Checking segmented generational activity is key for marketing success, and now is the time for funds to unlock Gen Z’s investment potential.
Some funds may be disparaging of younger investor bases in favour of their existing demographics. Many, too, may see social media as an afterthought marketing tool compared to research reports and hefty performance documents. But ignoring these investor pools and channels will be counter-intuitive.
In Betterment’s 2026 Retail Investor Survey titled ‘The Guidance Gaps’, 1,000 US retail investors over four generations were studied to get a picture of investor preference with age. Namely, 60% of Gen Z investors state that social media is the primary destination for financial news (up from 45% in 2024), with only 21% seeing advisors as go-to sources.
Other findings are also painting a fascinating picture of the modern investing landscape that looked very different not too long ago:
- For one, AI for financial advice is not wholly trusted (by only a modest 31%), and yet more than half that do say an AI output has influenced a financial decision that would not have ordinarily been made.
- Alarmingly, another 52% of Gen Zers diverted money originally planned to invest in sports betting; an avenue treated as a deliberate part of a long-term investment strategy.
So, what does this mean for fund marketers?
Responding to this new-look investor experience is not easy. It is, though, wholly necessary to adhere to an audience that will inherit trillions in intergenerational wealth over the next decade.
Fund marketers that prioritise email newsletters, conference appearances or gated PDFs are missing a large slice of the pie that choose to get investment thought leadership from TikTok, Instagram and Reddit. Influencers are largely becoming valued over websites and wholesalers.
A fund that is part of this educational content landscape can help form new investors’ impressions of portfolio construction, and more in line with the financial news accounts they follow. It’s a matter of taking well-designed ‘financial education’ material to scrollable, dopamine-hit timelines where attention-heavy factsheets are falling out of favour.
Any short-form outlooks and unique viewpoints need to become part-and-parcel of the fund marketing infrastructure, able to be shared as part of an IR workflow and with a cadence that supports social media’s habit-forming output. It’s essentially the same expert analytical content redressed and recontextualised for a different format.
Similarly, the AI discoverability phenomenon also means content distribution needs to shift away from SEO: the guiding principle for ‘being found’ the past few years. Tools such as Google’s AI Search and ChatGPT should be able to cite a fund’s content, if it is structured in a way to answer generic investment questions by a junior retail investor.
The new reality sees decision-makers utilising AI (and researching further into the top results it sources). Becoming one of those sources is vital, as is seeing AI and socials as distribution channels drives discoverability, particularly when content presents a fund’s unique voice in the niche alternatives sector.
Source
PR Newswire, Betterment’s 2026 Retail Investor Survey
