9 Random Stats Cherry-Picked Just For You

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The last few weeks have seen the release of some fascinating and free research and work. I cracked open the reports to pull out the following nine numbers that made an impression on me and might on you.

10.8

Financial advisors say they’re working with about one additional mutual fund provider in 2012—10.8 versus 9.9 in 2011—and that they’re concentrating fewer assets with their top three providers.

This is just one of many insights offered in “A Fresh Look at Advisor Loyalty” from Cogent Research. The report, which you can download, also analyzes aspects of the product and service experience that are most likely to drive advisor loyalty across three types of products: mutual funds, ETFs and annuities.

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Coupla Notes About 4 New Mutual Fund, ETF Websites

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Let’s take a quick spin around four new mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF)-sponsored Websites and/or Web presences that surfaced in October.

Janus' Proceed With Caution

Janus is promoting a new domain—proceedwithcaution.com that re-directs to its brand domain. This is a shallow, siloed presence with the top-level pages linking to PDFs for advisors to use when working with clients. It’s a targeted campaign with three clear steps:

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Mutual Fund, ETF Sites Not #Winning With The Pinning

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We’ve all heard about Pinterest’s unprecedented climb to the mainstream (to 23 million unique users by July of this year). It’s popular with an age group (66% of Pinterest users are 35 and older) and a gender (79% of users are female) that asset managers would like to get close to (data from an eMarketer report this week). And, it reportedly drives more traffic to Websites than ye old Yahoo.

PinterestGrowth2012

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Want To Raise Awareness? Try Publishing More Often

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One of the most significant changes to asset management marketing over the last four years has been the frequency with which Websites—and increasingly blogs—are updated. (For a blast back to the past, see this Rock The Boat Marketing post on Web content updates, published on September 18, 2008, after the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the announced federal bailout of AIG, etc.)

Previously, content had been valued for its "evergreen" quality. But as the markets melted down and buy-and-hold came under fire, the most general, time-tested statements about investing and investment products needed to be rethought and recast. Evergreen investment content? We may have been deluding ourselves.
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Videos Humanize Mutual Fund, ETF Firms—All That's Needed Now Is Viewers

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When was the last time you went to the movies? And by that I mean, when did you last watch an asset manager video that you didn't have a hand in producing?

If it's been a while or...never, you are not alone as mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firms' videos continue to languish in obscurity. While other brands in other industries consistently report success with video, investment firm-sponsored videos do well to attract three-digit view totals on YouTube. (See a lonnng Rock The Boat Marketing post on this from June of last year.)

But low viewership is not stopping firms from elevating their art, as this selection of recent videos suggests.
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