New Rules focused on new trends for investors
Over the past 6 months, I’ve written about a lot of things on New Rules. Whether its my ADD or just the fact that so much is going on, I’ve taken different directions with the blog.
From structural changes in Investor Relations to some interesting new models of investing for retail investors leveraging expert communities or Screening 2.0, I’ve tried to bubble up practical advice as well as an industry-level overview. Heck, I’ve even written an ebook on how to write a profitable investment newsletter.
Mainly, my focus has been on what the end-user investor can get out of new trends, technologies and models in the investment field.
This stuff interests me and I’m going to continue to write about what I think is interesting for my readers.
The supply-side of New Rules: professional investor marketing
I’d like to set a new tack as well. This is about a trend that I see bubbling up here and that is professional money managers (that includes brokers, Financial Advisors /Financial Planners (FAs and FPs) and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) adopting new-school internet marketing techniques, technologies and platforms to build their books of business.
The financial community may be slow to the game here in this respect and it’s probably because of a variety of causes — the most salient being compliance restrictions. As this evolves, we’ll drill down here as well. For starters, please see recent guest posts on compliance issues arising from Linkedin use. I’m going to look outside to bring you domain experts on these issues.
But there are many advisors who have begun using the Internet effectively to bring in assets. Where investors see expert communities like Covestor and kaching as idea-generation pools, the professional posting their trades and commentary on these sites see them as something very different. These are lead-generation platforms for investment advisors. See the success Sean Hannon, CEO of EPIC Advisors, has had adopting these platforms.
I’m grappling on how to reconcile one blog focused on both the demand-side (end-investor) and supply side (professional participation with an eye on marketing) of the New Rules of Investing. Any opinions, I’d be glad to hear.
Next steps
While investors (individuals and professionals alike) have a tremendous arsenal of new tools available to make better investment decisions, professionals can also use some of these same tools to build up assets under management (AUM). I think this is huge for the industry: it raises the bar for professionals by giving more transparency to the investor. It should create a more competitive environment and provide new sales channels — global channels — for those professionals who know how to effectively tap these new types of distribution.
As you can see, I haven’t actually blocked-out social media as a category in and of itself. I’m not jumping on the social media bandwagon because it’s the flavor of the month. What I’m saying is that new media and all that this term entails is an extremely powerful marketing vehicle for advisors and I’d like to explore how this is working in greater depth.
In short, all of this provides the dynamic for the next stage of the competition.
It’ll be interesting and I’d appreciate any feedback you’d like to provide along the journey.
