Although Lumose is partnering with a college to intro paralegals to legal-tech, we’re still in disagreement that a course is going to maintain their commitment and knowledge on being the kind of paralegal the legal sector needs long-term. Knowledge doesn’t work like that. They will need daily reminders after the course is done, which is why the marketing channels with short-form content they follow after the course will determine what they as much as the course itself.
The hidden message actually matters more
E.g. An Instagram or TikTok video: "5 signs of a smart accident benefits paralegal".
From this post they will learn:
a) 5 ideas for being a better paralegal, and
b) that personal injury law for plaintiffs is a practice area they could pursue. They might disagree or agree with the 5 ideas for being a better paralegal, but they will not dispute the fact they could pursue accident benefits as a practice area, it is accepted as a given.
An audience will sometimes believe what content directly states, but will 98% of the time believe the background message that the content normalizes.
Make your desired message the background context of another message
Another example of this? Law firms with a niche in mining. How do they get so many mining companies as clients? It's because only half their business is practicing law, the other half is the financing of junior mining exploration projects. Once a mining project is funded, guess who the mining company is hiring as their law firm? Accepting their financing is a choice, using their legal services once having accepted their financing is a given. As a bonus, once in a while the exploration projects actually hits gold (yes literally). I supposed it’s similar to having a loss leader product, so remember your marketing content can have a loss leader too.
Lesson? To really get your message across, make it the background context of another point. The direct point will be disputed, the background context will be accepted.
Undervalued Marketing Channels in B2B Legal
Back to paralegals - to continue their learning long into the future, they will need a daily message through Instagram stories, TikTok, and/or YouTube shorts. That’s where the real learning and understanding of how legal software can be used happens, not during a one month course. So who will paralegals follow online?
#Option 1: Could be an Instagram account they start following during the course that multiple legal-tech companies contribute content to.
#Option 2: Provide them examples of online influencers of paralegals who already have channels.
There are many paralegals who have a large network of influence who don't see how it could be useful. I would assume they don't think of it as a network, as we don't think of our entrepreneur peers as a 'network'. They would happily help share the word about products they like, but they're never going to sign up for your affiliate marketing program of their own volition. If we could assure them they would only make recommendations when it naturally came into a conversation, such as word of mouth marketing with a little boost. You need to reach out to them to be your affiliate marketers.
How to Find Undervalued Marketing Channels
- Explore Different Markets: The value of something is subjective, so to one crowd of people it will be highly valued, and to another crowd it will not be. That makes it pretty simple, explore new markets. Take something that is highly valued in one market, bring it to another crowd of people who have never heard of it before. It is undervalued in the new market because you know it has the potential to be valued, but they haven't discovered it yet. This isn’t complicated, the hardest part is being discerning when your peers are running towards what is highly valued. E.g. The people that love innovation should go hangout in an industry full of traditional, ‘boring’ folk. The traditional crowd go hangout with the ‘innovative’ obsessed crowd. Let's be real though, we're all in the first bucket.
- Don’t choose something unless the company has unusual leverage in it.
4 Types of Leverage
- Audience: Either make use of an audience you already have, or incentivize partners to share your message with an audience they already have. You don' have much advantage if you're building an audience from scratch.
- Financial: Use money that's not yours. Equity investors, revenue based financing (my favorite), or government grants for hiring / training employees.
- Relationships: Similar to an audience but offline, e.g. having a great relationship with non-competing companies who you can integrate or partner with.
- Timing: If the courts were changing a policy around e-filing for example, it might be a reason to change their process server. Are there any rules changing that would be a reason for them to NOW look at your software?
