Zinvest Financial
Leading corporate messaging, brand development, and go-to-market for an online brokerage application.
Overview
Zinvest Financial is a retail investment platform that helps users by providing them with access to an online robo-advisor powered by artificial intelligence, customized investment portfolios based on their financial goals, and access to a zero-commission stock brokerage for trading on international markets.
As a Senior Associate for its child company, I was selected to work on the Zinvest APAC team as a Director of Product Marketing for close to two years. For most of my tenure, I led the development of our brand by building out our offerings portfolio and the product motion for the firm, which included our web/digital presence and go-to-market materials.
Contributions
Brand Strategy
Product Design
Website Design
Product Marketing
Document Design
Business Development
Responsibilities
As both a registered investment advisor and a retail brokerage, Zinvest needed a marketing leader in North America who successfully understood the culture of promoting online products to an American market while navigating a highly regulated industry.
Duties
After employment, I was assigned to lead the development of a new application design for its core product offering, launch marketing operations that supported go-to-market efforts for new customer segments in Southeast Asia & the United States, own the development of brand assets and collateral along with the creation and maintenance of the Zinvest ’s website and its sub-brand websites.
Product Launch
Collaborating directly with my US-based Marketing team & our Chinese Engineering cohort, I led the development of a new user experience and interface design system for the next-generation model of our mobile trading application.
Utilizing insights we gathered from deep customer research and complex market analysis, the Zinvest team devised a solution for our existing mobile application with the goal of capturing market share in Southeast Asia and creating a network effect in our current user base.
After iterating and testing for over six months, we shipped the completed design of the mobile product to the iOS App Store in 2021. We also organized new product marketing measures to retain new & existing users on the platform, utilizing a marketing mix of intent-driven push notifications, e-mail messaging, SMS-based notifications, and in-app promotions to drive advocacy.
Promotion & Distribution
In addition to the design and development of the Zinvest mobile application, I led the creation of various brand materials and collateral including promotional graphics and personalized product messaging.
We utilized various media platforms to support our user acquisition goals by distributing the value of our product to our core audiences. This scheme involved leveraging a $10,000 monthly budget on paid media channels (such as Twitter and Google), structuring an in-app retention system for engaged users, and activating partnerships with social influencers to drive awareness of our product.
Brand Equity
Zinvest’s brand marketing system was not mature when the development of the mobile application began and it desperately needed a revision of all existing materials and touchpoints to align with our launch.
I worked alongside my Staff Designer to envision a suite of new brand assets to be used by various teams companywide for onboarding users, engaging enterprise partners, updating messaging to maintain regulatory compliance, and accurately representing our product capabilities. We took the opportunity to update these materials to seamlessly blend aesthetics with functionality and improve internal experiences.
We also invested in new formats for expanding our brand, highlighting product-led techniques to accelerate our growth motion; I curated new strategies for implementing ASO/SEO practices, established a new corporate website design, and setup a new marketing blog to drive site traffic.
Key Takeaways
Shipped the redesign of the mobile brokerage application for iOS and overhauled most app features to cater to new & dedicated users of the platform. Launched in 2021 to the public with access to financial markets in the US, China, and Hong Kong.
Developed the brand identity for the product and the firm. This involved launching a new design system for the app, creating a new corporate logo & collateral system for the firm, and procuring vendors for developing interactive media elements.
Owned product-led growth for the US team, which included foraging research for SEO/ASO, managing in-channel paid media accounts for user acquisition with budgets exceeding $10,000 each month, and leveraging organic content for demand generation.
Owned product positioning, messaging, and promotion strategies while also directing the development of supporting content & tools to be used by customers. This included video/product interface media, in-application FAQs, playbooks for new features,
Created an attribution system for measuring corporate & product KPIs, aligning go-to-market timelines with ROI expectations.