Introduction

After more than a decade working in digital marketing within the B2B investment management industry, I’ve come to believe that marketing teams can play a far greater role in their firm’s success.

Part of their lacklustre performance stems from well-known modern workplace challenges — the constant pull of smartphones, overflowing inboxes, and back-to-back meetings that disrupt deep work. But there’s a more fundamental issue: digital marketing teams haven’t tailored their approach (when they have one) to the peculiarities of the industry. Instead, they continue trying to apply generic models that simply don’t fit.

This guide offers a practical solution by showing how a widely used methodology — inbound marketing — can be adapted to suit the realities of the industry.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy focused on building trust and long-term relationships with a firm’s audience through valuable, non-intrusive content. Rather than relying on unsolicited emails or ads, it aims to deliver the right content — matching the interests of each audience member — at the right time.

Inbound marketing typically consists of three stages:

1. Attract — publishing content that draws the right audience via search engines and social media.
2. Engage — encouraging visitors to subscribe and receive tailored communications.
3. Delight — supporting customers after purchase to foster loyalty and advocacy.

In practice, this requires knowing where each contact sits in their journey so that marketing efforts can be personalised appropriately.

For most industries, this is manageable. A software company, for example, can mark contacts in its marketing database to reflect whether they own the product, and if so, which version. Based on this information, campaigns can then be tailored as needed: prospects receive thought leadership, new customers get onboarding emails, and users of basic versions are offered upgrades.

Why inbound marketing needs adapting for B2B investment managers

For direct-to-consumer (D2C) investment firms, segmenting contacts based on product ownership is technically possible — although the complexity increases with the number of products offered and the fluid nature of investments (which are regularly bought and sold). Reliable automation would be needed to keep the data current.

However, it gets a lot more complicated for B2B investment managers.

Lack of transaction and holdings data

Investment products aren’t purchased on a B2B firm’s website. Instead, sales occur offline between salespeople and their contacts or online via third-party platforms — and so marketing teams don’t have access to consistent or reliable transaction or holdings data.

Even when internal data exists, it’s often fragmented, out of sync with marketing systems, or only available at a firm level, offering little relevance to individual contacts. In short, marketing typically has no way to know who the firm’s clients are.

Accounting for gatekeepers

Further complicating things, B2B investment managers work not only with investors but also with gatekeepers — individuals who recommend products to others without directly investing themselves.

Examples include:

• Fund selectors at wealth managers who curate product lists for use by their firm’s client-facing advisors.
• Manager research analysts at consultancies who recommend strategies used by institutional clients.

Gatekeepers often behave like investors — researching products and engaging with content — yet they would be wrongly excluded if communications were based solely on investment ownership.

As they can make products more likely to receive future investments, they’re a crucial segment of a B2B investment manager's target audience, and must be treated accordingly.

Lack of sub-segment-specific content

Even if accurate investor data were available and gatekeepers could be identified, I still don't think segmentation based on ownership would make much sense.

Investment products are intangible, and beyond a report of an individual user's account balance — which would only be sent if they held investments directly with the investment manager — there’s nothing that differentiates the experience of an investor from someone simply researching.

Moreover, most content investment firms produce — factsheets, commentaries, webinars — is equally relevant to prospects and existing investors. That’s because most investors share a common goal — for the value of their investment to grow over time — and an investment product’s value proposition is demonstrated through data and analysis, not through usage or experience. This removes the need for case studies, testimonials, or demos that are common in other industries.

Even macroeconomic content, like views on interest rates or inflation, can simultaneously influence new investment decisions and reassure current holders. This contrasts with other industries, where content aimed at prospects (aiding buying decisions) is no longer relevant once they've purchased; post-purchase, they will need content to help them use the product instead.

Ultimately, segmenting by ownership doesn’t change what content is sent.

Adapting the inbound marketing approach

Given that the 'delight' stage can’t be applied effectively, inbound marketing must be simplified to two core stages:

• Attract: drawing in new audiences via valuable, discoverable content.
• Engage: providing tailored communication to known contacts based on their stated interests.

To make this work, two important changes are required.

Segmenting the marketing database by interest

Without knowing who’s invested, contacts must be segmented by what they tell you they care about. When someone subscribes via your website, they’ll choose from a list of options you provide — e.g., topics, strategies, or products — and their selections will determine what they receive.

This explicit consent-based segmentation:

• Aligns with GDPR and other data protection laws
• Keeps communications relevant
• Gives contacts full control over their preferences

Using implicit activity data for sales, not marketing

With consent, a marketing automation platform can track the digital behaviour of subscribers — pages viewed, emails opened, content downloaded — and log it against their contact record.

While this data has potential for personalising marketing, in B2B investment management it’s more valuable when routed to the sales team.

Salespeople usually know their contacts far better than marketing — including where each sits in the sales process — thanks to regular phone calls, meetings, and CRM notes. Sending them real-time or daily alerts about digital activity enables them to:

• Follow up after unexpected engagement
• Reconnect with cold contacts showing new interest
• Reinforce relationships with warm leads

Discretion is important — a call prompted by a whitepaper download shouldn’t feel invasive. But when used thoughtfully, this information becomes a powerful relationship-building tool.

Shifting marketing’s role to sales enablement

In this adapted inbound model, the marketing team focuses less on converting leads independently and more on supporting sales:

• Attracting new contacts
• Nurturing existing ones with interest-based content
• Equipping salespeople with insights and materials to advance relationships offline

This redefined role is a better fit for a relationship-driven industry where sales happen offline, website visits are brief, and salespeople are ultimately responsible for revenue.

By recognising the structural realities of B2B investment management and shifting their approach accordingly, digital marketing teams can significantly improve their impact — not by copying other industries, but by developing a model that truly fits their own.