trust me, I'm a marketer

Having worked in the credit risk management services, I've found out firsthand how difficult marketing of fiduciary services is and what it takes for the company you represent to be taken into consideration as possible supplier.

What I had in front of me was a highly specialized target market, of credit analysts, CFOs, risk managers, the professionals in financial services industry.

Being a start-up, our company was relying on marketing to initiate the conversation with our targeted, specialized audience. We eventually started a good one, after lots of trials and tunings.

Sure, we knew our product and what the benefits of our services were. We were able to bore anyone to death with the wonderful technical characteristics and specifications, explain exactly how everything works and why. After all, we knew so much about OUR business and activity.

Bo-ho-ring.

Truth was that, at first, we were safely withdrawn in the comfort of knowing perfectly our stuff. I thought that's enough to make a good impression in sales meetings - being able to answer every single question about your service; what was happening was that, up to a point, the conversation was going fine, and then there were all these terms the clients was using when talking about his activity and when answering my questions about his risk-verification processes: default probability, collateralization, pledges, securities, oh, by the way - how are you on the portfolio securization side?

Plain Chinese. What I did was take notes, go back to the office and clarifiy every jargon term. Then started reading what newspapers, publications, and sections these professionals were reading, to gain context and industry fresh facts.

Turned out quite nicely.

No one asks you to be a financial analyst in order to promote risk management services, but it's true that you have to put in serious effort to break the industry's jargon, so that you can start using it yourself when addressing this niche. Both you and the marketing materials you're writing should inspire confidence that you understand and have competences in your target market's activity.

The fiduciary is someone who has undertaken to act for and on behalf of another in a particular matter in circumstances which give rise to a relationship of trust and confidence. [according to trust law Bristol & West Building Society v Mothew [1998] Ch 1 at 18 per].