Look, I get it. As a marketer, I’d been focusing on the same KPIs for years. It was my job to generate activity like site visitors, clicks, downloads, even business cards collected (I’ve been doing this a LONG time). I got to present all this wonderful activity to my boss as proof that my campaigns were a success, and it was the job of sales to simply finish the job. Done and done.
But as I became a more strategic marketer working in smaller organizations and then the co-founder of LegalTech Hub, I started focusing more on who we were REALLY trying to reach. Selling into the legal industry afforded me the luxury of identifying specific buyers in large law or corporate legal. When I was able to curate my Serviceable Obtainable Market (basically, my target audience) to a universe of a few hundred decision-makers, I was able to sharpen my focus and become far more effective.
We provide a platform that allows, among other things, legal tech buyers to research, evaluate and select solutions. There are maybe a few thousand of these buyers that legal tech solution providers are trying to reach. That’s why I get frustrated when I hear vendors ask, “what is your website traffic?” when the right question is “WHO is your website traffic?” The former question suggests that old-way mentality. The right question suggests a real grasp of what is important to the organization – actually finding ways to connect with your real target audience.
I feel the same frustration when I peruse an exhibit hall at a legal event and am told by vendors that they are having a successful event because they have performed lots of demos, or scanned hundreds of badges, or had a packed happy hour or (seriously) given away all of their swag. Of the thousands of attendees at these larger events, there are a handful of people that you really need to engage.
There’s definitely something to be said for raising brand awareness, but the main driver for investing in a marketing channel should ultimately be revenue generated. A good marketing mix includes ‘air cover’ for brand awareness and reaching influencers to the buyers, but the focus has to be on those rare buyers.
The calculus is simple. You know what kind of companies (industry, size, geography) are in the market for your solution. Let’s say that it’s the Am Law 200. You also know that the buyers in these firms are the CIO and head of innovation, with a mix of COOs, practice group heads and managing partners. You can thus conclude that your target audience is about 1,000 people, of whom just a fraction of those people are actually in the market for your type of solution right now.
What would you invest to get just one of these people to look at your solution, to read the specs, to add it to a shortlist for evaluation, to download a white paper from your site, to attend your webinar, to see a demo?
They are called your “target” audience for a reason. Find out what events they attend and pre-book meetings with them. Find out what resources they use to research solutions and make sure yours is there and up front. Find out where they become educated and put relevant content in front of them.
