Email, Banner Ads, Webinars And A New Kind Of Hangout For Independent Advisors

Advisor Perspectives, the Website that no asset management marketer can ignore if he or she is interested in better understanding independent financial advisors/RIAs, is making news this week with two items of interest.

Online Marketing Campaigns

First are a few results from Advisor Perspectives’ recent survey of advisors on their response to fund company email, banner ads and Webinars. This follows a comparable survey last year, the results of which were reported on in a whitepaper and blog post, and I offered my take on them, too. This year, Director of Marketing Jeff Briskin says the plan is to distribute the insights in an ongoing campaign throughout the year.        

Independent advisors are no pushovers, as most mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers already know. But, the first of the survey results, made available in a two-page whitepaper emailed this week, confirm that.

Less than one-third of advisors will respond to a Webinar invitation, according to the survey. And, those who do say that a marquee name (speaker or sponsor) is the top way to entice them. Product-focused content? It's the least interesting Webinar "hook" you can offer. 

Banner advertising has limited appeal. The fund company name or reputation matters most to one-quarter of survey respondents (the largest percentage of those responding to banner ad questions!).

But even if you work for a little known firm and don’t have the wherewithal to book a big-time Webinar speaker, there’s hope for you in the survey results about what it takes to get an email opened. Investment whitepapers/research and other thought leadership deliverables sit at the top of the chart and offer the greatest potential as a gateway to show advisors a little bit more about your firm and what you know.

In fact, most investment firm marketers make the assumption that “marketing” to independent advisors/RIAs requires just fresh, solid ideas versus bright, shiny other stuff.

A Forum Of Insights: APViewpoint

To facilitate the exchange of ideas between advisors—something that doesn’t take place on AdvisorPerspectives.com—the mothership tomorrow is launching a new site: APViewpoint. Update: Advisor Perspectives tells me that they've delayed the launch, it should be sometime in May.

There are LinkedIn groups and other advisor communities online, but this site is different in a few ways, according to Briskin. There's nothing unique about the structure or its capabilities, the design isn't flashy. Instead, Advisor Perspectives is hoping that the depth of participation and debate will distinguish the forum.

Thirty thought leaders, including Bob Veres, Harold Evensky and Michael Kitces, have committed to take part. Registration is being monitored to assure that only advisors sign up. To date, 500 advisors have been admitted during the beta process. An email invitation goes out to Advisor Perspectives’ list of 400,000 names starting next week.

“The biggest selling point is that this will be a community of elite advisors,” Briskin says. "These are advisors who are the cream of the crop, people who interested in learning." Advisor Perspectives readers tend to be "more sophisticated" and have higher AUMs, he says.

This video provides additional detail on the forum. 

Briskin gave me guest access and, sure enough, there is a lot of substantive debate and exchange going on in APViewpoint. Responses to the conversations I scanned were longish, reasoned, almost academic.

As of yesterday afternoon, the most commented on post was about using bond ladders for retirement income. A post seeking feedback on some retirement research published by GMO was the most viewed. In the course of one conversation, an advisor commented on the “packaging and marketing attributes” of the "JP Morgan Dynamic Retirement Income Withdrawal Strategy/Breaking the 4% Rule" executive summary. He'd liked it and uploaded the Adobe Acrobat file.

You can see how this could develop into a fascinating way to follow hot buttons and track what’s resonating with advisors.

Fund Companies Will Have To Wait

...Except that for now participation by fund company employees won’t be allowed. Here’s where the conversation with Briskin turned awkward.

“We want the site to live and breathe and blossom,” Briskin says. Advisor Perspectives intends to provide a "haven" for advisors who want to be free to criticize fund companies (and I did spot at least one post drilling into a firm’s performance) and not need to navigate their way through product pitches.

If you’ve spent any time in standard-issue LinkedIn groups, you know what Briskin means. In its early state, the forum is refreshingly free of self-promotional posts masquerading as engagement.

Hope you don’t mind me using space in this blog to describe a community that would not have you as a member. The restriction will lift soon enough.

As advertisers and Webinar sponsors, asset managers are a significant source of Advisor Perspectives revenue. Briskin says the firm's early plans to monetize APViewpoint envision giving firms some kind of access. At some point, he says, Advisor Perspectives may bundle up comments and sell them as market intelligence. Or, firms may have the opportunity to pay to feature a portfolio manager's presence on the site for a week.  

Whatever, the offer will have to work for both sides.

The business of reaching financial advisors online was fragmented when I wrote about it four years ago and it’s even more so now. APViewpoint has a long road ahead not just to build up its registrations but to drive good word-of-mouth among members and repeat visits. Social media will go only so far in raising visibility—promotional posts will link to a registration page. And, search can’t help a site whose content is behind a wall.

The more active users (defined by vibrant, helpful conversations, subsequent log-ins, posting, following, etc.) the more appealing this will be as a forum to get in front of, on a paid basis, or even—assuming fund companies and their Sales staff can promise to behave—in read-only mode. 

I wish Advisor Perspectives team success with this. By the way, the Advisor Perspectives newsletter will start to include excerpts of what’s being discussed in APViewpoint. For the time being, that will be one way to keep an eye on what’s going on in there. It has a brand new Twitter account to follow, too: @APViewpoint.

What Do Advisors Use Fund Company Websites For?

What are financial advisors using fund company Websites for? That's the question asked by an Advisor Perspectives survey, the results of which I've been anxious to see since January. The findings are elaborated on in a post published yesterday on the AP site. They reflect the responses of 282 investment advisers, registered representatives, financial planners and insurance agents who completed the survey online. 

While I urge you to check out the full report, below are a few of my notes. 

Websites are the #3 information resource after third-party sites and meetings/calls with wholesalers.

RTB’s take: Congratulations, digital marketers, you’ve reached the pinnacle of what you can hope to achieve. Can you envision Websites climbing any higher as an information source than third place, surpassing either third-party sites or meetings/calls with wholesalers and other real live people? I can't.

Note that print communications are nowhere to be found in the answers the Advisor Perspectives provided—I guess reliance on them is lumped into the Other category that 6% of advisors responded to.

Print’s fade is no less than stunning. Just six years ago a SwanDog/FRC study reported that firms with less than $50 billion in assets under management spent 40%-60% of their marketing budgets on sales literature fulfillment. And now...poof, at least in terms of what advisors rely on. Here's hoping a meaningful share of that spending on print has shifted to your digital budget.

What I wonder about is where asset manager apps would place on this list. It's a category worth breaking out next time. 

More than half of surveyed advisors get at least 25% of their due diligence information from fund sites. 

RTB’s take: Advisors who manage more money tend to rely more on wholesalers than on fund sites. But, the more money an advisor manages, the more they use the sites for research. Both of these would seem to make sense.

But if more than half of advisors get at least 25% of their due diligence done on fund sites, that means that a significant number of advisors are doing their due diligence on your firm and your products somewhere else. Are you plugged into those sources and how information feeds to them? Is someone checking on it regularly? These findings make it obvious that you can't afford to be disinterested about your firm's data and content syndication.

Advisors tend to use mutual fund Websites primarily to access core-level data on performance, holdings and risk metrics.

RTB’s take: No matter how imaginative you can get with enhancements to your site, here's a reminder of the highest value that a site can provide: As the product manufacturer, you’re recognized by advisors as having more product information than any other site is going to have. For many, it's the only reason to go to your site. Focus on improving the product information-gathering experience (e.g., how easy are your holdings to get to?) and all else will flow from there.

Asked to select up to five kinds of advisor-focused content that advisors found most valuable and relevant to their investment management and client service processes, 3% of advisors selected firm-created videos. (Detailed fund information, fact sheets, commentaries and fund research were what ranked highest.)

RTB's take: This has to smart, I'm sure. But, maybe it's time for you and your team to reset. Are the videos you’re producing truly advisor-worthy? Is it even realistic to be expecting advisors to regularly get their information from videos? Alternatively, what would you change in your approach if you instead optimized video on your site for the non-advisor visitors? 

55% of advisors access fund company sites on a mobile device.

RTB’s take: Advisor use of mobile devices has been studied by a few surveys but never have we seen numbers on mobile advisors' access of fund sites. More than half of the group surveyed (55%) say they've visited sites while mobile, and more than one-quarter (26%) say they do it daily. 

What are they looking at? "For everything except quick-hit tasks like getting price quotes, mobile users prefer tablets over smartphones," Advisor Perspectives reports. Below I've sorted the data to show the differences between advisor content consumption on smartphones versus tablets. 

These findings provide added incentive for firms to be form factor-aware when developing and executing their mobile strategies. Dig into your Web analytics and create at least two reports—one for smartphones and one for tablets. You need to understand the differences between these two very different types of visits. Pay special attention to visits that start from links in emails.  

"...Very few companies stand out as being the best. Of the top 20 largest mutual fund companies*, only nine were singled out by more than 10% of advisors as offering superior Website capabilities...This is an important wake-up call for fund companies." 

RTB’s take: Important wake-up call? I have to part ways with Advisor Perspectives on this conclusion. I just wouldn’t go that far with the data that’s being shared. For starters, perhaps “the best” aren’t all among the top 20 largest mutual fund company sites.

My hunch is that most advisors who regularly use firm sites are generally satisfied. Of course, every site can be improved upon. But there’s no indication that the industry suffers from poor quality sites across the board. Advisor Perspectives has a database of 300,000 financial advisors, and thousands of them will respond to a survey on a subject they feel passionate about. If advisors' needs weren't being met, I think there would have been a stronger response. 

But don't just take my word for all of this. If you're working on a fund company Website, the Advisor Perspectives research is a must-read point-in-time report on what's resonating and what isn't with a primary online audience. 

Keeping Up With The Advisors

This could be interesting. Advisor Perspectives Monday emailed a survey to its database of 300,000 financial advisors, asking some salient questions about the relative value of fund company Websites and mobile platforms.

Of course, asset management digital marketers have kasina, Cogent Research, Cerulli Associates and a handful of other firms to go to for paid research and quantitative-based analysis. But, the Advisor Perspectives work should provide welcome insights, and some of it will be shared.

Click to read more ...

"Astonishing" Advisor Research Suggests Necessary Changes To Mutual Fund/ETF Communications

I was so eager to get at the recent Advisor Perspectives/Inside Information research that I read the complete 65-page report on my 4-inch phone while sitting out in a cold car waiting for a Realtor to show my house over the weekend.

The conditions notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. “Investment Trends in the Financial Advisory Profession: Key Implications for the Investment Management Industry” lives up to its promotional email.

Authors Bob Veres (Inside Information) and Robert Huebscher (CEO of Advisor Perspectives) wrote a page-turner filled with some provocative ideas for mutual fund and ETF marketers focusing on the elusive RIA channel.

Click to read more ...