Beyond the Collateral Archives: Marketing Communications
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November 7, 2008
Asset Management Marketing Budgets Are Insufficient
We continue our release of exhibits from the 2007 Beyond The Collateral research with data on marketing budgets (exclusive of compensation). Last year’s study showed that nearly half of firms (46%) with assets under management (AUM) between $15B-$50B spend less than $2 million, and 50% of firms with AUM over $50B spend less than $10 million. These represent marketing budgets that are 1 basis point or less of AUM.
Further, a large percentage of marketing budgets are spent on literature development and fulfillment. The majority (57%) of firms with AUM of less than $50B spend more than 40% of their overall marketing budget on literature development and fulfillment. Even 38% of firms with AUM over $50B spend over 40% of their marketing budgets in this manner.
Check back next Friday for the next release of another exhibit from Beyond The Collateral. The research is being re-fielded now, with results due before the end of the year.
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October 20, 2008
SwanDog Publishes The World Has Changed (Part 1)
SwanDog Strategic Marketing today published “The World Has Changed (Part 1),” a 12-page whitepaper available to be downloaded from www.swandog.com. It includes recommendations on how mutual fund companies, other investment managers and broker-dealers can reposition themselves.
In the whitepaper, Dave Swanson, SwanDog’s founder and managing principal, is critical of investment management Web site updates and encourages marketers to commit to more timely communicating by adopting a “newsroom mentality.” Investment companies that have deferred investor communications to financial advisors need to use frequency, education and transparency to re-open the dialogue, we believe. Marketing communications, including imagery, need to be reworked to represent the empathy that today’s markets call for. Other recommendations relate to redefining the brand of the financial advisor and the prospects for large and small asset management brands.
The investment management industry is the business we come from and we now serve. Some of what we’re recommending is counterintuitive to legacy marketing, but we believe in marketing organizations’ ability to step it up and lead their firms’ efforts in bolstering investor confidence. There is unprecedented opportunity for those who do.
To download a copy of “The World Has Changed (Part 1),” go to www.swandog.com. The whitepaper is the first in a series of reports.
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September 20, 2007
Financial Services Study Envisions a Comprehensive Role for Marketing
Asset management firms focus on the production of marketing collateral and a limited number of other functions to their detriment. That’s the conclusion of the 2007 Beyond The Collateral: Unlocking Marketing’s Potential for Strategic Advantage study co-authored by SwanDog Strategic Marketing and Financial Research Corporation (FRC).
The overwhelming majority of CEOs, senior executives and heads of distribution say they expect Marketing to have a greater impact on their businesses in the next five years. (Not surprisingly, marketing heads concur!)
Yet, the study suggests that firm management is underutilizing the potential of their marketing organizations, often viewing Marketing as just a supplement to the sales effort.
“This is not meant to be a direct indictment of Marketing,” write Dave Swanson, Founder & Managing Principal of SwanDog Strategic Marketing, and Mike Evans, President of FRC. “There is plenty of evidence that suggests, for the most part, Marketing has always done what they have been asked to do, an what they have been structurally designed to do, which is to primarily create and distribute marketing materials. Traditionally, Marketing has not been asked or expected to take a strategic role within their firms. This is evident in Marketing’s typical structure, responsibilities and funding.”
Our goal, with the study and in discussion continuing on the Beyond the Collateral.com Web site, is to engage the industry—senior management, distribution heads, marketing chieftains and their teams in the pursuit of what we’re calling Comprehensive Marketing. This is in contrast to the one-sided marketing that the study documents as the status quo in the industry today.
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September 12, 2007
Free Tools Help Measure Web Site Popularity
How do you know if your company’s Web site is competitive? Many firms announce rankings periodically, and the Mutual Fund Education Alliance bestows a few awards every year. While those assessments are qualitative, a few free Web tools make it possible to measure a site’s relative standing.
We’ve modeled the following table on the approach used by eBizMBA (see 25 Most Popular Business Sites as an example). And, we used the top mutual fund Web sites as identified by Alexa.com excluding the Singapore-based Fundsupermart.com and UK-based TrustNet Limited.
eBizMBA’s model considers three sources in measuring “top sites:”
- Inbound links, which are key to search engines discovering a site. Links from other Web sites serve to validate the expertness of a Web site. The source used in the table is Yahoo’s Site Explorer (Yahoo login required).
- Monthly visitors as counted by Compete.com. Compete “triangulates” multiple data sources, including ISP, Panel & Toolbar to estimate U.S. traffic.
- Monthly visitors as counted by Quantcast.com. Quantcast says it observes “anonymous records of visits to internet destinations. For a portion of the observations, they have certain information, such as the age, gender or income level of the Internet visitor and/or their household. This group is called a panel and forms one aspect of our analysis and reporting methodology.” Internet log records are also analyzed.
- Alexa rank, which is a blend based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach).
