Comprehensive Guides and Strategies to Elevate Your Law Firm's Success

I’ve had M.I.T. educated, highly business-savvy people ask me for lead generation, when they were really after demand gen and didn’t know it. So are they the same thing? No, but similar. What’s the difference between the two? Demand generation is like casting a large fishing net around the target audience, hoping to raise awareness. Lead generation is like throwing a fishhook in, once they’re in the net, to start gathering prospective customer data (email, mobile number, etc.). Let’s take a deep dive (no pun intended) into different examples of each, as well as further explanation. Why Demand Generation is Vital It’s tempting to skip demand gen and go straight to capturing customer data (lead gen); however, the seasoned marketer knows that in most cases this will be money thrown into oblivion, never to be seen again. This is because people haven’t been “warmed” up to you yet. It’s like the difference of a guy going up to an unknown girl and asking, “do you want to start dating?” She’s obviously going to say no in most cases. On the other hand, if the guy goes up to the unknown girl and asks, “Do you work around here?” It’s a very superficial starting point where the girl can start engaging with the guy in conversation, without there being any commitment involved. In a similar way, demand generation is warming up the target audience, starting the process of building trust and the perceived need for your offering. Demand Gen creates the awareness and interest that subsequently allows you to use Lead Gen to actually start acquiring customer data. People in a boardroom looking at a spreadsheet often want to skip this step and go straight toward what they think will impact the bottom line with lead generation; however, the savvy entrepreneur knows that demand gen, when done properly, DOES directly impact the bottom line. We don’t want to use this resource as an opportunity to talk about ourselves, but would be remiss if we didn’t mention that we know of several clients who are now reaping the benefits of doing proper demand gen to compliment their lead gen and sales and service efforts. They are now experiencing a much fuller business as well as family life as a result of some of the opportunities that continue to come their way as a result of doing things the right way. We've also seen the alternative: Businesses who were so focused on creating SaaS market share instantly that they refused to do any demand generation. As a result, they always wanted the "quick win" - instant customers without building credibility or properly establishing a need in the marketplace - and the "quick wins" never materialized into a sustainable momentum that would carry the company forward. Where to Start with Demand Gen The first step is to figure out who your target audience is. A great book on this, written many years ago, is “The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market” by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema. Disclaimer: the link I provided does give us a commission if you buy it on Amazon. In it, the authors point out, with several examples, that you can actually grow more, the more refined your targeting is. In other words, the less people you reach, the more potential you have to make a bigger impact. Although this seems like an oxymoron: reach less to do more??! But if you follow the train of thought, it’s not so much about the quantity of the people you’re trying to reach, it’s more about who the demographics of those people. Let's say you have a fictitious filing service that you wanted to promote. If you just bought a super bowl ad and said to the masses, “buy this great service, it will help you file things easier,” you might get a little traction. On the other hand, if you took the time to determine that the people who could benefit the MOST from your filing service are intellectual property (IP) attorneys, you could skip buying a cost-prohibitive Super Bowl ad and just go after them specifically. When I say specifically, I of course mean you’d be targeting them in the settings of the ads you place. Equally as important, your messaging would be crafted to specifically get their attention. You could use the acronyms and verbiage IP attorneys use on a regular basis. You could "speak their language," so to speak. This may be at the cost of people who are not IP attorneys being completely lost as to how your service would benefit them. Which is okay because, at this point, they are not your target market! Believe it or not, your business’s ad spend would be much more contained and could have an incredibly higher ROI. Once you're getting traction in this specific legal niche, you may want to expand to other niches or industries that would also benefit from your service. You could basically "rinse and repeat" by running demand gen targeted toward them. Demand Generation Examples There is an almost endless list of things one could do that would qualify as Demand Generation. Here are some examples: guest hosting a podcast publishing content online display advertising on Faceboook (B2C) or LinkedIn (B2B) doing a Super Bowl commercial SEO brand mentions thru influencer marketing Why Marketers Love Lead Generation Imagine a farmer tilling and cultivating his land for months and seeing no return on his efforts. What keeps him going? It's his knowledge that at harvest-time he will most likely be able to reap a harvest. In the same way, businesses greatly look forward to the lead generation portion of their marketing flywheel. This is the beginning of the "harvest" part of their business. Lead generation is not to be confused with closing sales. It is often the prerequisite to making the sale. It is the gathering of the specific customer data that the sales and/or marketing teams can hopefully convert into paying and satisfied customers. Lead Generation Examples free download in exchange for customer data free trial webinars email drip campaign (very effective, when done right) social media One of the most common examples of Lead Gen is gated content. This is asking for customer data, such as an email address, in exchange for a video, a free downloadable guide or a free trial. Another example is a webinar, which typically requires a target customer's data in order to attend it. Some of our clients are experiencing great success with email drip campaigns. This is a long-term approach, and is most effective when the focus is on providing value instead of making sales. Before moving on, I'll mention that social media is another effective example of this - even for B2B businesses. A Complete Marketing Flywheel A popular buzzword in marketing for the last several years is "funnel;" however, we appreciate HubSpot's new term "flywheel." Although only subtly different, a flywheel helps to integrate other departments and functions within an organization for optimum growth. Instead of just relying on Sales and Marketing for growth, this is a more holistic approach that helps emphasize the importance of the follow-up that occurs once the sale has been made. Is the service department helping people become so delighted with the brand that they want to recommend it to their friends and colleagues? Is the product or service continually being improved so current customers wouldn't even consider going to the competition? All these things inevitably make it easier to also sell the current client base on add-ons. Demand Gen and Lead Gen Only Part of the Picture With that said, your demand and lead generation efforts are vitally important, but also need to be followed up with other aspects of the organization being strong. Combined, all these efforts and activities can result in a solid organization that continues to grow. All the best as you put some of these ideas into practice!

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