Introduction

In this chapter

After more than fifteen years working in marketing teams at B2B investment managers, it's become clear to me that these teams haven't adapted their strategies and tactics (when they have them) to fit the industry — which helps explain their lacklustre performance.

To help address this issue, this guide refines the popular inbound marketing methodology, which broadly involves:

Why inbound marketing needs adapting

For teams to be able to "do" inbound marketing, the contact database needs to be divided between prospects (or leads) and customers, so each segment can be targeted appropriately.

For most firms — including investment managers that sell products directly to retail investors via their website — this is relatively straightforward.

But for B2B managers, as sales may occur offline or through third-party online platforms, there's often a lack of reliable transaction and holdings data available to marketing. Furthermore, a key segment of their target audience don't actually invest money (they only perform research) and so will never hold an investment in the firm's products. As a result, prospects and customers can't be differentiated in the contact database.

Even if prospects and customers could be identified, investment products don't need to be assessed through usage or experience — which negates the need for case studies, testimonials, demos, or user guides — and even non-product content (such as commentary on interest rates or inflation) can influence new investments as well as modifying allocations to existing holdings. This leaves teams without segment-specific content they could use for inbound marketing.

Adapting the inbound marketing approach

Given that customers can't be identified, communications will purely be based on subscription preferences (i.e., what each contact has expressed an interest in) and won't target prospects or customers specifically.

Additionally, information about the digital behaviour of subscribers (who are being tracked by the marketing automation system) will be routed to their assigned salesperson — who will know where they sit in the sales process — instead of being used to influence marketing activity.

Overall, the focus for marketing shifts to sales enablement:

  • Help attract new audiences
  • Nurture the contact database with content based on individual subscription preferences
  • Provide salespeople with information about the digital activity of subscribers to help them nurture relationships offline

This is a much better fit for an industry that is heavily relationship-driven, and in which salespeople are ultimately responsible for revenue.