The following is a comprehensive audit for Pioneer Investments.
(If you want an audit for your own hedge fund, contact Damon here.)
Who Is Pioneer Investments?
Contents
Pioneer Investments is an investment manager with an age of nearly 100 years. They have offices in Boston, Dublin, and London. Having been in the hedge fund industry for over a decade, they are now running funds of funds. Currently, they manage over $1 billion assets through different investment vehicles.
I came across Pioneer Investments’s website while researching their Meteor Opportunities Fund (cool name, huh?). What I found disappointed me – I’m talking about the website, not the fund. The fund is actually quite successful.
While highly illiquid, the Meteor Opportunities Fund is an event-strategy hedge fund with nearly $200 million AUM at the end of 2013. In 2014, it stands to gain another $300 million. And this is after five years of no or negative growth. Congrats on whatever you fixed!
The minimum investment is $25,000. The fund is also pretty generous toward its investors, ditching the standard 2-and-20 for a 1% management fee and a 15% incentive fee. It has a total return of 50%, with an annual return of 4%.
As you can see, the fund itself is quite impressive.
Launched in February 2014, the Schroders UK Dynamic Absolute Return Fund manages over 100 million pounds and has an annual return of -9% (this will likely change in the future).
Why Audit Pioneer Investments?
As always, when I audit a hedge fund’s marketing materials, my goal is never to insult but to help. Pioneer Investments runs a successful management company. Their resources are clearly all poured into running their financial vehicles, as they’ve neglected quite a bit on their marketing. I’m simply here to show them what they could (and should) do better. In this article, I am writing to help them and other hedge funds who want to better their marketing efforts.
Disclaimer
I am not affiliated with nor a client of Pioneer Investments. I was not commissioned to write this audit. All the data in this article regarding Pioneer Investments was obtained from publicly available sources – I was not supplied with any internal data from Pioneer Investments itself.
I am writing for both Pioneer Investments and other hedge funds who wish to find better ways to market their products.
If you have any questions regarding this disclaimer, please contact me.
Okay…
So there’s lots to talk about here, but let’s start with probably the most important and helpful point (assuming Pioneer Investments’s people are reading):
Targeting
According to my research, those visiting the Pioneer Investments website have arrived mainly through organic traffic – that is, they’re coming from Google and other search engines. Here are the top four terms people are searching for when they reach Pioneer Investments:
- pioneer investments
- pioneer asset management
- pioneer funds
- alternative investment management
Analyzing these four keywords, the first three are obvious: People are finding what they are looking for – namely Pioneer Investments’s website. In other words, those searching for any of the first three terms already know of Pioneer Investments and are looking for more information on them. This is obvious.
The search term that stands out is the fourth one: “alternative investment management.” This is huge!
In essence, what this tells us is that some people are interested in hiring a company to manage their investments and “stumble across” Pioneer Investments. These people, obviously without brand preference, upon finding Pioneer Investments will either go through the leads funnel or return. (Keeping them in the leads funnel is the entire point of my advice in the marketing tips section of this website).
Now realize that the term “alternative investment management” pulls up nearly 13 million results from Google. Pioneer Investments is competing with virtually every other hedge fund for the people searching this term. Luckily, Pioneer Investments is getting around 40 of those people onto their website per month. That’s 40 chances at getting a new investor.
What Pioneer Investments should be doing with this information is two-fold:
- They should run more SEO and copywriting efforts to increase the number of people coming into their site through the “alternative investment management” search.
- They should match the landing page for that term to the expectations of the searchers.
For step 1, Pioneer Investments could write a few in-depth, educational blog posts on the subject, focusing on the keyword “alternative investment management.” They should also rewrite their metatext and titles to both include the keyword and to make it more “clickable” (i.e., write with clear, commanding copy).
For step 2, Pioneer Investments should do a bit of back-end research to discover where the majority of the people searching “alternative investment management” are landing on the site – it’s not always going to be the home page! Once they’ve figured out that “landing page,” they should adapt it to make the transition from the search to the site easier. I’ll give you an example of what I mean by this:
You’ve hurt your wrist and need some help getting it back into working condition (you’re a professional sewer). So, you pick up your laptop and search for “physical therapist.” You click on one of the search results, bringing you to a new site. The new site shows an obscure picture of someone performing sports and some text about the history of the physical therapist. The conversation going on in your head was originally “I need someone to help me with my wrist,” but you’re met with a new conversation, “Let me tell you about my academic background.”
Not a good match.
I hope the above example came across well. If you have people searching for “alternative investment management” and your site shows a picture of a guy playing water sports overlayed by some text talking about the history of Pioneer Investments, are you matching the conversation in the searchers’ heads? Unlikely. They’re probably thinking, “I need someone to manage this pile of cash I’m sitting on” when they go to Google. You need to follow that conversation with a page that directly directs the searcher’s issue.
Finally, I would also consider running some online advertisements in the form of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads on the keyword “alternative investment management.” This is a money-making keyword for Pioneer Investments, so they should consider investing more of the resources into targeting people searching for that word.
Tip: The organic keywords working for you are also the PPC keywords that will work for you.
Accessibility
Pioneer Investments’s website is mainly for their current clients, which is why most of the content is password-locked. Because of this, I almost decided not to audit Pioneer Investments, as some hedge funds use their websites exclusively as guidebooks for their clients. But I decided to go forward with this audit for two reasons:
- As we saw in the last section, we have prospects naturally coming across Pioneer Investments.
- The content that’s not locked off does little to turn prospects into interested leads or clients.
Tip: Password-locked websites and lead-generating websites are not mutually exclusive and can be built on the same web space.
Ninety percent of Pioneer Investments’s website is locked. Even the factsheets, which I imagine would be more informative to leads than to people already locked into a certain investment vehicle. It’s a strange system Pioneer Investments is running.
Regarding the content that’s open to the public, it’s all about what Pioneer Investments does. In other words, it’s not about what the investors stand to gain or how they can solve their problems through working with Pioneer Investments. The little information on the funds themselves are sentence length blurbs that don’t say anything to differentiate Pioneer Investments from its competitors:
A “well-balanced” and “diversified” (aren’t they the same?) fund? And it’s focused on returns?! Sign me up! Oh wait, that’s the same fund that all the other investment companies are trying to get me to sign up for…
Granted, the region-specific websites do offer a lot more information than the main site, so for the rest of the article, I will focus on the region-specific sites, specifically the US site for individual investors (why do I have to click through twice?) and the Taiwanese site. Note that, I’m again met with varying information based on regions (just as I saw in my audit for Schroders):
(Also no Japanese site?)
Tip: Region-based sites are great but should all target the same set of marketing objectives.
Multimedia
Pioneer Investments has done a great job of integrating multimedia into their online marketing content. Not only do they offer their notices in pdf form but they also offer it in audio form. Another thing they are doing right is offering video, which is something few hedge funds do. Their interview-style videos educate investors while simultaneously putting a face to the hedge fund. Pioneer Investments should definitely do more of this.
Tip: Video can help “personify” your hedge fund.
Surprisingly, the Taiwanese site lacks such multimedia. Pioneer Investments has the funds to translate complex financial language for a website but not to add Chinese subtitles to a relatively simply Q&A session. If they are getting any decent traffic to their Chinese site, they should definitely move over these multimedia efforts over.
Overall, I’m impressed with what Pioneer Investments is doing with its multimedia strategy. However, they could improve on several points.
- More video. Video topics can be easy, and you don’t always have to use a big-name in your firm. Take any representative and put them in front of the camera for a “10 frequently asked questions about Pioneer Investments” video. Other video ideas include the general process of signing up as an investor, the advantages of investing in Pioneer Investments (as opposed to other funds), and introducing the fund managers.
- Go all-out with multimedia. Video can be converted to blog posts. Blog posts can be converted to PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint presentations can be converted to audio. You’ll be able to create 3 or 4 extra pieces of content from every original piece.
- Integrate social media. Hosting your videos on your website does look more professional than embedding a YouTube video, I agree. However, more traffic means more leads, which means more investors. Start integrating your website’s content with social media.
Overall, Pioneer Investments, good job here, but you can take it a step further.
Tip: Video is more convincing than text.
Layout
The layout of Pioneer Investments is probably the biggest problem in terms of:
- Improving on-site time
- Improving page views
- Improving conversions
- Decreasing bounce rate
Consider these facts into consideration:
- The average time someone spends on Pioneer Investments’s site is 90 seconds.
- The average user reads less than 3 pages on Pioneer Investments’s site.
- It takes 4 clicks just to get into the US regional site.
Most people leave the site after a few clicks. Pioneer Investments can easily improve upon this by changing their most severe layout problems. I’ll only be talking about the US site for this section.
At first sight, the website’s pages are content-less. That is, until you recognize that they put their content in a grayed-out area that looks like the footer:
The content should definitely be moved into the white area, where people will actually look.
Second, the main page scrunches everything between two sidebars:
In fact, the sidebars on this entire site are problematic. Just from a readability standpoint, you never have a good enough reason to put the sidebar on the left, as Pioneer Investments has done. Switch it to the right side.
Tip: Sidebars should always go on the right.
Third, and the biggest problem of them all – Pioneer Investments lacks a mobile site! This is simply inexcusable for an industry in which 60% of investors are browsing via phone. Fix this right away!
Tip: Even if many of your readers are browsing from work, the majority of the other readers are using phones or tablets. Cater to them!
Conclusion
To Pioneer Investments and the other hedge funds reading this article, I sincerely hope you’ve taken away at least one thing you can immediately implement. Pioneer Investments runs a successful investment firm and several hedge funds. But success in one expertise doesn’t necessarily carry over to online marketing. I hope you employ my advice to the best of your ability. Invest in your website, and others will invest in you!
In short, Pioneer Invest should:
- Make the main site more accessible.
- Leverage the prospects who come across your site from general keyword searches (e.g., alternative investment management).
- Alter the layout to allow easier access to the information your prospects are most likely looking for.
- Keep going forward with your already-strong multimedia efforts!
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