Jon Budge is a digital marketing leader with over 15 years of experience helping law firms and ambitious businesses win more clients online. He pairs hands-on expertise in SEO, PPC and content with strong strategic and brand instincts, and the commercial instinct to turn marketing spend into real fees, not just a rankings graph. At one top 100 national law firm, the website and campaign work he led opened cases worth more than £14m in projected fees in a single year, and one multichannel campaign alone brought in £1.8m against a £1m target.
Jon has worked on both sides of the fence, in agency and in-house, at firms including Hugh James, Irwin Mitchell and Healys LLP. That mix means he understands the day-to-day pressure of hitting targets inside a firm just as well as the agency discipline of proving value to clients month after month. He holds an MSc in Marketing and a degree in Business Administration, both from Swansea University.
He works closely with law firm owners, partners, marketing teams and fee earners on the things that actually move a business forward: lead generation, SEO, PPC, content and converting enquiries into paying clients. His focus is always on client strategy, taking what a firm genuinely wants to achieve and building the search, content and paid work to get there.
Jon is as comfortable setting strategy as he is delivering it. He has built brand and marketing strategy from the ground up, running stakeholder workshops, shaping brand values, vision and guidelines, and overhauling websites end to end. With a solid eye for design and UX, and a good working knowledge of the tools behind it, he makes sure every touchpoint, from the website to email templates, looks sharp and stays consistent.
While much of Jon’s career has been in the legal sector, he has acted as the senior marketing lead across whole divisions, owning strategy for as many as 16 practice areas at once and partnering with Heads of Department to grow each one. His experience also spans e-commerce, professional services and public organisations, across budgets large and small. He knows the regulatory side of legal marketing inside out, from SRA rules and GDPR to EEAT and YMYL content standards, and has managed high-profile directory submissions to Legal 500, Chambers & Partners and Who’s Who Legal.
Above all, Jon brings growth and measurable value to the firms he works with, adding directly to their bottom line.
Experience Highlights
Jon has:
- Grown organic traffic by an average of 68% across a portfolio of client accounts, with several clients picking up 39% more qualified leads and real revenue off the back of it.
- Delivered a multichannel campaign that generated £1.8m in fees against a £1m target.
- Acted as senior marketing lead for a 16-department legal division, owning strategy across every practice area while managing a national budget.
- Rebranded firms end to end, from strategy workshops with senior stakeholders through to brand guidelines, websites, email templates and firm-wide documents.
- Managed ongoing Legal 500, Chambers & Partners and Who’s Who Legal submissions.
- Managed national PPC holding a minimum 1:10 return on ad spend and cutting cost per lead by 14%.
- Doubled a law firm website’s clicks and impressions through a full optimisation project and CMS migration.
- Built a marketing department from scratch as a firm’s first dedicated marketer, growing it to four permanent staff.
Awards
- Marketing Campaign of the Year, Personal Injury Awards 2022
