Generating online buzz from scratch

According to the 2021 Fidelity Women and Investing study, only 33 percent of women see themselves as investors. And only 42 percent feel confident in their ability to save for future milestones like retirement. Despite this, women experience better returns on investing than men.

These kinds of statistics were what prompted our client Brooks Macdonald to launch a bespoke investment service for women.  The company saw the need to offer a ‘by women, for women’ service that helped high net worth women create their own investment story.

A tricky timescale

Having decided to launch the new service, Brooks Macdonald sought our help in promoting it.  Normally our advice would be to generate sustained support for the concept over some months to help grow interest and engagement but on this occasion, we did not have that luxury.  When we were briefed on the launch, the company had already scheduled events to showcase the service: in London and Jersey – and the first was only a month away.

The right tools for the right job

With such a tight timescale – and no chance to build a community organically over a sustained period – we recommended using social media advertising to maximise awareness of the network.  Over the next three weeks, we ran a slew of Facebook advertisements to promote the events and supplemented this with LinkedIn advertising to support the launches and encourage interested women to sign up.

With just one month to maximise reach, targeting was critical – and this is where Facebook comes into its own.  We could target on a micro level, considering the interests of the audience to optimise performance.  This was a hugely challenging task because the advertising required daily attention and daily testing to see what resonated most with our emerging audience.

Real footfall from online ads

The biggest two questions were:

• Will people be prepared to sign up for an ‘in real life’ event from social media advertising – particularly for a concept they had not previously heard of?
• Will people looking at the adverts see this as some form of scam because it involves investment – after all, online is notoriously a den for scammers?

Fortunately, the messaging resonated and the campaign helped attract more than 100 women to attend the first events.

The client was pleased with the results in terms of attendance and – more importantly – the campaign launched the new concept clearly and effectively, which should drive more credible interest over time.