If you’re an investor relations agency thinking about the possibility of doing a bit of marketing on the Internet then Alan Bromley’s advice is to slam together a home page as quickly as possible.
Bromley is CEO of New York agency the Bromley Group and decided last August that he would experiment with a home page on the Web. He hired a ‘college kid’ to do the work quickly and get the information up on the Net – ‘Before most of the big firms,’ he adds. ‘We put our brochure up and the beauty of the Net is that we can update the information without going through the time and cost of printing.’That decision to act quickly has paid off, with Bromley gaining his first client from the Web site in mid-December. Nasdaq-listed small cap International Absorbents is now using Bromley for IR and media relations. Its communications adviser in Vancouver stumbled across Bromley’s site and requested more information.
Of course, it helps when the CEO who pays the bills is a Web convert and wholly supportive of the IR effort. Darryl Jones, CEO at International Absorbents, believes that the Internet is one of the most powerful marketing tools for the future – and that includes financial marketing.
Bromley is happy to go along with that idea: ‘In my experience, at the moment it’s mainly retail investors viewing companies on the Internet,’ says Bromley. ‘But institutions are so sharp that if this generation isn’t already looking then the next one will be.’
