Our marketing strategy - 2

Do not worry: you are in the right page, even if you see a YETI advertising picture. We love YETI and we will tell you more about it in a second.

We are here to keep talking about our nascent marketing strategy. Here's chapter one to the story.

Below is chapter two.

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In the previous chapter, we have said that we have identified family offices as key target market in the space of institutional investors, because of our previous experience (and contacts) in the field.

We have also said that we are using marketing techniques and experiments to identify non-professional investors who are (filtered from many possible personas):

• problem-aware ("I urgently need to put my money at work..."), and...
  • solution-aware ("...in a much better way that what I have done so far, as I am really unhappy with my advisor's/self-run investing results")
  • or solution-unaware ("where can I invest to obtain a reliable income stream in unreliable financial markets who I do not understand/I have no time for")

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Bench-marking on classic investing mammoths

As we have launched several content experiments on this blog, newsletter or social media, we have also done some classic bench-marking research on what is out there:

• we identified classic investment companies with an established brand such as Blackrock, M&G Investments, Pictet, PIMCO and others to understand what target markets they are after (and how well they understand customers' problems)
  • we discovered that they mainly serve investment professionals from insurance companies, hedge funds and pension funds - i.e. institutional investors - to bankers and advisors
  • still, some have a smart mix of marketing messaging dedicated to the end client (to promote the brand, so that individuals can push their bankers to buy a specific fund for them) and professionals themselves via their sales force

What is their messaging about ? By looking at their social media activity (or content on their websites), we found out that they tend to propose a continuous stream of product updates (to service current professional customers), awards that they have won (to position themselves above their competition) and boring financial education using jargon hard to understand for outsiders:

• In one line, we perceived a deep disconnection between expert companies and non-professional investors
• Also, we felt that all messaging was tailored for their existing (professional) customers with little content to help new buyers decide what to do

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Bench-marking on emerging fintechs

We then decided to investigate the messaging of retail investing companies in EU and US from Trade Republic to Wealthfront, from Charles Schwab to SOFI and Revolut.

We found in some cases a much easier, more natural and more authentic language tailored for specific customer segments. For example, it was refreshing to see the ability of Ellevest to understand (and therefore address) peculiar women-first investing problems, or Wealthfront proposing clear alternatives to start for wannabe investors.

As a consequence of the learning emerging from our bench-marking, we have tailored some language on our own website.

Bench-marking on other brands

Despite some good progress on finding out what style of communication to use ourselves and how to better understand possible client prospects, we felt still short of something. We did not find any company with some deep connections with, or deep understanding of, their customer base.

We are talking about the likes of Patagonia, Redbull, Liquid Death (here's Nutsa's blog post on them) or YETI. Those companies have discovered very specific niches of customers and built a loyal following.

By the way, you can find more about YETI's story and success here, here and here.

Our aim is to do the same: build a deep connection with our customer base, created by our understanding of their urgent needs and our ability to connect with them/you.

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But how?

We are not sure.

For now, we are launching some hooks out there in the internet:

• open questions (little replies)
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• references to the final goal (no traction yet)

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• explaining some concepts and jargon to see if people decide to interact (not yet)

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We are aware that for now we miss a clear call to action.

In fact, even if we could have amongst our readers the correct individuals who want to put their money at work in a different, better diversified and more reliable way, by delegating to someone (or to autonomous machines) the day to day handling of markets, we do not have yet a solution to offer.

The solution - our dynamic and autonomously managed fund - will be ready soon. We are running a robust back-testing of our model performance in the past ten years before launching a roadshow to invite institutional investors to bet on us. It will then be the time of retail investors.

With a clear call to action and some nice performance, we hope and think that the right prospects will start having fun with us.

Stay tuned.