At the
Institute for Business Communications conference on "
Electronic Distribution of Mutual Funds," most participants discussed ways to attract customers with better, faster sites.
Jonas Ferris, president and founder of
MAXfunds took a slightly different approach. As he sees it, the Internet has changed the playing field, and different times call for different marketing techniques.
MAXfunds is a low budget operation providing information about smaller, lesser-known funds. Jonas feels that he can't win a head-to-head battle with the big boys. His online marketing model is the alternative approach taken by the "
Blair Witch Project." These techniques are known as "viral," "guerilla," or "underground" marketing.
Such a campaign can take a number of different forms, but they all have one thing in common--"low dollars, high labor." For MAXfunds, which gets cheap labor from its young work force but doesn't have lots of money to spare, that's a perfect recipe.
One of the primary marketing techniques involves "infomediaries" like
SmartMoney and
MotleyFool. To Jonas, mutual fund information will increasingly be found on these sites, which have a number of advantages over brokerage or fund company sites. First, because they're in the business of creating Web sites, they do it better. Second, they cover all funds. Finally, as a third-party, they're perceived as more objective and trustworthy.
There are 15,000 of these infomediaries in existence, according to Ferris. A primary item on the MAXfunds agenda is getting the firm discussed on these sites, and building links to their site.
Another thrust is a MAXfunds presence in internet chat rooms. "It's insane, but that's where things are happening in the world of finance," he said. But his recommendation that fund companies send their managers into these chats drew criticism from the audience, who said such a move would raise compliance issues and draw unfriendly attention from the
SEC.
If Blair Witch product is one marketing model followed by MAXfunds,
Amway is another. Through various devices, the firm tries to get current users of the site to identify other potential users. The firm then targets them.
Jonas concedes that guerilla marketing is "very difficult." He believes that firms specializing in underground marketing will appear in a year or two. Until then, MAXfunds will continue to explore new techniques for creating a buzz.
Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE
Subscribe to MFWire.com's News Alerts [click]
Email & Route 
Print 
Raw XML
