Category: Marketing Basics

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Communication Marketing Basics

How to Make Your Firm Easy for Advisors to Work With

You’ve probably heard of CX, which is customer experience. But in the asset management world, it’s also important to think about the AX, which is the advisor experience. As you launch an offering or you continue to try to appeal to advisors, the easier you make it to work with your firm, the better.

Here are a few ways to make sure that your firm is being accessible and easy for advisors to work with.

Access to Your Materials

First of all, it’s important to make sure advisors can access your material easily, whether that’s on your website or through contacting your sales team. Same holds true for obtaining information about your firm. You don’t want advisors to have to go to your website and search around trying to find key pieces of information. It should be front center, clear and easy to find.

Access to People

Advisors are looking for access to people. Whether that’s that sales team and being able to talk to them on demand, or the management team – accessing them through events or even one-on-one meetings. Access to the humans behind the firm and the investment can be critical and important for creating a positive experience for advisors.

Updated Materials

Advisors need the asset managers they work with to be consistent in updating their materials. No one wants to invest a client in a product and then have only outdated information to provide status updates and answer questions. That is the signature of a bad advisor experience.

For example, the latest property acquisition should be front and center, easy to find, and current. This also helps create trust with advisors by showing them you are following through on your investment philosophy

Clear Communication

Finally, clear communication is essential both before and after an advisor makes an investment in your firm. Advisors need to know and understand:

  • Your story and your investment philosophy
  • How you approach doing business
  • How you operate
  • How you communicate with advisors and investors
  • What your statements look like (are they easily understandable)
  • What types of updates are you providing on an ongoing basis

All these things can help develop trust on both the front end, as well as after advisors and investors are invested in your product, which can then help perpetuate additional investments.

If you need help evaluating your strategy and the type of experience you’re creating for advisors, contact Marketing Intent today.

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Marketing Basics

Three Ways to Improve Your Marketing Execution

When most people think of marketing, they think of the creativity that goes into copywriting design and web development. But we all know without a solid strategy for execution, that creativity doesn’t go very far.

In this article, we’ll discuss three ways to improve your marketing execution through project management, technology know-how, and procedures.

Project Management

Let’s start with project management. Most marketing projects are more in depth than they might seem on the surface, with many moving parts. At Marketing Intent, we use Trello to manage our projects as well as our clients’ projects. Trello is a simple and versatile project management software that we use for anything from managing an event to launching a fund. Trello allows us to keep all project details and deadlines in one place so we can keep tabs on how deliverables are moving forward. There are many choices in project management software today. Pick one that is simple, fits your needs – and most importantly – that you will use consistently.

Technology Know-How

A software tool is only as good as how you use it. So, it’s important to have somebody on your marketing team who is comfortable with technology – and not just on the project management side of the equation. In today’s world of digital marketing, marketers are using numerous types of technologies to do their jobs. Sometimes 10 or 12 different programs. It’s important to have somebody who is comfortable and willing to learn and maximize these technologies.

But keep in mind that you don’t have to use every available function of a technology. The goal is to use technology to increase your efficiency. Not to get overwhelmed by its features or go so far into functionality that you take time away from core marketing tasks, or the technology becomes so complicated that you don’t use it.

Procedures

That takes us to our next point. And this one may be foreign to many people thinking about marketing. Procedures. I like to think of procedures as being kind to my future self.

Oftentimes in marketing, there are projects that need to be done once a month or quarter. Instead of trying to remember what you did last time or re-learning the process every time you’re working on that project, take time to create procedures for the project. Next time you do that project, refer to your document and you’ll save time and brain power…and your future self will thank you!

To recap, we’ve talked about improving your marketing efficiencies with project management, the use of technology and procedures. These are strategies we use every day at Marketing Intent to manage our own projects, as well as our clients.

At Marketing Intent, we implement smart technology, project management platforms and helpful procedures to assist clients with their marketing initiatives.

If you’d like help becoming more efficient in your marketing, reach out to us, we’d be glad to help.

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Marketing Basics

Three Audiences New Asset Managers Need to Understand

Are you an asset manager that’s new to offering your products through financial advisors and the broker-dealer network?

In this article, we’ll talk about the various audiences you’ll be targeting, so you can get a good understanding of who’s who as you enter a new distribution channel.

Due Diligence Officers and Home Office Personnel

Let’s start with due diligence officers and home office personnel at broker-dealers and RIA firms. This group is at the top of the hierarchy. If we think about it flowing from the very top, where more information is allowed, down to the bottom, where less is.

Think about this group as the gatekeepers, with your goal of getting a selling agreement. You are sharing more information on the offering with them than you would with advisors or investors. This could be your track record, detailed financials, and pieces of information that you typically wouldn’t push down beyond them to advisors and investors.

Once you have the selling agreement in place, don’t forget the nurture. A mistake we often see asset managers make is to get the selling agreement and have established a relationship with a due diligence officer, but then they let communication taper off.

It’s important to continue to give updates on your offering. If you are a commercial real estate firm, for example, give updates on properties that you’re buying, or distributions you’re making to investors. It becomes a public relations effort in some ways, to keep due diligence officers/home office personnel updated. When they understand what you’re doing, they can continue to support your offering and positively influence future selling agreements with your firm.

Financial Advisors & RIAs

The next audience is financial advisors and RIAs. With this group, your goal is to always make it simple. We are in a world of complicated financial investment products. Make sure financial advisors and RIAs easily understand what you do.

An example we like to use is industrial real estate equals Amazon packages. Boil down what you do to reflect a lifestyle trend or an everyday topic so advisors will understand easily and feel confident about presenting your investment product to their investors.

Like with due diligence officers, continue to update advisors on your offerings, progress, changes, distributions and activity. They appreciate staying informed – especially when it comes to answering client questions. No one like to be caught off guard.

Investors

The third audience is investors – prospective investors as well as investors that end up investing in your fund. With prospective investors, your conduit to them is going to be through financial advisors and RIAs for the most part. You will produce materials that can be used with the end investor, but you’re going to rely on financial advisors to communicate that information to them.

Again, simplicity is so important because we all know we have really short attention spans. Even though we might be analytical people and some investors could be accredited investors or high net worth individuals, keeping it simple is key so they understand your offering quickly and easily.

Once investors are in your fund, make sure you’re communicating regularly with them, so again, they understand what’s happening. Build trust by keeping them updated.

We’ve covered the key audiences you’ll be communicating with as you work with broker-dealers and RIAs:

  • Due diligence/home office personnel
  • Financial advisors
  • Prospective investors, and the investors in your fund

Need Help Communicating with Your Audiences?

If you need help understanding your audiences or better communicating with them, contact Marketing Intent. We’re happy to help.

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Due Diligence Marketing Basics

7 Ways to Stay in Front of Distribution Partners When Your Offering is Dark

Just because your offering has been suspended doesn’t mean communication with your distribution partners should stop.

In fact, it’s a perfect time to showcase your commitment to your partnership by continuing communications with both home office contacts and advisors.

Home Office Contacts

Like everyone, your home office contacts have had to adjust to the virtual work environment. And their resources are being used to keep up with their investment offerings, monitor results, determine how Reg BI applies, and continue to provide advisors with the alternative investments their clients want.

Sounds like a big job. So how can you make life easier for your home office contacts? How can you best serve their needs?

  1. Provide market updates/articles that pertain to your industry sector. Introduce them with a couple bullet points on why you thought your contact would find the information interesting.
  2. Communicate news on your offering early and transparently. Outline changes and updates rather than simply forwarding a link to a press release or filing.
  3. Ask permission to communicate with advisors. You may be inclined to reach out to advisors like you always have and ask your home office contacts for forgiveness later if they frown on your communications. Instead, use the opportunity to strengthen your relationship. Develop a communication plan for input/approval to let your distribution partners know you’re operating with them and their financial advisors in mind. While it’s tempting to skip a plan and submit one-off communications instead, a plan shows a more thoughtful and partner-centric approach.
44% of advisors find communicating effectively with clients during volatile markets stressful.* How can you help?

Advisors

Consider advisor communications from their point of view – not yours. What are they struggling with? What’s their daily environment look like? How can you simply help them – even if it doesn’t immediately result in them dropping a ticket? Remember, those firms and wholesalers who focus on relationship building in uncertain times are the ones that will be top of mind for advisors when things settle down.

  1. Help advisors communicate with their clients. Provide talking points to give advisors a reason to call their clients with an update on their investment in your product. Remind them of any client-approved email templates or materials you have available. Or offer to speak on a client conference call or webinar to provide a market update on your sector.
  2. Make finding answers to common questions easy. Replace a product pitch call with a tour of your firm’s website to show advisors where to find key information (e.g., distributions, performance, portfolio). Encourage them to bookmark important pages. Maximize your time by scheduling a website tour webinar for your entire territory.
  3. Educate advisors. An educated advisor is your best customer. Think about where their knowledge gaps are today. Where can you help educate them on how various alternative investments compare, about industry trends, or even why your offering is dark and the criteria your firm is striving for to bring it back online.
  4. Reach out to centers of influence. Expand your reach by connecting with centers of influence at your distribution partners. How can you help field leaders, super OSJs or complex managers provide their advisors with valuable educational content? Position yourself as a resource to help their advisors navigate topics like market fundamentals, investment product comparisons or recent investor trends.

*Study: The War on Stress, 2019, Financial Planning Association, Janus Henderson Investors, Investopedia.

Want more information on strengthening your distribution partner relationship? Contact us today.

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