This is a first in a series of preview posts on the inaugural US edition of the 2008 InsideLegal Legal Vendor Marketing Survey that was completed last fall. The survey yielded invaluable information and feedback from 97 vendor company participants and InsideLegal will be covering the results for its subscribers. Watch for upcoming posts on key findings including:

• Marketing Budgets: How much are you spending on marketing efforts? How does this compare to your competitors and other vendors? Where do you look to cut costs first?

• Marketing strategy: Who do you market to? Do you have executive buy-in? What are your key marketing objectives?  What aspects of your marketing program have you outsourced?

• Marketing Events: The good, the bad, and the ugly of the legal trade shows based on criteria such as quality of attendees, cost-benefit value, and show leads-to-sales ratios.  Does your company host a User Conference? Do you/how do you use webinars as a marketing tool.

• Advertising:Where do you advertise? What is the mix of print vs. online?

• Public Relations: What is your media relations approach?  What is included in your (and your competitor's) PR plan? 

• Market Research: Who uses research to support marketing and sales efforts?  What type of research proves most effective?  What industry surveys do you and your competitors follow?

A little background… InsideLegal founders has been heavily involved in the legal industry for more than a decade, from working with technology vendors to collaborating with industry consultants to liaising with law firms and the legal trade media. During this time, we have assumed an advisory role to the legal vendor community, and have worked with a large number of companies on marketing programs, consulting initiatives, market scope and custom research projects as well as various thought leadership roundtables and events. Based on this intensive interaction, we identified a glaring information and knowledge gap when it comes to marketing intelligence and general marketing budget and spend statistics maintained by legal vendors. Over the years, basic questions about how much total budget to spend on marketing, what line items to cut, where to advertise, and the general consensus on trade shows (how valuable are they?) have been commonplace. Finally, this summer we initiated an inaugural survey (completed in the fall) designed to serve the legal vendor marketing community. The survey includes 97 separate confidential company responses and 67 completed surveys (39 questions) representing legal technology vendors ranging from less than 10 employees to 500+, all who completed the entire survey in exchange for the complete final report. Beyond numerous posts on the topic over the upcoming weeks, we will issue the complete report to participating companies and host a webinar at a later date.  Also, we will be administering the Global InsideLegal Legal Vendor Marketing Survey soon and will be covering those results as well.