Enable Business Solutions: The hype before the dull party invite
2020 threw one of the biggest curveballs in the history of legal marketing that you probably need little reminding of. Despite innovation being enforced, now that we are nearing the end of 2021, we can confidently conclude that marketers stepped up to the challenges successfully – and then some. Technology adoption skyrocketed – something that this department is generally quite good at to start with – and new approaches have been mapped out and turned around seemingly overnight.
As the theme of this year’s PM Forum suggests, if 2020 was the year for change then 2021 is the year for consolidation. Marketers have played a critical role in keeping their firm’s brand alive in the digital space but with hybrid working in full swing and some webinar and survey fatigue kicking in, they must keep their eyes on the prize and continue working on strengthening the approaches that brought the biggest returns.
Customisation has been high if not highest up on that list. Going beyond a “Hello [FNAME]” email greeting many firms invested in more robust CRM, that allow collecting better insights and consequent segmentation; content marketing that addresses very specific issues, targeted at narrowly defined audiences and the list goes on. However, most efforts have been directed at the customisation of the first couple of steps of the journey and not the later stages – the pitches, to be exact – which is the reason we are so keen to contribute to this year’s PM Forum.
Imagine if someone said that that they are the unquestionable best choice when it comes to organising birthday parties and spend months targeting you with content that resonates on platforms that they know you use. If you are like me, they would know from my Spotify playlists that I love film scores and Hamilton, from my Instagram feed that I will choose bourbon over beer and from my search history that I like local history. These three points would already give them enough opportunities to push content towards me that gets my interest and approaching my birthday (after a discovery call), they would have a robust understanding about me and what would get my buy-in. Now imagine getting one of their standard brochures with the generic and empty statement of being “client-first” and “understanding your needs” as a pitch. This doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be able to deliver on my needs, but it means that they lost my business just as I was about to sign on the line.
Legal pitches are no different. Not dedicating enough effort to their customisation diminishes all the effort invested in the stages before. People are aware of the amount of information you hold about them (or how much you can hold if you do your research), so in exchange for that they expect that you use it and make them feel genuinely understood. This absolutely does take time, but it doesn’t need to start from square one every single time – which is where technology comes in. One of our biggest ambitions behind PitchPerfect is to give you an intuitive solution that allows you to spend more time getting the content of pitches spot on without having to worry about the look and feel of the final output. Using a familiar Microsoft Word or Power Point environment you can pull data into your custom designed templates without having to go back and forth trying to find the right information to fill the gaps. This way you can significantly reduce the turnaround time of pitch creation whilst making them a closer fit to your prospect’s requirements.
Almost as sweet of an idea as the cookies we are delivering to all PM Forum attendees!
