Ken Fisher's Marketing Empire

A story about how Ken Fisher built a massive investment management firm through marketing rather than superior investment returns.

"Ken Fisher created a simple investment adviser firm called Fisher Investments and grew it to manage $275 billion in assets. They sold to private equity at a $12.5 billion valuation, and it was their first outside capital raise. He basically bootstrapped his way to a $12 billion company.

His dad was a finance guy who wrote a popular book called 'Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits' that Warren Buffett called a major influence on his career. But what Ken did differently was master marketing. They spend $60 million a year on marketing, which sounds like a ton to anybody else in the money management space. When asked why they advertise so much, Ken says 'Because we have no market share.' Even with over $100 billion in assets under management, he says that's nothing - they're just the biggest grain of sand in the sandbox.

They broke down their marketing into 6 mental profiles of how people think about retirement and savings. They run ads targeting each profile, do focus groups, and test everything scientifically. They use Ken's face in the ads because they found clients want to believe there's someone who wakes up in the morning and cares - not just an institution. They learned men's faces convert better than women's faces in their ads.

The fascinating part is they built the biggest investment adviser firm while not necessarily having the best returns. Their funds have underperformed the market substantially. But through marketing mastery, they've built an empire charging 1-1.25% fees on $250 billion in assets."