Online Marketing Strategy Memo1210

Victoria Johnson Consulting

Strategy Memo
for
Legacy Investment Advisors, LLC
A Private Wealth Management Company

Guide to Online Marketing Strategy: Beyond the Website

Online Marketing Strategy for Legacy Investment Advisors, LLC

Executive Summary
Marketing to an emerging customer avails Legacy Investment Advisors LLC an exciting
challenge to penetrate the wealth management sector of the financial services industry.
The firm that identifies its prospective customer base discovers the needs of that base, and
then points out how the attributes of the firm satisfies the unique needs of that customer
will triumph the challenge. This strategy recommends to Legacy Investment Advisors, LLC a
road map to defining market position and the uses of emerging technologies that will lead
to a triumphant online presence.

LEGACY is poised to meet prospective and current customers’ needs through easy access
to information, human interactions, on- and offline, and setting in motion a plan for
customer advocacy. Using emerging technologies that rival any of the large industry
firms’ online techniques presents a smaller player with an opportunity to be at a
competitive advantage. The advantage lies in offerings such as scenario based
calculators to assist the concerns of the prospect; promoting the latest in new feeds from
major content providers, providing snippets of LEGACY online content through RSS feeds
(in-house generated news headlines); facile navigation leads to results for the busy target
demographic.

A cornerstone of marketing strategy, market positioning takes the view that a strong
message promotes a strong position. Preserving brand equity while streamlining a
consistent message throughout the organization gives LEGACY the edge it needs. The
research done inside of this project by interviewing the analysts and executives uncovered
some surprising results. The poll points out the need for consistent, and constant,
messaging and a need for new follow-up methodologies to win prospective customers.

We examine profiles of typical web-savvy visitors, whose experience will transcend any
reticence among new web users by promoting a program of product evangelism and
word-of-mouth publicity, and the safe and simple use of viral marketing. The term viral
marketing has had controversial exposure in the press; however it is merely the practice of
those who enjoy their online experience to pass it on, as an electronic word-of-mouth
response to strong market positioning. With an online search presence, optimized for
immediate identification for LEGACY, the “viral” aspect makes its way into the online
experience and helps to capture online traffic.

The strategy recommends that LEGACY adopt practices that will raise its market
awareness. Strong messages let the customer know that LEGACY is different and offers a
far better experience to the pre-retirement customer through

• Offering the use of compelling tools and research
• Conveying the LEGACY market positioning at every touch-point, then
• Letting the market positioning permeate the LEGACY organization and external
observers of LEGACY’s performance.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 4

Meeting Customers Needs 5
Access to Information 5
Customer Advocacy 6
Human Interaction Online and Offline 6

Emerging with Technology 7

Market Positioning 8

Online Marketing Strategy 10
Summary of Polling 10
Market Positioning Recommendations 13
Brand Equity 13
Market Positioning Checklist 17
Categories Served 21
Product Differentiation 21
Testing the Positioning Checklist 25
Take Your Positioning To The Marketplace 27
Portal Tools Compel and Save Time 27
Internal Assets 28

Conclusions 28

References 30

Exhibits 31
Exhibit A -1 Opt-In Form, Page Organization and Layout 31
Exhibit A -2 Opt-In Form, Page Organization and Layout, Brief 32
Exhibit A -3 Opt-In Form, Page Organization and Layout, Detailed 33
Exhibit B -1 Home Page, Page Organization and Layout 34
Exhibit B -2 Informational Content, Page Organization and Layout 36
Exhibit B -3 Contact Us, Page Organization and Layout 38

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Introduction
Increasing competition in a growing market for asset management of retirement dollars
raises the ante for all firms in the industry. To capitalize on the opportunity, all of the
industry will come to recognize the need to make aggressive investments in systems and
people over the next few years. Given these facts, Legacy Investment Advisors, LLC has
focused it efforts to address this growing market sector: wealth management. The
management at LEGACY has made a decision to invest in online marketing schema and
technology that will reach large numbers of potential investors.

By making the choice to market its financial advisory services to customers nearing
retirement age, LEGACY is making a bold move to capture a larger share of it target
market. Its main target is the pool of African American investors who have investment-
ready dollars and have yet to make a decision on how to manage those assets.

This strategy makes the acknowledgement of and is founded on these assumptions:

1. LEGACY is part of a mature market

2. By its association with its parent company, Sturdivant & Co, Inc., the
barriers to entry for LEGACY have been surpassed

3. It is time to make a mark in the industry, specializing in marketing
financial advisory services to a growing segment of investors, the
African American man or woman nearing retirement.

The competition is heating up. Large institutions, such as Fidelity Investments for example,
continue to improve their retirement planning options for investors. Many of the full-service
brokerages like Merrill Lynch are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each on broker
workstation upgrades that will enable advisors to deliver better financial planning to
customers.

Along with improvements to infrastructure, the major players in pursuit of new investors are
focusing on meeting their target market - investors between the ages of 50 and 60 years
who are in the segment better known as “baby boomers”- where it stands. The “boomer”
segment has grown up with technology innovation and in large part has embraced it in
one form or another. The Internet has opened the gateway to information for the
average person, whether or not an individual has personal technology at his home or
office. Some of the information gathering exercises that used to be the monopoly of
investment advisors are available to any person with the desire to search online by
publicly-available means.

In a 2006 study, researchers say that baby boomers are anxious about retirement
finances and feel unprepared. The implication that the researchers conclude:

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Firms aren't meeting the retirement planning needs of all baby boomers.

Unlike today's retirees, baby boomers shop around, prefer to serve themselves online, and
are wary of large institutions. They also want guidance from advisors. The study suggests
that to win boomers' retirement assets, firms must

• offer easier access to human experts

• offer better online experiences, and

• offer simpler products.

As 12 million mass-affluent baby boomers hit retirement age during the next 15 years, the
demand for professional financial advice will grow quickly and steadily.1 Within
LEGACY’s target market, African-American boomers with investment ready dollars share
many of the characteristics and will respond in the same manner to marketing approaches
used to reach the mass-affluent.

No firm has a lock on the boomer retirement market today. Forrester Research, for
example, believes that firms with high customer advocacy scores, such as Vanguard, are in
the best position to win.

Online marketing strategy is a portion of an entire strategy. The recommendations and
methods presented here will outline the basic parameters of marketing positioning, the
bedrock of marketing strategy. The parameters are related to the Legacy Investment
Advisors, LLC perceived market position, making a point to clarify and elevate that
position. An entire market strategy for a financial services firm is beyond the scope of this
project; moreover, this strategy addresses a definite way for LEGACY to use its online
presence to augment its current marketing of financial products and services.

Technologies developed for the LEGACY portal present the best and most efficient
methods, designed for immediate impact on the visitor. Recommendations in this document
intend to point-up the most prevalent uses of technology as opportunities in the emerging
technologies employed today.

Meeting Customers Needs
Access to Information

Rather than trying to recapture a monopoly on information availability, the smart firms
take the opportunity to provide analysis and advisory to information-seeking consumers

1
Forrester Research, 2005. Forrester defines mass-affluent households as those with between $100K and $1M in invest able
assets.

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by providing a venue that fills the need for information and couples it with a human
knowledge base. LEGACY has at its disposal a strong history in investment research that
will keep it in the forefront of competitive firms of its same size and category. By
providing that storehouse of knowledge to the consumer in a comprehensible manner, via
a web-portal venue, LEGACY will realize greater return for its efforts, while giving its
customer exactly the kind of access to information that it seeks.

Customer Advocacy

Firms who are seeking customer advocacy by offering products that are best for the
consumer, not just the firm’s bottom line2, concentrate on giving the consumer the best
expertise in an environment that meets that consumer’s needs. Firms that lead in customer
advocacy are also seen as the most advanced in technology use, such as implementing a
customer-friendly internet site, offering collaborative tools that connect clients with
advisors.

In numerous studies, consumers have expressed the desire to have access to information
then to have access to human interaction that advises and facilitates their investment
objectives. Calculators and opt-in requests for information jump-start the process. At the
point when an opt-in request arrives, the database server will email a sales person for the
first [human] touch opportunity.

Human Interaction Online and Offline

Consideration to peer-to-peer technologies should not be taken lightly. Word of mouth
messages are carried by technologies that include user review sites, discussion forums, and
blogs. All these technologies contribute to a new era called Social Computing3 that
empowers individuals at the expense of institutions like retail financial services firms. As
consumers use the Internet to share information, financial brands risk being undermined as
marketers lose control of the message.

Smart firms will use the same emerging technologies to communicate with customers,
gather customer insights, and develop stronger customer relationships. The size of staff at
LEGACY is small, however the potential of having an analyst blogger dedicated to
sharing insights in a conversational manner will boost the overall relationship with
inquisitive prospects who want to know there is always someone they can trust to answer
the simplest of inquires.

Follow-up discussions with the opt-in prospect must become a routine course of action.
Online businesses regularly follow any interest with at least two phone calls to the
prospect, unless that prospect opts- out along the way.

2
Forrester Whole View Research, J. Phinshill, 2003
3
Forrester Research, Social Computing’s Impact on Financial Services; 2006

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The sales process, when examined for how much contact a prospect needs to become a
customer is made up of touch points. Touch-points are specific instances of customer
contact. The touch-point process works in a simple scheme.

1. The first touch-point has been an in-person, one-on-one meeting or group
meeting or sponsored seminar. Now we must include the un-exposed, first time
visitor to the LEGACY web-portal.

2. An in-person follow-on meeting or telephone call with a human advisor.
Alternatively this may be an opt-in request for contact from a first-time or
anonymous portal visitor, regardless of whether there has been any human
contact beforehand.

Each contact or touch includes the message that new and informative content is awaiting
the customer at LEGACY’s online venue. Each contact is also an opportunity to gauge
customer qualification and available investment assets.

Opt-ins are the objective for quid pro quo – information provided by LEGACY, for contact
information provided by the requester. At a minimum, the requester’s name, phone
number and/or email address is required to obtain the content. The form is an opt-in
request from LEGACY. If a requester opts-in, a lead is generated from this user's
information and emailed to a LEGACY sales account person for follow-up. The opt-in
option also gives LEGACY the explicit permission to email newsletters and other content to
the requester.

The opt-in form on the portal design gives the sales team a view to the type and level of
interest. If the prospect submits a question with the opt-in as a follow-up about an
experience with LEGACY’s scenario-base calculators, the sales team has a ready-made
topic of discussion. See Exhibits A-1, A-2, & A-3.

Emerging with Technology
The marketing strategy for LEGACY includes a well designed portal, planned to win new
web-interested customers. Critics of website composition say that a great user experience
is critical -- but rare. For this reason only features that can be tied to a business goal are
a part of this strategy.

Customers would never come to the LEGACY site with the objective of being exposed to
your brand messages or to be cross-sold new products. Marketing messages crafted to
render a positive brand image, showcase the points that differentiate LEGACY from its
competitors and its commitment to customer advocacy, indicating a softer “sell”.

The site is structured to appeal to older, busy people who want direct responses to
inquiries, clear navigation and distraction from unrelated advertising. The portal Home
Page welcomes the user to LEGACY Wealth Management, and then provides multiple

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paths that guide user through required tasks, necessary to complete their goals. See
Exhibit B-1.

Ease of navigation is the key objective. The site is mapped to bring the user to a
destination where a goal may be accomplished. Clear, concise graphics are “hot”; the
graphic actually links to more detailed pages. See Exhibit B.

• Home page links and menus guide the user to the product pages, topics listed
functionally. See Exhibit B-1.

o Calculators for Retirement Planning, Stocks, IRA's

o Market news, piped in from a financial news content provider

o Video content featuring a LEGACY executive speaking on selected subjects.

o Research materials or downloadable documents intended for further study
are preceded by a “quid pro quo” form.

• Informational pages devoted to Private Wealth issues. See Exhibit B-2

o Financial planning for the pre-retiree

o 401(K) alternatives

o Research on featured topics and current legislation

o Expanded topics presented at LEGACY seminars

• The Contact Us page also collects valuable information and gives the user ample
space to submit a question, in exchange for an email address used to send an
answer. In the answer email, the visitor will be invited to opt-in for more
informational services. See Exhibit B-3.

Market Positioning
There are many models in marketing strategy. Market positioning is the root of marketing
strategy—and is critical to the success of any business.

Market Position is:

• The process of designing, communicating and delivering your company’s offerings
so that they create a meaningful and distinct image in the mind of the target
customer.

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More text available by contacting

marketing@vjconsultingonline.com

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Online Marketing Strategy Memo1210

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