“Committed to meeting customer needs”, “culture of transparency and trust”, “highly experienced”… How often have asset managers made these points when presenting their credentials to potential clients? Countless times. How often do they truly resonate with prospects? Rarely.

In most industries, a clear and strong brand is recognized as an essential competitive advantage. Yet asset management firms have proved reluctant to invest in brand awareness. For decades, asset managers have been focused on year-over-year returns rather than differentiation in the marketplace. Nonetheless, such an investment is mandatory to help companies stand out in today’s busy market. By doing so, you can not only boost market share and instil customer loyalty but also gain productivity and responsiveness!

Branding is not just about visual features. It refers to every aspect of your firm from customer engagement to service, interaction and even how you manage and lead your own people. Branding done well is the consistent representation of the firm’s culture across all forms of media, in line with your company’s core purpose, values and mission statement.

1. Boost your asset management firm’s market share

Branding displays a number of promises to your customers: what you offer, your values, your quality level and your consistency. This also tells your customers how their lives would be improved by buying your services. By building your brand image, you can assert how you want to be seen by your clients but also your prospects with the use of a unique voice, vision, and distinctive visuals in your marketing collaterals.

Each asset management brand has its own style, voice and persona. Ideally, it should set off an emotion when customers come across it. First impressions are critical: studies reveal that up to 90% of snap judgments made about a company can be based on colour alone! Today, your presentations can go further than the standard off-the-shelf Microsoft PowerPoint graphics. And it usually pays off: your company’s image and the way the message is communicated inevitably play a big role in perception and saleability.

According to an analysis by Dun & Bradstreet, 57% of the top asset management firms describe themselves as “client focused” and “transparent”. These kind of table stakes are nice must-haves, but they don’t ensure a winning hand!

American B2B branding and marketing agency DeSantis Breindel helped a $15 billion institutional asset manager to develop a new brand. DeSantis Breindel conducted in-depth interviews with senior management, internal teams and even customers to understand how they see the firm. Then, they developed a set of core messages adapted to specific audiences – investors, consultants… These actions, amongst others, lead the asset manager to substantial increase of its market share and revenue. The investors as well as the customers reinforced their trust in the brand.

2. Improve customer experience

It is crucial to asset managers to make sure that their documents and presentation supports meet the standards of a clear brand identity. Defining structured and up to date corporate templates will lead to fewer errors in disclaimers or legal notices. By ensuring the conformity and compliance of your presentations, you also better meet your customers’ expectations: indeed, a single mistake could be enough to convince a potential client that your company is not stringent enough on risk management…

>> Read more: 8 Powerful PowerPoint Tips To Avoid Easy Mistakes

Did you know that 87% of customers think brands need to put more effort into providing a consistent experience? Kampyle, sponsor of this survey, also found that customers systematically expect the communication to remain consistent. A unified communication shows customers that you are a caring and transparent brand, providing them with useful and straightforward information all along their journey.

As a matter of fact, branding ensures the compliance of all customers’ communications – presentations, documents, tables, charts and contracts – with the firm’s style, tone of voice and visual identity. Remember that the ultimate goal is instant recognition from your customers as soon as they come across your logo, colours, and visuals. In the end, you don’t only improve your brand recognition and consistency, but you hit your target: delivering better customer satisfaction.

3. Enhance your productivity and efficiency

Asset managers can often be confronted to changes and last-minute adjustments. Updating documents and presentations – especially when they can be several hundred pages long – in a hurry can become stressful and time-consuming. Such repetitive and low value-added tasks could be easily automated.

The main benefit? Be way more responsive and efficient whenever a customer asks you to amend proposals or when you need to broadcast updates amongst the whole company.

As an example, let us tell you’re the story of AXA, a French insurance company which is also one of our clients. AXA uses UpSlide to improve the quality of reportings and presentations for several years. AXA was rewarded several times for the quality of its reporting documents (“Best investors climate reporting” in 2016, “Best institutional reporting for mandates” in 2017…). We feel like we helped them achieve their goals and we are very proud to count them as one of our customers.

Now, it’s your turn to become a reporting champion!