Beyond the Collateral Archives: Marketing Communications
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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).
