Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Hi Rachael,

Marketing to law firms is a difficult task under the best of circumstances, so your initial results are not that surprising. An email campaign can fail for several reasons, the most likely problems being with either your list or your offer.

The list needs to include the name (and title) of a specific person, who is currently with the firm and would have an interest in IT support and/or SEO services. Some law firms employ IT staff full time, part time or as outside consultants. More typically, there will be a firm administrator, sometimes with title of office manager, sometimes the secretary of the managing partner, it really depends on the size, practice areas and other factors of the law firms you are targeting. For SEO services some firms will employ a marketing coordinator or business development person. The point is, the specific individual target for an email campaign will vary and it is unlikely you will find a list that will work without some preliminary calls to confirm the name and title of your target.

The offer should be something that provides an immediate benefit and requires the recipient to take action that is easy, such as click on a link and the target will go to a landing page where they can request your online management tool demo, white paper or ??

I have been involved in several campaigns targeting specific staff in blue chip law firms. We found that sending a well thought out and well executed physical package via FedEx yielded the best overall return for investment. We sent fewer packages at a higher cost per package but over time we landed enough new business to justify the expense.

Here are a couple links that may help:

Association of Legal Administrators
https://www.alanet.org/

Legal Marketing Association
https://www.legalmarketing.org/


Steve

Since this is probably a hyper-local business, you might try face-to-face calls offering an hour of free service while you're there. There's nothing like a no-obligation sample of what you can do to introduce yourself.

I know it sounds a little crazy, but there are no easy options with this target audience. You don't have a lot to lose.

I'm finding that email is becoming harder and harder to rely upon even as a communication medium between consenting adult parties. The spam level means everyone's defence shields are set to Klingon attack level maximum and when email does make it through to the target inbox you have approximately one nanosecond to try to cut through - the offer needs to be very powerful and then you need to be very lucky to penetrate their defence systems.

I'm with Michael on this. A thoughtfully crafted brochure (hire a marketing professional) hand-delivered to specific people - perhaps by appointment after a telephone call - to a tightly-defined law firm market could well work for you.

The prospect field does need to be specific, though. Clearly, you're offering outsourced services that larger law firms would be handling in house. Those firms wishing to make savings might be better off in-sourcing to your company - you could put someone in-house to go round the workstations fixing the physical problems that occur - while centralising the help-desk functions off-site. If that kind of initiative sounds right your target prospect is going to be the managing partner or head of finance & administration - not the existing IT guys whose lunch you would be eating.

Hope that helps!