Can Asset Management Regain Its Digital Marketing Appetite?

Digitalisation in the financial industry is still a precarious topic.

While it should feel like a given that every firm delivers quality, bespoke content to potential investors online through multiple channels, and identifies how that affects their inflows, that’s not a familiar story across the board.

In our own Fund Marketing Outlook Report looking into priorities for next year, over half of representatives we surveyed are still without an automation platform. Considering the advantages of this technology for gathering personalisation insights and making content distribution seamless, going without it feels like climbing a mountain without the right boots.

Automations are only a handful of useful tools available for funds to market their brand, their content and their offerings, and the asset management sector is still grappling with multiple digital platforms. Interestingly, respondents to a JPES Partners report back in 2021 reported having a lot of confidence using technology – a number that has waned sense. Speculatively, that may have been due to the number of funds upping their digital game to adhere to an influx of online investors as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.

Recently, JPES Partners again surveyed 38 asset owners (with more than $3 trillion in AuM), and a resounding 58% still see technology as a topic of high importance. Not only that, but more than half of those surveyed (52%) were actively dissatisfied with how the industry has embraced and used technology until now. Why?

The success of fund marketing has to align the commercial goals of increasing AuM with attracting the right audiences with insights that matter. From the report, it seems that the lack of love for technology is due to it not being able to get their brand and philosophy across to customers with the highest potential to invest.

It’s not that asset managers do not know their stuff. Far from it; 63% feel like they have a strong ability to explain their investment strategies. It’s just a shame that almost the same number struggles to display their positive company culture just as well. Both of these worthy brand awareness points benefit from promotion on digital channels. Blogs, videos, infographics and more can convey informed, expert-led thought pieces and outlooks from fund professionals, and also those that pinpoint particular investors’ challenges and potential solutions.

Digital marketing is not just about the sharing of key messages, though. Collecting the right audience touchpoint data across channels consistently helps to understand why they’re interested in particular funds or services. This informs the basis for fund marketers to craft personas: ‘ideal investor’ profiles that showcase who can benefit from certain offerings, and how and where they’d like to receive marketing collateral.

Engagement is the cornerstone of building awareness with a brand and what it does best. Be that through a website, automated email chains and social profiles, getting your insights out in the right formats helps cultivate trust that digital channels are being used properly.

And a fund that serves content directly to a prospect that’s waiting to receive well informed communication to secure their next investment decision will benefit most.

As the JPES survey has found, asset managers’ confidence in technology is showing steady signs of improvement again, but it goes to show that a greater focus in displaying service, culture, and investment content through digital channels may still be missing.

Digital innovation is improving daily – with more MarTech integrations, add-ons and AI capabilities becoming more commonplace – so getting the digital basics in place now can provide a brilliant jump-off point for more targeted marketing campaigns.