Does Your RIA Channel Strategy Contain These 7 Tactics? It Should

Broadridge published a paper and, based on their findings, concluded:

“RIAs now sell more, in aggregate, than the top four wirehouses. Unfortunately for fund sales and marketing executives, RIAs tend to be small and more diverse, unlike those institutions, and therefore harder to reach using traditional distribution strategies. Gaining access and winning business in this space requires advanced segmentation and specific targeting of the individual advisor.”

Based on this information, how can organizations reach these large complex RIA channels, while still delivering a personalized experience?

Consider including the following 7 tactics into your RIA channel strategy:

1. Segment your RIA channel.  Identify those RIAs with the largest asset base, the biggest opportunities, or sales of relevant product types.  Score and select which of these segments you want to invest a greater portion of your sales strategy with, which could be managed by inside sales teams or wholesalers, and which could be communicated to digitally.
2. Map the RIA channel journey.  How will RIAs access your products and find information about them?  You need to set yourself apart just like they do.  Customize and personalize your message.  Test different communication channels across your asset base and product segments.  Define the personas for those segments.  You must define the channel communication journey, map the content, and identify gaps and opportunity.  Lastly, make it easy for RIAs to seek and engage with information.  Reduce the clicks across the channels.  Don’t complicate the navigation; drive them directly to the content they desire.
3. Develop and respond to RIA focused preference centers.  Begin to understand channel and segment preferences and behavior through the use of a preference center.  Allow RIAs to select what information they receive, when, and in what format.  Deliver content based on digital body language of RIA. 
4. Align sales resources with the RIA channel.Provide sales tools that allow your internal and external advisors to deliver timely and relevant communications.  By providing pre-approved messaging, and the tools to deliver that communication, companies can empower their teams while remaining compliant.  Educate your advisors, agents, and brokers on the importance of personal brand development, and provide the training necessary to build their brand.Develop scoring models that focus efforts where they’re needed most.  Based on an RIA’s activity, score their digital body language and deliver the most qualified opportunities to your teams for follow-up.  Engage your resources where there is the greatest promise of return.
5. Test RIA communication channels.  RIAs will choose to engage across varying channels. Consider adding digital advertising as a method to communicate with your RIA segments.  Digital advertising technology exists today that allows you to use business demographics to precisely target ads to your exact audience wherever they travel online. This results in more efficiently spent ad dollars, and gives you the ability to reach more of your target RIA audience, more often, and strategically guide them through the discovery cycle.
6. Leverage mobile as both a content consumption tool and RIA enablement tool.  With the continued growth and dependency on mobile devices for content consumption, it’s important you design your digital communications to be mobile friendly. It’s also worth investigating what mobile tools you can provide RIAs. Schwab rolled out Schwab OpenView Mobile, enabling RIAs to quickly deliver a branded mobile presence for their firms . This app lets advisors enhance client experience while also helping scale their business.
7. Curate and promote RIA content.  Content Development is a recognized influential tool, but also a challenge.  Generating quality content, and enough of it, is a problem many organizations face. With more RIA’s recognizing the need to develop a personal brand, the opportunity to syndicate this content is prevalent.  Curate RIA content or provide RIA’s the opportunity to guest blog. Pull from RIA generated content.  Highlight them and niche expertise.  Leverage social media to promote their thought leadership.

What other tactics have you included in your RIA channel strategy?