Who. Kim Rosenblum is CMO of Betterment, an independent digital investing advisor platform. The 16-year-old company began as a direct-to-consumer platform, giving people quick access to investing in ETFs and long-term wealth management. It was the first “robo-advisor,” which provides automated investment portfolios based in your preferences and is now a typical feature of every investment firm doing business online.
Over the past few years, the company has expanded its scope to incorporate B2B services like 401k programs, an answer for registered independent advisors and more.
The problem. Despite Betterment’s long-term success and technical accomplishments, it has an actual problem with brand awareness. One reason is that they operate in the shadow of sector giant Fidelity Investments.
“You start as a digital brand going right into a legacy category where Fidelity has online presence and brick-and-mortar offices and so they’re running ads in an enormous media spend,” Rosenblum told MarTech.
“While we’ve got a extremely sticky customer base, we don’t have loads of awareness or familiarity,” she said. “When you think that awareness, most individuals think consumer, but once we go to discuss our 401K, the chief people officer has to go to the company and say, ‘Hey, we’re going with this Betterment.’ And persons are like, ‘What’s that? Who’s running my retirement plan?’”
However, the brand’s concentrate on long-term investing and planning does help it stand out in the fintech sector.
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The solution. Last month, Rosenblum and her team launched the year-long brand awareness campaign “Pursue Better.” It features 4 skilled athletes facing the same challenges as the millennial audience segment the company goes after. They are WNBA All-Star Arike Ogunbowale, recently retired women’s soccer legend Carli Lloyd, quarterback Drake Maye — last yr’s first-round draft pick by the New England Patriots, and golfer Michael Thorbjornsen who recently joined the PGA Tour after a highly successful profession as an amateur.
“Our core business is actually geared toward the millennial skilled space,” said Rosenblum. “People who’re starting to take a position for the long run or are at the starting of an investing journey.”
This audience segment consists of individuals who have big life events happening, she said. They’re buying homes, having their first child and the other things which have people pondering long run.
“They’re optimizers,” Rosenblum said. “They wish to do things which are efficient, because they’re super busy people. For our campaign, we wanted individuals who have very busy, packed lives and don’t have time to take into consideration their funds day-to-day. All of them are in a life stage that’s at a turning point. They’re at a spot where they should focus all in on what they’re doing.”
Case in point: Carli Lloyd. Even though she just retired — something few, if any, millennials are currently doing — she’s also starting a profession as a Fox Sports analyst and is about to have a baby.
“She very much desires to focus every thing and all her talent and into this next chapter of her life,” said Rosenblum. “She’s got loads happening. So who’s taking care of her money long run?”
It’s also an audience segment that grew up using their phone for every thing: “It’s not an unusual concept to them to take into consideration a digital or tech platform as their first stop for financial planning, which might need been just a little bit mind-blowing 10 years ago.”
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Content and channels. The campaign, launched days before we spoke with Rosenblum, is using YouTube and paid social media.
For content, the Betterment team spent a full day shooting video with each athlete. From that, they created about 30 pieces of content for everyone. The content will probably be posted on social media ads and the athletes will post them using their very own handles.
“We weren’t expecting any lessons learned 4 days after launch,” said Rosenblum, “but everyone posted on the first day. And on that day the cumulative views and engagement was well beyond our expectations, like 10 times what our own organic social could have gotten in that point.”
Measuring success. Brand awareness campaigns are trickier to measure than those geared toward increasing sales.
“We have a brand health tracker that we keep watch over, measuring ourselves against a competitive set,” she said. “We have a look at awareness, familiarity, momentum, quality and we also ask people to inform us brand attributes.”
The company desires to be often known as the trusted brand that handles your money so you’ll be able to live your life.
“Trust is actually essential,” Rosenblum said. “We’re managing people’s retirement.”
The post Behind the scenes of Betterment’s B2B brand awareness campaign appeared first on MarTech.
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