Where are investment management firms allocating marketing budget?

Events and sponsorships remain the favoured marketing tool in investment management marketing, according to a recent study.

The research, conducted by Teamspirit in partnership with the Financial Services Forum and Investment Week, surveyed 23 marketing heads at investment management firms. The firms varied in size, including small (under £10bn AUM), medium (£20-60bn AUM) and large (over £100bn AUM).

On average, the firms surveyed planned to assign 34% of spending to events and sponsorship. The allocation varied according to size: the figure was only 19% for medium firms but rose to 38% for large firms.

The second most popular overall category was advertising, attracting 16% of total spend. Unsurprisingly, large firms allocated more budget than other groups to advertising, at 25% of total budget, while the figure was 11% and 5% for small and medium ones respectively.

PR and customer experience were the next most popular areas, both attracting 9% of total budgets. However, large firms spend considerably less on both areas, at 6% and 4% respectively.

Medium firms had different priorities to other groups: their heaviest spend went on content development and customer experience (both 20%). Smaller firms were more likely than other firms to spend on martech, with 12% of total budget compared to 5% and 4% respectively for medium and large firms.