The enterprise legal tech buyer's journey can be a complex and lengthy process, with multiple stakeholders, decision-makers, and influencers involved at different stages. To create effective marketing and sales strategies, it's essential to understand the key steps and touchpoints in this journey and tailor your approach accordingly.
Here's a step-by-step guide to mapping the enterprise legal tech buyer's journey:
Step 1: Identify key stakeholders and personas
Start by identifying the key stakeholders and personas involved in the enterprise legal tech buying process. These may include:
- General Counsel (GC) or Chief Legal Officer (CLO)
- Legal Operations Manager or Director
- IT Director or Chief Information Officer (CIO)
- Procurement Manager or Director
- Finance Manager or Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Use your persona research and customer data to understand the specific needs, goals, challenges, and preferences of each stakeholder.
Step 2: Define the buying stages
Break down the buyer's journey into clear stages that reflect the key milestones and decision points in the process. A typical enterprise legal tech buying journey might include the following stages:
- Awareness: The buyer becomes aware of a problem or opportunity and starts researching potential solutions.
- Consideration: The buyer evaluates different options and vendors, gathers information, and engages with potential providers.
- Evaluation: The buyer conducts a more in-depth assessment of shortlisted solutions, including demos, trials, and reference checks.
- Decision: The buyer makes a final selection and negotiates contracts and terms with the chosen vendor.
- Implementation: The buyer works with the vendor to implement and roll out the solution across the organization.
- Adoption: The buyer ensures successful adoption and usage of the solution by end users and stakeholders.
- Expansion: The buyer explores additional use cases, features, and opportunities to expand the relationship with the vendor.
Step 3: Map content and touchpoints to each stage
For each stage of the buyer's journey, identify the key content and touchpoints that will help move the buyer forward and address their specific needs and questions. For example:
- Awareness: Educational blog posts, industry reports, thought leadership content
- Consideration: Product overviews, feature comparisons, case studies
- Evaluation: Live demos, free trials, customer references
- Decision: Personalized proposals, contract templates, ROI calculators
- Implementation: Onboarding guides, training materials, support resources
- Adoption: User communities, best practice guides, success stories
- Expansion: Cross-sell and upsell offers, loyalty programs, executive briefings
Use your persona insights to tailor your content and messaging to the specific needs and preferences of each stakeholder at each stage.
Step 4: Identify key buying triggers and signals
Look for key buying triggers and signals that indicate when a buyer is ready to move to the next stage of their journey. These might include:
- Awareness: Engaging with educational content, attending industry events
- Consideration: Requesting a demo or trial, engaging with sales
- Evaluation: Conducting reference checks, involving additional stakeholders
- Decision: Requesting a proposal or contract, seeking budget approval
- Implementation: Completing onboarding and training, integrating with existing systems
- Adoption: Achieving key usage and satisfaction metrics, providing positive feedback
- Expansion: Expressing interest in additional features or products, renewing contracts
Use these triggers and signals to tailor your outreach and engagement at each stage and proactively guide the buyer through their journey.
Step 5: Align sales and marketing efforts
Ensure that your sales and marketing teams are aligned and working together seamlessly to support the buyer at each stage of their journey. This might include:
- Defining clear hand-off points and criteria between marketing and sales
- Providing sales with persona-specific messaging and content for each stage
- Using account-based marketing (ABM) tactics to personalize outreach and engagement
- Leveraging marketing automation and CRM tools to track and nurture leads
- Continuously sharing feedback and insights between sales and marketing
By taking a coordinated and persona-driven approach, you can create a more seamless and effective buyer experience that drives better results.
Step 6: Measure and optimize
Finally, track and measure your performance at each stage of the buyer's journey using key metrics and KPIs, such as:
- Awareness: Website traffic, content engagement, social media followers
- Consideration: Demo and trial requests, MQLs, SQLs
- Evaluation: Proof of concept completions, stakeholder engagement
- Decision: Proposals sent, win rate, average deal size
- Implementation: Time to onboard, user adoption rate
- Adoption: Customer satisfaction, net promoter score
- Expansion: Renewal rate, upsell and cross-sell revenue
Use these metrics to identify areas for improvement and continuously optimize your approach based on what's working and what's not.
By following this step-by-step guide, you can create a comprehensive and effective map of the enterprise legal tech buyer's journey. With a deep understanding of your buyer personas, key touchpoints and triggers, and a coordinated sales and marketing approach, you can engage your buyers more effectively and drive better business results.