Your potential investors go online to learn more — it’s the first place they look. If you don’t have the website content they’re looking for, someone else may attract their attention (and investment dollars) first.

Adding valuable and timely content to your mutual fund website can help generate more new investors faster.

Why Add More Website Content? You’ll See More Traffic and More Investors

Adding valuable website content can:

1. Improve your visibility on search engines.  In general, more useful content on your website gives you more opportunities for your website pages to be listed in a search engine’s “organic” (non-paid) search results. The more visible your mutual fund website, the more traffic you’re likely to receive.For example, by creating content focused on “value investors,” that content may appear on a search engine as a result of a search on that term – and drive new investors to your website.
2. Drive more in-coming links to your website. By posting useful content, you increase the chances that blogs, analysts, financial media and other financial websites may find your content so useful they include a link to it on their website.  Incoming links from reputable websites can help improve your website’s visibility in the organic search listings – and also help drive more direct traffic from those links.
3. Attract a wider pool of potential investors. More content gives you more opportunities – and more topics – to attract attention and pique the interest of a wider array of investors.
4. Boost the percentage of website visitors that become new investors. Delivering quality content can help engage your visitors and motivate them to take action. More useful content helps answer investor questions, concerns, and objections. Potential investors feel more confident in their decision to invest. And so when you leave no unanswered questions in your potential investors’ minds, you increase the probability of them taking the next step to becoming investors.
5. Help investors find the right fund for their investment objectives. Content about a fund’s strategy can help investors see how the particular fund can be a good fit for their current portfolio. A “Market Insights” discussion of how the fund’s strategy fits in the current market conditions can really help investors feel comfortable with the fund – and motivate them to take action.
6. Increase sales to existing customers. More useful website content also improves your ability to sell more to your existing customers – and to retain them as investors.

So not only can additional content drive more traffic to your website, it can also help convert more visitors to investors, retain investors, and expand your existing relationships.

What Types of Content Should a Mutual Fund Website Add?

Performance Figures:

On Vanguard’s personal investor site, the snapshots for each mutual fund show SEC yield, YTD, 1 year, 5 year, 10 year, and Since Inception performance — updated continuously. You can even choose month-end or quarter-end figures.

Click the Fund Profile for current day’s NAV, average annual performance chart (or table), growth chart over last 10 years, month-end portfolio composition and 10 largest holdings.

For each fund, you can click “buy” — but you can also select “watch” or “compare,” two great online tools to consider adding to your mutual fund website.

Fund Documents and Account Application:

When you choose any mutual fund on Franklin Templeton’s website, a right column bar appears on every page of the fund’s information — offering a PDF of the Fund Fact Sheet, Prospectus, Annual Report, and Account Application.

The site also offers an “Investor Education” section, with a page of “Tools and Calculators” for retirement, college, and personal finance.

When you’ve engaged a visitor with your great content, be sure they can easily take the next step before leaving your website.

Portfolio Manager Insights:

There’s no better way to give prospects and current investors a deeper understanding of each fund/fund manager’s investment philosophy than to provide regularly updated content directly from the Portfolio Manager.On the Oppenheimer Funds website, each fund features a “Fund Commentaries” tab with archived discussions from the Portfolio Manager by month. The “Planning & Research” tab features a multimedia selection — where you’ll find links to a selection of video segments and television appearances.

The home page features Global Tracker, Oppenheimer’s mobile app, for investment philosophy on the go.

It’s this type of in-depth insight into a Portfolio Manager’s thinking that can really attract new investors to your funds.

Produce Content in Different Formats

Different investors prefer different content formats. Generation X (generally those in their 30s and 40s) is the “video” generation – the largest consumers of online video. Many Baby Boomers (those in their 50s and 60s) and Seniors are readers. The more varied the formats you use, the wider audience you’ll likely attract.

By considering formats other than an article on a web page, you can also make your content more interesting. What if you took that text and turned it into a checklist or a worksheet? How about a comparison chart? Do your investors access your website on a mobile device? You might consider a mobile app.

Once you create an article, why not maximize the time you spent creating it – by re-purposing that same content into a video, or series of videos. Or maybe your investors would enjoy podcasts (great for mobile devices!).  Consider ways to re-use, re-purpose, expand, or take apart your content to extend its use and value.

As you create new website content, be sure to mention and include a link to it in your e-newsletters. In this way, content you originally create for online purposes can become e-newsletter content as well.

Content as Track-able Offers

You may want to consider creating special content that is accessible only by completing a form. If you can capture the prospect’s email or direct mail address via an online form, you can then market to those leads over time.

Your Content Can be Promoted on Social Media

When you develop interesting pieces of content such as a new video, it gives you a great topic to talk about on Twitter or Facebook. The more interesting your content, the more likely it is to be shared – to help you reach even more prospective investors.

The bottom line: Content can generate more traffic, more leads, and more conversions to investors. If you’re a smaller mutual fund company, adding more online content can help you more effectively compete with mutual fund companies of any size.