You're not rational, and nor are your buyers.

Had a delightful dinner at The Bleeding Heart in The City of London, organised by Keith Hardie. I passed the vetting process - I didn’t even know there was one! Lucky I found out after the event, however as Keith pointed out, I would have never known if I hadn’t....

It was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with some old faces, and new ones. All of those round the table, I hope will be happy for me to say this, are in the business of helping the legal industry navigate the seismic changes that are happening from a strategy,business development & marketing perspective. Be it overall strategy, to brand positioning, PR, talent, digital transformation and more. 

Keith tried his hardest to confuse, at least me, in terms of who should change seats versus those who shouldn’t, after each course. And there I was thinking the 4th Industrial Revolution is going to be the biggest challenge for society.

The focus of the conversation was how do we help, support and steer our clients, Law firms, through this. 

Speaking to Pete Byre of Digital Whiskey, he used the turn of phrase which prompted me to reflect further and then write this article

" Your buyers are not rational. "

And by your, we mean yours, the reader. General Counsel for example. Further discussion ensued. I say this with my clients

"Your buyers are all consumers."

Taking both of these into consideration, what do we mean. They are in the [insert any standard app] one moment, the next they are receiving a crappy marketing email which is not mobile enabled and just annoys them. Or land on a website which all becomes one blur of corporate jargon, don’t believe me? Read Lee Grunnell's post here.

What we mean is this. Of course your buyer is as rational as you or I - it's that your buyer's personality doesn’t suddenly change when they are in the office or consuming corporate content. They don't have a switch which they say, right, now I am in B2B mode because I am reading a law firm report, or whatever it might be, and then switch it back to B2C when they use the Amazon app. They are consumers, people. Amazon has given all of us a certain expectation of what a good "digital" experience. In fact I would argue, we can drop the word digital - this is just what expect any interaction with a brand to be.

As people, they will have good days and bad days. Or in mine and Peter's case navigating life being new parents for the first time, or in my case, round 2. Experiencing new levels of tiredness. Which can make you less rational at times. And then a poor meeting, buying experience, customer service call, annoying marketing email - it just annoys you even more. Your buyers are the same. They are people too.

This applies to any industry. We just happen to be talking about Legal. Very few, if any, consider that their buyers are people; there seems to be this assumption they cross the corporate threshold and our buyers are suddenly logical, almost autonomous individuals who will obediently consume all content we throw at them.

Which they aren't. Because you aren't.

Scroll , scroll, scroll , oh that’s interesting, oh, no it isn’t. Move on.

Your business may have spent 1k, 5k, 10k on that “interesting” piece of content, which has been crafted in a sterile, logical process, based on your perception that your buyer will be in peaceful, zen like frame of mind, with nothing else to focus on, but your piece of content. In that particular moment in time.

Then firms default to the same old tactic of an email blast, to the same email lists, with the same bounce backs, open rates and click throughs. And very little to zero follow up. They may post on social. Once. Job done. 

Well that didn't really work pre-social. It definitely doesn't work now. Blame Marketing, Blame the time of year, Blame the buyer even. No.

Everyone needs to pause and take a step back. BD, Marketing, PR, Fee Earners - you are all in this together. You have to start thinking like your buyers - because they are just like you.

"What works for you, what annoys you - is likely to be the same for your buyer."

Most of what is pumped out is not that interesting, or designed for the digital age, but most importantly does not take into consideration what your buyers want to consume as content and how. 

They are, after all, only human. Just like you.

Now, which seat am I moving on to.