(This post is part of an in-depth series on finding your ideal customer in justice tech)
Pinpointing the right audience can be as difficult as developing the technology itself.
This challenge is exemplified by Alexis, the visionary behind JusticeBridge, a startup dedicated to bridging the gap in access to justice through innovative legal tech solutions.
She poured countless hours into creating a promising platform, envisioning a future where legal services would be as accessible as a smartphone app.
However, despite her tireless efforts, JusticeBridge faced a formidable challenge: identifying customers who truly needed their innovation. The lukewarm interest in her platform wasn't translating into the adoptions necessary for financial survival.
The heart of JusticeBridge's predicament was that their offering, while innovative, didn't address a pressing, immediate problem for potential customers in the legal sector. This made it challenging to generate genuine interest in their justice tech solutions, despite their potential for transformative social impact.
As an strategic innovation advisor for countless social impact executives like Alexis, I've witnessed firsthand the critical importance of swiftly identifying the right ideal client profile in the justice tech sector. The strategies we'll explore can help leaders and executives in justice tech tackle this challenge more effectively by implementing strategic learning.
Existing solutions and limitations
To navigate this complex landscape, Alexis and her team employed various strategies to gather feedback and identify their ideal customer:
- They crafted personalized outreach to legal aid organizations and connected with court administrators on professional networks. They also invested in targeted advertising, focusing on specific keywords related to legal tech and access to justice.
- They revamped their website to showcase justice tech use cases for various legal scenarios, incorporating testing to optimize user engagement.
- They conducted in-depth interviews with legal professionals and tested early versions of their product with small community legal clinics, using techniques to uncover genuine needs.
While this multifaceted approach allowed JusticeBridge to cast a wide net and gather substantial feedback, it came with significant drawbacks:
- The broad approach prevented them from deeply understanding any specific legal niche. With limited interactions per segment, they struggled to gather actionable insights and refine their justice tech solutions effectively.
- It was challenging to determine if they were making real progress towards product-market fit within the legal sector. Increased website traffic and positive feedback didn't necessarily translate to adoption, leaving Alexis frustrated and uncertain about the true barriers to conversion.
- The scattershot process felt like an endless loop, rapidly depleting their limited resources without providing clear direction. This open-ended approach left little time for strategic learning based on concrete insights.
Conclusion: the critical importance of strategic learning
In our next discussion, we'll delve into why strategic learning accelerates your understanding of critical unmet needs in the justice system.
Stay tuned to discover how you can transform your justice tech startup's customer discovery process, moving from a generalist approach to becoming a trusted strategic advisor.
I'd be curious to hear if your experiences resonates with Alexis's. If so feel free to share in the comments or reach out to me directly.
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