Pro One Traders and their digital marketing strategy

Yara Moura Lima -

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Pro One Traders: Organic Marketing as a Market Strategy for a Small Financial Education Company

Authors: Yara Moura Lima; Helena Araújo Costa and Josivania Silva Farias

Summary

Pro One Traders is a company that was born in 2019 with the aim of bringing lay people in the financial market closer to Traders professionals, working in the financial education market. Among its challenges to expand and consolidate, there is the aggressive marketing commonly used by its competitors, with which the company does not identify. Jonathas, the young founder of the company, is facing a reflection on how to position and promote his company in this competitive context. The case addresses this decision and proposes that the participant reflect on how to overcome this marketing challenge in the digital universe and on techniques used to stand out in the market and prospect new customers.

Keywords: Financial market; Financial Education; Digital Marketing.

Abstract

Pro One Traders was a company created in 2019 which aims to connect people who does not have enough knowledge on financial market to professional Traders. The company works on educational sector and its main challenge to face the aggressive market commonly used by their adversary. Jonathas, the young founder of the company, is seeking how to position its business in this context. This teaching case offers a real situation for the participants to develop more understanding on how to overcome this challenge on digital marketing and the technics to thrive on the market and prospect new clients.

Keywords: Financial market; Financial education; Digital Marketing.

Pro One Traders: From Discontent to Emergence

Pro One Traders was born in 2019 stimulated by the dissatisfaction of Jonathas, a young 34-year-old entrepreneur, with a Finance training from a weekend he had attended. The content was aimed at people who worked and wanted to work in the financial market, operating various assets on the Stock Exchange. When leaving this course, Jonathas saw a gap in the education market focused on the financial and capital markets, seeing that in addition to quality in the content taught, there was a lack of support for participants to continue working in the capital market. He had this proof when, a week after the event, there was no support for people who participated in the training.

So Jonathas got in touch with Alan, one of the participants he met in the course and with whom he had an affinity, and invited him to be part of a group to help people who want to start in the financial market and who want to acquire more knowledge to continue operating.

Thus, Jonathas and Alan, in February 2019, inaugurated Pro One Traders, a company with the main objective of serving individuals and micro-enterprises who wish to enter the financial and capital markets, as well as other people who already work and wish to deepen the study of the topics. In this way, they aimed to create a community where people can have easy access to quality content and affordable value by getting closer to the Skin in the game (people who work directly within the financial market). They dreamed of bringing lay people closer to Traders market professionals.

Large firms usually do not receive people with a financial contribution of less than R$20,000.00 and this was the second gap that Jonathas saw in the financial education market. For the future of Pro One Traders, the intention is for the company to become a financial investment manager, where it will be possible to serve investors with less investment, helping those who enter the financial market independently. An analogy that the entrepreneur makes is with the idea of "becoming the Smart Fit of educational institutions in the financial and capital markets". Just like the academy - which proposes to have teachers only to answer questions and guide students, providing them with a high degree of autonomy to train - Pro One wants to provide its students with a high degree of autonomy to operate any asset on the Brazilian or international Stock Exchange.

From these positioning and customer value proposition decisions, Pro One Traders brings quality content at an affordable price with attentive support to its target audience. Currently, the company has more than 1,800 people in its open community and about 50 students in its closed community.

Pro One Trader's horizontal organizational structure has four people. Jonathas (as main manager) and Alan (founding partner) who teach the classes, in addition to Renato and Jean. Jonathas specializes in the Bovespa Index and Alan specializes in the foreign exchange market, trading in the dollar. Renato is responsible for quantitative analysis and macro market analysis, and is also one of the professors who teach classes on the foreign exchange market. Finally, Jean is responsible for marketing and prospecting students. Everyone makes up the desk that operates the company's capital.

Currently, the company has a monthly revenue of around R$6,000.00 - an amount coming from the mentoring offered and also from its capital referring to variable income from the market (about 8% to 10%). Thus, the company has two forms of monetization.

Understanding the Impact of Aggressive Marketing on Financial Education

The culture of diversification of investments and the operation of the Stock Exchange has been changing. According to the InvestNews website (2020), the number of individuals investing in the Brazilian stock market reached the historic mark of 3 million in September 2020. According to data from B3 (2020), the company that operates market trading. As a result, there was an evolution of 82.4%, or 1.3 million more registered CPFs, since the beginning of the year.

What is this growth due to? According to B3, this increase is due to the democratization of information, the ease with which the new generation obtains information on the internet and the incentive made through Digital Influencers and Youtubers .

Thus combining the little knowledge of the market with the amount of information received from the internet, often without any kind of filter, these people may be more susceptible to the impact of aggressive marketing so that they become investors in the capital market. According to the Crab Agency, advertising and marketing, aggressive Marketing can be defined as the "Technique used, generally, by major brands, to persuade and bombard their audience in a way that generates the greatest possible visibility".

The challenges faced by the management of Pro One Traders, in the view of its managers, are related to external factors, such as the aggressive marketing used by companies in the same market, in order to prospect customers. Usually, the same tactic is used, showing only the positive side, but the process behind the result is not shown.

Jonathas emphasizes in team meetings the difficulty that this represents for the company. He believes that his company faces the difficulty of presenting the reality of the market to customers, demonstrating that the market "is, yes, for everyone who wants to be part of it, but it needs a lot of caution, a lot of understanding and a lot of dedication. So, our main challenge is to demystify this whole culture that has been created that the market is "easy", showing the positive and negative side of being in the market."

Jonathan recently read a book in which he saw his concerns reflected. In this book, From a Thousand to a Million, Thiago Nigro talks a little about it:

"[...] Faced with a profusion of offers and exposed to marketing campaigns, it is common for the still inexperienced citizen to feel lost and entrust his money to these professionals when making the first investment outside savings, believing in the promise of miraculous profits."

Another difficulty that the company faces is its initial knowledge about digital marketing. Especially Jean, responsible for working in this area, has sought to delve deeper. Reading about the strategies for content creation, he has already absorbed the lessons: use #hasthtags, publish content with known periodicity, plan the most appropriate color palette; Define which social networks you will work with and, most crucially, be sure to initially define and design who the ' Persona ' that will be met by the company, with its expectations and ' pain points' (ROCK CONTENT, 2019).

This knowledge has led Jean to evaluate: should we be only on Instagram? Should we combine Instagram and Twitter? Youtube? Blogs? Vlogs? LinkedIn? Can Email Marketing and Newsletter work well for this type of audience that Pro One Traders wants to reach? What colors would be the most suitable for the brand of a social network that talks about finance and investment? What topics should we address and how to generate this content? It seems like an infinity of possibilities that need an assertive decision at a more strategic level so that you can create content in a guided way.

Jean has also reinforced the need to know more about his competitors. He discovered that there are tools to facilitate this search, such as competition analysis sites, such as Similar Web - https://www.similarweb.com/ and Social Blade - https://socialblade.com/ , but has not yet been able to delve into this analysis.

The choices don't stop. He noted that he needs to define engagement techniques, design a funnel (OLIVEIRA, 2018). And so on.... All very new for those who understand capital markets and are recent in the vast universe of digital strategic communication. At the same time, he needs to start a Pro One Traders operation.

From paid traffic to the use of organic marketing

With the objective of changing the view that people currently have about the financial market, Pro One Trader seeks, through organic marketing, to show the reality of those who are inserted in the market, demonstrating not only the result, but also the process behind investments in the Stock Exchange.

Initially, with the intention of prospecting more customers, Pro One Trader opted for the use of paid traffic, a widely used digital marketing tool, to reach as many people as possible through social networks, applications, search platforms such as Google, Yahoo etc. com paid ads. However, this strategy did not generate the results expected by the company, which made a high investment in marketing and did not obtain results corresponding to what was expected, frustrating managers.

In a nutshell, paid traffic aims to attract as many audiences as possible and the advertiser pays for each click obtained on the ad. Organic traffic, on the other hand, is a tool that makes your audience reach the page without the company paying per ad to gain visibility.

Jean, the person responsible for Marketing, explains: "We were initially interested in paid traffic, because we have a large audience to be reached, and we have two advantages, which is the quality of our course and the affordable value. As we did not obtain results with paid traffic, the team was discouraged, because we invested a large amount of money, we paid a specialized company that had worked with large companies in the field, and that had high profits, however, the result was not the same for Pro One. We were at a loss, the money we used could have been used to invest in other things, such as: equipment to improve the quality of the videos, a recording studio, improvement courses and several other things, which would help improve the quality of our product". Being a small company with limited resources, managers realized that this resource could have been allocated to other more effective actions to generate their objectives.

After this experience, managers considered that organic marketing could better align with their purposes and available resources. The purpose of Pro One Traders' organic marketing is to attract students for its quality, without bombarding them or overwhelming them with information. Thus, the managers implemented the following actions for the production and publication of content on Instagram: a) they created an Instagram account, also linking it to Facebook, they described the company's business in the 'bio', with a link to the website, which is still under development.

The person responsible for Marketing seeks to produce one post per day on the company's social networks, also with interactions by Stories and Reels on Instagram, which are synced with Facebook. The contents focus on the operations carried out in the educational room of the day, results achieved and testimonials from students. Jean, however, did not have a plan for the production of content to be released in the week or a calendar with the periodicity of the posts. Publications and disclosures end up being concentrated when there are course launches and openings of new classes.

Despite these limitations, and with low investment, the company's organic marketing raised its customer acquisition rate to 910% compared to the result obtained with paid traffic. This result was achieved by attracting students in social network groups aimed at connecting diverse Traders spread throughout Brazil (ANNEX 01).

Managers realized in practice some of the expected benefits of organic traffic. According to the website of the digital marketing company Rock Content, 5 benefits are expected from this type of action, namely:

  1. Cost-effective: since the investment is lower;
  2. Scalability: it can expand according to the number of hits it receives;
  3. Relevance: The company's content is shown on the platforms according to its quality;
  4. Duration: Organic traffic does not have an "expiration date" unlike paid traffic, which in order to stay active needs to continue paying for its ads to run.
  5. Relationship building: It brings the customer closer to the company with organic traffic, and the customer does not feel that the company's only goal is to sell.

The organic traffic tool does not focus on bombarding people with various information for immediate profits, but rather on showing the quality of your product since the relationship between the customer and the company is not limited to just one click. Thus, it is the creation of content that makes the company appear to the customer. So, the higher the quality of content and the better used the Keywords fundamental to organic search, as it optimizes content in search engines (or SEO – Search Engine Optimization ) , This increases the likelihood that the company will show up for the customer and have opportunities to strengthen a lasting bond.

Faced with this situation, Jonathas and Jean are now meeting, having a coffee and reflecting on whether these gains will remain, given the aggressiveness of competitors in their market. They're debating how long the organic traffic gains will last and whether it secures the future they want for the company.

Discussion questions:

  1. Identify a financial education institution present in the market that can be considered a competitor of the company analyzed in the case. Tell Jonathas what Pro's differentials are

  2. After evaluating the case and the attachments presented here, suggest ways to review the content prepared by the company for Instagram. Propose improvements and adjustments for Jean.

  3. What is your suggestion of other actions for Jonathas to expand Pro One Traders in the financial education market?

  4. What other organic marketing strategies would you recommend to Pro One Traders? Would you invest in other networks and channels? With what content? Why?

Attachments

Figure 1 – Facebook Pro One Traders

Figure 2

Figure 3 – Pro One Traders Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/proonetraders

Figure 4 – Pro One Traders Instragram

References

Nigro, Thiago. FROM A THOUSAND TO A MILLION, without cutting the coffee . Rio de Janeiro: Harper Collins, 2019.

OLIVEIRA et. Al. Application of the sales funnel to improve engagement in an VAS. Journal of the Vale do Rio Verde University | v. 16 | n. 2 | Aug./Dec. 2018.

ROCK CONTENT. The Guide to Creating Personas. Access: https://rockcontent.com/blog/o-guia-para-criacao-de-personas/ Accessed on 28-Jan, 2019.

Rock Content – Content Production Guide for Web 2.0. Access: https://comunidade.rockcontent.com/ebook-sobre-producao-de-conteudo-web/ . Accessed on 28-Jan-2019.

http://agenciacrab.com/marketing-agressivo-o-que-e/ (Accessed: March 06, 2021)

https://herospark.com/blog/trafego-pago/ (Accessed on: March 03, 2021).

https://valorinveste.globo.com/mercados/renda-variavel/noticia/2020/09/02/numero-de-pessoas-fisicas-na-bolsa-cresce-ainda-mais-em-agosto-e-encosta-em-3-milhoes.ghtml (Accessed on: March 02, 2021).

https://rockcontent.com/br/blog/o-que-e-trafego-organico/#:~:text=No%20in%C3%ADcio%20do%20artigo%2C%20falamos,trazer%20para%20o%20seu%20neg%C3%B3cio (Accessed on: March 06, 2021).

https://redatoronline.net/blog/trafegopago/#:~:text=O%20objetivo%20do%20tr%C3%A1fego%20pago,no%20cso%20da%20primeira%20op%C3%A7%C3%A3o . (Accessed: May 23, 2021)

i . About the Authors
Yara Moura Lima is a Business Administration student at the University of Brasilia. Member of the ADM Casoteca team. Email: yara.moura@aluno.unb.br

Ii . Helena Araújo Costa is an Associate Professor at the Department of Administration at the University of Brasilia. Coordinator of the ADM Casoteca. Professor of Contemporary Topics in ADM and Introduction to ADM. Email: helenacosta@unb.br

Iii . Josivânia Silva Farias is an Associate Professor at the University of Brasília working in the Undergraduate Program in Administration and in the Graduate Program in Administration (PPGA UnB). Professor of Marketing and Innovation in Services. Email: josivania@unb.br

This case was written based on information provided by the company, information available in the media and/or based on other references cited. It is not the authors' intention to evaluate or judge the company in question. This text is intended exclusively for academic study and discussion, and its use or reproduction in any other form is prohibited. Copyright infringement will subject the offender to the penalties of Law No. 9,610/1998.