eDiscovery Daily Blog

• October 27, 2011

 

Successful marketing efforts have two components – ‘big picture’ marketing aimed at spreading the word about what you offer, and one-on-one marketing to individual attorneys and litigation teams.  In the last several posts in this series, we covered ‘big-picture’ marketing.  Now let’s move on to techniques and mechanisms for one-on-one marketing.  Here are some suggestions aimed at doing one-on-one marketing that work:

• Know your audience.  Find out everything you can about people you will be marketing do.  Do your homework and find out about the cases they handle, the types of litigation they specialize in, the prior experience they have with litigation support and eDiscovery technology, the vendors they have used, the problems they’ve had, and their level of technical expertise.  You will always find it easier to sell to someone who you know something about.
• Understand the dynamics of the litigation team:  Before a meeting with a litigation team, find out what you can about how the team works together, who the decision makers are, how decisions are made, and who – if anyone – may have objections to what you are trying to sell.  Know whether an individual you’ll be meeting with is a decision maker, a gate-keeper, someone with influence over the decision maker, or a saboteur.  Knowing who you are marketing to will set your expectations and help you prepare for a meeting aimed at getting a project.
• Start building a good relationship.  Even if you haven’t worked with someone, you can start building a good relationship with them.  Here are some tips:
  • Always deliver what you say you can.  If you haven’t worked with someone yet, this may be delivering references, or information about your offerings.
  • Always be upfront about what you don’t know and what you can’t do.  But, fill in those gaps quickly and get back to them with information they need and contact information for others who can solve their problem.  Even if you can’t directly help them, you can become their “go-to” person for problems.  That will usually lead to business at some point.
  • Be incredibly responsive and punctual.  Never be even a minute late for a meeting and always respond quickly to phone calls and email.
  • Ask lots of questions.  This demonstrates that you have a genuine interest in your audience.

Check in next week for some more techniques and mechanisms for doing one-on-one marketing to individual attorneys and litigation teams in the firm. 

In the meantime, we’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.