Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Why Do Investor Relations Departments Continue to Experiment?

The race is on.

While traditional investor relations practices remain the norm, more and more public companies are testing new ways of reaching current and potential investors online.

Why test new methods when nothing appears broken?

For one, existing investors are demanding more transparency.

And two, and arguably more important is that potential investors are showing intent. They’re roaming the Internet daily searching for new companies to invest in. With better strategies, IR pros could more effectively target them.

Unfortunately, while we all know where potential investors spend their time researching stocks online it’s less clear how to target them.

As a result, public companies like Zillow (ticker: Z) are pushing the boundaries.

Over the last two years they’ve used earning release days to take investor engagement to a new level using Twitter, Facebook, Motley Fool and TheStreet.com.

But while high profile examples such as Zillow, Netflix, and FedEx receive widespread praise for novel outreach efforts, none of their strategies is being widely adopted.

Instead, we continue to see public companies testing new strategies and platforms clearly searching for better and more effective targeting solutions.

And without a dominant online platform or strategy gaining significant traction public companies can only focus on incremental ways to attract new investor attention.

It’s a difficult challenge. 

But there are possible solutions (see related posts below). 

And the platform or platforms that recognize and address this opportunity will be richly rewarded.

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