated their marketing and sales process."
The problem is not the precentage spent of the marketing budget...it is the low low numbers that firms are putting into the marketing budget in the first place. Companies put over 6% of annual revenues into marketing, while law firms do not come close. Some large firms even ridicule the firms that do spend 6%. I think firms need to look at how their successful clients run their marketing and sales and copy them
15% on online marketing I expect this percentage. We all know what online marketing can do, how it can twist everything when it comes to marketing. It is just right to be the second biggest budget item.