Asset Managers and Search Analytics. An Investigation into Keyword Strategy and its Impact on Building Your Brand s Online Presence

Transcription

1 Asset Managers and Search Analytics An Investigation into Keyword Strategy and its Impact on Building Your Brand s Online Presence

2 INTRODUCTION Media relations for financial services have undergone an evolution over the past decade. Digital has replaced print and new communication channels challenge old-school media. As a response, communications and marketing practitioners have adapted, leveraging integrated communications strategies that encompass paid, earned, social and owned tactics to reach target audiences. AND DOES ANY OF THIS DRIVE ALLOCATIONS? One tangible way to measure success is by looking at how web traffic responds to marketing and communications activity. If a firm s goal is to raise awareness of its brand and products, we have to understand how people are finding them online. To do this, we turned to search and web analytics to help unlock the value of these activities, and better understand how to build an effective, integrated communications strategy. We sought to answer one fundamental question: HOW CAN ASSET MANAGEMENT FIRMS BEST USE SEARCH TERMS AND KEYWORD STRATEGIES TO BUILD THEIR BRANDS AND DRIVE TARGET AUDIENCES TO THEIR WEBSITES? But challenges persist. How do you measure a quote in the Wall Street Journal? What is the value of a blog on interest-rate hedging strategies? How much is a re-tweet really worth?

3 METHODOLOGY BIGGER IS BETTER We examined the Google U.S. online search analytics of 70 investment management firms based in the U.S. or with a significant presence in the U.S. market. They are big and small, targeting a mix of retail and institutional assets. We divided the firms into three tiers based on assets under management (AUM): Not surprisingly, we found a strong correlation between the size of a firm and its search performance. The largest firms have an advantage over those in tier-2 and tier-3. The average amount of organic web traffic to firms with over $500 billion in assets is greater than 16 times that of firms below $500 billion. Organic web traffic refers to a user clicking on a non-paid link after executing a Google search, as an example. Our research also found a large divide with paid search activity. The larger firms receive four times the amount of average monthly traffic compared to tier-2 and tier 3 firms combined. The most commonly used paid search campaigns are executed through the purchase of Google Adwords. In order for small to medium sized firms to compete, they need to understand how people are finding tier-1 firms, and how their own brands are getting lost in the shuffle. Tier 1 more than $500 billion in assets Tier 2 $100 - $499 billion Tier 3 $1 billion to $99 billion THE DIVIDE BETWEEN HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS IS SUBSTANTIAL: We evaluated each firms search analytics across a range of metrics provided by SEMrush, the world s leading competitive research service for online marketing. SEMrush tracks keyword rankings in search engines to help better understand how users are finding websites. THE METRICS WE FOCUSED ON INCLUDED: A) Organic search traffic B) Paid search traffic C) SEMrush search rank D) Branded and non-branded keywords associated with each firm E) The ratio of branded and non-branded search activity 01 *The value on the Y-axis in table 1 represents the number of users expected to visit a website in the following month on condition that average monthly organic traffic stays relatively the same. **The value on the Y-axis in table 2 represents the number of users expected to visit a website in the following month on condition that average monthly paid traffic stays relatively the same. 02

4 Overall search rank between the tiers also shows a strong correlation to asset size. As you move from the smallest firms to the largest, the average SEMrush Rank increases (the lower the ranking, the better the SEO): Branded searches generally indicate strong brand awareness. Non-branded search traffic indicates how people are finding a website through demandgenerating searches like the investment needs mentioned above. Firms that aren t the PIMCO s of the world will likely need to focus on non-branded terms at first, in order to compete against the household names. We compared tier-2 and tier-3 to see the extent to which people were finding them online through non-branded search: Among tier-2 and tier-3 firms ($1 billion to $499 billion in assets), there is a positive correlation between AUM and the percentage of traffic derived from non-branded search. Firms with higher AUM tend to have a higher percentage of non-branded traffic directing people to their websites. So, what are asset management firms doing to affect how people are finding them online? Do the largest firms generate the greatest search activity because of their sheer size and brand recognition, or can lower-tier firms compete? In order to better understand this, we examined the type of search traffic and keywords branded and non-branded that drive users to these websites. HOW DO PEOPLE FIND YOU? Online search activity is grouped into two buckets, branded and non-branded. Branded keywords relate directly to a company s name or product suite. Think of a search for Schwab or PIMCO Total Return Fund Prospectus. Users search for a brand name directly to reach a specific web destination. Overall search ranking (SEMrush rank), is higher for tier-2 and tier-3 firms where non-branded search drives more than 60 percent of web traffic. Non-branded keywords result from searches for terms where the user may be searching for information on a type of product or a topic, and end up on a company s webpage. Examples of this in the financial services industry include searches for investment needs like - best emerging markets equity funds, or investment industry themes, trends or topics like - Fed rate impact on fixed income

5 Increasing non-branded traffic is important for improving search analytics and online visibility (and potentially AUM). Only 35% of tier-2 and tier-3 firms do non-branded search well, meaning that they gain 60% or more of the web traffic from industry-related keywords. 40% of tier-2 and tier-3 rely on branded keywords to bring people to their websites, with tier-3 leaning on their brand the most. This can be a losing position for firms with brand names that are new or aren t as well known as say a Vanguard or Fidelity. Sophisticated online tools allow firms to analyze branded vs. non-branded ratio (or that of their competition), to see how people are finding them online, and determine a strategy to push towards more non-branded search traffic. Learning how people find your firm online can be illuminating. Often, you may be surprised by the keywords people used to end up on your website. What if only a minority of people end up on your website as a result of searching for your investment specialty? That indicates a clear need to adjust how you communicate online and possibly in the press. Analyzing keywords can also help you understand which of your existing press appearances or blog posts were popular and why. Once you identify the key non-branded terms you want to be known for, you can devise an integrated marketing and communications strategy based on what you ve learned. JUST A FEW ELEMENTS OF SUCH A CAMPAIGN MAY INCLUDE: What you are speaking about in the press Website copy Online marketing materials Research and other thought leadership materials Blog content Social media posts TAKING DOWN GOLIATH Paid search / Google AdWord campaigns Why do the largest, most-established brand name firms receive the majority of their web traffic on average, through searches unrelated to their firm or product names? One might assume that anyone on PIMCO s or BlackRock s website intended to reach that destination, right? Wrong. It is non-branded key terms, such as US inflation outlook, India ETF and closed-end fund where the biggest firms wrangle in their readership. This is where the opportunity lies for challenger brands

6 CONCLUSION For asset managers both large and small, understanding how people find your brand and website online is crucial to connecting with and expanding your target audience. Understanding how your communications efforts from PR to content marketing to social media may impact and influence those searches is even more paramount. An evolving media world and new communications channels have created new challenges for marketing and communications professionals, but new approaches are offering more insight than ever on the effectiveness of our work. So no matter what, or how, you are communicating your message to the world ask yourself one question: How do you want to be found? TERMS DEFINED Organic Traffic: The number of users expected to visit the website in the following month on condition that average monthly organic traffic stays relatively the same. Paid Traffic: The number of users expected to visit the website in the following month on condition that average monthly paid traffic stays relatively the same. SEMrush Rank: SEMrush Rank is a custom ranking for domains that shows how high of a presence a domain has on the Internet based on organic ranking. This number is calculated based on the visibility of the domain s ranking for the keywords that are displayed on the SEMrush database. Branded Keywords: Search terms that direct a user to a web domain that contain a company s brand name or some variation of it. Non-branded Keywords: Search terms that direct a user to a web domain that does not contain the target company s brand name or some variation

7 About Cognito Cognito is an integrated communications consulting firm for the financial and technology sectors. With offices in New York, London, Los Angeles and Singapore, we help firms improve their performance and manage their reputation. We provide planning, marketing, advertising, design, PR and social campaigns, together with proprietary software that delivers measurability and intelligence. Contact NEW YORK LONDON LOS ANGELES SINGAPORE 11 Broadway 4 Crown Place 9000 Sunset Bov 6 Eu Tong Sen Street, 18th Floor Broadgate Suite 900 #06-09 New York London Los Angeles Singapore NY EC2A 4BT CA