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Asset Managers Go Social !

Social media has become an integral part of our daily communication, whether personal or professional. Companies are investing millions across the social media channels to gain traction and these platforms serve an inevitable tool of business expansion and brand development. It serves as a device where the companies can spread their works and words to the target audience. It is also a mechanism where their prospects and clients can voice out their thoughts and insights, resulting in superior engagement.

Why Asset Managers Need to Go Social

Asset managers are no exception to the above trend. One may say that the responsibility of asset managers is to manage funds and ensure a healthy and positive return but their work needs to be amplified and publicised in the greater forum to gain the eyeballs of the investors. Saying that, what can be better tool than social media in modern times?!

The giants of the Wall Street are already deeply invested in social media platforms to connect, convert and monetise each opportunity possible. 

Which Social Platform To Choose?

Ok, I was never really going to suggest another platform in preference but, personal bias aside, in the professional world, LinkedIn triumphs as the best networking space for professionals and companies. As per LinkedIn’s data, there are around 875m users on LinkedIn from over 200 countries and territories. And guess what? LinkedIn has 4 out of 10 millionaires as active users. They are usually the decision makers of corporates and institutions calling the shots and deciding how to utilise the funds at hand.

To understand the market potential, LinkedIn appointed the Greenwich Associates to carry out an interview of 277 institutional investors across North America, Europe and Asia. They discovered that 63% of the investors prefer to read and search over social media for their decision on fund management and only 48% would opt for specific trade publications.

To gain maximum ROI on your LinkedIn strategy, it should be a team effort and commitment, led from the top of the organisation. You will doubtless hear objections such as, “I don’t have enough time” or “You can’t get this past compliance.”

Yes, this may be a cultural shift but that’s ok – you can help your firm better use LinkedIn as part of your sales and marketing strategy – take baby steps, no pressure!

THE STRATEGY

For the majority of asset managers, 80% of their AUM will come from c. 20% of your clients so your goal should be to try and find as many of those LinkedIn members that will make up 80% of your business as possible.

How? Find the traits that are common to these members…

Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator (see below) to use one of the 25+ demographic and firmographic filters that will give you list of individuals that will fit your ideal client criteria.

With this list you can not only connect with them but look for those who invest, those who went to a certain university, those who worked previously for a particular firm and tailor your content accordingly.

Motivation & Employee Advocacy

The aim is to leverage your employees’ audiences / networks. They can share your company page content with their followers and ask their connections to follow your company.

You may also ask your key team members to build/upgrade/complete their own LinkedIn profiles. Thorough personal profiles should include the usual CV type items – work history, education, skills, licenses and certifications, and a professional head shot, they also need toinclude accomplishments, and where appropriate, published articles, endorsements, recommendations, and speaking opportunities. Do share this LinkedIn profile checklist with them:

What Content Works On LinkedIn?

So why not use this content as marketing tool on LinkedIn? The inventors of this information need to understand how the content needs be tweaked to the taste of online viewers on LinkedIn. It is important to know what works and what does not work for an asset manager to share their insights and engage with the clients and prospects. LinkedIn provides the analytics and metrics to help understand the correct medium they should opt for maximum traction.

• As an asset manager, you should keep changing the format of your content and see the performance of each of those pieces of content over a period to understand what’s hot and what’s not. A/B testing helps to pick the right format and medium for the right content. 
• Do create a company page where you can share your content. Most pages I see have been created but never optimised (not even a logo – are you guilty of this?!) You can monitor the performance of each post with metrics such as number of impressions, views, likes, share and comments. Your profile, company description, tagline, logo, images and contact information should include the right keywords.
• Create an editorial calendar: A key to building visibility and brand awareness is regularly producing strategic, consistent and insightful content. Do you have a long-term plan – or do you push out random articles to satisfy a monthly task list? Creating a calendar for each quarter helps your firm focus on what’s important for clients and provide you with accountability. 
• Have you thought about starting your own LinkedIn group? You can target influencers and potential clients / HNWIs by establishing your own LinkedIn group and inviting people to join. In doing so, you can create your own circle of influence.

Have you ever Googled your firm? You want your company profile to look the part of the serious financial services firm that you are.

• Consider a professional paid account like Sales Navigator Core (no, I am not affiliated with LinkedIn!) which gives you access to variety of tools. It can help you in profiling your ideal prospect on LinkedIn and connecting with the lead member. You can also get lead recommendations who would be unknown prospects to your asset management company. Following which, you can send personal curated messages to multiple audience without connecting with them and even get insights on companies who are interested in your content. Attractive prospect?

Talking: Add Connections and Create a Network

Gently request that your staff start proactively connecting with clients, prospects and people with influence. Eg. portfolio managers could connect with the people they may work with every day, such as researchers, traders, analysts, clients and prospects. Once employees start receiving connection requests, it’s essential to respond in a timely manner and include a message thanking their new connections for the opportunity to network and, ideally, sending g them something of value. A market report? Which stocks are on the rise?

Advantages Of Getting Social

But this is just the start of plethora of services that LinkedIn has to offer. If you wish to use their paid services (be warned , they are expensive, with a lower conversion rate generally than other social media platforms) LinkedIn enables you to use curated advertisements and promotions which they can use to leverage their reach to the prospective investors.

• There is a vast range of paid advertisement to help you to share your exclusive expertise to the target audience you want to connect with. For example, an analysis of the oil industry post COVID can be shared in form of video marketing with paid ads on LinkedIn. Using this, the video content will be shown to only the category and audience that the asset manager feels interesting and worth investing in. With the help of number of video infographics, you can create compelling story-telling for their target audience.   
• Similarly, a webinar about the crypto-currency can be targeted through message or text advertisements towards an audience base who is looking for self-study of the new investment instrument. Getting them to join the webinar can help you to connect with prospective clients and increase engagement on the social media site. Simply put, you need to understand the medium they need to use for their content on LinkedIn and then do some trials to get actionable data.
• There are other features on LinkedIn which catalyses the performance of the users. One of the new tools introduced by LinkedIn is the LinkedIn Website Demographics which helps in getting actionable data on the demographics of the visitors visiting the site from LinkedIn. This may not be a direct tool for you to use, but it can help you evaluate the content you share for their company websites off social media.

LinkedIn gives what all asset managers love – numbers and analysis. All you need to do is use them in the right way. This way you can maximise your rate of engagement, connectivity and ROI on your presence here.