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How is a marketer’s role in asset management evolving and becoming your most profitable asset?

March 1, 2023 | Christina Ratings

The status and profile of marketing in asset management organisations has risen significantly over the past couple of years. While marketing’s role used to be subservient to sales, it’s now a revenue generator in its own right.

Marketers’ strong digital acumen, their ability to commercialise data and produce creative, targeted, personalised, integrated marketing campaigns have resulted in them being able to pinpoint untapped leads that sales have failed to identify.

Their understanding of clients’ behaviours and needs makes them one of the most valuable assets a thriving, forward-thinking company can have.

How current marketing and digital trends are affecting asset management

There are a few key trends emerging in marketing that impact asset management organisations, and you need to be on top of these trends to enable your business to thrive.

  1. Marketing’s status and skills are evolving

Marketing’s status has finally risen, and alongside that, the need for traditional, siloed marketing specialists is diminishing.

Top marketers now need to be commercial, unfluffy, and have a deeper knowledge of data, metrics and analytics.

Additionally, having a sound understanding of clients enables marketers to create personalised customer journeys that generate qualified sales leads, and they need better product awareness than ever before.

  1. Digital marketing is woven into the marketing function

Marketing talent has to have a higher level of digital acumen than ever before. Gone are the days when digital was a bolt on of a marketing team – digital is now part and parcel of your marketing function.

Digital channels are key for asset managers in building closer and more efficient relationships with clients, and it’s outstripping sales as the prime channel for client acquisition.

That’s another reason why marketing is coming to the fore – it’s no longer a sales support function, but a critical function in its own right.

Asset management firms are investing deeply into their digital strategies. There’s a requirement to better understand what return this investment is delivering, leading to a business case/ROI driven digital approach.

Because of this, we’re seeing increasing numbers of new digital marketing roles. Head of Digital Propositions, for example, is a new phenomenon to the FS industry. This role, along with distribution and technology, can successfully drive your organisation’s digital distribution and client engagement strategy forward, ensuring your capabilities are packaged appropriately to deliver products, services, processes and customer experiences digitally to your clients.

Email and social media expertise continues to be an asset to any marketing team. CMOs have said that their biggest challenge is finding talent who are not just strong at servicing clients, but who are creative and can “create original and meaningful content”. In this day and age, coming up with strong creative ideas on social media or email campaigns can distinguish an asset manager from the crowd.

Those with experience in A/B testing, who understand the importance of marginal gain and can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of every stage of the client journey are also worth their weight in gold.

  1. Data analysts are key to successful marketing

Hiring marketing data analysts and putting them into marketing functions within financial services is a key trend we will see more of in 2023.

Data is crucial for so many reasons, including finding new product opportunities and markets. Marketing functions need their own data specialists, and this is driving recruitment for different types of marketers.

These individuals need to have a sound understanding of clients and the relevant marketing tools, whilst also having the skills to interrupt, commercialise and customise data, and enrich the customer experience by improving the end-to-end customer journey.

Data is the biggest focus for many asset management organisations this year. According to a report by McKinsey, sales and marketing can use data to drive 5-30% higher revenues through behavioural segmentation, data-driven prospecting, personalised marketing and using predictive algorithms.

But in a report called ‘The Power of Data-Driven Asset Management’, Accenture finds that between 60-73% of all data goes unused for analytics. They go on to say that this data could be used for several asset management marketing contexts:

  • Analysing customers’ offline and digital footprints captured against a variety of sources
  • Assessing brand value
  • Supporting alpha generation and research

The hot skills in data include a strong background in data analytics with previous exposure to CDP, Pardot, Marketo and an understanding of the client types, be that institutional, wholesale or retail. Individuals who have a sound knowledge of the digital ecosystem and know how to reach clients, how to engage with them and then track them are in demand.

  1. Content is king (but content fatigue is real)

That phrase might sound old, but in asset management it rings true in 2023.

Asset managers are continuing to hire top content marketing specialists, with a focus on finding experts who can digitalise content. Content fatigue has set in, so marketers need to  reduce content and go for quality over quantity by creating shorter, more compelling pieces that stand out in an already crowded space.

  1. A need for technical product marketers

As you probably know only too well, competition in asset management is intense, and you need to make your products stand out.

This requires technical product marketers who know the competitor landscape and can understand, identify and explain what a product will do to meet client needs, whilst creating the messaging and marketing strategy around it.

Asset managers are paying a premium for talent with sound writing skills who have a strong technical understanding of investment products and markets. Product champions like this are gold dust as they have the ability to speak the language of marketing whilst having the technical ability to work with the product specialist and fund managers

  1. Private market experience

One last key trend is attracting marketers with private market experience. Asset managers are aggressively building out their private market offerings, so marketing teams want to be introduced to talented individuals with a background in alternatives.

Private equity groups are a threat to asset management organisations in this regard, as they typically pay well and offer strong benefits packages.

Are you looking to add some serious weight to your marketing team? Contact me today and let’s have a chat about finding senior marketers who can keep you one step ahead of the competition.