TradeStation, an online stock trading software marketer, is banking on social media and online video to drive prospects to its website where they can learn how to use its products.
These prospects are consumer investors as well as smaller institutional and hedge fund investors. TradeStation products facilitate trading in stocks, options, futures and other financial instruments.
The company is making its first uses of social media and online video, a shift from its previous advertising strategies, says CMO Erik Jepson.
“The decision to try to build a social and viral component into the campaign meant that the entire communication plan needed to evolve from where we have been in the past,” he says. “Historically, we positioned ourselves as the serious product choice for the most sophisticated segment of the retail investor and trader market. This led to creative executions that tended to be very safe."
"This time we decided to try a more breakthrough, fresh approach—one that would grab the attention of our target audience by calling attention to the clichés of typical retail financial services advertising," says Jepson.
TradeStation hopes that through social media prospects will share content expressing what they are thinking or feeling. "We knew we needed to tap into that for this campaign to be successful and go viral," he notes.
The campaign centers on videos that walk prospects through the products, which are promoted on Facebook and Twitter. All thee videos direct users to microsite, says Lee Goldstein, president of Digo, TradeStation’s agency.
In these videos, Tradestation is debuting its first-ever use of a "fake trading persona," an actor who leads prospects through various humorous scenarios and interacts with a company spokesman who seriously touts the benefits of products such as its "Radar Screen" software, which consolidates several stock charts into one in real time, to help speed up trading decisions.
This tour page also encourages users to open online accounts.
Later this year, Tradestation plans to unveil seven additional spots and one new persona in addition to the two it’s using now, says Jepson.
The Plantation, FL company is coupling these newer efforts with more serious and traditional 30-second direct response TV spots on CNBC as well as ads on such websites as InvestorPlace, Nasdaq, FuturesMag.com, ForexPro, InvestingChannel and FX Street, says Goldstein.
John Terrana, brand supervisor at Digo, notes that Tradestation chose to advertise on CNBC because its viewers tend to be both financial professionals and upscale financially-minded consumers.
When respondents contact TradeStation, the company elicits such data as name and address, email address, phone numbers "and as much information as possible about their trading habits and preferences," Terrana notes.
After this, TradeStation salespeople from its Florida and Chicago offices stay in contact with these prospects largely through email.
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