Shirin Oreizy
CONTRIBUTOR
JoAnne Tobias
AUTHOR
Challenge
Large financial transactions require a high level of trust. This is especially true when you’re introducing a new type of service that involves shareholder equity. Liquid Stock already had a pipeline of in-person referrals, but it needed a demand gen campaign to expand its pool of qualified leads.
But the secondary market is complex and many shareholders are either unfamiliar with it or, worse, associate it with risk and/or disadvantageous terms. Could we create a digital marketing campaign that would educate users and build trust? Could digital channels work to convert leads?
Stage One: Channel Testing and Lead Generation
We created campaigns on social media and search channels.
The campaigns drove prospects back to the recently refreshed website which educated prospects on the new service and used comparison graphs so people could see for themselves the benefits and ask the hard questions. The campaign worked, receiving a high volume of leads.
But, volume isn’t always the goal. We needed to focus on quality, not quantity.
Stage Two: Improving Lead Quality with Channel Optimization
Although we had a consistent monthly lead volume, it was time to fine-tune. Liquid Stock didn’t need overwhelming amounts of leads per month; they needed a very specific, high quality prospect: a large shareholder in a pre-IPO company who was financially savvy and interested in converting stocks or exercising options without giving up ownership.
We adjusted the output by pausing the campaigns and audiences that were generating a large number of leads that didn’t seem high quality. We also scaled back the channels to focus on AdWords for prospecting and the social channels for remarketing.
Generating Awareness of a Market
Because Liquid Stock’s financial service was a new concept within the secondary market, the keywords didn’t yet exist. We had to create market awareness. We built up a new market within search, pairing Liquid Stock’s ads with similar concepts and funneling people back to the website and social for education. We also targeted specific roles and conditions rather than use a buckshot approach.
Many clients say they would rather have higher quality over quantity. But not everyone is able to stomach it when the volume of leads suddenly dries up and you’re looking for the right one. Liquid Stock, however, kept the faith and it paid off.
After isolating and testing multiple channels, and continual optimization, the lead volume is steady, and, more importantly, the lead quality is high.
Results: Market Awareness and High Quality Leads in the Pipeline
Liquid Stock now has high quality leads in the pipeline as well as growing market awareness. In the first year of working together, we’ve not only generated an appropriate amount of leads, but ensured that they are high quality versus high quantity.
To protect client confidentiality, we agreed to not share specific metrics for this account, but we can say that Liquid Stock has already closed multiple 8 figure deals through the digital campaign, representing an attractive return on their ad spend.
