RIAs, Content Scoring, YouTube Views: It’s A Random Reading Round-up

I never met a free ebook that I didn’t download. I’m inclined to take online surveys and accept flyers from people on the street, too. Hey, we’re all in marketing, we have to support one another.

Here’s my latest report on a random collection of ebooks, reports, a presentation deck and a whitepaper that I’ve read in the last few months, and recommend to you.

Rounding Up The RIAs

“The RIA Channel: A Roadmap for Driving Growth” is a 14-page whitepaper from Broadridge. It’s a data-packed overview of how mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketing has needed to dramatically change as RIAs have become an increasing focus.

“While the four main wirehouses offer central points of contact and provide a degree of product and process uniformity for their approximately 57,000 advisers, a number of RIAs just shy of that number are spread among 14,000 RIA firms,” is how the paper succinctly summarizes the challenge (while simultaneously making the argument for digital).

The paper includes insights on RIA segments and some suggestions for targeting the best prospects and product positioning. My favorite graphic maps where RIAs are in the country, shown below. Sourced by Access Data, a Broadridge company, it’s a nice content marketing turn, too.

A Broad Dive Into All Things Digital

Before you reflexively go to print Experian’s The 2014 Digital Marketer, you should know that it’s 138 pages long. Then again, it's a resource you may find yourself referring to all year. 

Published in March, this is Experian’s sixth annual report of benchmarks and trends. Financial services is mentioned as one of the leaders in Internet advertising, second only to retail, and there’s this table showing the percentage of people who transact stocks/bonds/mutual funds on mobile, tablets and desktops (more on tablets than on the PC?!).

But read this more as a lay of the land of all things email, mobile, social and search/display. Also, this year’s report devotes several pages to cross-channel marketing, as important to this space as it is to business-to-consumer businesses. 

Some Of These Are Not Like The Others

First there was lead scoring—online it involves interpreting a Website visitors' digital body language and behavior and understanding where they are in their information-gathering process. Because it’s marketers who are accountable for creating the online content offered at various points in the purchase funnel, it naturally follows that there should be some scoring of content, too.

This Kapost deck (the link opens a PDF)—and the video below—is slightly more commercial than the others in this round-up. Kapost sells content marketing software. Even so, it’s a good primer if you haven’t yet started distinguishing between the performance of your individual content assets. It’s a quick, heavily illustrated 40 pages. For the video, you’ll need to know that MQL stands for marketing qualified lead.

YouTube Views Before Subscribers

To no one’s surprise, OpenSlate’s Top 500 Brands on YouTube industry report does not include an investment company.

The most successful non-entertainment brands average 1.4 million average monthly video views and have an average of 82,000 subscribers. Investment firms don’t come close. In fact, the Business and Finance Industry, lumped together in a way that echoes YouTube’s maddening categorization, represents only about 20 of the top 500. And, they’re companies like SpaceX, Boeing, Geico, GE and Lockheed Martin. 

Here’s the graph from the report that’s worth your consideration: The relationship between views and subscribers. On average across all YouTube channels, every 200 views results in a new subscriber, OpenSlate reports. Brands generally need almost four times that—750 views—to convert a single subscriber. And, as you can see in the OpenSlate graph below, “business and finance” channels need close to 1,000. 

“There are many factors working against brands in this regard, including an inconsistent content and publishing strategy and the likely impression by a viewer that whatever drew them to the brand’s content in the first place will not be repeated. A high percentage of TrueView driven (paid) views by brands also has a large impact,” according to the report.

The Raw Power Of Tech-Driven Marketing

I don’t even know where to start to summarize this must-read perspective on how Marketing has changed. In the 40-page New Brand of Marketing ebook, Scott Brinker of ChiefMartec.com takes a leisurely approach as he recounts seven “meta-trends” that have led to nothing short of "cataclysmic" disruption in how marketers work:

• From traditional to digital
• From media silos to converged media
• From outbound to inbound
• From communications to experiences
• From art and copy to code and data
• From rigid plans to agile iterations
• From agencies to in-house marketing

You’ll see much of the research and many of the datapoints that digital marketers like to quote and cite (e.g., on average 57% of the buyer’s journey happens online before prospects even talk to a salesperson), but Brinker provides the context and direction for them.

The narrative builds as a call to action for marketing to step up and “harness the raw power” of what's disrupted it. Brinker—whose work I’ve mentioned before—believes that marketing needs to assume responsibility for technology strategy and marketing. Specifically, he advocates for the role of a chief marketing technologist.

“If you’re responsible for the outcomes—how customers will perceive your brand in the digital world that is run by software—then you cannot afford to take a laissez-faire approach to the technological mechanisms by which those outcomes are achieved,” he writes.

Even if you’re familiar with Brinker’s chief marketing technologist argument, read this book for the extended reasoning supporting it. It’s all there.

Read anything good lately? Your recommendations are welcome below. 

Asset Manager Content Sharing Takes Off—Don’t Be Left Behind

There was a time not too long ago—seven months ago-ish—when the sharing of content published on mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) Websites was at low levels across the board.

That’s changing.

A comparison between the September 2013 sharing of content on the sites I blogged about in October with sharing in April 2014 shows that some fund companies are beginning to see significant sharing to social networks. Primarily to LinkedIn but not exclusively. The gains are stunning for BlackRock. Other firms are participating too, as you'll see below.

Why Isn’t Your Content Being Shared?

As for those of you whose content isn’t attracting the support you would hope for, it’s time to delve into why.

When nothing much is happening for your peers either, it’s easy to shrug your shoulders—i.e., uh, maybe nobody shares investment content. But now that others are starting to experience more of a social lift, what's keeping your content from participating? Let’s answer the question with a few questions: 

• Are you making it possible to share? If you’re still publishing your commentary via Adobe Acrobat files, none of this applies to you. PDFs don’t get shared on social networks. Even if you and your content team are knocking yourselves out with the narrative and the graphics, you can’t be a contender and that’s unfortunate. This is particularly true of smaller firms—firms whose limited marketing resources could most benefit from a little help from others.

If at all possible with the Compliance direction at your firm and your Web publishing capability (or whatever it is that prompted you to default to PDFs in the first place), I’d find a way to add some HTML commentary to your site, along with social sharing icons.

• How visible is your content? Waiting for others to find your content and pass it around is one way to go. The more effective way is to use your firm's own social accounts to call attention. 

Investment content sharing happens on four networks: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. The data suggest that the most significant thing you can do to increase the visibility of the content you publish is to post it as a company update to LinkedIn. If you’re not doing that yet, I’d make it a priority.

A company presence on LinkedIn, hopefully buoyed by some support of your loyalist followers and even employees (where possible), should make a difference.

What we don’t know is the extent to which firms are paying for broader exposure through LinkedIn sponsored updates or advertising. That is the X factor. However, to my knowledge, there is no way to buy shares. Followers yes, but shares still need to be earned.

As shown on the graphs, LinkedIn casts the longest shadow here. There’s no site I looked at where tweets generated the most shares in April. But I want to put a word in for Twitter. Twitter is an effective means of calling attention to the availability and relevance of your content to the world at large, including topical news-hungry financial advisors, the media and other influential accounts. As impressive as the LinkedIn numbers are, don’t underestimate the power and reach of a few tweets. 

Facebook may be fading as a network where investment firm content gets shared to. In the set of data I looked at, Facebook shares were most important to Franklin Templeton's Beyond Bulls & Bears blog in the fall. That contribution seems to have dimmed since the start of the year (see below).

Google+ is a no-show in this data. With the singular exception of the Vanguard experience, little content produced by investment firms has been shared there over the last seven months. Now, after the surprise departure last week of Google+'s business leader and reported staff reorganizations, the prospects for the platform as a whole is in question.

• Is your content visually appealing? A sea of gray text is going to get you and your content nowhere. You need images—lists, charts, even stock photos. And how about some subheads or pull-quotes to give your content a fighting chance?   

• What’s the quality of your content? The availability, visibility and appeal of the look of the content is where most firms need to focus, I suspect. But in my analysis, I did come across a few firms that were posting to LinkedIn and not seeing much sharing. 

Creativity in this space and elsewhere has raised the content bar. You can’t expect to attract many eyeballs, let alone stimulate sharing by publishing one post after another all with the headline “Market Update.”

As difficult as this conversation may be with your content creators, you need to have it, to make the most of your collective effort. Take the data with you to the meeting. 

Some Sharing Successes

My analysis in October looked at the sharing of investment commentary-type content published, mostly on blogs, by 10 firms (AllianceBernstein, BlackRock, First Trust, Franklin Templeton, Guggenheim, MFS, OppenheimerFunds, PIMCO, Vanguard and WisdomTree). I used the SharedCount multi-URL dashboard to look at how many times a URL was shared on social networks. This data should be reliable as it’s based on direct queries to the networks.

Included were URLs to all posts published by the firms in September, a total of 111 posts. The mix included 22 updates from BlackRock on the high end and 4 from MFS on the low end.

Please see the post for the full report. To give you an idea, content published on all 10 domains resulted in 1,500 shares on LinkedIn. 

After recently noticing much more sharing on some sites, I decided to return to SharedCount for an update.

Sure enough, sharing is up across the board. 

If I were a digital marketer at a firm not benefitting from sharing, I might be tempted to discount the BlackRock results. There can be only one BlackRock and you may never be able to match BlackRock’s blog post production (21 posts in one month), helping drive 7,400-plus shares.  

But the pattern across multiple firms suggests that sharing of your content should be on the rise, too, regardless of the size of your brand’s footprint or even how often you publish. One of the blogs I looked at earlier was MFS’ On The Lookout, which published five posts in September. There were just two postings in April and yet one post produced 77 LinkedIn shares versus 5 total LinkedIn shares of all five September posts.

What's more, the sharing has been building. To confirm this, I analyzed the URLs of all BlackRock (the most prolific blog in this set, consistently producing 20-plus posts each month) and Guggenheim (the least prolific, producing a steady four Macro View posts a month) content published from September through April. Who's to say that April represents the top?

The additional graphs that follow are included not for the absolute numbers involved but to show the change.

What are your thoughts?

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.

Heartbleed Bug: The Less Said, The Better?

I want to tread carefully on this. Online account security is nothing to trifle with. In all likelihood, concern over the Heartbleed security bug has seized the attention of the very highest levels of your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) organization.

The timeliness, frequency and depth of what your firm communicates about your own and third parties’ systems’ status, including vulnerabilities and patches, is a function of your culture and of your executive management including your IT, Legal and Communications leadership.

Understood. At the same time, I’m guessing that your Sales and telephone staffs have been armed with scripts for institutional investors, financial advisors and individual investors since the hole in Internet security was revealed in late March/early April. The relationship managers who serve those constituencies no doubt demanded “something to tell them,” and they’ve received what they asked for.

Why haven’t more communications appeared on Websites and in social media account updates? Two weeks after the initial report, I’ve seen just a handful of communications. Not all are on Website home pages, and even fewer have been part of the Twitter or Facebook update streams. 

The media has been continuously warning people to change the passwords on their financial accounts and other accounts where they may have used passwords also used on financial accounts.

Two-thirds of all Websites are reportedly affected. Among fund companies specifically, no less than American Funds has disclosed that it had an issue.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see that one person asked about Heartbleed in an April 10 comment on an American Funds' Facebook update about something else. And, you’ll see the April 14 note that American Funds posted on its Website acknowledging a “very narrow of risk.” According to reports yesterday, American has emailed clients suggesting that they change their user information, password, security image and questions, and delete their browsing history and cookies.

This is unfortunate and, American Funds was obliged to communicate the risk to its clients.

If your firm hasn't already fielded calls about Heartbleed, American Funds' notification to its 800,000 mutual fund shareholders and their advisors likely will heighten concern and result in questions.

At times we've all wondered, “What do our clients really want from us?” In this instance, isn’t it predictable? Isn’t it logical to expect that clients arrived at mutual fund and ETF Websites or checked Twitter feeds looking for Heartbleed information?

Even if your firm's systems have not been compromised. Even if you don't operate a brokerage business. Even if your firm uses a third-party transfer agent for shareholder servicing and all your site does is provide a link to that site. Even if IT scoffs at the question whether the passwords to your advisor Website could have been hacked.

Your client is not likely to be making these distinctions. 

'Controlling The Message'

At one time, brands sought to control the size of the attention given to an issue by limiting what they said. That’s not available anymore, if it ever was. And, there's the false security in believing that an offline communication can remain under the radar just because it isn’t made available on the Web.

In delivering the self-publishing capabilities that enable individuals to share brands’ marketing news, Web 2.0 has also empowered individuals to share a full range of information with each other. In this space, we know that financial advisors tweet advisor-only conference calls and upload to their blogs images from restricted distribution publications, for instance. Shareholders regularly complain about firms' password protocols on Twitter.

On the subject of Heartbleed, citizen contributors to both Bogleheads.org and a Morningstar forum took it upon themselves to check some fund Websites on a Heartbleed hacker checker. One result, according to the posters’ claims, was that TIAA-CREF failed the test of its site. See this and this. In fact, according to a syndicated press release that appears on this Web page, TIAA-CREF at one point issued a statement denying online reports of Heartbleed vulnerability.

Like it or not, there is no such thing as keeping something quiet or controlling who or what is going to pass a communication or even an observation on. There is no flushing search engine results.

In your organization, nobody knows this better than Digital Marketing. Even when there’s nothing to report, say something because your clients want to hear from you and you know that the Website or your Twitter or Facebook page is where they’ll come to. A clear, adequate communication on the Web will keep the call volume under control, and will facilitate the peer-to-peer online communication already underway.

Marginalizing A Digital Presence

Less important for your clients but important to the contribution your work can make: A de facto policy that reserves Web and social communications for only what’s required (fund updates) or marketing-based (commentaries, appearances, announcements) marginalizes the potential value of having an open, 24/7 digital presence.

Every once in a while I hear from someone who asks why I haven’t adopted the term “social business” instead of “social media”—the implication being that brands have evolved beyond social media. I disagree. The pages of the calendar may have flipped, but this has yet to become a social business.  

Four years ago, I was surprised when more financial Twitter accounts didn’t use their Twitter accounts to communicate about the flash crash. But that was too early in the history of asset managers and social media, the news itself was confusing, firms weren’t ready.

Little more than a year ago, PBS ran a documentary about retirement funding and the expense of retirement plans. Most asset managers chose not to comment, despite the fact that the show consumed online commentary for a while. It was controversial and complex, and no firm was compelled to jump in the fray.

This slower developing Heartbleed issue, on which few fund firms were directly impacted apparently, was an opportunity for a firm to demonstrate the attributes of being social—transparency, accountability and authenticity among them.

The relevant, financial services-focused online conversation these last two weeks has been about Heartbleed and the security of financial assets. Others have had plenty to contribute, and more firms could have joined in, even if only in an informational/educational (change your passwords!) role.

It's strange to land on a financial site with no front-and-center acknowledgment of Heartbleed. Forgive me. But even to someone who knows better, the firm seems out of touch, at best.   

The topic is too hot right now for you the digital marketer to call the question internally and advocate for your “constituency.” But if you agree that it’s time to challenge those who believe “the less publicly said, the better,” you might start to think about what it will take to get your firm to think more expansively.   

To help you make your case, here are a few examples of firms that have communicated something. 

Fidelity Pop-up

T. Rowe Price Splash Page Violator

OppenheimerFunds Timely Topic

Vanguard Home Page News Item

The Less Hyped Twitter News: Now You Can Search Twitter Lists

Twitter is making the news this week with its planned changes to account profile pages.

But the focus of this post is a change that Twitter has made with little to no fanfare: the capability to search for Twitter lists.

Since I’ve been paying attention to Twitter and doing my part to introduce people to all that Twitter can lead to, there have been two recurring questions: 1. How do we get people to follow us? (And sometimes, who do we follow?) 2. How do we find relevant tweets? This change helps with both.

Twitter List Background

First, some background.

Whether you work for a firm with a chatty Twitter account or a firm interested just in what’s being said on Twitter but not maintaining a Twitter presence, Twitter lists can be useful. 

Things can look pretty messy on Twitter.com. Twitter lists are what enable an account to organize who it follows (example: Investment Managers on Twitter) or why it follows them (example: Marketing Technology).

Actually, you don’t even need to follow an account in order to add it to a Twitter list. This helps when you need to be stealth about who and what you're "listening" to.

Twitter lists can be either public or private. From what’s able to be observed (i.e., public lists) and from my experience, my sense is that asset management firms and Twitter lists could be better acquainted.

Here’s a look at some of the largest firms and their Twitter list membership and activity. Not only does @PIMCO have the most followers, it appears on the most public lists relative to others. And—to anticipate a question—the high list membership of Vanguard's advisor account (@Vanguard_FA) relative to the number of its followers suggests that Twitter-using advisors use Twitter lists.

iShares and Putnam are the only firms that have created and/or subscribed to public lists. It's possible they and others may be creating private lists. 

What To Learn From Twitter Lists

At the minimum, I recommend that you: 

• Track the number of Twitter lists that your account has been added to over time. The number of a Twitter account’s followers can be artificially inflated by advertising and other automated means. It’s an incomplete measure of the value of an account.

The Twitter list count is meaningful because a list creator needs to manually add each account to it. It’s a reflection of the resonance of your content. Also, inclusion on a Twitter list implies that your tweets have a better chance of being paid attention to.

• Note the names of the Twitter lists that your account appears on. This will show you how your content is being received. For example, it feels like all is in order when @RockTheBoatMKTG is added to an Investment Marketing Twitter list, and not so much when the account is added to a Boat Shipping list. 

To see the lists that others have added your account to, just go to your Twitter account Settings/Lists. The lists that your account has created and/or subscribed to is the default view, click on the Member of tab.

When your account is added to a list, it's reported through the Twitter Notifications tab.

For a total of the lists that your account is on, however, you’ll need to go to Twitonomy.com, the source of the data shown in the table above. 

• Create Twitter lists (private, probably) to isolate the individuals or topics you care most about. Tweets from your curated lists can then be monitored on Twitter.com or using third-party apps (HootSuite, Feedly, Flipboard, etc.)

Surfacing Relevant Accounts, Content

A few additional opportunities open up, now that Twitter lists can be searched. As an example, let’s say that your firm is positioning itself as a 401(k) thought leader.

A Twitter list search will expose you to who’s so focused on 401(k)s that they’ve created a list for the topic, and you’ll be able to track the tweets and accounts added to the list for your own content development inspiration.

If your firm is permitted by Compliance to follow others, Twitter list search will help vet which accounts and lists to subscribe to or follow. Your following activity will make the list creator and other accounts aware that you’re out there, and that your interests are aligned. This should lead to more followers for your account.

Greater visibility via the new search capability should also stimulate usage of Twitter lists. Hope so, I consider Twitter lists one of Twitter’s most awesome, configurable features. The absence of an easy way to search for them has been a drawback in others' adoption.

Where To Find Twitter List Search

Without any further ado, these screenshots show where to find the Twitter list search. These are from desktop Twitter. It's also possible to get to List search from the Twitter Android and iOS apps.

Start by entering your term in the Search box, which will produce timeline search results.

Click on Timelines in the left-hand column and you'll see two tabs displayed: One for Lists and one for Timelines. Lists is the default view. This shows just a partial view of the available 401k lists.

It’s not as intuitive as one might hope. For example, I expected to access list search via Twitter's Advanced Search but that’s not available. And, there’s no knowing the order that the lists are displayed in—it’s not by number of members, as you’ll see in the screenshot.

While we’re on the topic of Twitter search, did you know that you can also search within only the tweets of the people you follow (boxed on the screenshot above)? This can be quite helpful, too.