Investment trust identities: messaging, competing, tone of voice
Accelerated by COVID, half-empty offices and remote home working, having a digital persona for investment trusts is becoming the primary means to enquire and discovery. It is also a high maintenance activity, with stories and images conveyed through animations, webinars, podcasts and advertorial which ideally should feel seamless to what is the user’s own experience. Whether they are working on iphones, laptops or large pcs in offices.
Investment trust boards are now increasingly conscious about the need for their company website to be an engaging, appealing and compelling proposition and a place where to linger.
This evolution of significance is quite removed from a pdf online of an annual report in days of old. Changing ownership patterns, a new demography, pension reform and the visible yardstick of PLC trading companies are raising the bar. Technology users have expectations for their journey to be easy, nimble and fun.
Winners of the AIC shareholder engagement awards in recent years included Martin Currie Global Portfolio Trust and Asset Value Investors, so this year’s winners once announced soon will be intriguing to see how new techniques and communication skills are deployed, especially as trust’s websites are metaphorical shop windows.
In practice, for enquirers, websites are not the primary portal for investor research. The websites themselves are typically destination sites for those who have already invested. So they perform a valuable function as a repository of key documents. But increasingly managers recognise that compelling individual corporate messages are critical on arrival, as all web users nowadays carry expectations of their discovery.
In some instances, it is easier for independent and smaller asset managers to score in the creative process here, as larger firms tend to adapt their mutual fund sites which have different constraints. Trusts are independent client companies and not just manager products with prefixed labels alone. This can pose strategic marketing questions on brand hierarchy and the relationship between the brands. Are the trusts “endorsed brands”, “standalone identities” or servants of the manager “master brand”? There are merits to define the leverage each brand identity contributes to attract visitors. In many instances, 75% of all visitors are “pulled” to the website by paid-for means, no longer is splendid isolation and a website just being published a sufficient reason for people to visit.
Visitors shorthand their digital experiences swiftly into definitions of appeal, engagement and their understanding. Insisting, as if a benefit, that this sector is, the old refrain, “investment trusts are the best kept secret in the City”, can nowadays sound a thin defence of lack of engagement. Competitor sites are after all just a keystroke away, inviting the invisible but powerful cohort of self-directed audiences to space.
March 2022