As you know, the investment management industry is facing unprecedented headwinds. Establishing differentiation is among the most effective ways for managers to come out the other side stronger than ever.
But differentiation is more than simply having a nice brochure and a pretty website. It requires investment data marketing, and lots of it.
When it comes to investment database profiles, managers often struggle to know:
- In which investment databases should I publish?
- What datasets will be most effective in promoting my firm’s investment approach?
- How can I ensure the data I’m populating substantiates our topline marketing strategy?
- How can I best leverage my data to establish differentiation from my peers?
These are difficult questions managers are often unable to answer on their own, so let’s take them one at a time.
Where should I be marketing my data?
We often rely on the 80/20 rule: 80% of the search activity occurs in 20% of the databases. So that’s typically where we start with clients. But there are more than 60 investment databases across the globe, so identifying which of the niche-type databases our clients might want to consider is an important part of the consulting we do.
Who do you want to work with? Where are they located? How do the strengths & weaknesses of your strategy/strategies dovetail with the needs of that target market? These are all important investment data marketing considerations.
Which datasets are most effective for me to highlight?
In short? All of them. Contrary to most investment database consultants, we believe there are 9 true datasets for which managers need to account, as opposed to the standard industry 5:
- Firm
- Product
- Vehicle
- Performance
- AUM
- Portfolio Characteristics
- Personnel
- Product Narratives
- Firm narratives
Now, does that necessarily mean that every datapoint within each of these datasets needs to be completed? The short answer is “yes,” but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
What guides our efforts is the notion that blank fields are marketing poison, yet absolute, full disclosure of everything is suboptimal as well. After all, the databases are like dating apps, so if you leave nothing to the imagination, there’s little reason for anyone to reach out and ask you any questions about your investment management services.
Walking the fine line between being appropriately discrete and over-eager is a fine one, but a good consultant can help you to strike the right balance.
How can I ensure my investment data substantiates our topline marketing message?
“Substantiating your AUM” is our term for ensuring that the quantitative and the qualitative verify each other. So if a manager says they are “a contrarian, small cap manager,” the holdings and other portfolio characteristics bears that out.
Maintaining consistency between the narratives and the numbers allows consultants and investment professionals to develop a strong sense of a firm’s approach; in other words, does a firm manage assets and its business in a verifiable way?
When discrepancies do exist between narratives and numbers, there’s often a simple explanation., but that’s cold comfort when so much of today’s search activity occurs behind the scenes, with databases supplanting RFPs as the search vehicle of choice. All consultants see are discrepancy, and they are left to assume a lackadaisical approach to data marketing strategy or an unrealistic self-awareness about the business.
Either way, it’s not good and it may differentiate your firm in an unflattering way.
How can investment data marketing help me to differentiate myself from my peers?
There are several ways.
First, as we note above, simply maintaining clear, consistent, and substantiated data across your entire investment database footprint makes the job of the prospect much easier and reflects well on your firm.
Second, an effective database footprint answers all of the big, obvious questions, but leaves enough ambiguity to prompt a prospect conducting due diligence to initiate an unsolicited inquiry: the first step in establishing the relationship.
Third, it demonstrates transparency. All managers wax poetic about how clients come first and that they are deeply committed to client relationships. A database footprint that’s actually helpful is an important first step in actually proving it. The importance of helping prospects to gain a meaningful understanding of the 5 Ps (product, performance, people, philosophy, price) cannot be overstated.
In the end…
Investment data marketing should not be a heavy lift over the long-term. Once a manager establishes a thorough, substantiated database footprint, maintaining it can be a relatively easy task, especially if a manager automates the process.
A technological solution that enables all 9 datasets to be quickly and accurately published across each database profile is essential to the task. Absent automation, maintaining quantitative and qualitative data integrity is a time-consuming, manual process that is fraught with opportunities for error.