Why You Should Stop Using PDFs for Your Quarterly Commentary

In the investment management industry, content assets like quarterly commentary are not just important in the marketing and sales process, but also client relations. Stakeholders want to hear what you have to say about markets and how it impacts their portfolios. However, most managers still write their letters in Word, then distribute the letter using an email marketing system and either attaching a PDF version of the letter, or providing a link to the PDF. This approach should be thing of the past. 

Here are a few reasons why your next quarterly letter should be web-based, not published as a PDF.

Tracking Engagement

While you can track which recipients opened or clicked the email, that's where it ends. Conversely, if the letter was a "blog post", the user is viewing a page on your web site to read the content, enabling you to track other valuable data such as:

• Views: the number of times the page or post was viewed.
• Source: where the viewer came from - direct traffic, organic search, email marketing, social media, etc.
• New Contacts: the number of new contacts created from the page or post - known as organic lead capture. 
• Submissions: the number of form submissions on the page or post.
• Average Time On Page: the total amount of time visitors spent viewing this page or post - are people actually reading the letter.
• Entrances: the number of sessions where this was the first page or post viewed.
• Exit Rate: the percentage of sessions that ended after viewing this page or post - this is 100% if letter was a PDF.

Data that allows you to analyze individual pages and posts to see how visitors are engaging with your content and which pages lead to new conversions and customers is very powerful. You can use this data to optimize future content and take action to move visitors further along the buyer’s journey.

A Natural Next Step

When someone views your letter as a PDF, they have essentially reached a dead end. So, how can readers take the next step and learn more about your company and offerings? If your content is web-based, you can use CTAs to allow the reader to keep moving forward. For example, someone has read your letter and wants to learn more about the strategies that that you manage, or your team and the person who wrote the letter. Adding CTAs to the page not only makes this possible, but actually encourages the viewer to take that next step. All of which can be tracked and measured, and therefore used to nurture leads. 

Accessibility & Sharing

Over half of all web traffic is via mobile devices. Have you ever tried to view a PDF on a mobile device? A lot of pinching and zooming is required! People frequently share blog posts and articles of interest with others in their personal networks via social media, however they do not share PDFs in the same way. Keeping your content in a PDF will prevent it from being discovered via search and shared on social media outlets like LinkedIn. 

Organic Search

Quarterly commentary in PDF format severely hinders the organic search results of your content. The PDF file itself might show up on a search engine results page, but the content within the PDF itself will not. Quality quarterly commentary does exceptionally well from organic searches because it offers compelling content and ideas that people want to read. By housing your content on your web site, you significantly increase the chances of your content being found which then drives organic traffic - and therefore an opportunity for the reader to keep moving forward and learn more about your firm and strategies.

Conclusion

PDFs are the dinosaurs of content distribution and they weaken your marketing efforts by excluding a large segment of your audience. There are far more benefits to using web technology to create digital publications that allow you to take advantage of interactive web features like CTAs, landing pages, and forms. Having the ability to gather data and take action upon it is essential in the marketing and sales process.

Want to learn more about how Goodwood can help you make your content capture more leads? Schedule a call or send us an email at info@goodwood-consulting.com