Designing and executing a targeted marketing campaign

Company: Praktio, Legal EdTech Startup
Stage: Customer-funded
Responsibilities: Designing and executing marketing strategy, creating social media assets and marketing emails, designing landing page, creating sales tools

Background
Praktio wanted to increase the use of training products targeted at summer associates within new and existing law firm clients. This meant selling into the recruiting function, a buyer they hadn't specifically targeted in the past. My aim was to create a marketing campaign directed toward recruiting departments with a goal of generating qualified leads.

Crafting the message and marketing strategy
After conducting research through conversations with the target buyer, I learned that one of the common objections to training for summer associates was a lack of perceived value in substantive training for this end user. As I was planning the messaging for this campaign, I wanted to be sure we addressed this objection head-on. The benefits of Praktio training would be front and center in our marketing campaign, along with social proof, which would help demonstrate the value to the end user, a historically effective tool within the law firm market. I also wanted to make sure the messaging highlighted the flexibility of implementation methods since summer programs are a mix of in-person and remote events, making Praktio's on-demand courses and virtual workshops particularly valuable.

In order to reach our intended audience, I focused on Praktio's primary channels: email, LinkedIn, and conference sponsorships. I developed a five week campaign that would end with sponsorship of a conference for our target buyer.

Email marketing
Emails were an important part of Praktio's marketing strategy, but their contact list was particularly sensitive to the number of messages sent. I previously found a bi-weekly cadence allowed for the strongest engagement rates while avoiding unsubscribes, so I prepared two main messages for this particular campaign. I segmented the list between different roles at law firms but made a strategic decision to send both messages to all segments. Early research had revealed overlap in responsibilities of each role within a firm, and Praktio had found prior success in accessing the recruiting function through adjacent roles.

The first email focused on the benefits of adding substantive training to a summer program, in addition to highlighting a few e-learning courses to showcase specific skills summers commonly need to develop but often aren't associated with e-learning. The second email called out specific examples of Praktio's e-learning and workshops. Both messages included testimonials from end users highlighting not just the value of the training content but the importance of having access to the course at that particular stage in their career.

These emails achieved an open rate above Praktio's standing average as well as above the industry average. Engagement also surpassed Praktio's standing average.

LinkedIn content
Praktio's LinkedIn network was primarily comprised of people from the legal industry, which made it another important communication channel for the company. Prior marketing efforts had been focused on training products for junior associates, so this campaign played an important role in generating awareness around the additional use case for summer associates. In addition to trying to reach our existing followers, I used strategically chosen hashtags to attempt to reach a broader audience.

The post showcasing the benefits of adding substantive training to a summer program had the fourth highest engagement rate of any posts from Praktio, and along with two other summer-related posts were in the top 10 of engagement rates.

Targeted landing page
In addition to creating marketing materials targeted toward the recruiting function at firms, we also needed a dedicated place on the Praktio website where we could direct interested traffic. Previously, this use case wasn't represented on the website, so I created a landing page specifically for this use case that incorporated positioning and messaging work from the beginning of the project.

Conference support
Praktio had planned to sponsor an in-person conference that aligned with the end of this marketing campaign. Based on learnings from the prior year, I developed new sales collateral and guidance on pitch conversations. Both focused around the messaging from this campaign, highlighting the value of including substantive training in a summer program as well as highlighting some of the specific skills covered by Praktio training.

Interestingly, while the content that led with benefits proved most effective in the marketing campaign up to this point, leading customer conversations with specific skills proved to be the most effective approach at the conference.

Overall results
When comparing to the prior year, Praktio saw an increase in both qualified leads as well as closed sales. Of particular note was that in spite of the long sales cycle in this market (often longer than one year), multiple leads closed within a number of months, due, at least in part, to the assets and messaging available during the sales process.