Web sites

How Do You Want Advisors to Follow-Up?

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Apr 06, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

I spent an hour last week monitoring an asset manager’s quarterly conference call with advisors. As the call wrapped, the executive moderating the call invited advisors to follow up via the firm’s:

  • Web site
  • Twitter feed
  • Sales team

What was interesting to me is that is the exact order in which these outlets were introduced. Web, then Twitter, and finally the wholesalers. Besides the order, the voiceover did even more to reinforce the primacy of the Web and Twitter relative to the sales team.

Obviously this a minor, tactical part of the call. But I’m intrigued by the order. I would not claim that online outlets provide more effective follow-up than a wholesaler in this case. And the call did not have enough advisors to raise concerns about an overwhelming volume of inbound calls/e-mails.

So was this a conscious decision? Is there a reason why the Web and Twitter were prioritized? I can think of a few good explanations, and will follow up here when I get a concrete answer.

Asset Managers as Content Aggregators?

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Jan 27, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

Many of our asset management clients face a common issue – they don’t generate as much high-quality content as they’d like.  It’s a frustrating issue for marketing teams and most often chalked up to a lack of resources.

As I read about some recent developments at Seeking Alpha, a thought came to mind – should asset managers invest more effort in content aggregation and less in content creation?

Seeking Alpha is among the better known and regarded financial blogs out there.  The site publishes 250+ articles daily, drawn from a pool of 3,000 (non-proprietary) contributors.  Some of the authors, who include financial advisors, and individual articles get quite a bit of attention (upwards of 50k followers and 30k page views, respectively).

What’s interesting is that Seeking Alpha has accomplished this having paid exactly $0 for content.  $0.  For 250+ articles per day.  My takeaway is that being a content aggregator has advantages over being a content creator.  Three broad reasons why:

  1. Relevant third-party magazines, newspapers, and blogs produce much more content than individual organizations.
  2. All things being equal, more content should mean more traffic/attention for aggregators.
  3. There may be economic efficiencies in pooling strong external content versus creating proprietary material.

Given the challenges in producing proprietary content, should asset managers consider content aggregation as a strategy?  I think yes.  Would researching, licensing, and packaging 30 top-notch articles from external sources be more fiscally efficient and valuable to clients than producing 30 internal pieces?  I think maybe.

That’s enough for asset managers to at least investigate aggregation as a part of their content strategies.

4 Web Tips for Asset Managers from Gawker (Part 2)

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Dec 06, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

In a post last week, I suggested that pending design changes to Gawker’s popular blog family offer up 4 good ideas for asset managers and their Web sites.  The previous post covered two of those ideas; and without further ado here are two others:

  1. Appointment Viewing Works: Having experimented with pre-scheduled content and “theme” weeks, Gawker has found that they do well at attracting readers.  In the past I’ve advocated that asset managers too embrace programming practices from the media – preset publishing schedules that can be promoted in advance, serialized content that can stretch over time.  Gawker’s data validates that this works.

    2. Each week's Economic Calendar drives people to pay attention to information as it is released.

  2. Video is an Advertising Prerequisite, Too: The Web has gone way beyond static banner ads.  Gawker notes that 30-50% of potential sponsors have video ads to run online.  While asset managers have integrated more video into their Web sites, how fast can they start using video to support their online advertising as well?

Yes, Gawker is not an asset manager.  Content is their product.  But what they’ve learned in repeatedly trying to engage more people with their content parallels the similar challenges of asset management marketing and eBusiness teams.

4 Web Tips for Asset Managers from Gawker (Part 1)

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Dec 03, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

For those of you unfamiliar, Gawker operates a network of (generally popular) blogs.  You may not know the individual brands, but you probably know some of things they’ve written about, such as when Gizmodo found an iPhone 4 prototype in a bar earlier this year.

This week Gawker announced changes to the page layout of its blog network.  This 1-minute video gives an overview:

Clearly Gawker’s business model does not match that of an asset manager.  But I found the detailed reasoning behind the changes to have 4 good ideas for the Web sites of asset management firms.

The first two:

  1. All-Text Content is Toast: I know.  “No duh.”  But this point can’t be reinforced enough.  Gawker is embracing the fact that the Web is increasingly all about the visual.  The chance that great content can overcome subpar packaging is moving closer to zero.  While firms have improved the amount and quality of audiovisual material, the typical asset management site is still a PDF and text-rich environment.

  2. Recent Does Not Equal Best: The traditional blog format and traditional approach to content management means that the most recent item almost always appears first (*cough, our blog, cough*).  But Gawker notes that  older content sometimes has more appeal and deserves longer premium promotion.  Their new design enables dual management of what’s popular and what’s new.  Asset managers – who tend to showcase the most recent piece of commentary or the most recent practice management offering by default – can consider doing the same.

Two more thoughts to come on Monday…

Pitch Book Length is Not Just About Pages

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Nov 03, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with ,

It’s become widely accepted that a hedge fund pitch book shouldn’t exceed 20 pages.  It’s a good goal, but it leaves out half the story.

While managers often succeed in keeping pitch books short in terms of slides, they just as often fail to keep them short in terms of words.  I’d argue word count matters more than slide count.

The average adult reads about 250 words per minute.  But reading rate doesn’t really matter when it comes to pitch books.  Near-constant use of the Web has changed the way people consume information, and there’s a lot more scanning than reading these days.  And that most definitely includes PowerPoint.

Consider two startling conclusions from a Jakob Nielsen study:

  • Users read about 20% of the words on an average Web page
  • Users read 50% of the words when there are ~100 words or less

Our experience with pitch books is similar.  Prospective investors just aren’t going to read your pitch book word for word.  And if it’s a live presentation, they’ll read even less (assuming they’re paying attention to what’s being said.)

A good rule of thumb is to avoid going over 125 words on a slide.  Beyond that most pitch books end up with an overly-dense layout or too-small fonts.

Hedge funds should embrace the paradox:  say less to be heard more.