The strategy: Build strong relationships with intermediaries such as institutional investors, consultants, and financial advisors, as marketing effectively to them is vital to long-term profitability. These institutions channel large flows of capital and act as gateways to large volumes of customers who would be costly or impossible to reach one by one, per Investopedia.
By working closely with intermediaries, financial institutions (FIs) gain more-reliable access to funds, risk diversification, and greater operational efficiency. This in turn improves margins and market share and keeps institutions connected to the investment-lending flow that drives their bottom lines. In this article, we explore strategies for successful outreach to and empowerment of these intermediaries.
Know what they need: Financial advisors are critical gatekeepers to high-net-worth (over $1 million to invest) and ultra-high-net-worth clients (over $30 million to invest). To reach them effectively, asset managers must understand that these professionals prioritize efficiency, education, and resources they can use directly with clients.
Advisors are under intense time pressure, per Bill Good Marketing, and lean heavily on digital content, newsletters, webinars, and social platforms like LinkedIn to stay informed. This means producing useful thought leadership content that preempts advisors’ questions with informative answers while driving up SEO scores could land FIs on more intermediaries’ screens.
Advisors should also place high value on client-ready materials and actionable insights they can use to build trust with their investors. Advisors can save time and keep users returning for more by creating engaging, subscription-based regular updates and actionable tips and links to the most relevant products.
Know how to influence intermediaries: Institutional investors make decisions through structured processes often mediated by consultants, per Investopedia. These consultants vet managers, maintain approved lists, and shape the shortlists of asset managers.
Institutions and their consultants look for partners who can demonstrate performance and problem-solving capability across asset classes and client types. That means showcasing breadth in ways that directly map to institutional priorities like risk management, portfolio resilience, and long-term funding needs.
Another differentiator is credible, evidence-based thought leadership tailored to institutional use cases, which 59% of institutional investors say play into their choice of asset managers, per CoreData Research. And 23% say thought leadership led them to a firm they hadn’t heard of before—showing its power for discovery and brand-building, according to the same study.
Publishing white papers and case studies, hosting invite-only roundtables with leading consultants, producing institutional webinars, and offering interactive tools that let investors model scenarios with the FI’s strategies can further strengthen consideration.
Our take: Successful intermediary marketing directly correlates with empowering the chosen intermediary to do its job rapidly and accurately. FIs must shift their focus to becoming indispensable partners that save intermediaries time and help them win clients. By proactively providing advisors and consultants with ready-to-use, actionable materials, FIs move from being vendors to trusted, strategic assets.