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Key takeaways:
- Public relations has a core, strategic role to play.
- PR teams excel when they’re at the table, helping to shape and support business strategy.
- Investment firms are embracing PR’s strategic contribution in shaping brand narratives, entering new markets, changing perceptions, and supporting M&A.
Is your PR department mainly charged with posting news releases? Are your PR pros merely gatekeepers who manage incoming requests from reporters and turn away any request that is in the least bit controversial?
That’s a shame. Because in our view, PR should be a strategic business function, especially at financial firms that are growing, exploring new markets, or trying to build a distinct and relevant brand.
How do new investment ideas get introduced to the market and catch hold? How do long-held opinions get changed? How have new brands broken out of nowhere?
Advertising? Sure, that’s part of it. Robust content outreach? Definitely. But don’t overlook the role of public relations in leading the communications and directions of these new strategies — especially for financial firms that are growing, exploring new markets, or determined to build a distinct and relevant brand.
PR’s unique strategic contribution starts with direct access to company leadership. With an intimate knowledge of the business’ vision, the PR team can propose communications strategies tied to the core business objectives and — based on their external industry perspective and understanding — what it will take to achieve them. This lays the foundation for both alignment and accountability.
Below, we explore three recent examples of PR working — not in isolation but in close support of sales and business growth.
Entering new markets
The asset management industry is seeing a huge shift toward ETFs. Many managers have moved quickly to offer products that are still low cost but typically pursue active strategies whose benefits require a distinct communications strategy. While most PR teams are proficient at B2B marketing aimed at the intermediary distribution channel, entrants to the ETF space are learning to embrace a new, direct-to-consumer audience that is — by definition — larger, more diverse, and expensive to advertise to.
PR campaigns including earned media is cost-effective at reaching these markets, often in combination with paid strategies. What’s more, the collaboration of PR and digital marketing strategies can pay off as PR teams use real-time data to shape strategy. When the various marketing teams are aligned, they’re able to amplify earned media results through digital channels, measure the results, and fine-tune strategy in real time to optimize awareness and drive product usage.
But what if you’re bringing a truly differentiated strategy? Good for you — but that just raises the expectation that you’ll need to communicate in a thoughtful, deliberate way to get attention in this crowded market.
Changing product perceptions
The introduction of commission-free annuities years ago to RIAs and consumers faced significant headwinds given long-standing prejudices about the products, despite research showing their benefits in retirement portfolios. Annuities’ bad rap stemmed from high commissions that led to unsavory sales practices.
The leaders of one innovative platform offering annuities to both advisors and consumers believed that a PR effort could change the narrative, and the annuity platform undertook an extensive education effort for both media and advisors, including:
- The creation of annual Media Masterclasses to help reporters better understand the new landscape of low-cost annuities. The presentations featured academics and real-world stories to help demonstrate their value.
- A survey of advisors, helping to reveal how the products helped advisors build their practices.
- Development of content drawing on academic research and real-life examples of how retirees can improve long-term results by adding annuities to their portfolio.
The result, after a few years: Having successfully elevated awareness, advisors now understand the unique benefits commission-free annuities offer and have embraced research demonstrating that retirees who receive guaranteed income from an annuity are more confident and willing to take risk in their portfolios. They are more regularly including annuities in retirement planning conversations.
That’s a win for the investor, a win for the advisor, and a win for the platform sponsor who believed in the power of a communications program to change long-held beliefs (for more, see this proof point).
Supporting M&A
Growth-oriented acquirers of asset or wealth management firms know why their acquisition makes sense. The challenge lies in getting others to understand. This requires a strategic PR approach that can help make the chaos of a merger easier to swallow for all stakeholders, but especially for clients and employees.
Strategic PR for M&A is much more than the deal announcement. PR leaders can articulate a strategy and help craft a plan to reach all impacted parties and to develop the custom materials needed for each audience. PR can monitor coverage and social media chatter to make sure the strategy is working and adjust as needed.
A widespread trend
Investment firms’ embrace of PR as a strategic function is consistent with what is happening in other industries. A Cision/PRWeek Report found that 84% of communications leaders today are regularly consulted by C-suite executives driven by factors including the evolving business landscape, the need for strategic insights, and the reliance on data and analytics in decision-making.
An Edelman study came to similar conclusions. While media relations was once viewed as the top function of PR teams, it’s dropped to third in importance — after employee engagement and brand reputation. (See our blog post.)
Is there a press release involved? Will media interviews need to be coordinated? Certainly — but those functions are simply the obvious byproducts of significant planning and preparation that includes:
- Shaping the brand narrative. The best PR teams see themselves as guardians of the brand. They are part of marketing’s inner circle that defines brand identity. And they consistently and repeatedly elevate stories that support that identity.
- Media training. For investment firms, so often brand identity lies in a firm’s expertise and people. A strategic PR team starts by defining the key media messages and training all spokespeople to consistently deliver them.
- Media outreach. PR creates plans to elevate key spokespeople and get them in front of the right audiences, such as financial advisors, institutional investors, or high net worth investors. They also manage opportunities carefully, avoiding anything that might erode trust or damage reputation, both of which are critical to financial brands.
- Thought leadership. Working collaboratively with the CEO and others, PR leaders can embrace the vision and elevate authority by crafting thought leadership that establishes credibility.
Growth-focused firms overall today are gravitating to Gini Dietrich’s PESO model in which Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media work powerfully together. It’s an especially appropriate approach in this dynamic industry where opportunities are boundless but resources are limited. Public relations — the strategic function responsible for earned media — can help investment firms do more.
Jody Lowe is President and Founder of Lowe Group, a financial PR and digital marketing strategy agency serving asset managers, RIAs and wealth advisors, alternative firms, fintech and other service providers.
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