The secret to maintaining first mover advantage

State Street AlphaSM is a technology platform that supports institutional investors and wealth managers across the entire investment lifecycle. “It automates workflows, it streamlines operations, and it really gives these asset managers and asset owners quick and deep insights into their portfolio construction.”

The solution, which launched in 2020, was the first of its kind. Head of Platform Marketing at State Street, Katherine Lucas joined the Account Based Marketing podcast to discuss how her team launched a unique proposition ahead of the competition and how you can maintain first mover advantage.

You’ll find below a selection of insights from the conversation. Be sure to tune in to the podcast to hear all the tips from Katherine Lucas.

Every marketer is aware of the fundamental challenges their audience is facing. But, building a completely new solution for that segment required more than a broad understanding of your customers. It takes a two-way dialogue with them and getting to the bottom of their unique needs.

“We really want to try to make sure that [our customers] are heard,” Lucas says. “We want to look at distinguishing them by segment and then subsequently by persona, so that we can target solutions for their specific goals. It’s about the right content to the right person at the right time. And in the right format.

As a result of these in-depth conversations, “we identified data as the veritable lifeblood and central component to the buy-side operating model, and then made sure to incorporate system interoperability [into the solution].”

A room full of marketers may lead to plenty of ideas, but how do you know if they are any good? That two-way dialogue that was crucial to getting the solution right is just as essential for building the value proposition. “You cannot go in [to your organisation] with this unilateral decision and say, ‘This is what it’s going to be called. This is how you’re going to refer to it.’”

Bringing in internal stakeholders across the business means bringing diversity of thought to the conversation. “They’re not even internal clients, they’re very much partners. It’s just this great give and take,” Lucas says. She recalled a moment during an early brainstorming session when one of the international business leads pulled her aside and said: “’You know that name there? Well, that means ‘bicycle’. Do you really want to call our product Bicycle?’ I thought, oh my goodness. It makes you feel so silly, but at the same time it reminds us how important it is in any process to have this diverse representation of opinion and knowledge at the table at all times.”

Just as the world around us changes, so should your value proposition and sales approach. Lucas refers to it as a “living proposition”.

The pandemic was a prime example of how vital it is to refresh your messaging. “We had a lot of hard collateral and some content that really manifested better when you were face to face. So, we’ve had to reset our entire sales toolkit for a digital environment.”

Preparation is key, says Lucas. “I try to remind myself that we cannot be complacent. We could very easily lose our position and our first mover advantage as an innovator in this space. I believe fervently that it’s incumbent on all of us at the company, particularly in the marketing organisation, to protect the message, to amplify the message. Make sure that you’re going back to the idea that it’s a living proposition to make sure that we’re nurturing this proposition in the right way and at the right times.”

Listen to the full episode of Account Based Marketing with Katherine Lucas, Head of Platform Marketing at State Street here.

Check out the full back catalogue of podcast episodes to discover insights and anecdotes from AWS, Dell Technologies, S&P Global, Investec, and more.