The Company: Betterment
Betterment is an independent digital investing advisor platform. What started out as a direct-to-consumer platform, providing automated investment portfolios based on user preferences, is expanding its verticals to B2B for better(ment) growth.

The Segment: Millennial professionals new to long-term investments
“They’re optimizers,” CMO Kim Rosenblum said. “They like to do things that are efficient, because they’re super busy people… All of them are in a life stage that is at a turning point. They’re at a place where they need to focus all in on what they’re doing.”

Why This, Why Now: Each featured athlete faces is on a new life stage

The athletes include WNBA All-Star Arike Ogunbowale, recently retired women’s soccer legend Carli Lloyd, quarterback Drake Maye, and new PGA Tour golfer Michael Thorbjornsen. Each of these sports stars are entering new phases of their careers similar to the deeply personal challenges the targeted millennial segment face.

How You Can Do It On a Dime: Activate your segments’ peeros.

A peero, or peer hero, is a word we made up just now to describe the type of person your target audience admires and looks up to, while also realistically wants to be.

With a little audience listening, identify four micro-influencers who your audience loves that are near their demographic. Micro-influencers (10k-100k followers), cost around $150-$500 for a post, and niche influencers (below 10k) cost anywhere from $25-$150 for the same.

Use adjacent life journeys (vs professional problems) to tap into the emotional memory of your audience and create new brand recognition that connects you with the challenge you’re seeking to help solve.

Campaigns That Don’t Costs Millions

Sendoso Gets Spooky

Sendoso, the gifting platform, revamped their home page just in time for the season.

Why We Love This:

Sendoso’s platform is all about clever personalization with gifting and direct mail, making their creative swings part of their marketing.

And here’s the best part: the content stayed the same.

(Aside from a few puns.)

For those who are new to the platform, it’s captivating.

For the ones who are researching, it evokes curiosity.

And for everyone, the spooky scary page compels them to finally scroll down to the bottom of a page to see what happens next.

Check out Sendoso’s Dimmo!

Kondo Builds In Public

Mitchell Tan, founder of Kondo, is a one-man inbox cleaning band driven by revenge against LinkedIn’s messy messaging system. And he’s choosing to build his platform in public.

Why We Love This:

Some start ups don’t have big budgets with do-it-all teams; some, like Kondo, are staffed by one visionary and a developer.

This is marketing without the marketing department — using your own gumption and joy to bring your tool to the public.

Tan takes us on a journey with his product release, something we wish more SaaS tech did. It’s just him, his platform, and a feature that launched the night before.

This kind of do-it-yourself brand of marketing captures the spirit of our tech community, and we find ourselves rooting for him as he sprints to tell us about his new advancements.

And honestly, we all want to root for the LinkedIn Corp vs. Creator underdog.

Check out Kondo’s Dimmo!

Hapily Lights a Campfire

Hapily, the company that offers Hubspot users a range of make-life-easier apps, roasted the vendor hall with their summer camp-themed booth.

Why We Love This:

So many brands enter the events space and try to replicate their website physically. Rarely does a brand come in with a theme, double down on it, and then deliver.

Hapily’s event space created an amazing atmosphere at INBOUND that slowed us down as we walked through. From the bright colors to the inviting sitting area, this was the perfect add-on to a sales booth that didn’t completely detract from what they were pitching.

Hapily does not have a Dimmo, however you can find their site here!