Inbound Marketing for IBs and CTAs

At the NIBA conference next month, Phil and I will be talking about how IBs and CTAs can leverage inbound marketing to improve the effectiveness of your marketing programs and attract more leads. To prepare, I thought it might be helpful to introduce some of the concepts we’ll be discussing.

Inbound Marketing versus Interruption Marketing

Traditionally, marketers have used various forms of what is now called “interruption marketing” to gain attention from their target prospects. Whether the technique is radio advertising, , email marketing or cold calling; the marketing message essentially interrupts the prospect’s train of thought. This approach is becoming less and less effective over time for two reasons:

• Noise: It is estimated that your prospects encounter 2,000 marketing interruptions per day. It’s very hard (and expensive) to ensure that your message is heard above the cacophony.
• Filtering: Your prospects are finding new and creative ways to block your messages (defecting to satellite radio, filtering their inbox for spam, avoiding calls with caller ID and voice mail).

By contrast, “inbound marketing” is about attracting the people who are actively looking for your services or researching the kinds of problems you can help them solve. This approach requires a different way of thinking. Instead of figuring out how to reach your prospects, you have to figure out how to help them find you. Inbound marketing includes online content marketing strategies, but it can also involve online and offline events – seminars and conferences where prospects attend to get educated. Regardless of the tactic, inbound marketing requires that you make available high value content and make sure it’s easy to search for and find online by someone who is looking for education but might not be familiar with your company.

In our session, we’ll talk about some of the strategies and tactics you can use to get found by your prospects.

Marketing to Tribes

Futures trading appeals to a small group of people who likely have a number of similar characteristics. It’s also likely that many of them network either through professional societies, social media networks, and/or other on- and off-line communities. As IBs or CTAs, you each have your own unique trading strategies and approaches to working with clients that will appeal to some customers and not to others. What would interest a mass market of investors might not interest the small group of customers you serve. Marketing to tribes is the practice of identifying the unique characteristics of your target market, figuring out what communities they participate in, and actively getting involved in that community. Social media offers a powerful medium to find these groups and participate. Here’s an interesting video on this topic: http://freevideolectures.com/Course/2752/Future-of-Marketing/2 and a helpful blog post: http://www.tribebuilding.com/2009/04/10-steps-to-marketing-in-a-tribe.html

We’ll explore how the tribal concept applies to your marketing efforts, and how you can use social media to find and gain access to the right tribes.

Educating versus Selling

The average corporate website has grown by more than 60% in content in the past couple years, but customers are still finding that most of the content available is not helpful to their decision process. We find this to be particularly true among brokers.

Content marketing is all about educating your prospect. Your customers need information that will facilitate their decision process; content that helps them understand the opportunities and attendant risks in futures trading, that teaches them strategies for managing their risk, and shows them how to evaluate products and performance. Mark Melin published an excellent article in the NIBA newsletter that discusses the areas where you should be educating your clients and prospects. You can find it here: https://www.theniba.com/nibajournal/marketing/11-06-20/In_the_Future_IBs_and_Financial_Advisors_Compete_Head_to_Head.aspx

Please join us at 3:15pm on Monday, September 12, at the NIBA Conference. You will learn how you can immediately put Inbound Marketing Strategies to work at your firm to increase your marketing visibility.