When I started at Onramp Invest, they were in a period of flux and trying to discover their core identity. As their only full-time marketing hire, I began with the basics: identifying a brand voice & tone, mapping out consumer personas (their TAM being RIAs, Family Offices, and SMAs), and doing a full copy audit of their website leveraging competitor analysis and SEO.

Solidifying those core elements left space to create, explore, and have fun bringing Onramp to market. Over the last two years, despite constrained, early-stage budgets, we’ve been able to produce outsized growth cheaply and organically through unique design, powerful messaging, and an increased focus on humanizing our brand presence.

While at Onramp, I’ve grown our B2B social following by over 1K+, redesigned and increased traffic to our website and blog, taken our email list from 6K to 10K, executed numerous marketing partnerships with major brands in the digital asset space, and saw our brand through an acquisition without losing the core of who we are.

Here are a few projects I’m really proud of:

The challenge: Help RIAs see that the new market isn’t so scary after all and highlight the urgent need for crypto solutions for clients to bring in AUM and remain relevant.

The idea: Draw parallels between the traditional market and digital asset market to make them feel more comfortable and qualified to tackle the space.

Campaign specifics: I wrote four blogs and provided our designer with creative direction for the comparative, dynamic graphics, which we deployed across social media and email over the course of a month. Product marketing being the priority, each blog focuses on an idea that is directly related to a product we offer on the platform.

Results: 10+ MQLs generated solely through organic, unpaid blog content

For financial advisors, many of whom are rooted in their ways, engaging the crypto market can feel like a risky venture into the unknown. Insights from our sales team showed that RIAs were struggling to understand crypto and were reluctant to learn out of fear of not understanding or looking stupid. This campaign helped bridge the gap in the advisor’s mind between the knowledge they have and the knowledge they need. Our goal was to show and tell in equal amounts to help build familiar parallels they could relate to.

Blogs

Challenge: Get more crypto AUM on the platform during a bear market

Idea: Identify our competitive edge (no platform fees or start up fees) and shout it from the rooftops for all RIAs to hear while offering them a promo that helped strengthen their client relationships.

Campaign specifics: We ran paid media ads across LinkedIn and Twitter over the course of two months with a cumulative budget of around $4-5K. Our promo offered RIAs up to 2% reimbursement on advisory fees for their clients. We also used this opportunity to test out different kinds of imagery to see what performed best, including animations, illustrations, stock images, while still maintaining and emphasis on the human element.

Results: $1.4 million in AUM onboarded to the platform sourced from MQLs 🎉

When we finally got some paid media budget, the first item was to test out the progress of our brand awareness efforts by running some ads to RIAs. We did a competitive audit to see where we could differentiate ourselves through our product offering and amplified that in the copy. We also added a promo hook that would help advisors with the part of their jobs they care about most: client relationships. To add urgency, we offered to reimburse advisory fees for anyone who onboarded clients between that September and the end of the year.

To differentiate from our competitors and keep the brand approachable and fresh, we try to match our design elements to the personality of our team: we take our work and supporting you very seriously, but know how to have fun with it. I wanted our joy in what we do to come through in the imagery, because RIAs are entrepreneurs and know the joy and passion of working with clients in this field.

Dynamic bitcoin

Cartoon RIAs dressed in modern professional clothing

With low budget, I had to be extremely strategic about which news items warranted paid press releases on our end and had to negotiate with partners for support. We leveraged Businesswire and PR Newswire for all deployments. The below were our biggest hits.