Internet Optimization -- (SEO Search engine optimization and SEM Search engine marketing).

The least spent for maximum results:

The effort and time spent over the past several years building and optimizing our websites for better search engine rankings, has resulted in our URL’s consistently ranking on the first page for searches related to our keywords ie, futures, commodity traders/brokers and trading terms (especially ones with Canada in the search string).  Studies show over 70% of people don't go past the first page of search results. While we have almost ceased advertising during the past four months, we continue to bring in new leads per month.

Organic Search Marketing Works!

The lesson learned is that innovative approaches to the internet and investments toward website optimization are the best money spent for bringing in retail leads.  A large advertising budget must be focused and constantly measured in order to guard against diminishing returns.

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING and PUBLIC RELATIONS

The Canadian marketing team will be responsible for creating all ads and advertising buys.  We have a team of two internet programmers, one creative designer, one copywriter editor/administrator and a marketing manager. This function will be moved in-house as we have the expertise to develop and manage our own marketing program.  

The advertising spends will be divided between internet, television, radio, print, conferences and coop advertising. The spend will be broken down to 47% internet, 21% print and 32% TV and radio (primarily to promote our seminars).  Leads will be driven to our website.  Our website is designed to capture leads directly to our CRM tool using many sign up contact pages and seminar registrations.   Our seminar series will be expanded with more seminars planned for across Canada. 

All advertising needs to integrate marketing investments with sales initiatives.  Our strategy will be to  invest in long term campaigns with shelf life and a strong call to action.  The goal is to create buzz with internet marketing and public relations.  This is accomplished by co-sponsoring internet tabs on third party portals.  This gives us credibility in the eyes of the consumer as the media seems to be validating and promoting our message.

Our advertising buys will be guided by the following guidelines:

• Focus on target market and affluence
• Establish credibility that enhances brand image
• Advertising must motivate audience to take action
• Differentiate ourselves from the competition
• Everything we do is branding        

We will look to differentiate our advertising spend from our competitors.  We will focus on viral marketing and the promotion of “The Client” as the educational resource in Canada.  Our goal is to promote third party validation of “The Client” as the industry leader and platform for all futures trading in Canada.  This will be done by getting the top web portal in Canada (MSN-Sympatico) and the best internet site for our target demographic group (www.globeandmail.com) to create unique sections on their websites which will be sponsored by “The Client” Canada.  We will provide the content for these sections and advertise our product offerings.  Our content will consist of stories written by our our staff and headline articles provided by “The Client”’s proprietary research department.  We only provide the first few lines of the story and require any interested parties to sign up for “The Client” research to view the full story thereby capturing the leads.  By having our articles and “The Client” research on the site as content the site’s themselves validate “The Client” as a reputable source of information and industry leader. 

Education / Seminars

We found that many of our leads were interested in our services, but often the clients sales teams did not have enough knowledge to confidently open an account.  This realization lead us to focus our resources on education and seminars.  We used print and radio advertisements to send people to our web site to sign up for seminars across Canada.  In this way we collected lead contact information and send out emails reminding people of upcoming seminar dates.  No shows are contacted to turn out to the next seminar.  By getting individuals to make a commitment to come out to a seminar we are able to develop rapport with the client and educate them at the same time.  We offer advanced courses to on a pay-to-attend basis and these seminars tend to have an 80% closing ratio.  By having separate seminars we are able to cross sell products to our database of leads. We have a large data base of national leads and we can email this database when we have special events.  This is a very cost effective way of cross selling products and the more contact points we can make with a prospect the higher the potential they will open an account.

If your plan is to expand seminars across Canada and to promote a national seminar series by sponsoring high profile personalities to speak about topical issues.  The advantages of seminars are as follows:

• Satisfies the audience’s quest for knowledge
• Increase the effectiveness of our prospecting
• Increases our brand awareness
• Establishes our credentials as an authority on different subjects
• Create a strong base for future referrals through personal contact with prospects
• Face-to-face contact builds rapport and increases sales

Public Relations

Public relations (PR) is defined as ”marketing focused on managing communications and relationships between an organization and its audiences.”  This definition enforces the significance of the internet as public relation tool.  Customers go online for product and services information.  Journalists research companies and seek out story angles.  Business partners, potential employees and competitors visit a website to gauge strengths and weaknesses of a company.  It is crucial for us to recognize that word-of-mouth is still the most trusted form of communication (vital to referral marketing).  PR has the ability to create a buzz, capture public attention, spread the word and create a brand story.  This is advertising that money cannot buy.  As traditional media modes fragment, public relations becomes more important.  PR’s ability to do more with less, makes it crucial to the introduction of a new brand and the creation of a “deliberate” brand image.

Our PR strategy will be to keep “the clients” name synonymous within the industry. A source for journalists to find expert quotes.  The task is to associate our brand as the industry leader in the. The “The Client” name is “golden” and provides instant credibility. We will leverage this to promote confidence in our brands and to attract new clients and talent to your organization.

Webinars

Webinars are a cost-effective way of reaching out to a large number of people across a national stage.  We use them to promote market personalities and to create educational content for prospects interested in our products and services. Having a large database makes this a cost effective way of staying in touch with our leads. The downside of webinars is that the leads tend to be of poorer quality.