MutualFundWire.com: How Do You Improve the Dialogue Between Advisors and Clients?

MutualFundWire.com

The insiders' edge for 40 Act industry executives!
an InvestmentWires' Publication

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

How Do You Improve the Dialogue Between Advisors and Clients?

Marty Willis, chief marketing officer at OpFunds [profile] devotes a lot of her time thinking about the advisors who sell OpFunds products.

"Advisors have a lot going on in their lives today, if I can make their sales process easier and better relate to their customers, that's what I want to do. That is what I look to do every day," she recently told MFWire.

Case in point, OpFunds' latest ad campaign, launched earlier this month, titled Growth.Income.Protection.

The campaign, which was developed with the ad agency Havas Worldwide is meant to help advisors "change the conversation" with investors, according to Willis.

"When advisors have these conversations with their clients, these talks are more about needs and then on how the advisor can deliver solutions to help with these needs," she said.

For example, in some of the ads, there is a grid that outlines OpFunds products along the three different need categories outlined in the campaign's title: Growth, Income and Protection. Willis says this grid helps investors understand how the different products are aligned to their needs.

"Some products may address only one component, while others may address two or even all three of these needs. With the grid, it is made clear," she said. "Investors looking at this have been telling us and their advisors that 'this makes things so much clearer. I do understand now where all of these products meet my individual needs.'"

Simplicity in advertising may sound like, um,…a simple goal, but Willis says that it's a concept that clients are yearning for. And achieving it is harder than it sounds.

Investors have so many things coming at them today. They have to be much more self reliant. People are living longer. You can't rely on social security any more. People are living longer. What are they going to do to make that income generating part? The markets are not necessarily delivering the returns they once did. That makes the whole investing conundrum a bigger issue that it was maybe for our grandparents. The campaign that we launched is really for simplifying that for the investor. Trying to focus it into the three needs of growth, income and protection. You now have a broader array of products for delivering on that. It's important to make sure that people understand how the products are aligned to these needs.

The Growth.Income.Protection campaign follows on the momentum of another campaign, Globalize Your Thinking, launched by OpFunds two years ago and also masterminded by Willis.

Willis, who has been with OpFunds for four years, said that the first campaign came about from a realization that she and her colleagues had about common investor perceptions about global markets.

"What we came to see was that there was a need for Americans to think more broadly about their investing strategies. They tended not to think outside of just the United States," she said.

One of the primary messages of the Globalize Your Thinking campaign was "don't just invest in a country, invest in a company that would benefit from the growth trends happening around the world."

"It ran for two years," she said. "It was extremely successful."

Printed from: MFWire.com/story.asp?s=46093

Copyright 2013, InvestmentWires, Inc.
All Rights Reserved