4 Seeds of Marketing That Grow Your Sales:  Brand Awareness, Demand Generation, Lead Generation, and Analytics

This article dives deep into the seeds of brand awareness, demand and lead generation, and analytics reporting.  What are they? What types of activities do they produce? What are the goals of each?  Who is ultimately responsible for execution and results?

If you want a marketing strategy that yields revenue growth, then you must understand these seeds of marketing and how they work collectively to feed business development and sales efforts.  (Listen to our podcast by clicking here.)

Brand Awareness (Building Trust and Reputation)

Category and Meaning: Brand awareness refers to the recognition and familiarity your legal tech startup or boutique law firm holds within its target audience. It is emotional perception and associations people have with your brand.

Types of Activities: Activities under this category include thought leadership content creation, distribution, and engagement through social media, speaking engagements at client events, and partnerships with reputable legal organizations.

Goal of Activities: The aim is to establish a strong reputation, foster trust, and position your brand as an authority in the legal landscape. By consistently showcasing your expertise, you instill confidence in potential clients and partners.

Responsibility for Activities: Your marketing team and subject matter experts play a pivotal role in crafting and disseminating content that reflects your brand's values and expertise.

Responsibility for Results: The marketing team, guided by key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagement rates and brand sentiment, is accountable for assessing the impact of these activities on brand perception.

Guiding her startup clients, Cheryl Wilson Griffin emphasizes, “It’s critical that you understand where your target audience goes for trusted advice and information. Where do they learn about products and services like yours? What newsletters, websites, and social media platforms do they subscribe to? These are the places where you invest your energy.”

Demand Generation 

(Cultivating Relationships and Nurturing)

Category and Meaning: Demand generation builds on brand awareness, engaging and nurturing leads who have shown interest in your legal solutions or services but are not yet ready for direct engagement.

Types of Activities: Email newsletters and campaigns, educational webinars, whitepapers, and targeted content catered to the pain points of your audience fall under this category.

Goal of Activities: The primary goal is to foster relationships, educate leads, and position your trusted brand as a valuable resource. By addressing your target’s challenges, you increase the likelihood of conversion from an MQL to an SQL down the line.

Responsibility for Activities: Your marketing and content teams collaborate to develop tailored deliverables that address the needs of potential clients.

Responsibility for Results: Marketing, in conjunction with sales, assesses the engagement metrics (such as open rates, click-through rates, and other scoring systems) to evaluate the effectiveness of the content and activities in moving leads through the funnel.

Lead Generation (Converting Interest to Action)

Category and Meaning: Lead generation begins with distinguishing between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).  Only then will you understand which leads can be converted into actionable opportunities.

Types of Activities: Offering a free consultation or free trials of your legal tech solutions, conducting personalized demos, and providing case studies that showcase successful outcomes can encourage a prospect to take action and reach out to you.

Goal of Activities: The objective is to identify potential clients who exhibit a strong intent to purchase, thereby providing your sales team with warm leads that have a higher chance of conversion.

Responsibility for Activities: Marketing and sales teams collaborate closely, with marketing nurturing MQLs and sales taking over once a lead becomes an SQL.

Responsibility for Results: Marketing evaluates the conversion rates from MQL to SQL, while sales gauges the ultimate success in terms of deal closing rates and revenue generation.

As Martha MacPherson, Chief Marketing Officer at eDiscovery Assistant, explains, “While interrelated, demand and lead generation serve distinct roles in the customer acquisition process. Demand generation encompasses broader marketing activities to raise awareness and interest in a company's offerings. It involves content marketing, events, advertising, and public relations efforts, all strategically designed to nurture potential buyers' relationships over time and establish thought leadership. Lead generation is explicitly focused on capturing and collecting information from individuals showing explicit interest in the company's product or service. The primary goal of lead generation is to obtain high-quality leads that can be directly passed on to the sales team for further engagement and potential conversion.”

Analytics Reporting (Informing Decision-Making)

Category and Meaning: Analytics reporting entails the systematic analysis of data collected from various marketing activities and channels to gain insights and inform strategic decisions about your growth strategy.

Types of Activities: Tracking website traffic, monitoring social media engagement metrics, reporting on email campaign subscriber scores, calculating MQL to SQL conversion rates, and reviewing customer feedback will give you a holistic understanding of your efforts.

Goal of Activities: The primary goal is to derive actionable insights that allow you to refine your strategies and optimize your growth efforts.

Responsibility for Activities: Data analysts and marketing professionals collaborate to collect, analyze, and interpret data to support sales efforts.

Responsibility for Results: Data analysts assess the performance metrics, while the marketing team utilizes these insights to work with sales to make informed decisions about future campaigns and strategies.

“As you monitor metrics, you’ll identify trends, of course, but you’ll also see anomalies that might influence your approach in a way that you’d not expected,” Cheryl Wilson Griffin states.

Conclusion: Driving Growth Through Legal Marketing

In conclusion, legal technology startups and boutique law firms must recognize the intricate interplay between brand awareness, demand generation, lead generation, and analytics reporting within their growth strategy. Each category, with its distinct activities, goals, and responsibilities, contributes to a seamless progression from brand recognition to meaningful engagement, conversion, and eventual revenue generation.

As your legal venture continues on its growth journey, remember that harmonizing these elements is necessary and empowers you to build a strong presence, nurture relationships, convert leads, and fine-tune your strategies for sustained growth in the competitive legal landscape.