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Peer Pressure: Tell Advisors About Their Peers Online

by Johanna

In Steven's recent blog post "Understanding Independent Financial Advisors Can Stem Redemptions," he noted the success wholesalers have had with bringing advisors together. As he noted, this is particularly effective in the independent channel, where many advisors lack the support of a large network of their peers. It's been a common theme in kasina's research: advisors want to know what their peers are doing and thinking.

I recently came across a way one asset manager is bringing advisors together online, and spurring interest in online content at the same time. This firm sends out an e-mail every month with an overview of the ETF market, including asset growth and other information. The message also includes a link titled "See what information other investors are looking for." Clicking on the links takes users to a landing page with bar charts detailing the most downloaded factsheets and educational documents for advisors. In looking at these charts, I immediately wanted to look at the most popular items to see what advisors were so interested in. The firm makes it easy to do by hyperlinking each bar in the charts to take users to their advisor site, so they may more closely review the documents.

It's unlikely that asset management intermediary sites will become social networking hubs anytime soon, but that doesn't mean that firms can't communicate to advisors about their peers. Working with Compliance departments and taking small steps - such as telling advisors what their peers are downloading - is a powerful tool for promoting the firm and its products.