Strategy Overview

This chapter provides a high-level summary of the key steps involved in implementing the digital marketing infrastructure — and what follows once the setup is complete.

Firm research

The process begins with researching and documenting key aspects of the investment management firm you work for — products & strategies, target audience, sales team coverage, and languages it communicates in online.

Information collected here will be used in future work as well as providing valuable learning and insight to the digital marketing team.

Completing essential groundwork

Next, a number of preparatory tasks are undertaken:

• Collating marketing materials, tracking downloads, and creating an internal document library (primarily for the sales team)
• Ensuring the corporate website is fit for purpose
• Establishing a structured process for content publishing

Lead generation & management

Once content is being published through the new process, website subscriptions are introduced. This allows visitors to opt into receiving relevant content and enables the marketing database to grow.

For each new subscriber:

• The marketing automation system creates a contact record
• The system checks the firm’s CRM to determine whether that contact already exists and is assigned to a salesperson
• If the contact is known, the marketing and CRM records are synchronised

For any new, unknown contacts:

• Automated lead grading is set up that identifies high-value individuals — those who can allocate capital into the firm’s products, directly or indirectly
• A process is established to determine when a CRM record is created, how new contacts are assigned to a salesperson, and how the salesperson is notified

Additionally, alerts are configured in the marketing automation system to share behavioural insights — based on the digital activity of tracked contacts — with the appropriate salesperson.

This tracking is made possible by a browser cookie placed when a visitor subscribes, which allows their subsequent interactions with the website and content to be monitored.

Post-implementation focus

With the infrastructure in place, attention can then shift to ongoing operations — content publishing and distribution, running campaigns, testing and tweaking, and delivering ad-hoc projects as needed.

Depending on the individual circumstances of each investment manager, a few key areas will arise for additional focus — such as increasing overall website traffic, improving the website-to-subscriber conversion rate, and boosting the volume of digital activity from tracked contacts.