Life has gotten more complicated for asset management marketers interested in reaching financial advisors online.
In the simplest scenario, financial advisors—current producers and prospects—would regularly visit asset managers’ password-protected Web sites, and marketers would be able to meaningfully interact with them there. But, this is a pipedream—as defined: "a fantastic but vain hope."
A financial advisor communications plan that puts your site at the center ignores at least two market realities:
Oh and here’s a third consideration: As financial advisors step up their own content production and online marketing efforts, some do-it-yourselfers are broadening the scope of their work-related online information-gathering to include search engine optimization and other Web marketing topics. That cuts into the time they have for the asset manager’s site, too.
We’ve commented on some of this before, including the ascent of social networking sites over brand sites, the rationale for content syndication, etc. But today we thought we’d share the list we’ve been keeping of various business-to-business sites that are courting financial advisor audiences. Not included are the mainstream financial media sites (e.g., Yahoo!Finance, Bloomberg, etc.) or the growing number of sites designed to bring investors and advisors together (e.g., the Wall Street Journal’s FiLife, FiGuide.com or LinkedFA.com). And, closed sites such as broker-dealer Intranets and private institutional sites are beyond the scope of this. But they occupy advisors online, too.
The sites we list below are advisor-focused sites we’ve seen advisors tweeting about over the last six months, based on data collected on AdvisorTweets.com. What did we miss? Please let us know below.
To be part of an audience that's in such demand is great for the advisor, but we encourage you to consider the implications for asset manager marketing efforts. Knowledge of these sites should influence the planning done for your advisor site, of course, but also your firm’s media planning. Many of the sites listed below are less than a year old, have tiny audiences and are most certainly nowhere near your media planner’s radar.
In your advantaged role as a digital marketer with access to the freshest customer insights, you may need to lead your firm’s valuation of the sometimes unconventional opportunities—in advertising, content sponsorship, content publishing and interaction with influential advisors—that these sites offer.
Almost all of these legacy print publishers have stepped up their publishing frequency and enhanced their forum capabilities on their Web sites, augmented in a few cases by LinkedIn Groups.
These sites are delivering timely, fresh content, with much of it user-generated—which tends to stimulate engagement, loyalty and lots of tweets.
We include two categories: associations and social networking sites organized by practitioners.
Associations
Social Networks
Update: The blog at AdvisorTweets.com has introduced an occasional series of guest blog posts from the founders and managers of these social networks. The April 16, 2010, post is from AdvisorConnect.