InsideLegal

Not Twitter savvy but don't want to miss out on the LegalTech NY buzz?

There is a wealth of information and industry buzz that takes place on Twitter around tradeshows, but we realize not everyone is active on or comfortable with Twitter. We've created a webpage on InsideLegal that will allow you to follow the LegalTech buzz without having a Twitter account or any social media experience. This page will constantly update and you can view this page any time between now and two weeks after LegalTech. Hope this helps!

View InsideLegal's LegalTech NY Twitter Activity Page

 

InsideLegal Master Legal Events Calendar Updated for 2012

Since 2001, we have been compiling the InsideLegal Master Legal Events Calendar, the most comprehensive international legal events calendar (on this site and printed in various legal publications) and we have just completed the update for the remainder of 2012. For 2012, you’ll find over 110 events spanning more than 250 days of legal conferences spanning all facets of law management - technology, security, marketing, eDiscovery, business development, law practice management, financial, knowledge management, global business, training, legal education, risk management - as well as vendor user conferences and events geared towards corporate counsel, legal administrators, paralegals, trial lawyers, law libarians, etc.

We welcome any links to the calendar and if you have an event that you would like considered for addition, email us the details. Please send:

• Dates
• Event name
• Event host/producer
• City, state 
• URL

 

ILTA 2010: It's Officially Crunch Time

Last week, we wrapped up our annual "ILTA Marketing Plan" webinar, which we co-host with Peggy Wechsler, ILTA's program director. While this session is geared at any and all details related to exhibiting at the August educational conference - you can download the recorded webinar here - there are some points, especially on the promotion and marketing/PR front, that fit into the bigger picture category. Specifically, we always talk about how legal vendors can best prepare themselves pre-event and truly reap the rewards of their investment post-event. While you can listen to the entire conversation via the webinar recording, the highlights worth repeating include: 

Know your audience: ILTA projects 1,000 member attendees for the August 22-26 educational conference at the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas, a 20+% increase from 2009. How well do you know the attendees? their firms? their IT & technology purchasing priorities? Which ILTA regions do they belong to? How active are they in their local ILTA chapters? Educate yourself: If you are a registered exhibitor, review the registration list emailed to you pre-show (you should have the first 'version' by now); cross-reference this with existing clients and firm contacts;  pull up ILTA's regional groups and see if you know any of the regional VPs or city reps. Also, when is the last time you looked at ILTA members' technology purchasing habits and influences? Go back to the 2009 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey (of law firms with 50+ attorneys), and review firm purchasing patterns and what they are planning to buy this year.

Did you know? According to ILTA's preliminary demographic statistics, 79% of all attendees are with 50+ attorney firms and 82% have manager titles and higher (10% C-level, 35% directors, 37% managers). 

Set objectives (beyond lead generation): Most of us will attend a trade show with one goal in mind - generating sales leads and developing new business contacts. Well, as anyone who has attended an ILTA event will be quick to tell you, the conference is NOT a trade show. It's all about education and peer as well as social networking. Re-think your event goals and expand your objectives to include meeting the ILTA board; linking up with your region's RVP; introducing yourself to an editor you have heard about and who's articles you might enjoy; having coffee with a blogger or technologist who covers your application area or service specialty; walking over to another vendor's booth to chat about potential partnerships or alliance building opportunities. The list goes on an on. And, when you are not busy with expanding your network, attend one of the 150 educational sessions spanning the 4 main areas of discipline (info management, organization management, applications/desktop, and technology operations).   

Check yourself, before you ...: How well do you know your company? the value you deliver your clients (perceived vs. real)? why your different from others? And, can you deliver that 'elevator pitch' without having to ride up to the top of the Empire State Building? The point here is to review your sales pitch, your marketing boiler plate language and your collateral before you unleash them on innocent ILTA-ites. If your CEO  can't make a believer out of me, how will others lower in the food chain manage?

Target-aim & fire: Based on your intimate knowledge of your target audience (we assume you took our earlier pointers to heart!), customizing offers for each set of prospects should be straightforward. Channel your creativity and come up with new ways of promoting yourself, company and products. Seek advice from clients you trust or industry insiders about what they would like to see and how you can grab their attention. And finally, don't neglect balance and make sure you are reaching out across multiple channels (think integrating exhibits, web, ads, direct mail & promos, social media and PR).

Follow-through and up: Your nifty ILTA plan and strategy is only as genius and effective as your ability to follow-though and implement it, so don't overshoot. More importantly, your ability or inability to follow-up post-show will set the tone for future plans. According to various trade groups, 85% of trade show leads and contacts are not followed up on. Can you believe it? Don't become a statistic. Implement your follow-up program before you even get home from Vegas. Assemble a post-show report card so you can grade and rank all your activities and provide some data and fodder for the next go-around.

Stay tuned for further tips on maximizing your ILTA experience. Next up: A closer look at the 2010 ILTA vendor education program and why vendor CEOs and marketing directors must attend. 

Vote now on the content you would like us to offer at the ILTA Vendor Education Program produced by InsideLegal! Poll is open until the end of the day July 19th.

Lead Generation Marketing: Converting RSVPs into Attendees

As anyone familiar with marketing knows, a majority of marketing initiatives are conceived to generate leads and ideally sell, or at a minimum, greatly assist in selling a company's goods and services. The legal technology industry is no different. In fact, according to the 2008 InsideLegal.com Legal Technology Vendor Marketing Survey, 79% of all marketing programs have lead generation as the primary goal. With this in mind, it is helpful to differentiate between lead generation that results in a face-to-face meeting, a product demonstration, or a seminar RSVP, compared to leads that are aimed at closing deals, bringing in new business, and directly impacting the bottomline. 

In this case, we'll focus on 'indirect' lead generation in the form of event attendance. How many times have you produced an event - a webinar, a 'lunch and learn', or perhaps a one day workshop- and waited with baited breath for the RSVPs to roll in. Then, once you straddled the RSVP hurdle you were even more anxious about ensuring adequate attendance (actual 'live bodies') to your event. Typically, the correlation between RSVPs and actual day-of event attendance is determined by event type, event venue (or access), event cost, and overall goodwill gained by attending or ill-will earned through absence. Here are some observations as it relates to legal event RSVPs vs. attendance: If producing a webinar, the further in advance you send the initial invite, the smaller the overall attendance (people usually don't plan webinars or web sessions more than a week or so in advance). If producing a complimentary webinar and relying on evites/HTML invites, a majority of RSVPS will occur on the first day the invitation was sent. Email reminders for webinars sent between 3 days prior and up to 3 hours before are most effective. For seminars and educational programs offered free of charge, the RSVP-to-attendance conversion rate is commonly less than 50% and influenced by many factors including event content, ease of getting to venue and length of event, allegiance to the event host/producer (aka 'the guilt factor'), and overall competition from other events or invites.

While there is no silver bullet or magic formula for increasing your RSVP-to-attendance conversion ratio, there are several tips that will guarantee you have adequately covered all your promo and marketing angles (and hopefully result in better attendance):

Set the tone with professional invites and follow-through: Your invitation is often times your first point of contact with your prospects so make sure you are sending out very professional, appealing content that clearly articulates your value proposition and answers the attendee's main question: "what's in it for me?" Once RSVPs are received, make sure you acknowledge receipt and confirm attendance (usually handled by auto-response emails).

Preach value as well as exclusivity: When you send a follow-up or reminder to the initial invite, add unique content tidbits to further entice attendance and to communicate exclusivity of this 'invite-only' event.

Rely on grassroots (word-of-mouth) promotion using social media: While it is not realistic or advisable to blast the invitees with pre-event reminders and 'save the date' messages, it is possible to use social media tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to not only extend your invitation scope but to intelligently 'tease' and preview content attendees will be privy too. For example, if you are inviting legal IT executives to attend a webinar focused on presenting results of a recent IT Budgeting and Purchasing survey, use LinkedIn to provide pre-webinar polls, leverage Facebook to sign up 'fans' and encourage conversation about some of the survey toplines, and tap into twitter to send out short (all you have is 140 character anyway), thought provoking statistics and survey factoids (and web invite links) to your followers and potential webinar attendees. Beyond social media, good old fashioned 'door-to-door' tactics might work well, venue permitting. For example, we recently hosted a tradeshow vendor education program and went booth-to-booth the morning of the event to remind RSVP(ers) and others who had not heard anything about the event.

Tap into your 'social' network: Most events often involve external speakers, panel participants, and lecturers- all of whom are very vested in your event and want nothing more than to draw a big crowd and fill those seats just like you. With a little planning and foresight, you can collaborate with your content providers and have them help promote your event, in some cases to the same crowd you are reaching, in other cases to a whole new group of prospects you might not have thought of or had access to.

Reward RSVPs that attend: Do not take attendance to your events for granted. Consider that your audience will always have a reason to not attend (they'll have more reasons during the economic downturn), but rather seek the event presentation notes and other leave-behind. Reward your attendees for coming with an exclusive gift, acknowledgement, hand-out or other give-away.

At the end of the day, and before you start serving your pre-event continental breakfast, you want to feel good about the outreach and promotion you have engaged in beforehand. If you follow-through on some of the common sense methods above, you'll be able to not only fill more seats at your events but build valuable, hopefully long-term relationships with your prospects.

Note: InsideLegal decided to 'eat our own dogfood' and follow the aforementioned RSVP-to-attendee conversion tips when producing our recent ILTA Legal Vendor Education Program. The result: We received 135 RSVPs to our 3 hour long educational track, and counted actual attendance in excess of 95 through various panel discussions offered as part of the program.  

Ten Rules for Conference Vendors from Matt Homann

Just in time for ILTA, below is a list of ten rules for conference vendors from LexThink's Matt Homann.  How many of the rules does your company break? 

1.  If the only way you can sell your value proposition is with a white paper, you don't have a value proposition.

2.  You do not earn my attention by giving me a pen. You earn it by solving a problem I can't solve without you.

3.  The more your booth looks like everyone else's the more I think your product does what everyone else’s does, too.

4.  Don’t get offended if I don’t believe your product will do what you promise.  I’ve been burned before by people who sounded and looked a lot like you.

5.  Everyone working your booth should have a 7 word answer to the question “What do you do?”  The first three words of that answer should be “We help you…”

6.  The number of words on your booth is inversely proportional to the likelihood I’ll read any of them.

7.  These five words should NEVER appear on your booth: Trusted, Leading, Innovative, Premier, and Unique.  If they do, you probably aren’t.

8.  Dump the booth babes.  If I can’t trust you to make good decisions about your marketing, how can I trust you to make good decisions about serving me?

9.  Your product’s benefits are not as different from your competitors’ as you believe them to be.  Instead of selling me “unique” features, sell me outstanding service.

10.  Capture my attention before you capture my contact information.  A one-dollar USB drive in exchange for a year of emails and telephone calls is not a fair trade.

You can view the rest of Matt's "10 Rules" Posts here.

Outside Insights for Legal Exhibitors

Often, vendors spend more effort preparing for a trade show and talking about maximizing their efforts there, than they do actually "working" the show.  Tim Corcoran of Altman Weil wrote an article about this topic that has some great points to think about when exhibiting (and when interfacing with prospects/external audiences in general) ... How does your team work the booth?  Are they engaging but not intimidating?  Can you succinctly articulate what makes you/your product or service unique? Do you and your staff make the most of the show and maximize your investment by participating in the networking events?

Sticking with the theme of "vendors trade show/general business preparedness",  here are some "tweets" uber-consultant/blogger Matt Homann composed while walking the exhibit hall at the ABA TECHSHOW recently in Chicago...

• "Vendors: If the only way you can "sell" your value proposition is with a white paper, you don't have a value proposition."

• "Vendors, the more your booth looks like everyone else's the more I think your product is too."

• "Vendors: You do not earn my attention by giving me a pen. You earn it by solving a problem I can't solve without you."

Master Legal Technology/Law Firm Management Events Calendar

We have published the InsideLegal Legal Technology/Law Firm Management Master Events Calendar, the only comprehensive, one-stop, international legal technology event overview we know of (includes over 80 events).

If you have an event you would like us to consider adding (bar event, vendor/user conference, etc.), please email us with the following information...  

• Dates
• Event Name
• Owner of the Event
• Location (City, State, Country)
• Website URL

Also, please let us know if you want to include this link on your site, blog, etc.

LegalTech New York - The Post Post

Another year, another LegalTech under our collective belts. This year was our 9th trip to NY for LegalTech and everyone was waiting to see how the "hold your breath because of the economy" scenario would play out.

Overall attendance appeared to be down quite a bit from previous years (compared to a reported 12,797 in 2008) which was not surprising with the current business climate.  Also, there were a few less exhibitors than in 2008 according to Incisive Media.  With that said, it seemed that overall attendee quality was up (see our separate post on our on-site exhibitor InsideLegal flash poll later this week) and there was more eagerness to get business done.  Ironically, the smaller crowd allowed for more indepth talks in the booth without the prospects being pushed away by the crowd. (See post on LTNY exhibit hall pics)

New for vendors in 2009 was expansion of the exhibit space into the 3rd floor ballroom and the removal of booths from the dreaded back hallway.  I was not sure how this would play out, but the hall seemed to have traffic each time I went in and the space looked like it belonged with the show.  This was a creative way to add space, but also did add to the disjointed nature of the exhibit space. 

2009 was the year that LegalTech embraced Twitter.  There were quite a few firm contacts, consultants and less so vendors that twitted about LegalTech and in particular the session on Twitter that was held on Monday afternoon - moderated by Monica Bay (Editor-in-Chief, Law Technology News) and panelists included Matt Homann (Founder, LexThink), Kevin O'Keefe (CEO, LexBlog), and Chris Winfield (President, 10e20).  According to Matt Homann, LegalTech NY made it to the top 10 twittered topics during the session.

Also very noticeable this year, was the abundance of legal industry job seekers, brought to a whole new level with resumes being circulated en mass. Seems like an ideal time to pick-up great talent with so many folks in active job search mode.

One particular complaint of ours (and vendors, consultants and media attendees, etc.) is the lack of meeting space.  Part of the culture of a tradeshow (especially of this size) is that companies have meetings on-site - whether it is with clients, media, industry consultants, potential partners or employees, etc.  LegalTech has all but made this impossible with the sale of about the only meeting space that is available in the Hilton.  The Bridges Bar area (by escalator on floor 1) is sold for thousands of dollars for the duration of the show and only a handful of vendors actually shell out that much money to have the privilege to sit at a table for 4 behind a velvet rope complete with security guard.  We know first hand of a few media editors and a consultant that have stopped coming to LegalTech because of the lack of space to meet with vendors.  Hopefully this will change for 2010.

Here are some details on "extra curriculars" on Monday and Tuesday during the show:

Monday Night - InsideLegal Consultant Reception

On Monday night we hosted a small InsideLegal Consultant Reception.  In attendance were Andy Adkins (Director, Legal Technology Institute), Debbie Foster (Founder/President, InTouch Legal), Adriana Linares (President, LawTech Partners), Larry Smith (Director, ABA LPM), Carly DiVito (Exhibit Manager, ABA TECHSHOW), Dave Glynn (Director of Research, Law Bulletin Publishing), Matt Homann (Founder, LexThink), and Jeremy Hill (Publisher, LegalEase).  Also many thanks to BigHand for sponsoring the event!  BigHand was represented by David Fryer, CEO; Jonathan Carter, Client Solutions Director; David Jones, UK Sales Director; Beth Thomspon, Regional Sales Manager; and Steve Butterworth, President.

  [Andy Adkins (Legal Technology Institute) & David Fyer (BigHand)]

 [JoAnna Forshee (InsideLegal), Matt Homann (LexThink) and Adriana Linares (LawTech Partners)]

  [Debbie Foster (InTouch Legal), Larry Smith (ABA LPM) and Adriana Linares (LawTech Partners)]

Tuesday Night - TechnoLawyer Party & Charles Christian Performance

Tuesday night was the much talked about TechnoLawyer party hosted by Publisher, Neil Squillante. TechnoLawyer is one of the few organizations that host an event to thank the vendors for their patronage and, as always, it was a great party.  Thanks to Neil Squillante!

[Matt Homann (LexThink), Adriana Linares (LawTech Partners), Bob Ambrogi (Legaline), Kevin O'Keefe (LexBlog)]

  [Derek Giles (TimeFrame), Jobst Elster (Envision Agency), JoAnna Forshee (InsideLegal)]

After the TechnoLawyer soiree, we headed downtown for a special performance by Charles Christian, the Editor and Publisher of American Legal Technology Insider, Legal Technology Insider and The Orange Rag blog.  In Charles' free time, he runs a poetry web community and decided to take advantage of his trip to New York to tell a story of his wilder days in the 60s.  It was hilarious and was by far the hit of the evening. 

 [Charles Christian (The Orange Rag)]

Thanks to Adriana Linares for the pictures from the reception!

Demystifying Roadshows

The term “road show” conjures images of rocks stars and back stage parties.  In actuality, marketing and sales road shows, which have been a popular marketing tool utilized in Australia and Europe for quite some time, are now also gaining more popularity in the United States.  Until recently, most road shows held in the United States were strictly for investor relations.

For face-to-face marketing on a grand scale, there is no greater vehicle than a tradeshow.  Large industry trade shows allow companies to reach thousands of prospects in just a couple of days.  Sometimes the number of leads from a large show can be overwhelming and it becomes a chore picking through all the contacts to get to the ones that are a qualified prospect.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to bring pre-qualified leads directly to you?  There is.  Road shows differ from tradeshows in that they focus on a much smaller, targeted audience and allow for a much more in-depth presentation.  Road shows can be multi-city events that enable your company to reach pre-qualified prospects and serve as a supplement to your trade show program. 

As in any successful marketing endeavor, the first step should be to determine what you would like to gain from your road show program and, equally importantly, what benefit you can offer to your attendees.  Begin by deciding what type of road show will best fit your goal.

There are two types of sales and marketing road shows – for new prospects and for your client-base.  Goals for a client-focused road show could include the following: 

• More referenceable clients
• Develop stronger relationships with clients
• Collect research/customer feedback
• Generate add-on sales “leads” from client base
• Increase awareness of range of products and services
• Cross selling of products and services
• Introduce key decision-makers from firms to your executives
• Educate client base to your vision and direction in a controlled environment

Goals for a prospect road show could include:

• SALES!  Create interest in your product/service
• Build market awareness of your product/service
• Build relationships with key players in market

If you are planning on hosting a prospect road show program, there are many ways to come up with the names for your invite list.  In addition to your internal sales lead list that you have compiled from trade shows and your sales team, lists can be obtained from industry associations/companies such as ABA, ILTA, ALM and the Leadership Directories (Legal Yellow pages).  Once you have selected your list of invitees, you can send invitations via mail or email. 

A large part of devising your road show strategy involves determining what will draw your audience to you.  It will take more than free food and the promise of a day away from the office to draw quality attendees.  Make sure the benefits to your attendees are highlighted in your invitation.  Let them know what they will be receiving in return for sacrificing their time.  A few examples are peer networking, industry news, product updates, increase in efficiency, and general education.  In addition, offering CLE credits is an excellent way to add value to your program and increase the attendance tremendously.  You can coordinate through a legal event planning/marketing agency to get your programs approved for CLE credits or work directly with the applicable state bars to accomplish this.  Also, teaming with an industry consultant/training company is a great way to take the pressure of the program off of you and many of them have presentations that are already approved for CLE credits.

In addition to your audience, there are many logistical things to consider in planning your road show program.  The format for your program is completely up to you.  Will you have it at a hotel or have a client host it?  Will you invite end-users or high-level decision makers?  Will you plan for a full-day or half-day program?  Will you offer sponsorship opportunities to your partners and help offset the costs?  Do you plan on a keynote speaker or matter expert to add sizzle? Your opportunities are virtually endless.

No matter what route you choose, a road show program can be an invaluable addition to your sales and marketing plan.  It is one of the few times you can completely control who your marketing dollars reach!

Just in Time for ABA TECHSHOW/LMA Annual Conference...How To Measure Trade Show Return on Investment (ROI)

With marketing budgets being scrutinized more than ever, measuring the return on your trade show investment is a hot topic. There is not one magic formula that will determine trade show success for every company, however, setting objectives relating to ROI will give you important data you can use to determine many factors of your trade show program.  In addition to helping you justify your company’s participation at a particular show, this information will assist you in selecting the shows that will produce the most for you as well as increasing the participation from your team.  Also, having a pre-determined goal for each show can boost the level of cooperation from your booth staff.

There are many objectives that trade shows can help your company achieve.  Some of these objectives are quantifiable and can easily be measured, while some are intangible and relate to perception.  It is also important to remember that separate objectives should be assigned for each individual show, as your goals and objectives can and will change from show to show.

Below, we have listed 23 objectives that can be achieved by exhibiting at industry trade shows.  We have divided these objectives into 4 main categories – Sales/Prospecting, Customer Relations, Marketing/PR and Partner Programs.

Trade Show Objectives & Related Key Performance Indicators

Sales/Prospecting

• Creating new sales leads - Quantity of leads received
• Finalizing sales contracts - Contracts finalized/Revenue
• Selling to existing clients - Revenue of add-on sales to current clients
• Building prospect database - Number of new contacts

Customer Relations

• Building relationships with current clients - Number of clients met with
• Client education - Number of attendees at company sessions
• Client satisfaction surveys - Number of completed surveys submitted
• Receiving customer testimonials - Number and quality of testimonials obtained
• Regaining lost clients - Number of clients won back

Marketing/PR

• Marketing new product/service - Quality of feedback
• Building brand awareness - Number of impressions at, during, after show
• Positioning/re-positioning brand - Quantity of attendees and number of impressions
• Demonstrating benefits - Quantity and attendance of product demonstrations
• Boosting financial/investor perceptions - Editorial coverage in financial press
• Developing new markets - Number/quality of contacts from new market
• Generating editorial coverage - Number of articles
• Building relationships with editors and journalists - Number of editors/journalists met
• Competitive intelligence/Industry trends - Quality of information received
• Test marketing campaigns - Number/quality of feedback sessions
• Researching brand perception - Number/quality of feedback sessions

Partner Program

• Finding new distributors/partners - Number/quality of partners met or signed up
• Supporting current re-sellers - Number of re-sellers met with
• Building your reputation as a partner - Number/quality of prospective partners met

Immediately after a show is the best time to review your objectives and report on your participation.  A post-show report is a valuable resource in helping you plan your next year’s trade show schedule and can be turned into your management team to help justify your participation at shows.  Your post-show report should include such information as final costs, objectives met and sales leads generated.  Keep in mind, new business can still happen for weeks or months after a show, so be sure to keep your post-show report updated with any changes.  In addition to the objectives, this is a good time to reflect on your trade show procedures and make notes of what you can do to make the process easier on you next time. 

After the show is also a good time to reflect on the performance of your booth team.  Not every salesperson is good at exhibit sales so you may need to decide what salespeople you will use at future shows.  Another option is designating an exhibit sales team that attends all your trade shows, however, not all companies can afford such a luxury.  If your booth team is lacking, you may want to consider boothmanship training. 

Equally important to this process is setting sufficient methods to measure these goals.  Far too often, companies set goals and do not make them easy to track.  If your goal is set for “number of leads obtained” for example, counting on your salespeople to turn in business cards is not going to cut it.  You may want to consider renting the badge scanner from the show.  The scanner will collect the attendee’s information and then it will be emailed to you in spreadsheet format, but keep in mind, most shows do not include email addresses in the final badge scanner reports.  This makes the information easy to track as well as easy to distribute to your sales staff.  If you would rather collect business cards, consider purchasing a business card scanner for use in the booth.

Sometimes there can be hindrances to your company’s success that are out of your control such as a competitor’s product launch or special promotion.  It is important to take these things into consideration when completing your post-show follow up report.  If you feel that you are at the right show but aren’t getting the exposure that you could be, talk to the show representatives.  They can help you find ways to drive traffic and increase your profile at the show.   

You've got to start somewhere, and it can appear overwhelming unless you plan ahead. The first time you set goals for a trade show you may find that your numbers are not realistic, but that will change.  Keeping this information from show to show will help you start a trend by which you measure your entire trade show program.