Wonder what that means numbers-wise. Given that Compete reports that Vanguard.com attracts easily more than 2 million visitors a month, it’s worth taking a moment to ponder. If you think that your firm’s shareholders, investors, advisors who use your products are similar in any way to Vanguard’s clients and prospects, you might want to check your own mobile analytics.

And, then listen to the rest of the half-hour interview in which yet another executive provides a peek at the enviable Vanguard culture.

Marcante discusses IT’s six-person innovation team and the work it does with more than 150 crew volunteers. With 2,000 internal communities sharing 3.5 million files, Vanguard’s crazy for communities, it seems. Marcante reflects on what’s being learned about the collaboration possibilities of information-sharing via communities of defined contribution and defined benefits clients, as an example. Authentication by voice biometrics is also a recent initiative with the potential to delight—a Vanguard IT objective.

At the risk of seeming hopelessly idealistic (just a continuation of yesterday’s blog post, some might say), you could send the link to the interview to your IT team and see if it prompts a conversation.

PIMCO’s dominance is on Twitter, the social platform that makes the most sense for thought leadership-producing investment companies. But unlike what’s usually required to be successful on Twitter, there is no conversation in the give-and-take sense. @PIMCO follows exactly one account (@PIMCOFoundation). The account never re-tweets, let alone acknowledges others’ tweets.

Despite this, people are so drawn to the brand that tweets like this back to Gross are not uncommon. Impressive.

@pimco My bonds are all @premium with sh/med duration and ttm.I refreshed my NYIF notes on duration and price sensitivity after roundtable.

— Retired Tennis Bum (@retiredtennis) January 22, 2013

But here’s where PIMCO is setting an example that can and should be followed by asset managers. On Twitter, people and their natural language represent the PIMCO brand. PIMCO even foregoes its logo, preferring to use a photo of Bill Gross and Mohamed el-Erian together as its avatar.

What’s more, the legendary bond king writes his own tweets.

“Very cool to know Gross pens his own tweets!” Morningstar Advisor Publisher Leslie Marshall tweeted while attending yesterday’s ETF Virtual Summit, where Gross was the keynote presenter.

Gross gets lots of attention for the PIMCO tweets but I have never believed that he wrote his own tweets (not even for this exchange). In fact, at times I’ve thought that I detected a change in the writing style, which I attributed to a stable of ghost-tweeters. But after I saw Leslie’s tweet this morning, I went to PIMCO PR and asked for confirmation once and for all.

“Confirmed…he writes every word” was the response.

“Even this one?” I asked, pasting in the following tweet I’d saved from last May (I know, I need to get a life and I promise I will. If not this year, next year for sure).

There isn’t a communications professional working in the industry today that would allow this SMS-inspired, truncated message to fly, if not written under Bill Gross’s name and delivered via Twitter. Substance and timeliness trump form and formality. All hail.

And now back to the challenge facing the rest of us mere mortals.

Toward A Social Business

It’s easy for individuals to be effective using social media, while it can be difficult for brands. It’s more of a struggle for business-to-business brands than for business-to-consumer brands, and it can be a whole lot of complicated for regulated investment business-to-business brands unaccustomed to projecting a personality in public.

A social presence needs a voice in order to engage and be engaged. That’s one of the advantages that @PIMCO has. Gross has a personality that’s evident across every communications platform he uses, but Twitter is where he seems freshest and most accessible. (Read this for a contrary view.)

Maybe PIMCO-like attention isn’t available to every firm. But by now the path to becoming a business whose social participation deepens relationships and fosters collaboration is well worn and documented. (The IBM CEO Study: Command & Control Meets Collaboration published last year is a must-read if you haven’t yet).

Few firms can get what they want (i.e., the benefits of a social business) while retaining an institutional persona.

To date, the almost $60 trillion investment management industry is personified by a handful of faces on social networks. There are the Twitter accounts of investment strategists, mostly, and CEOs shown below (the image is linked to the Rock The Boat Marketing Twitter list of Investment Managers, which all are included on). Vanguard CEO Bill McNabb takes to Facebook and Twitter periodically. Not all of these are communicating as their natural (male, notice) selves.

More asset manager employees are active in LinkedIn groups, but it tends to be passive participation in private groups. With no real conversation stream, there’s plenty of time to submit a measured, corporate comment.

The personality that’s being shown on asset manager blogs is indeed a positive sign, but publishing and moderating posts on one’s own domain is different from participating on a social platform.

I’m predicting that 2013 may ring in a change. This just may be the year when we begin to see “extemporaneous,” natural communicating and insights from real live people in responsible positions at asset management firms.

It’s not just wishful thinking on my part. I’ve been wishing for it since at least the May 2010 flash crash; this year I think it could happen. I’m seeing signs that the business imperative (and opportunity) is dawning on asset managers, who have needed time to get organized.

Look for more investment strategists—how cool would it be to observe a few strategists engaging one another on a forum like Twitter—more firm execs, at least one sales leader, maybe some value-added program managers. National account people or wholesalers? Maybe. This industry will never rival Microsoft or Zappos in social participation but neither will participation remain at the current level for much longer.

If your work involves prepping your firm’s marquee names, encourage them to do it themselves, using their own words and in real-time. Oh, it’s going to be fun, running interference between all the many interests (Compliance, Legal, Brand, Investments, Sales) that prefer a more programmed approach. This will require your best, most thoughtful work, if you expect to help the firm gain in relevance in even a fraction of the way that PIMCO has.

By the way, who will be the first asset management CMO to take to Twitter with a public account?

This could be interesting.

Advisor Perspectives Monday emailed a survey to its database of 300,000 financial advisors, asking some salient questions about the relative value of fund company Websites and mobile platforms.

Of course, asset management digital marketers have kasina, Cogent Research, Cerulli Associates and a handful of other firms to go to for paid research and quantitative-based analysis. But, the Advisor Perspectives work should provide welcome insights, and some of it will be shared.

Jeff Briskin, Advisor Perspectives director of Marketing, says the survey’s focus is on how advisors use mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) Websites to manage their practices.

For example:

• The survey asks, “When you are conducting an investment due diligence process for your clients, what percentage of the fund-related information comes from fund company sites?”
• Respondents are asked to select “the best” Website capabilities and resources from a list of the largest 20 fund companies as ranked by Investment News. Note that iShares and PowerShares are subsumed by BlackRock and Invesco. State Street SPDR ETFs is the only standalone ETF provider on the list. The same set is provided for advisors to weigh in on the best mobile user experience provided.

If you’re a smaller firm, you’re going to have to hope for strong write-in support to place.

• As you can see from the screenshot below, advisors are being asked what type of information they access on what type of mobile device (iPad/tablet or iPhone/smartphone). Responses could be helpful to asset managers for resource planning and yes, reality-checking.

Assuming a healthy survey response, Advisor Perspectives will have some rich profiling data, enabling it to filter responses by type of advisor, assets under management and type of client base (e.g., individuals/families, mass affluent, high net worth, retirement plans, endowments and private foundations).

Briskin says top-level results (not including firm rankings) will be shared in an AdvisorPerspectives.com report sometime in March. Other results may be released as requested by individual firms.

In other research news

Interaction With Fund Managers The Highest Value Social Media Activity

I’ve also been meaning to call your attention to this finding from a Phoenix Marketing International Study “What You Need to Know About Social Networking Among Financial Advisors.”

As you can see in this slide from an early December Webinar, 55% of advisors surveyed consider “Interacting with asset managers on fund offerings and performance” the highest value activity of social networking. Higher value than any other reason for advisors to be social, including advisors’ own brand-building or client acquisition or communication activities.

For those of you who need justification for social media participation, this data might help. What gives me pause is the survey response’s mention of fund offerings and performance. Very few firms mention products or performance on social platforms.

In response to an email questioning this, Phoenix Senior Research Analyst/Product Manager Carl Uttaro said, “While firms aren’t necessarily getting into nitty-gritty details, they are still pushing out information/notifications about certain funds and other product offerings.” The wording of the question was designed to clarify interaction with firms, Uttaro said.

4th Annual Social Media Adoption Survey Planned

For the last three years, American Century Investments has conducted a survey of financial advisor adoption of social media (here’s the link to the 2012 survey). Jennifer Sussman, director of Digital Engagement, this week told me that the survey is in the field and we can look for an updated report in March. So, something else to look forward to…

I needed to re-install the apps that had been on my first gen iPad while a few were new to me. Henderson Global Investors launched its app just last week and I was catching up with the AllianceBernstein AB Connect app, launched in December with added content and capability for advisors with a log-in. And, it’s been 10 months since my last post on the state of the art of version 1.0 apps.

How Will A Financial Advisor Engage?

The perspective I offer is as a user of lots of iPad apps and as a consumer of mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) content on the desktop, iPad and mobile. My bias is for apps that are both device- and audience-aware, with a particular interest in how a financial advisor might engage.

Three years after the iPad’s introduction, not every money manager offers its own app and it’s not a foregone conclusion that all will. When asked about apps lately, I cite a few datapoints:

• Financial advisors like tablets. Half of all advisors responding to the 2012 Financial Planning Tech Survey own a tablet (81% of those own an iPad, 15% an Android and 7% own a Windows tablet).
• Advisors like to use iPads to access the kinds of content that asset managers produce. A By AllAccounts Q2 2011 Gadget Survey asked advisors how the iPad and its applications support their business. The answer “Allows me to access educational material relating to my business (i.e. whitepapers, …)” was the third most popular choice. Sixty percent of iPad-using financial advisors selected the answer, topped only by “helps me stay connected” and “increases my productivity.”

The iPad is the evening newspaper for consumers, according to a July 2012 2012 RJI Mobile Media News Consumption Survey. When you consider that financial advisors prefer to reserve their daytime hours to meet with clients, it’s a safe assumption that they are among the majority who use their tablets to consume content at home after 5 p.m.

• Advisors read, in part, to share. This is true regardless of where the reading takes place or how. Advisors’ participation in social media just casts a light on something that’s part and parcel of how they communicate in the course of doing their jobs. Example: May 2012 LinkedIn/FTI Consulting research on advisors’ social media use reported that at least one-third of advisors use social media to “cascade thought leadership.”

Advisors can read and use the content you publish on your Website content. But if you’re going to the trouble to produce and continually update an app, keep in mind that the most useful asset manager app would enable advisor productivity (including content sharing) after hours. And, if you expect advisors to try your app and regularly use it, the app needs to provide a better experience than a collection of self-navigated Web pages can.

Here are some highlights of what I saw while adding the apps to my sweet new mini.

Better File Management Controls

This is just a matter of being considerate. Greater reliance on the cloud means that consumers can save money by buying tablets with the minimum size hard drives. The last thing you want to do is come along and consume a disproportionate amount of their limited hard drive space with your big ole files—and God forbid that you use their dataplans in the process.

Henderson Global Investors and John Hancock are two firms that are smart to give the user control over what gets downloaded and when. This screenshot combines two screens from the Henderson app, click on it to enlarge.

Support for sharing

An app is a closed platform, which enables app publishers to control the experience and make some assumptions about their “captive” users. A piece of content can be a beautiful thing in an app, uncluttered by a Web page’s navigation and sidebars, etc. But if you’re producing content for a business reason, you’ll want to enable users to use the content outside the cozy world of the app.

Asset manager app support for sharing via users’ social accounts continues to be spotty, with PIMCO’s app offering the most choices (via Twitter, Facebook, email and Google Reader). The integration of the iPad content and what managers are saying on their own social accounts (e.g., Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) also is still kind of clumsy.

Oppenheimer’s Global Tracker app includes presentations whose value is extended by the simple inclusion of an email form for the emailing of presentations and of the app itself. (Wonder why the note cautioning OppenheimerFunds employees to use their company email address couldn’t be communicated internally, though.)

Hopefully the day will soon come when the presentations’ individual charts and graphs can be made available to be shared on social networks and embedded.

Printing support

Content sharing in the physical world often involves hard copies, and a few apps are now supporting wireless printing.

I was loving life, printing an outlook from AllianceBernstein’s AB Connect app, thinking about how simple this would be for an advisor to prepare for a meeting. However, I was foiled by a gotcha that advisors have rightfully complained about since we first shifted the printing to their office equipment: the disclosures on the last page are reversed out of an all-black (ink-consuming) page!

More user-friendly is the John Hancock app, which provides welcome printing controls.

Included in the John Hancock app, by the way, is a robust library of forms. Somebody who’s all-digital (and plenty of advisors aspire to be) is going to miss being able to tab from field to field to complete and then print. But, maybe that’s a capability on the roadmap?

Keeping in touch

It’s a high bar for an asset manager to produce an app that advisors will use again and again. There’s nothing fancy about this, but see how U.S. Global Investors makes an effort to encourage followership (and acquire names) from even one-time users of its app.

Henderson’s is one of the few apps that uses location to find a wholesaler. And when the wholesaler is located, adding the name to the device’s Contacts list is a snap.

Fostering reliance

Finally, this screenshot from the Schwab On Investing app shows how the My Briefcase feature, included in a few asset manager apps, could evolve. Schwab enables content saving to be organized by customizable tabs and the user can write and save his own notes about the content. Imagine how an advisor might value this feature and how it could foster app reliance.

 How about you? What features are you noting—or missing—in asset manager apps?

Content (to include more than just the written word in 2012) can be just so relevant, so provocative, so entertaining that it has an impact on us. We email a link to it, we tweet about it, we mention it in real life conversations, we conduct research based on it, we remember it.

The following is a list of 20 content highlights that I’ll take from 2012. Notes I made to introduce the 2011 and 2010 lists apply here, too:

• Thank you to the dear tribes I interact with on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, SlideShare, Pinterest and a little bit of Facebook for introducing me to most of the items on this list. Your curation enriches my life!
• This is probably not “the best content of 2012.” How could I make that claim? What follows is a motley mix, reflecting a broad interest in digital marketing effectiveness, a business focused on mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketing and a weakness for online distraction. In other words, this list is 100% subjective and X percentage quirky.

Here’s hoping you’ll discover something memorable, too.

1. Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner

iShares, Putnam and MFS are just a few of the asset managers who in 2012 bought high-rent advertising space and filled it with promotions of their market and investment product content. That’s right, this year the steak became the sizzle.

This frequent iShares ad on the home page of the The Wall Street Journal iPad app also suggests how high the stakes are nowadays—nobody’s buying advertising to promote quarterly updates. The pressure is on to communicate in real-time, baby.

2. From The Victor Comes The Data

Competition in the future will be heavily data-based. And, in 2013, the campaign to re-elect President Obama and the data team behind it will be invoked repeatedly as a best practice approach. No more than one day after the election (the article was prepared ahead of time, with release embargoed), Time published this must-read: Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win.

3. Dear B2C: Thanks!

This post had me at the headline: Dear B2B, It’s Totally OK To Copy Our Outfits, Love, B2C, and the three-rule makeover for B2B content marketers, including examples, did not disappoint.

Image from tpdsaa.tumblr.com

4. In A World Full of Average…

Big Content (which I take as a play on Big Data) is content that goes beyond individual one-off postings. Think of it as ambitious content, as you’ll see in the examples cited in this SEOmoz blog post by Dr. Peter J. Meyers.

Online readers have become accustomed to landing on a page and seeing some text and probably a graphic. But increasingly in 2012 we saw examples of pull-out-all-the-stops content displays. Invariably, big content takes more effort and time but the benefits can be many-fold, as Meyers notes.

To cite an example I bookmarked this year, here’s a screenshot from the 2012 FedEx Ketchum Social Business Study. Imagine the user’s delight at all there was to see—video, Webinar, case studies, social accounts—when he or she landed on this page. Compared to this, simply issuing a press release to report research results seems puny, doesn’t it?

5. An Homage To The People Who Made It All Possible

Can you say “learning curve”?

As described in a richly illustrated Ars Technica article Make mainframes, not war: how Mad Men sold computers in the 1960s and 1970s, we have earlier generations of marketers to thank for their effective education of buyers on the features and benefits of computers. This account is one great read.

http://www.computerhistory.org/

6. Hard To See In the Dark

An important idea was advanced this year that we can’t see as much as we think we can about online activity.

Facebook and other social sites have structured the social Web but they did not create it and are not the only sources of link-sharing, says this October article from the Atlantic. Senior editor Alexis C. Madrigal notes the early and continuing popularity of chat rooms, message boards and email, all of which make up what he calls “dark social:” “a vast trove of social traffic that’s invisible to analytics programs.”

This is an especially relevant point for asset management marketers whose firms and offerings are regularly discussed in online forums and message boards.

Related: In May, an SEO specialist made a distinction between Bright Websearch, which is search using the search giants, and Dark Websearch, which occurs on specialized search indexes outside Google, Bing, etc. (example: Websites’ product search). Dark Websearch is used more often but “no one is counting the queries or the clicks, the users or the referrals,” writes Michael Martinez in his SEO Theory blog post.

7. Sugar-coating Was So 2011

When you’re a straight-shooter, sometimes all you need is 140 characters, as shown in this @Vanguard_FA tweet.

Our Advisors app for iPad product comparison tool was too slow. We fixed it. Try it now. vgi.vg/RK9ICd

— Vanguard (@Vanguard_FA) November 17, 2012

8. When The Content Needs To Be ‘Liquid’

I’m bending the rules here to include a 2011 video because it provides the content strategy rationale for a step that Coca-Cola took just last month: It made over its corporate Website as an online magazine called Coca-Cola Journey (here’s the New York Times coverage).

Some of this is a little thick—I’m on board with the importance of data but stop short of considering data whisperers “the new messiahs.” Watch this and a second video for 15 minutes of insight into how this leading consumer brand approaches its re-thinking of content and testing.

9. Brands Bring It

Perhaps aided by their interactions on social networks, communications from asset managers are getting less formal. But they’re still a mile or two away from this September AdWeek report of two brands acting like people this year.

Evidently, an Oreo Twitter team raised the possibility that people snuck Oreos into a movie theater. The @AMCTheatres account, which just happened to be paying attention, took exception and the game was on—two unconnected brands being playful with each other for the whole world to see. Love it, and you’ll enjoy the entire article.

10. You Can Run But You Cannot Hide

Business’ heightened focus on data in turns heightens expectations about marketers’ command of data. Check out the Chief Marketing Technologist’s review of what Harvard Business Review thinks you should know. Blogger Scott Brinker has some recommendations on how to build your data savviness, and be sure to read the comments, too.

11. How An Investment Banker Sizes It All Up

On your own you could piece together most of what’s in here but don’t bother—this report about the social media ecosystem, including the “Rise of Users, Intelligence and Operating Systems” is quite comprehensive and insightful. It was developed by Jordan, Edmiston’s Group Social Media Practice, the first of its kind for an investment bank, and supported by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

12. Rule #2 In Improv: “Yes and…”

Columbia Management this year demonstrated that it’s willing to chime in on conversations already in progress. (That’s a characteristic of a social business and something I blogged about in March when financial advisor Jeff Rose started a Roth IRA movement.)

Last year, noted equities analyst Mary Meeker wrote a 450-page report called USA Inc. In April of this year, two Columbia portfolio managers based their own report, “USA Inc. — If it were a stock, would it be a buy, hold or sell?” on Meeker’s work. It demonstrates that not every good idea needs to originate within the firm. When you think about it, most don’t.

13. Replacing Lines Of Code With Lines Of Dialogue

If there was any doubt that 2012 was the year of the story, it was dispelled in the 50^th week of the year. Google (not known for conceptual marketing) last week posted a few videos that aimed to demonstrate how “missteps on the digital shelf play out in real life.” Here’s my favorite of the three.

14. Keep Up, Would You?

This isn’t for everybody but if you’re an information hound who suspects you could be more efficient with your news-catching, read this step-by-step guest post by Druce Vertes on TheReformedBroker’s blog. Awesome and generous.

15. Enabling Advisors

I cheered Putnam Investments’ September launch of AdvisorTechTips.com as an example of a content offering focused on the client. It’s a blog designed to help advisors learn and adopt online technology. The content and design are contemporary, although it could probably benefit from some user and guest post (FPPad’s Bill Winterberg would be a natural) participation, not to mention ongoing promotion.

16. The Ditty That Would Not Quitty (sorry)

The tune to Call Me Maybe has not been far from my consciousness since March when my niece came home from college obsessed with it. This Journalism.org article from June reconstructs its development as an Internet meme.

The song itself is the best 2012 example of creating content and setting it free. Canadian artist Carly Rae Jepsen may have recorded the song but she was just one of countless celebrities and non-celebrities we saw performing it on YouTube.

You’d be disappointed in me if I told you how many renditions I’ve sampled. My favorite is the Olympics Swimming team’s. It was great to see those young athletes, who miss out on so much to focus on their sport, cutting loose, yukking it up and taking part. USA! USA!

17. Lots Of Progress To Report On

Business Insider’s CEO and editor-in-chief Henry Blodget likes to use slideshows to tell stories. While I understand their time-on-site-lengthening appeal to online publishers, slideshows aren’t my favorite content format. But anyhoo, Blodget’s 138-slide State of the Internet, released in October, is worth clicking through for a fast-paced briefing.

18. Ross Could Do The Paleontology On The Side

Who doesn’t know Chandler and the gang from the Friends sitcom? Assuming your home is not in a cave, I think you’ll get something out of this genius blog post assigning Friends personas to marketing team members. Blogger Oli Gardner had some valid points to make. By making the extra effort of writing in an entertaining way, he produced an indescribably satisfying post to read and share.

19. Remember Being Bored?

There’s no reason to be bored ever again now that we have the Internet. But…if you have any nostalgia about being bored or about reading as a “momentary stay against confusion” vs. reading to find something to share socially, check this April 2012 piece out. How We Will Read is a Q&A with Clay Shirky, a smart academic whose specialization is the evolution of the Internet culture.

20. Mobile Matters

Don’t make the mistake I did. Because I was walking as I was listening to a podcast of Shel Holtz’s 2012 IABC World Conference presentation, I needed to stop every few minutes to jot notes on my phone.

Much better for you to set aside an hour and give Holtz’s Game Changer: Mobility, Games and Gamification for the Communications Profession vision, via the slides and audio, the attention it deserves.

But come back down to Earth now and let’s get real. No matter what your stripe, marketers can’t afford disconnects with the people they work with, or report to. Alignment helps assure employment.

The latest research to quantify the gap between lead marketers and C-level executives is “Outside Looking In: The CMO struggles to get in sync with the C-suite,” an Economist Intelligence Unit report sponsored by SAS.

One finding from the report: Non-marketing types in the C-suite say that Marketing’s top priority is to drive revenue. Chief marketing officers, on the other hand, rank driving revenue as #3 on their list, giving higher priority to creating new products and services and acquiring customers. Disconnect!

“Outside Looking In” is a global cross-industry study, with the largest percentage of responses (14%) coming from financial services and 27% from North America. You’ll see quite a few references to the importance of digital work. I recommend the complete report to you.

But I mention it here not because of the responses to the questions per se. As we wind down 2012 and look ahead to 2013, the questions themselves may have value as a check-in on the purpose of the work that you and your Marketing team does. The turn of the calendar is a good time to check your alignment.

How would you answer these questions, which are among those asked by the Economist Intelligence Unit (with a wee bit of editorializing by me)?

To which area has Marketing contributed most in the past year? And its corollary: What should the Marketing function’s top priority be at your organization?

• Driving revenue growth
• Finding new customers
• Improving your organization’s reputation
• Creating new products and services
• Entering new markets
• Retaining existing customers
• Other________________

What are the primary internal barriers that impede Marketing from delivering more value to your organization? (Some of the provided responses strike me as whiny. If we believe that Marketing can be its own agent, to this question I’d add: And, what action are you going to take to overcome these barriers?)

• Lack of a strategic role for marketing in the organization
• Hiring and retaining skilled marketing talent
• Inability to turn data into actionable insights
• Limited ability to demonstrate ROI/accountability of marketing investments
• Disagreement about the role of marketing
• Difficulty in mining “big data” for customer insights
• Lack of senior management support for marketing investments
• Misalignment between marketing investments and business objectives
• Lack of transparency across customer touch points
• Sharing insights quickly across the org
• Other_________________________________

What skills are most important for marketers to have? (If you’re in Marketing leadership and you know that the requirements are evolving, the fair thing to do is to communicate this, don’t you think?)

• Customer insight
• Communications expertise
• Creativity
• Industry expertise
• Team building
• Data-driven analytical capability
• General business acumen
• Technical expertise
• Line-of-business knowledge
• Advertising/agency experience
• Social media expertise
• Pattern recognition
• Visual/design aesthetics
• Other_________________________

In what areas should Marketing focus investments in order to contribute most to your business now? Related: In what areas should Marketing focus investments in order to contribute most to your business in 3 years? (In the survey results, note how Brand advertising sinks 18 percentage points in the three-year horizon question. And that social media climbs 14 points.)

• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Brand advertising
• Collaboration tools
• Customer analytics
• Training employees
• Direct marketing
• Reputation management
• Marketing automation tools
• Social media
• New hires
• Mobile application development
• Web optimization tools
• Other___________________

NOTE: As 2012 counts down, I’m working on my list of content highlights for the year (for your reference, here’s the 2011 list in which I provide a totally subjective review of some of the best Web content I’ve read in the year). Is there any content that you’ve seen this year that you think warrants a mention? Please shoot me an email at pallen [at] rocktheboatmarketing [dot] com.

Now I’ll concede that search engine optimization is not the primary reason that Vanguard sits atop the mutual fund food chain. But I recently noticed yet another online advantage that Vanguard has over most asset managers: Because it offers an extensive amount of content in front of the log-in to its financial advisor site, that content is well positioned to draw searchers to the site. (Having the resources to produce the content is another advantage, we should note.)

As you can see in the screenshot below from SpyFu.com (subscription required), advisors.vanguard.com ranked in the top 50 search results for almost 400 organic keywords last month. That—coupled with the more than 8,000 keywords driving traffic to Vanguard.com and 38 other Vanguard domains—is impressive. Other asset managers are doing well to rank 300 keywords for their Websites overall, again according to SpyFu.

Zero keywords take searchers to most managers’ advisor-only Websites because, unlike most of Vanguard’s advisor site, all content on the others’ sites is locked down. Vanguard’s content is working harder and doing more for the firm.

Re-thinking The Advisor-Only Limiter

But, to rank in search engine results is not the first reason you’d cite when appealing a decision that may have been made years ago to lock up all advisor content. That argument should lead with the fact that advisors are likelier to discover and access your content if doesn’t require a password. Content wants to be free! That’s been the clarion call of content marketers for years now, and Vanguard and a few other asset managers are coming to the conclusion that most content created for advisor use doesn’t have to be labeled “advisor-only.”

Who else besides Vanguard? In the SpyFu research I did, I found that investment-professionals.dreyfus.com had a respectable 98 keywords driving traffic in October. A few other advisor sites—check out www.lordabbett.com/advisor, for example—let unregistered users browse content, although they have yet to break into top 50 results for keywords tracked by SpyFu.

Once you’ve won the user experience argument and start publishing your advisor content on pages that can be spidered by the search engines, heightened visibility should result. Advisors and other investment information-seekers will have a better chance of discovering your content through Search.

The Endgame: Visibility, Not Targeting

“Advisors don’t use search engines” is something I’ve heard from asset management staff, mostly on the Sales side, for years. That’s an old saw that just doesn’t cut anymore. More than three years ago, Google and the Financial Planners Association collaborated on a study of advisors’ use of Google for investment research. The study documented advisors’ reliance on Search, including for investment product research. It’s safe to assume that their search engine usage has only grown since 2009.

Indeed, one of Vanguard’s highest ranking search keyword phrases—“credit spread history”—is worded as an investment professional might. What’s more, today a handful of savvy asset managers are paying to appear on Page 1 results, offering content targeted to financial advisors. For example, see whose Google AdWords ads show up when you search for derivations of “alternative investments.”

But don’t oversell the value of ranking organically for the purpose of drawing more advisors.

It’s likely that many of Vanguard’s other top 50 keyword phrases (e.g., “what are ETFs” and “millionaire investors”) are being searched by people who are not advisors. They’re everybody else. Through their searches, non-advisors may land on your advisor pages and it will be up to your information architecture and design to convert that interest into something more appropriate for them.

The implication of high search engine rankings is that your firm is relevant on specific terms that people are looking for. You have something that people want. Conversely—hmm, how to put this—no matter how outstanding your content, your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) company is irrelevant if you’re not visible.

When was the last time your firm considered what really needs to be behind that creaky old registration gate? Maybe you don’t have to stand by while Vanguard, Dreyfus and others pick off all the best keyword searches.

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.

65%

While we’re on the subject, 65% of investors worldwide are not particularly loyal to their primary investment provider, according to the must-read “The Influential Investor, How Investor Behavior is Redefining Performance” published by The Center for Applied Research (CAR). CAR is an independent think tank that resides at State Street.

Before we all get our feelings hurt, though, consider this: Only 33% of institutional and retail investors believe that their primary investment provider is acting in their best interest. What’s to be loyal to?

42,000

That’s how many data points are included in a new “game-changing” Invesco iPad app for advisors seeking to benchmark and analyze retirement plans. In providing and presenting data from PlanSponsor’s annual DC survey for more than 40 industries and five plan sizes, the PlanAnalyzer app improves upon a previously labor-intensive process, according to this report from PLANADVISER.

In the early days, asset manager iPad apps did little more than re-package Website information. More and more now, apps are being tapped to do one discrete thing and in a way not available using any other device.

39%

It was the beginning of the end last year when Google decided to encrypt the search terms used by Web browsers who were signed into Google. The result after one year: An average 39% of the terms that signed-in users search for are reported as “not provided” by Google in analytics programs.

This report on Search Engine Land will give you study highlights or go directly to Optify, the author of the study, to download the full PDF. Eventually, Optify predicts, data on organic search terms will disappear altogether so make the most of your referrer data while you can.

80%

When financial advisors make a recommendation, how many of their clients take action? Eight of 10 investors do, according to a Blackrock Investor Watch™ survey finding reported last week.

1/3

…Or maybe it’s just one-third. That’s the much smaller number of Americans “consistently taking action after receiving financial advice” reported by TIAA-CREF in late October. Especially poignant: 74% of those surveyed said they don’t know which sources they can trust for financial advice. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

Two

Two is the number of organizations that this week announced efforts to help advisors evaluate their technology choices.

Investment News launched an independent adviser technology study that will benchmark advisory firms’ technology investments and usages against similar and top-performing firms. Schwab announced its plans to launch a review site featuring ratings and advisor feedback on popular technology providers.

Think technology is a pain point for advisors?

33%

The median retirement account balance of Baby Boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—rose 33% to $99,320 in 2012, according to The Annual TransAmerica Retirement study released yesterday. Last week Fidelity announced that the average 401(k) balance was up 18% in the last year.

There’s a lot of negativity going on out there in some of the characterizations about investors and their “train wreck” portfolios. The tough love approach is intended to prod investors away from their fixed income safe havens and to return to equities in advance of inevitably higher interest rates. But these rising balances suggest that workplace investors deserve kudos for doing something right.

$0.33

Most of the work referred to above will have a shelf life of at least a few months, but this number may not survive the week. With so much fiscal cliff-related content being produced by asset managers and others, I wondered which firms were paying to rank for the term on Google.

As of this writing Wednesday night, the answer was none, 0, goose eggs. This is surprising, given the surge in interest in the term as shown by this Google Trends graph.

Today “fiscal cliff” is attractively priced. Google’s Traffic Estimator said the term would cost an average price per click of $0.33. An advertiser could expect 665 clicks on 18,186 impressions.

Today and closer to home, I want to share some content that’s been published recently about the future of the asset management industry and its challenges.

Study after study points to the bright future for digital marketing at mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firms. You my dear digital marketing peeps are all good. But, what about your firm as a whole and the industry you’re in? The more you think about the business’ challenges, the greater the contribution you can make. It’s in that spirit that I offer the following.

McKinsey: Solution Delivery Faces Capability, Credibility Challenges

“Firms often under-invest in understanding client needs (especially in retail) and packaging them in a way that resonates with consumers and their advisors. As a result, there are hundreds of failed ‘me-too’ products, myriad ‘solutions’ in search of an ill-defined problem, and many great products that fail to be understood (and bought) by consumers.”

Ouch! This is a direct hit from a McKinsey report published last week that it wouldn’t kill you to download and read in full.

The report’s headline “The Asset Management Industry: Outcomes Are the New Alpha” hints at the key takeaway for marketers. While many asset manager product communications continue to dwell on relative performance claims (beating benchmarks and snagging Lipper rankings/Morningstar ratings), McKinsey says investment performance advantages explain just about one-third of the net new flows in the last decade.

McKinsey acknowledges that the industry has begun to shift from selling performance to investment outcomes (e.g., income generation and principal protection) via solutions (e.g., inflation-linked strategies, target volatility products that offer downside protection, “go-anywhere” funds, etc.).

No doubt you’re hearing plenty about solutions. According to a McKinsey survey, 80% of firms list solutions as a top three growth priority, and the average firm expects solutions to account for more than 25% of flows and 15% of profits by 2015.

But while many of the new products are in place, McKinsey says firms “face capability and credibility challenges” in their efforts to deliver the solutions effectively. Also see McKinsey’s data suggesting that expenses for the functions charged with delivery—Sales and Marketing—rose the most in 2011.

When, as McKinsey says, “the most lucrative industry in the financial services sector has been virtually incapable of collecting new money from its clients,” it’s safe to assume that change is in the air.

At the FundForum: Differentiation, Complexity, Regulation

What are the biggest challenges facing the U.S. investment management industry? You’ll see some of the same themes of the McKinsey report in this 4:52 video of people intercepted at the FundForum U.S. 2012 conference last month. It’s a blend of comments from people who answered the question from the perspective of providers and from the perspective of investors.

From ALFI: Regulation, Product Complexity, Financial Advice

This next video is brought to us by ALFI, the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry. I include these comments from NICSA President Theresa Hamacher not for their nod to social media but for the overview they provide about five trends shaping the industry. Effective delivery of the investment solutions your firms are pivoting to will require alignment with how financial advisors are positioning themselves with their clients, and Hamacher touches on that.

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:

1. Encourage investors to reconsider their allocation to equities
2. Introduce Janus’ time segmentation framework
3. Present Janus’ low volatility products

Most creative on the site is the graphic approach of this 4:39 video, addressed at investors.

Loomis Sayles’ New Site

The Contact Us function is what I find noteworthy in a largely straightforward redesign of LoomisSayles.com. The dropdown enables site users to “find a person” in multiple areas. Select Corporate Endowments & Foundations, for example, and you’ll get the full contact information, including email addresses, of two vice presidents.

Publishing names and contact information provides an improved user experience and addresses a common complaint about asset managers’ Websites. Not so long ago it was conventional wisdom not to expose email addresses for fear of compromising corporate data security. But there are workarounds to keep addresses from being harvested and we’re starting to see more email addresses published on sites across the board. If you’re interested in pursuing, talk to your IT team for their ideas.

Natixis’ Microsite

Building Websites with domains that exactly match the key phrase that the site is about (DurablePortfolios.com is about durable portfolio construction) used to be a way of virtually assuring high search engine rankings.

A recent change to Google’s algorithm has introduced prejudice against exact match domains (EMDs), however. If you’re thinking of going this route, you’ll need to do as Natixis is doing with its Durable Portfolios site and back up the domain claim with copious content. The screenshot below is a PowerMapper view of the first level of the site (click on image to enlarge)—there’s a lot there!

ICI-led ETF Education Site

Fourteen ETF firms participated in the industry-led initiative to launch a new site, www.UnderstandETFs.org. The initiative resulted from the ICI’s ETF Committee leadership and, according to an ICI October 18 press release, the site reflects “the industry’s collective view on the answers to the most important questions investors ask before investing in ETFs. It’s hoped that using the common language, which some firms may also incorporate in their own investor communications, should aid investor understanding.”

The centerpiece of the site is the ICI-copyright “Nine Questions Every ETF Investor
Should Ask Before Investing,” which “can be used in any way, in any medium, royalty-free, except that no changes or modifications may be made to the text of the publication.”

Herding 14 ETF cats can’t be easy but from the perspective of someone who cares both about digital effectiveness and ETF education, I hope there’s more to come. For maximum traction online, I’d like to see this initiative include a little more outreach—a blog? A Twitter account? A YouTube account? Mention on the ETF providers’ sites and blogs?