Podcast Ep. 144: ABM for Law Firms- An Effective Approach to Creating More Opportunities

In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast, Guy is joined by Auseh Britt, the Vice President of Growth Marketing at Terminus, and Kasey Johnson, the General Counsel at Terminus. Auseh leads demand generation, marketing operations, field marketing, and account-based marketing across new business and customer expansion. Kasey is a member of the Terminus Executive Leadership Team and the business’s chief lawyer. She is responsible for overseeing and managing all legal services, including providing strategic legal counsel to management, managing legal risk, and overseeing company contracts and business deals. Auseh and Kacey join us today to discuss what account-based marketing is, and how it relates to the legal industry.

Podcast Shownotes

What is account-based marketing (ABM)? 

Account-based marketing, or ABM as it’s commonly known, is a go-to-market strategy. It’s been getting a lot of popularity amongst B2B companies over the last few years. We’ve seen a faster adoption of ABM since the pandemic, as well. Many companies, especially law firms, have used more traditional channels to build those relationships. ABM is a great strategy to use for customer expansion. Still, at its core, ABM is really about gaining alignment between your marketing and sales team and identifying your ideal customer profile and which of those accounts are the best fit for your business.

How can ABM be used in the legal industry? 

ABM can be used in new acquisitions and can be used in pipeline acceleration. We take those opportunities that have been created and that the business development team has already worked on, and we speed them along to have a faster sales cycle and increase their opportunity size. In the legal industry, I think it’s crucial to identify opportunities for growth within customer accounts. You have to make sure that you’re putting together a multi-channel approach that targets them with relevant messaging to their business plan and how it applies to them, the value you bring to them, and what solutions you have to help them solve their problems.

What marketing tactics and programs grab your attention and compel you to respond? 

I think to be efficient and get the attention of the general counsel or hiring deputies of in-house legal teams, the marketing outreach has to know my business and have a really good idea of what I might need as an in-house lawyer. So, an effective marketing tactic would be something that marries a lawyer’s background and personal bio, with their ability to solve a problem they know I have. Hence, they know Terminus is a software and service. Therefore, we interface a lot with privacy issues, so the marketing outreach could present a specific lawyer who has something in common, perhaps with me, and something in common with my business’s needs. Those are the best ways to get your outreach efforts as outside counsel in front of and opened by the in-house legal team’s lawyers. In many respects, they’re a dime a dozen. Many different lawyers have many practice areas so it has to be more than ‘hey, I do this type of work, you should hire me.’

How do I get started with ABM?

Start by identifying your ideal customer and aligning that with sales. The next step would be putting together a plan on how you’ll engage with those accounts and looking at those accounts. Understanding the key players, the decision-makers of personas within those accounts that you’re trying to reach. What kind of publications are they reading, what types of podcasts do they listen to, what kinds of events they go to, specific associations they’re a part of- really understanding where they get their information. Then you can put together a plan on how you’re going to get your message out to reach them. Then activate your business development team so that those accounts start sending those signals and see how they respond. The last part is having well-defined metrics on how you’re going to measure success.

Takeaway:

ABM is an effective go-to-market strategy for any B2B organization. It provides an efficient and effective approach to reaching, engaging, closing, and growing your best fit accounts. If you’d like to learn more about account-based marketing, watch our free on-demand webinar, Account-Based Marketing for Law Firms, to gain insight.