From time immemorial, lawyers have played a crucial role in shaping our social fabric. With their meticulous efforts, they are at the forefront of protecting human rights, providing justice and legal advice, and have become an integral part of our society.
The global legal services market valued at $764.8 billion is poised to reach $1,256.2 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 5.7%. Reasons galore for this upward growth trajectory in the market. A few include an emerging trend of businesses needing contract management, litigation support, legal firms outsourcing non-revenue generating tasks, like business analytics, and project management, which are supporting the market growth. So, the message is clear: if you are a business offering services or products that align with the functionality of lawyers, the market is ripe!
With the right tactics, you can tap into the potential the legal service industry offers and make a mark for your venture. However lucrative the market potential seems marketing to lawyers is not easy! This market segment is not easy to persuade, as they are trained to find objections in what is pitched to them. It is more likely to gain a lawyer as your client by just getting in front of them and pitching your offerings the same way you would for any other B2B sales meeting.
Attracting lawyers as clients to a business is called marketing to lawyers.
Lawyers are busy professionals. They get paid based on the time they engage with a client; the time they invest interacting with a marketer eats away at their billing hours. Lawyers’ gatekeepers screen out promotional communications, preventing businesses from directly collaborating with their prospects. Lawyers are undeterred from taking the digital route, i.e., they prefer to do research on their own before meeting marketers. Lawyers buy a service or a product only when they need it and avoid interacting with marketers unnecessarily. Owing to their highly discerning nature, lawyers do not trust products or services until they are precise and accurate.
Let us deep dive to understand the dos and don’ts for businesses to follow while marketing to attorneys.
According to the ABA profile of the legal profession, there are around 1,331,290 active lawyers in the USA alone. The number indicates a broad audience segment. Owing to the various needs lawyers have, multiple vendors will be vying to grab their attention and win them over as their clients. In such a scenario, tactics that will not just help you touch base with lawyers but allow you to ace the marketing game is imperative.
Here are the ultimate tactics to follow while marketing to attorneys.
Understanding your audience’s needs is prima facie when a business is striving to market to lawyers effectively. 82% of marketers relied on high–quality data about their prospects to achieve desired outcomes; hence, leveraging contact databases is must. Whether marketing to lawyers with independent practice or lawyers in a law firm, you can assess your audience precisely by utilizing specific industry marketing databases. It allows businesses to understand their prospect’s specialization, their client volume, the firms they are affiliated with, their size, geographic location, and more.
Businesses or B2B marketers must infer their audience’s specific needs and pain points, which enables them to pitch the exact services that align with their professional needs and accelerate the sales cycle. Additionally, by understanding your audience’s needs, you can also modulate your offerings, offer personalized solutions or diversify your venture, win deals, and rapidly expand your business. By perceiving the audience’s needs, you can avoid throwing darts in the dark, formulate appropriate prospecting endeavors, and streamline marketing efforts for ROI.
For instance, consider a company offering KYC verification services, vying to gain clients. By leveraging contact databases, it can assess and understand the specializations of lawyers and choose to market to a multitude of professionals, ranging from intellectual property lawyers to immigration lawyers. As each lawyer’s KYC needs are different, it can accordingly modify its services to cater to their needs. Overall, from the specializations, besides precisely understanding their prospects’ needs, businesses can segment users, formulate their services appropriately, and secure lead wins.
Businesses should invest time in researching the legal industry so as to stay up to date on the latest changes and trends. In-depth research allows marketers to grasp several nuances, including any new laws that are implemented, new tech products that the industry is adopting, and more. It empowers you, as a business to offer correct solutions and meet client’s expectations. By understanding the latest challenges in the industry hindering your client’s growth, you can provide solutions that address them. It helps you to become lawyers’ trusted partners and advisors and chalk out long-lasting relationships with them.
In marketing, idealism can work wonders!
Investing time and effort in creating a comprehensive, documented profile of an enterprise’s perfect customer is highly beneficial. 74% of businesses create an ICP, as it allows you to hone your marketing endeavors and optimize targeting and messaging. With ICP being tied directly to the offerings a business provides and who is benefiting from them, it enables marketers to understand the user journey and determine a strong product or service-consumer fit.
As a business, you can collect customer data from CRM, interact with customer-facing teams, document traits, including company details, firmographic data, technographic data, purchasing patterns, and detail how your business’ offering addresses their need while creating an ICP. Companies can leverage these ICPs to identify similar users and avoid wasting time scouting for prospects. Besides improving your product’s market fit, ICP allows you as a business, to take up account-based marketing and qualify leads as MQLs and SQLs. Owing to this, you can prospect with leads that have the potential to become loyal customers and fast-track sales cycles.
While marketing to lawyers, as a business, you should be cognizant of the purchase processes and the key decision-makers involved. You can pitch your offering directly to the right prospects and close the sales deals while marketing to lawyers with independent practices. However, such a straightforward approach might not fetch results while marketing to attorneys working in law firms with a typical hierarchical structure and centralized decision-making. Instead of taking a headfirst approach, you must deviate from the usual and take into cognizance certain key factors and identify prospects with purchasing power, including department heads or a senior partner at the firm. Analyzing such factors lets you understand the decision-making process, identify key decision-makers, and narrow target audiences. Taking time out to determine the driving forces of purchase is vital for you as a business for formulating campaign messaging, deciphering the time to send correspondence, and seizing deals swiftly.
As a B2B marketer, it is important to know what you are selling, i.e., the pros and cons of your offerings and how they will benefit the end user. A good understanding of your offerings will allow you to confidently pitch offerings to lawyers. Knowing your product inside and outside helps you, as a business, craft communication that will communicate your offering’s benefits better to the audience, nudging them to make a purchase quickly.
For instance, consider a tech firm selling software for lawyers. Instead of marketing it as just software for lawyers or software for solicitors, an approach that states project management software for lawyers to boost billing hours will be more impactful in persuading prospects to purchase.
As a business, you must tailor your messaging according to the industry’s language to connect with lawyers on a deeper level and increase the likelihood of winning leads. Understanding terms specific to legal jargon helps you resonate with your prospects and establish a sense of credibility. With appropriate and concise communication that strikes a chord with lawyers, you can easily clinch a deal.
Lawyers are always keen on collaborating with vendors or businesses who can bring unique value to the table with their knowledge and expertise. It is crucial for you, as a business, to highlight your domain expertise while marketing to lawyers or attorneys. You can accomplish this by providing evidence of your successful work in the legal realm.
For instance, consider an enterprise that provides online document storage services for the legal industry. Showcasing testimonials from their existing users stating how their service made a difference to their practice allows it to demonstrate the stronghold it has in the legal domain.
Showcasing your excellent expertise in a specific domain allows you, as an enterprise, to secure a significant position for your brand and positively influence prospects to buy your offerings.
Using your product’s unique value proposition in the marketing tactics allows you, as a business, to communicate the benefits of your offerings to the target audience and gain leads. Incorporating your offerings’ value proposition in marketing communication lets you differentiate your brand from the competitors. Additionally, marketing benefits through a value proposition can help you nurture a strong connection with the users, achieve 19% revenue growth, and 15% higher profits.
Keeping a list of references handy will be highly beneficial for you as a business, as lawyers, attorneys, and solicitors rely heavily on recommendations while making decisions. Including lawyers who are or were associated with your organization and who can vouch for the quality of your services will be beneficial. Your references create a positive impression of your brand, as 92% of users trust personal referrals. While providing references, you should ensure that these recommendations are credible and that they have given their consent for their information to be shared.
Besides building trust with potential clients, sharing references allows you, as a business, to boost your prospect’s confidence about choosing them as their vendors. Businesses can also utilize positive online reviews on social platforms or websites to gain traction, as 81% of users trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Businesses should not shy away from displaying testimonials on their websites or product pages as it increases lead conversions by 34%.
Previously, assessing a prospect’s purchase trends and figuring out marketing strategies to promote offerings was a daunting task for businesses. You had to sift through numerous client interactions and manually decipher trends to make future marketing decisions. With the advent of CRM, this has become a problem of a bygone era, and 74% of businesses are using it to access user data.
As SMBs or vendors marketing to attorneys, you can use CRM to keep the guesswork out and gain specific insights about your client’s purchase journey, buying cycle, and more. With such valuable insights at your behest, as a business, you can make accurate decisions about the strategies you have to employ while marketing and gain maximum ROI with limited marketing spend.
As a business, you should consider building long-lasting partnerships with lawyers to slice through the complex marketing maze. By going the extra mile, you can ignite trust in prospects you are associating with, as your services can directly or indirectly impact the client’s reputation. As a business marketing to lawyers, to foster trust, you must be transparent about your processes and quickly resolve any issues they are facing that have arisen after using your products or services. You can also offer a trial period to lawyers to emphasize the value of your offerings and their positive impact on their practice. Besides helping you create a bond of trust with your prospects, such an approach allows you to differentiate your brand from the rest and attract clients.
Pricing is a pivotal move in the intricate world of B2B marketing, dictating revenue and shaping the growth trajectory of enterprises. The right pricing strategy helps you, as a business, to cement the deal and easily acquire users. To optimize lead acquisition based on pricing, you should first decipher the prospect’s budget, as lawyers often work with stringent budgets and are conscious of their investments and spending. By assessing the financial parameters under which lawyers are working, you can devise an effective price model, including cost-plus-based, value-based, competitor-based pricing, and more. Based on the prospect’s budget constraints and financial parameters, you can pitch your offerings using a monthly or a yearly subscription model and swiftly seize the deal.
Furthermore, a good understanding of the prospect’s budget allows you to raise the selling price and witness growth rates of over 5%. By comprehending the prospect’s financial parameters, as a B2B business, you can also offer cost-effective, affordable solutions that meet lawyer’s needs, leading to a long-term partnerships and repeat business.
How to market to lawyers? Think like a lawyer!
The rule of thumb that any business providing services to the legal industry must remember is to think like their client. Put yourself in your prospect’s perspective and, think about the issues they face daily, and formulate a marketing strategy that addresses their questions.
Some of the questions include:
While marketing to lawyers, legal vendors and businesses should explore a multitude of channels to promote their offerings. They should take into cognizance the most prominent channel their prospects, i.e., lawyers use for receiving promotional communication, and latch on to it.
Source: Statista
Some of the channels legal vendors can explore while marketing to attorneys include the following:
By providing a self-serve environment, websites allow businesses to connect and transact with potential prospects easily. Creating a website tailored to the needs of lawyers helps you, as a business, attract the right clients. By optimizing the website for SEO, companies can be easily discovered and gain visibility. Additionally, showcasing content that appeals to lawyers, like recent court decisions, law amendments, and the latest legal news, helps you to draw the right clients who are hungry for updates. You can drive users to product pages by displaying appropriate products or services and gaining leads. Owing to the benefits a well-made website offers, 80% of businesses are using it to communicate with potential prospects and also to promote their brand.
Businesses are making a beeline for leveraging SEO to market their services to lawyers, as 60% of marketers are gaining better leads with it. As perfect vista for legal vendors to promote their offerings 24/7 and find new clients organically, SEO gives businesses a competitive edge. SEO paves the way for organic discovery and, in turn, leads to increased website traffic. SEO leads offer a 14.6% higher close rate than leads generated through traditional marketing channels, and as a business marketing to lawyers, you must explore it as a promotional avenue.
If you are an SMB working within stringent financial parameters, you must consider PPC, as it enables you to control ad budgets and pay only for clicks on ads, giving an ROI of 200%. PPC allows you to target audiences based on several specific parameters, like time of day, geographic location, and more. Besides complementing SEO, PPC drives immediate traffic to your enterprise’s website, increasing visibility and boosting sales.
With content marketing campaigns costing 62% less than alternative campaigns, businesses are exploring this avenue with great zeal. As legal vendor, you can effectively promote your offerings through numerous vistas via content marketing, including videos, articles, and blog posts, to name a few. Through content marketing, you can educate your audience, establish yourself as a subject matter expert, and latch on to new lead sources. Hence, owing to this, around 67% of marketers use content marketing to generate leads.
Here is an overview of the best-performing content marketing formats for businesses:
| Formats | Effectiveness |
|---|---|
| Video | 45% |
| Short form articles | 31% |
| Success stories | 28% |
| Long form blogs | 24% |
| Case studies | 19% |
| White papers | 14% |
| Infographics | 17% |
Source: Forbes ADVISOR
Social media as a marketing avenue is a remarkable opportunity for legal vendors to gain the required traction for user acquisition, as 75% of B2B buyers use it to make purchase decisions. Social media offers various content distribution channels based on conceptuality, relevance of users, user intent, and more, and effectively reach your target audience. When coupled with content offers like eBooks and white papers, social media marketing can drive leads into the sales funnel. As social media platforms allows you, as businesses to distribute valuable content, connect with prospects, and engage with clients in real-time, nine out of ten B2B businesses are using platforms like LinkedIn for digital marketing. Additionally, 90% of attorneys are present on LinkedIn, which makes it the most effective channel for you, as a legal vendor to pitch your offerings to the target audience.
Online marketing has taken the driving seat and shadowed traditional offline methods. However, the benefits of offline marketing cannot be ignored. An eight-second attention span paired with an extremely appealing visual in any form of physical branding like print ads and hoardings will be impactful as human minds process visuals effectively. As a business marketing to lawyers, you can also employ digital signage, as they are 71% more impactful than online ads. As legal vendor, you can also explore networking events and trade shows, as 70% of businesses are acquiring leads through these channels. By making your presence felt in legal tech conferences, as a business, you can make impactful sponsorships in such events and grab opportunities to interact with lawyers and attract them as clients. You can also explore telecalling as a marketing and relationship-building channel and an avenue to pitch your offerings to attorneys, as 84% of B2B marketers recognize it as a lead generation powerhouse. Besides this, as a business, you can also approach lawyers through direct mail marketing and establish a strong connection with your prospects, which is vital for nudging them in their purchase journey.
The legal industry has an average email open rate of 35%. Hence, as a business, you must include email campaigns in your marketing strategy. With a greater scope for personalized messaging and mobile-friendly email templates that appease users, email marketing campaigns fetch an ROI of $36$ for every $1 spent.
Besides email marketing, referral marketing is another avenue for you, as a business, to collaborate with attorneys and add them to their user base. With 84% of B2B decision makers starting their buying process owing to referral and word-of-mouth marketing offering 4x more conversion rates, as a legal vendor, you must not shy away from taking up referral marketing.
Here are some of the latest trends as a business, you can adopt to obtain the best marketing outcomes and win lucrative deals while pitching your products or services to lawyers.
Optimizing the website content for EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), so that the quality content performs well in Google results and your businesses gains more visibility.
With active users amounting to 800 million and a daily average usage of 1.5 hours per user, as a business offering your services to lawyers, you must harness the potential of the TikTok platform to boost sales and increase product reach. Besides TikTok, as a legal vendor, you must also explore the numerous possibilities associated with YouTube videos. You must leverage them to showcase your products, testimonials, and how-to-use product videos, as 83% of businesses use them owing to the strong ROI they fetch.
Embracing AI technologies like ChatGTP for content generation, sentiment analysis, audience segmentation, FAQs, and customer interaction through Chabots enhances the efficiency of marketing endeavors for you as a business or legal vendor.
To stay in the lead, as a business marketing to lawyers, you must include voice search optimization in your list of marketing tactics. With voice-activated searches on the rise owing to the high adoption of voice assistants, you must develop content that matches conversational words and meets the needs of natural language queries.
By utilizing AR, as a legal vendor marketing to lawyers, you can gain a huge competitive edge. It empowers you to show virtually how your products fit in their spaces, boost user engagement, and achieve a higher conversion rate.
With numerous tactics at your behest and options to explore from a plentiful of marketing vehicles, you can create a marketing mix of all these techniques. You can measure the efficacy of each tactic and marketing vehicle, by considering the number of leads generated, lead conversions achieved, users gained through ads, and ultimately determine the marketing ROI gained through various endeavors.
Marketing to lawyers is not a cakewalk. The legal industry is complex, and its stakeholders are meticulous. By following the above-mentioned tactics, understanding their niche-specific needs, and delivering great service and products, you can attract lawyers as clients. The key aspect while marketing to lawyers is to understand how they think, function, and play the field as it is.
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