Summary of this article2022 is a downturn year, the financial people experienced the capital market shock, epidemic prevention and control under the retrograde, difficult performance appraisal 2022 came to an end, the epidemic prevention and control policy shifted, the market has warmed up, the personal pension business and other new business opened the floodgates, standing at this point in time, it can be said to be the guardian of the clouds and see the moon. We believe that 2023 will be a year of recovery and uplift, with opportunities for high-quality industry development. We hope to think with you about how to do marketing this year, so we put forward the proposition of channel expansion VS user operation, hoping to throw a brick to attract jade and discuss with you. Background: Channel Expansion VS User Operation? Become a mandatory topic _ wealth management online wave of channel changes in the fund before the wave of online, asset management institutions sales channels are mainly banks, brokerage firms offline outlets, asset management institutions can not directly contact the user, can only do channel expansion. Channel expansion is a traditional concept in marketing theory, companies do not directly reach consumers, but to establish a dealer network, its behavior is sales-oriented. The target of channel development is the distributor, by negotiating with the channel and establishing business relationships to obtain better sales. After the rise of fund Internet sales, asset management organizations have built direct sales channels to directly attract customers and operations. Ant, every day, the bank to build online wealth management ecosystem, open platform some of the authority to the asset management institutions, asset management institutions to a certain extent can reach the user. Fund sales channels have evolved from the original offline to a four-way competition among banks, brokers, three-party agents and direct sales. The role of fund companies has changed from a pure product provider to a dual role of asset management organization + wealth management. The online fund sales have given asset management institutions the objective conditions to do user operations. _ Inventory era caught in the customer acquisition bottleneck, from the stock of customers to find AUM Internet dividend period, the institutions in the various channels to run to seize customers, in accordance with the channel's policy to do, naturally can get more traffic, improve retention. At this stage, although the asset management institutions with a variety of marketing methods to do the user service, but still in accordance with the requirements of the channel and the idea to go, is still essentially to meet the needs of the channel side. Nowadays, the Internet has entered the period of stock competition, and the price of customer acquisition is high and difficult to increase. Asset management institutions need to change completely follow the channel policy to invest resources to grab the rough model of customer sources, focus on the stock of customers, through the refinement of the operation to improve customer unit price to enhance product retention. The operation of the stock of customers requires organizations to change from the idea of channel operation to user operation. User operation is a concept that appeared only after the rise of Internet enterprises, the goal of user operation is not directly oriented to sales, but to the user as the center, to the user's needs and set up content, activities, and finally promote the user to buy. Obviously, the strategy of purely doing channel operation has not adapted to the current sales channels and future development trends, but doing user operation is faced with a number of difficulties, pain points. Dilemma of how to choose, fund companies facing the fork in the road given by the times, how should they choose? Industry status quo: the openness of the distribution channel to enhance the sales channel Matthew effect is obvious _ sales system to build a mature, sales channel Matthew effect appeared in this paper discusses the topic based on the asset management institutions have formed a more mature sales system, the newly established bank wealth management companies, some brokerage firms asset management sub-companies sales channels are not yet complete. Because the sales of institutional clients and private equity products are quite different from the mass retail model, this paper mainly focuses on the retail business of public fund companies. Banks, brokerages, independent fund sales organizations and direct sales are the main channels for fund sales. As shown in Chart 1, according to the CDFA data, the proportion of retained scale in 2020 was 27.68%, 9.31%, 14.54% and 48.03% respectively. The industry concentration is very high among fund distribution channels. According to the data of the top 100 fund distribution in the third quarter of 2022, the CR5, CR10, and CR20 of equity fund retained size were 43%, 59%, and 75%, respectively. Although it is a slight decrease from the beginning of 2021, it can basically be considered that 20% of the institutions sell 80% of the size of the fund. This means that when fund companies are doing distribution channel operations, focusing resources on head institutions is a choice with a high input/output ratio. After years of channel construction, most of the fund companies have formed a stable and extensive pattern of distribution agencies, more than 30 fund companies have reached cooperation with more than 200 distribution agencies. Only 21 fund companies have fewer than 50 agents. Although the overall scale of direct sales channel has been not low, but most of the source of direct sales counter institutional customers, retail customers retained scale is not high, the short-term direct sales channel for the fund company is more strategic than profitable significance. In the past two years, with the head of the fund company brand out of the circle, the significance of direct sales channels began to emerge. Banks and brokerage channels: channel cooperation is the main, openness gradually increased according to the China Fund Association published data, fund distribution scale of the top 100 banks in the 27 equity and non-goods class retained size of 3 trillion, 3.9 trillion, accounting for 52% of the total size of the top 100, 28%, the bank is undoubtedly the leader of the distribution channel. 27 bank channels, China Merchants Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Construction Bank of the three will occupy the 27 banks. Banks total size of 46% (equity), 44% (non-goods). Although banks are late in the layout of online sales, the marketing strength of large state-owned banks should not be underestimated. With the acceleration of the digital transformation of banks, banks began to pay attention to the online wealth management business.2021 Starting from the beginning of the year, some banks began to launch the bank wealth open platform, and asset management institutions were stationed there. After more than a year of operation, the fund companies are operating with small success. In the case of China Merchants Bank, for example, as of the end of December, 75 asset management institutions have been stationed, and the total number of fans is nearly 16 million. Banks and brokerage channels have not formed a fully market-oriented competition in the operation of the mechanism, there is still a barrier to entry, can be stationed, how much access to resources need to maintain business relations. Even if stationed in the open platform, the bank platform open platform construction is slow, the flow is relatively low, the fund company's operation in the bank is very restricted. But the bank channel is a new traffic entrance, and the open ecology is gradually improving, it is a channel that needs to be emphasized. _Internet independent fund sales organization: the head fund company has acquired a large number of users as of March 2022 quarter, the independent sales organization occupies 20 seats of the top 100 fund distribution, forming a pattern of 2 over 4 strong, equity and non-goods total scale accounted for 25.8% and 36.5% of the total scale of the top 100 respectively. The head of the three-party platform Ant, every day are ranked in the fund distribution of the top three, the sum of the size of the two accounted for 17% of the top 100 scale (non-goods), 22% (equity). The tripartite platform was first opened to fund companies.In June 2017, Ant announced that the wealth open platform was officially on line, and then the daily fund also announced that it was on line wealth number. To date, the ant and daily fund are stationed in more than 100 fund companies, and the total number of fans of the ant wealth number is hundreds of millions. In the first few years of the horse race let the head fund company in the Internet platform to get a huge amount of traffic. Independent three-party sales organizations are open and open to positions such as graphic, live, small programs, discussion forums and so on. And the operation is fully marketized, the ant platform launched the FICI system, relying on the quantitative scores of each index to decide which institution gets more resources. Under full market competition, fund companies have familiarized themselves with the characteristics of Internet users and Internet marketing play on the ant platform, and have accumulated experience in online marketing. In the past two years, the traffic dividend of the three-party platform has declined, coupled with market shocks, investors are no longer enthusiastic, the growth of the number of fans has slowed down, and the fund company's operation has turned to refinement. Direct marketing channels: direct marketing channels are divided between head and tail, and WeChat channels are more productive (1) Direct marketing APP As of the end of September, more than 50 fund companies and brokerage firms operated direct marketing APPs, and the head fund companies basically all have direct marketing APPs. in the past two years, a number of fund companies began to stop operating direct marketing APPs. the investment in direct marketing platforms has become polarized, and some fund companies, with the support of their brands and product performance, have continued to increase the number of fans, and have continued to increase the number of fans. The scale of some fund companies continued to rise, so they continued to increase their investment. Some fund companies continue to reduce investment or even abandon the direct marketing APP due to cost issues.(2) WeChat Platform: WeChat domain can realize rich marketing games. WeChat domain can be linked through WeChat public number, micro-site, WeChat video number, small program and other positions to create rich marketing scenarios such as account opening, transaction, user companionship. WeChat small program can further enrich the marketing play and promote fund sales. Service No.: From the point of view of the issuance of the service number of the top 50 fund companies in terms of the size of non-goods funds, during the period from July to September 2022, an average of 43 organizations issued 394 articles per month, with an average reading volume of more than 3,000/article. The trend of posting articles is stable, and users already have a certain degree of stickiness. The operation of WeChat public number by each institution is already very mature. The vast majority of fund companies have already expanded a very complete channel system through the channel operation in the early stage, and the head fund companies have already accumulated a lot of users in various channels and formed a normalized user operation mode. The layout of the sales channels of the public fund industry has basically been completed, and thus the next work begins to turn to the fine-tuning of the channels. In the future, most of the incremental scale of fund companies will come from user operation rather than channel expansion. Industry case: the head fund company in the key channel user operation investment_Direct sales channel: Guangfa Fund - direct sales ecological sustained investment Guangfa Fund's direct sales scale has been located in the forefront of the industry, and began to build a direct sales system early, we analyze the direct sales channel from the Guangfa Fund to see the current situation of the head of the organization's direct sales. (1) Direct sales APP GF Fund's direct sales APP was launched in 2013, and it is one of the earlier fund companies that invested in direct sales APP. 2013-2019, GF Fund's direct sales APP builds all kinds of basic functions and experience optimization around the demand of "selling funds", focusing on account opening, login, and experience optimization, focusing on account opening, login, and experience optimization. The optimization focuses on account opening, login, fund checking, depositing and withdrawing, and from 2020, the direct marketing APP will design tools from the user's financial scenarios, such as parent-child financial management and financial assistant. Especially in 2022, GDF made many polishing and upgrading to the fund investment adviser page, such as investment adviser experience gold, intelligent education gold investment adviser, super fixed investor and so on. The operation idea of the direct sales APP has gradually changed, from selling products to the direction of wealth management to do the operation of the direct sales channel. (2) Official website The official website is the earliest direct marketing platform on line for GF, and users can trade directly on the fund company's official website. As the website cannot continuously reach users, and the user group's habit of using the website has migrated to the mobile terminal, the role of the fund company's official website is more of brand publicity than sales. GF's official website consists of five pages: home page, personal finance, high-end finance, corporate finance and about GF. This design is the idea of traditional business module, which is also in line with the usage habits of user groups who use the official website for transactions. (3) WeChat Platform GF IMF's operational positions on WeChat platform include public number, video number, small program and enterprise WeChat. The service number of GF is the main position of direct marketing, and the service number can be understood as a "streamlined version" of the APP, which puts the main functions of the APP in the menu bar of the service number. Users can push messages to users through WeChat after binding their accounts. Micro-butler and Niuqi investment society are positioned in information and investment teaching services, and through enterprise WeChat in the community and WeChat circle of friends to do the user's comprehensive services. Overall, GF's direct sales channels have changed from "building channels to sell products" to "improving channels to provide wealth services". Distribution channels: the head of the company covers a wide range, small and medium-sized organizations choose to focus on channel operation after decades of channel expansion, most fund companies have a very wide range of channel coverage. According to Wind data, by the end of 2022, 74 fund companies have more than 150 cooperative distribution organizations, and 12 fund companies have more than 250 cooperative organizations. The largest number of cooperative distribution institutions are Boshi Fund, Efonda Fund and Southern Fund, with 343, 324 and 300 cooperative institutions respectively. The breadth of channel operation coverage of the head fund company is already very high, and it is difficult to make a big breakthrough. To continue to improve sales in the distribution channel, the next key step in the distribution channel should be to strengthen the depth of cooperation in key channels. In terms of key channel cooperation, fund companies are also actively running in the open platform, for example, as shown in chart 11, statistics part of the head of the fund company in the focus of the open platform stationed in the situation, Boshi Fund, South Fund, Penghua Fund and other head of the company are stationed in dozens of institutions, including the three-way platforms, banks and brokerage firms, and through a period of operation, has accumulated a certain number of users. Ant and daily fund open platform sales scale is high, so most of the institutions in these two platforms invested very high. Taking ant as an example, in 2022, ETF fund, Huaxia fund, ICBC Credit Suisse fund, and Chongjin Hutchison fund released more than 1,500 articles. 36 wealth number released more than 500 articles, which can be seen that the frequency of releasing articles is very high. Statistics on the number of live broadcasts, videos, articles and small programs of the top ten fund companies in the non-food ranking in 2022 on the Ant platform, the frequency of operation is very high, and a lot of resources are invested. Outlook: user operation meets the needs of wealth management transformation_User operation is a general trend that requires continuous investment Under the general trend of wealth management transformation, the asset management industry is transforming from pure product provision to "asset management organization + wealth management organization". In recent years, the staffing of the sales business line of the public fund industry has also been quietly transformed. E-commerce department (mutual fund department) staff continues to expand, do financial live, content operation and other positions continue to expand, the whole industry tends to pay attention to the operation of online channels. We believe that the next asset management organizations should spare no effort to do user operations. First of all, user operation is an inevitable trend in the process of wealth management transformation. The model of capital management products relying on management fees to make profits requires fund companies to look not only at short-term sales, but also at long-term retention. Only relying on business relationships to obtain high-quality traffic brought about by the sales is not long-term, and can not guarantee that the user's holding time. We believe that most of the incremental fund size in the future will come from user operation, which requires fund companies to improve after-sales service and in-depth accompaniment. Secondly, fund companies have very limited control over channels. The bargaining power of fund companies in the channel is not strong since their establishment, and the sales capacity of the channel itself and its policy towards fund companies are in flux, and business relationships cannot fully guarantee sales. On the contrary, user operation can establish in-depth contact with users through long-term work, and user operation is replicable and scalable, and the accumulated work methods can be extended to various sales platforms. In addition, user operation plays an important role in the fund advisory business. The difference between fund investment consulting products will be narrowed, and more competition will be the ability of "Gu", in order to get a place in the fund investment consulting business, you need to cultivate the power of user operation in advance. Although we believe that user operation is an inevitable trend in the transformation process of wealth management, in the face of reality, it is still difficult to do user operation: (1) the independent operation of the distribution platform is limited, and it is too difficult to do user operation in a cross-platform collaboration. (2) Fund companies have many internal user service departments and business modules, making it difficult to coordinate operations. (3) The core of the fund company is the product, and the sales department itself needs to operate according to the company's product rhythm, so it is difficult to really use the user operation thinking to do operation. Although user operation is a long-term trend, it is difficult to change the industry's channel-heavy consciousness in the short term. What we need to do for a long time is to expand channels and user operation at the same time. During the period when the two go hand in hand, the organization needs to invest some resources in advance to try and layout, and gradually change the strategy. Three trends in user operations in the short term (1) Exclusivity: make full use of the platform's open capabilities, differentiated channel construction key channels need to be differentiated for user operations, as we said earlier, the fund distribution industry is highly centralized, the fund company focuses on investing in the head of the channel is highly productive, and the head of the channel should be utilized to do the differentiated operation of the platform capabilities. (2) Completion: the overall deployment of the sales system, comprehensive coverage of customer needs fund product sales, customer service, user education three functions for the user is the same, but within the fund company is separate. There is a need to have a full deployment of the user and internal system platform, under the premise of compliance with user information **** enjoy, user service planning. On the premise of meeting user needs and covering the full life cycle of users, do not over-market and disturb. We should not only pay attention to the front-end content output, but also pay more attention to the effect analysis and review, and do a good job of long-term user marketing. (3) Technology: strengthen digital means to enhance investor companionship thousands of people, artificial intelligence and big data in the application of user services require more personalized and intelligent services for users, such as investor-oriented intelligent assistant, intelligent customer service and so on. At the same time, the internal organization also needs to improve the compliance, safety and efficiency of marketing through technology, such as the establishment of a marketing center to improve the efficiency of internal marketing material review, production and release. The financial digital marketing platform, Lehap, developed by Doral, can intelligently produce and publish marketing content, helping asset management organizations to improve efficiency and provide thousands of contents and services for different users.