Blog

Best Blogs of the Week

Posted by Anu Heda on Dec 22, 2014, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , , , ,

We close in on the New Year and multiple more “2015 outlooks” pop up. We won’t bore you with any of them though. We noted over 10 posts related to oil prices this week, showing the industry’s continued capability to respond nimbly towards headline news.

  • Franklin Templeton – Though highly technical, we found this the most thorough and singularly helpful post related to oil prices.
  • JPMorgan – Quick hits on the year in review. Not scintillating yet highly effective.
  • Principal – A post for retirement plan sponsors; fantastic. I appreciate question four and continue to see a large gap in participant education throughout the value chain.
  • Vanguard – This post on explaining ETFs hits a particular note with us. In our proprietary research, we proved that a large FA population continues to avoid ETFs primarily because of missing education and a lack of knowledge.
  • WisdomTree – Excellent post on alternative investing and the impacts from macroeconomic factors (including oil prices!)

Best Blogs of the Week

Posted by Anu Heda on Dec 15, 2014, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with

We’re entering the Year in Review / Looking ahead to 2015 territory. If you’ve read this blog over the years, you know I’m not a big fan of these posts (e-mail me if you’re curious why). With that said, this week I liked a single post from Invesco for staying close to a specific topic in their year ahead review.

Best Blogs of the Week

Posted by Anu Heda on Dec 09, 2014, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , ,

Three posts this week.

  • AllianceBernstein – Helpful ways to view emerging market risk
  • Invesco – Muni bonds are so synonymous with tax-exempt income that this post is refreshing even if FAs disagree with the author’s reasons
  • Wisdom Tree– Interesting piece on actively-managed ETFs as a vehicle for FAs to utilize/consider.

 

The Need for Product Marketing

Posted by Anu Heda on Nov 24, 2014, in Thoughts

During a recent meeting with a retail marketing executive in a multi-boutique form, we brainstormed a bit on the perceived need for product marketing. Do asset managers need to produce product commentary, investment process documents, and other information at an individual product level? Is a printable fact sheet and high-quality Web product profile enough support?

We started to think through the use cases for these materials. The material is definitely not esoteric. Allianz has quarterly market commentary. Jensen provides a nice quarterly product commentary (related to the SMA). And Schroders offers an evergreen product process.

  1. Do FAs want these types of documents?
  2. Do these documents open doors via business-as-usual marketing channels (e.g., e-mail, banner ads, etc.)?
  3. Do these documents build credibility with FAs, home-office product specialists and others?
  4. Are they supportive to the wholesaler meeting?

Though basic market research would be a helpful way to quantify the perceived value, the marketing executive’s “gut instinct” was to answer “no” to the first three questions. But that last question gave pause. Perhaps having a “leave behind” is so typical that walking away from a meeting with an FA and not giving him something could seem awkward. In the “leave behind” scenario, the documents could be necessary (Also, perhaps the wholesalers used the documents to build product knowledge that efficiently educated them.). That fourth question left him with the to-do of discussing product marketing materials with the Internal Sales Manager to understand print-on-demand volume (for the wholesalers), mail volumes, or e-mail click-through rates.

As November concludes many asset managers will look at their 2015 plan and wonder where to increase and decrease spending. Perhaps product marketing literature is a place to consider decreasing.