Marketing of Legal Tech Solutions

 

I am both a user and an implementer of the legal technology (legal tech) solutions. I interact with and engage in discussions with both the vendors of the legal tech and the management of law firms, who will ultimately take the decision of subscribing to the legal tech solution for their firms.

Often, I find the vendors (most of them) of the legal tech lacking the direct knowledge or  experience of working in a law firm or legal department, and this results in blind spots in identifying target audiences and their problems. At the end of the day, you want to create a space and position your solution in market where is the target audience is inherently slow to adopt technology.

The principles of marketing remain the same, just the way of capturing the minds of target audience is different. And hence, below are some of my takeaways for starting the marketing of your solution based on my professional experience and academic rigor.

1. Positioning – The market is full of solutions from matter management to generative AI, and everyone claims they are superior. But the law firms or legal departments are wary. They want to see if their problem is getting solved or not. Agreed, sales discovery is where the law firm will tell you their problem but even before they engage in sales discovery, they need to select the solution to even think about it. How are you different from others?

2. Target Audience - The landscape of the legal tech is changing, especially in India. There are law firms, legal departments, government agencies, etc., who need legal tech solutions. In addition, today's law firms are trying to build their products and to specifically integrate generative AI. Hence, finding the right audience is important. Selling your product to everyone will only result in spending more efforts without any returns. Who is the one who will purchase your solution?

3. Messaging - Security of data is paramount for legal professionals. Tech jargon is not something legal professionals are comfortable with. Content should focus on what these aspects while aligning with the defined positioning of the solution, i.e., how the solution will solve their problem. Case studies definitely help that can talk about problem and how the solution helped solve the problem with the process involved. Key point is the target audience that primarily sells services. Hence, messaging should also focus on the services after inking the contracts - implementation, support, customization, configuration, etc., where the product is not being sold but the services are. What do they want to hear and listen?

4. Strategic Growth & Measurement - Finally, a strategy is required for continuous marketing with a focus on SEO, SPM, content (across platforms and media), networking events, and analytics. Whatever is being done for marketing and growth will not achieve results and returns unless there are defined metrics to measure them. What should you do and how do you measure?

The sale may be of product and promise of service but marketing is for pre-sales consulting, product, and service.

 Let me know what are your thoughts. We can catch up and discuss further.