The Trigger: Vanguard’s New Fee Structure

Recently, Vanguard announced that it would charge a minimum of £4 for customers with less than a certain amount under management. They used to charge a simple percentage fee of 0.15% of the value of your account, but they have implemented a minimum fee of £48/year. This can be annoying to people who expect to pay, e.g. £1.50 for their account with £1000 in it or £15 for an account with £10,000.

I’m sure they have a good reason for it. They set a timeline of January 31st for when these charges will commence and encouraged those who didn’t want to pay the fees to move their portfolio for free. This has sparked conversations with people exploring their alternatives. Some of the popular ones that came up include, Trading 212, AjBell, Hargreaves Lansdown etc.

The Initial Response: Passive Consideration

I was passively weighing my options, because I like to save any penny I can where I can but didn’t take any decisive action. On the other hand, I’ve had a Trading212 account for many months but never bothered to fund or utilise it.

The Journey to Action: Multiple Touchpoints

Last week Monday, I randomly came across a reel from an Instagram content creator, a mum/lifestyle content creator who made a post about how easy it was to buy any shares she wanted via Trading212. I don’t think this post was sponsored but you never know these days. (This post is no longer on her page at the time of writing this article)

The next day I searched on how to transfer your portfolio from Vanguard to Trading212, then went the rabbit hole of Reddit to confirm how reliable the platform is, what fees they charge, and the overall experience of others. The conversations there were mostly positive and affirmed my decision to move my little portfolio there.

The Final Push: Educational Content

I logged in to the Trading212 app but could not find the feature to transfer in the Vanguard portfolio, so I went on YouTube and found this likely sponsored video from Dr. Jubair Finance which was very explanatory and helped me find and utilise this feature.

The Attribution Challenge

The marketing team at Trading212 may not be able to attribute this activation action to:

• The UGC video from the Instagram content creator
• The organic conversations from users on Reddit
• The sponsored video on YouTube

I didn’t click any of them and as far as I know, there’s no tracking mechanism for these touchpoints.

Key Marketing Insight

This is another reminder that the journey of customers today is not linear and brands should endeavour to be on as many touch points as possible know the platforms their ICPs visit and even go outside of what’s expected to be top of the mind.

The idea is to meet consumers where they are by diversifying the platforms your brand is visible and accessible, across owned and earned media.

How do you account for these scenarios as a marketing professional?