Reaching a younger audience with TikTok?

Can an investment professional use TikTok to introduce investment trusts to a younger audience? The early results of my 90-day experiment are encouraging.

Having spent much of my career in investment management, and now sitting on several boards, I've become increasingly conscious of how much of the industry's communication takes place within its own echo chamber. We talk to existing investors, attend conferences and publish research largely consumed by other investment professionals, but how often do we reach people who aren't already engaged?

I launched a TikTok channel, Alex the Investment Trust Guy, to explore whether short-form video could help bridge that gap. I've set myself a 90-day experiment, without specific targets for followers or views, to see what works, what doesn't and what I can learn along the way.

Early results

During the week ending 11 October, my videos generated approximately 3,000 views, up 55% on the preceding week, reaching around 2,100 individual viewers, including 1,900 new viewers. Profile visits increased by 72%, while shares rose from two to twelve.

My first video, filmed at a London Stock Exchange conference, has now attracted almost 2,000 views. Most others have achieved a few hundred each, although my latest, provocatively titled "The investment they don't want you to know about", reached nearly 700 shortly after publication.

Hardly influencer numbers (yet!!) but I'm not trying to become a celebrity. I'm interested in whether there's an audience for investment education beyond the people our industry already talks to, and on that measure the results are encouraging.

According to TikTok's analytics, 54% of my viewers are under 35, more than three-quarters are under 45 and only 9% are over 55. By comparison, research published by the Association of Investment Companies found that the average age of investment trust investors in its survey was 63. The figures aren't directly comparable, but they illustrate the opportunity to engage an audience that traditional industry communications often struggle to reach.

Equally interesting is how those viewers are finding me. More than 91% of traffic comes from TikTok's For You feed, rather than followers or people actively searching for investment trusts. The algorithm is putting my videos in front of people who may never have heard of the subject, something that conventional marketing, which generally relies on an existing interest or relationship, finds much harder to achieve.

Of course, reaching someone isn't the same as educating them, but it's a start.

What's working, and what isn't?

My strongest educational video doesn't begin by talking about investment trusts at all. Instead, it asks whether someone holding both a global ETF and an S&P 500 tracker might inadvertently be buying much of the same underlying exposure twice. It's attracted more than 700 views, compared with around 250 for a video explaining how investment trust discounts can allow someone to buy £10 of assets for £9.

I still think the discount video contains useful information, but the comparison has taught me something about the importance of giving people a reason to watch. What interests investment professionals, or investors already familiar with investment trusts, isn't necessarily what captures the attention of someone casually scrolling through TikTok.

That means starting with a question or problem the viewer recognises, rather than an unfamiliar investment structure, and explaining how investment trusts might form part of the answer.

I'm also experimenting with more provocative headlines. My latest video (above) asks whether investment trusts are "the investment they don't want you to know about", contrasting millions of TikTok posts about Bitcoin with the relative scarcity of investment trust content.

I don't believe anyone is conspiring to hide investment trusts, but having complete editorial control, without corporate marketing oversight or brand guidelines, gives me the freedom to challenge the industry and occasionally be a little provocative.

Production quality is also not a major concern. Some videos are filmed at major financial events, others outdoors or spontaneously in my car, and so far the subject and opening hook seem more important than the setting. I'm learning that producing content regularly, experimenting and improving as I go is probably more valuable than spending hours perfecting every video.

Is it achieving anything?

I can see that people are watching, sharing and occasionally commenting, and that I'm reaching a younger audience than the traditional investment trust investor base. What I can't yet establish is whether they're learning anything, changing their perceptions or coming back for more. Nor should success be measured by persuading people to buy investment trusts.

Intellectual honesty matters, and investment trusts aren't automatically better than ETFs, open-ended funds or other investments. They have distinctive advantages, limitations and risks, and if someone watches a video and concludes that an investment trust isn't right for them, but understands why, I'd regard that as a positive outcome.

For now, I'll keep experimenting with subjects that begin with familiar financial questions, alongside coverage of industry events, debates and the work of investment company boards, and I'll continue sharing the successes and failures.

Perhaps the most important lesson so far is that you don't need an established audience to reach people outside your professional network. TikTok is already putting my videos in front of younger viewers who might never encounter conventional investment trust communications.

That doesn't mean every fund manager or director needs to become a TikTok creator, but perhaps more of us should be willing to experiment with how we communicate.