Board Evaluation Responses on Marketing and Sales

Executive summary

This report analyses responses to nine board evaluation questions on marketing and sales, drawn predominantly from investment trust boards. In total, 1,326 scored responses were received across the nine questions, of which 392 (30%) were accompanied by a written comment. All material has been anonymised: no individuals, companies, managers or advisers are identified anywhere in this report, and quoted comments have been edited where necessary to remove identifying detail.

The overall average score across all questions was 74.6%, placing the marketing and sales area broadly in "good but not strong" territory. Scores are notably consistent across questions, with a narrow range from 68.5% to 77.6%. The strongest-rated area was the portfolio manager's availability and willingness to participate in promotion (77.6%), followed by the quality of marketing materials (75.9%). The weakest-rated area, and the only question falling below 70%, concerned the mechanisms in place for monitoring the progress of the marketing and sales strategy (68.5%). Questions about the manager's own objectives and the effectiveness of the manager's activities also scored below the overall average.

The comments tell a richer and somewhat more critical story than the scores. Respondents who left comments scored, on average, around five percentage points lower than the overall population on every single question, so the written feedback should be read as disproportionately reflecting the views of directors with concerns. Five findings dominate the commentary. First, marketing is widely described as improving but unfinished: "work in progress" is by some distance the most common sentiment. Second, there is a persistent and clearly articulated frustration that boards cannot measure what marketing spend actually achieves; calls for better KPIs, attribution and benchmarking appear throughout. Third, sales is consistently rated more highly than marketing, with several respondents explicitly contrasting "excellent" sales execution with "average" or drifting marketing delivery. Fourth, reaching retail investors is the strategic priority most often cited, and the one where delivery is most often described as elusive. Fifth, external headwinds — weak sector sentiment, investment trusts being out of favour, and performance challenges — are repeatedly cited as limiting what even good marketing can achieve.

The findings point to four practical priorities for boards: strengthening measurement and monitoring frameworks (the lowest-scoring area and the loudest theme in the comments); sharpening the definition and resourcing of retail strategies; clarifying the boundary between company-level and manager-level branding and marketing; and improving the flow of marketing information to boards so directors feel equipped to judge effectiveness.

1. Background and methodology

The dataset comprises responses to nine board evaluation questions focused on marketing and sales. The large majority of respondents sit on the boards of investment trusts. For each question the source data provides the total number of responses, the average percentage score across all responses (with and without comments), and the individual comments left by respondents together with the score each commenter gave.

Two methodological points should be borne in mind when interpreting the results. First, questions attracted very different response volumes, ranging from 59 responses for the question on the effectiveness of the manager's marketing and sales activities to 320 for the question on the clarity of the company's strategy. Averages for the lower-volume questions are correspondingly less robust. Second, commenting is voluntary and self-selecting. Across the dataset, respondents who commented scored materially lower than the overall average on every question (69.8% versus 74.6% overall), which is a familiar pattern in evaluation exercises: directors with reservations are more motivated to explain them. The thematic analysis in Section 3 should therefore be read as a map of where concerns lie, rather than a representative sample of all views.

Anonymity has been treated as a strict requirement. All references to named individuals, trusts, management houses, brokers, public relations firms and other advisers have been removed or generalised, and quotations have been lightly edited where needed to prevent identification while preserving meaning.

2. Quantitative findings

2.1 Overall scores

The overall average across all 1,326 responses was 74.6%. The chart below shows the average score for each question, ordered from lowest to highest. The spread is narrow — just over nine percentage points separates the highest- and lowest-rated questions — suggesting that respondents see marketing and sales as a coherent area of moderate strength rather than one with isolated pockets of excellence or failure.

The strongest result concerns portfolio managers' availability and willingness to promote the company (77.6%). The weakest concerns the mechanisms for monitoring the progress of the marketing and sales strategy (68.5%), which is also the area where comments are most pointed. It is worth noting that the two "manager-focused" questions — the clarity of the manager's objectives (72.1%) and the effectiveness of the manager's activities (71.2%) — both sit below the equivalent "company-focused" questions (75.3% and 75.2%), hinting that directors are somewhat less comfortable with how their management houses define and deliver marketing than with what their own boards have set out.

2.2 Response volumes

Response volumes varied widely by question, as shown below. The three highest-volume questions — clarity of the company's strategy (320), clarity of the company's objectives (296) and quality of materials (266) — account for two-thirds of all responses, so the overall average is heavily weighted towards these company-level questions.

2.3 What the comment scores show

The 392 commented responses had a mean score of 69.8% and a median of 70%. Around 27% of comments accompanied scores of 50% or below, while 28% accompanied scores of 80% or above, with the remainder in between. The distribution has a pronounced cluster at 50% and at 70–80%, consistent with the dominant "adequate but improving" tone of the written feedback.

On every one of the nine questions, commented responses scored below the question's overall average — typically by four to six percentage points. This consistent gap confirms that the comments over-represent critical voices, and it is precisely why they are valuable: they explain the reservations that hold scores back from the top of the range.

3. Thematic analysis of comments

All 392 comments were reviewed and coded against recurring themes. The chart below shows how frequently each theme appears (a single comment can touch on more than one theme). The sections that follow discuss each major theme, illustrated with short anonymised quotations.

3.1 "Work in progress" — an improving but unfinished picture

The most common sentiment in the dataset, by a wide margin, is that marketing is on an improving trajectory but has not yet arrived. Nearly one in five comments uses language such as "improving", "much improved", "getting better" or "work in progress". Many respondents credit recent changes — new personnel, new PR or research agencies, refreshed messaging, deep-dive strategy sessions — while withholding higher scores until the results are demonstrated. Typical remarks include "average to good currently but on an improving trend", "much improved after considerable challenge from the board", and "still a work in progress but strides being made". Several respondents explicitly framed their scores as provisional, hoping to mark the area up in the following year's evaluation. For boards, the encouraging implication is that momentum is widely perceived; the risk is that "work in progress" has been the position for several consecutive years on some boards, and comments suggest patience is not unlimited.

“Not finished yet, but most directors see meaningful gains underway”

3.2 Measurement and attribution — the central frustration

The single sharpest criticism in the dataset, and the theme underlying the lowest-scoring question, is that boards cannot tell what marketing spend actually achieves. Roughly one comment in ten raises measurement, attribution, KPIs or value for money, and the language is often blunt: "not sure what difference marketing activity makes", "very hard to judge", "we don't have adequate KPIs or benchmarking to assess marketing and promotion effectiveness", and "it is often difficult to draw a line between what we spend and what delivers results". Digital marketing metrics attract particular scepticism, with several directors describing online KPIs as confusing or "lacking in context". One respondent memorably dismissed a monitoring report as "a blizzard of words".

“Monitoring reports often feel dense with detail but light on actionable insight”

Where monitoring works well, respondents describe a recognisable toolkit: budgets and KPIs agreed ahead of each financial year; regular register and shareholder analysis to track whether the register is actually broadening; reporting at every board meeting; and an annual deep-dive marketing session. Comments from boards with these mechanisms in place score visibly higher, suggesting that the gap between the best and the rest is about process discipline rather than any inherent impossibility of measurement — although a substantial minority of respondents believe attribution in marketing is intrinsically hard and that boards should accept a degree of uncertainty.

3.3 Sales strong, marketing weaker

A striking pattern is how often respondents split their answer into two: sales (institutional and wealth-manager engagement, share issuance, fundraising) rated highly, and marketing (brand, retail reach, digital presence) rated noticeably lower. Formulations such as "sales — excellent; marketing — improving", "sales objectives very clear and well executed; marketing more subject to drift in delivery" and "the sales strategy is very clear and extremely effective; marketing objectives seem tactical rather than strategic" recur across boards. Some respondents also noted asymmetries in objective-setting itself — for example that KPIs exist for marketing efforts but no equivalent objectives exist for sales, or vice versa. The implication is that many boards have a mature, measurable sales machine but a marketing function still searching for strategy, resource and proof of impact.

“Sales execution earns praise; marketing still trails behind”

3.4 The retail challenge

Reaching retail investors — and particularly younger and new-generation savers — is the most frequently cited strategic objective, and the one most often described as unmet. Comments range from the aspirational ("we need to continue to modernise how we market to the new generation of savers") to the frank ("the objectives are clear, delivery on retail elusive"; "it is not clear how retail is to be accessed"; "so far not seen much shift from institutional investors to retail investors in the shareholder base"). Several respondents link the retail push to structural pressures: consolidation in the wealth management industry reducing demand for smaller trusts, and the recognition that the investment trust sector is "getting harder to navigate" for new investors. Related to this, around 5% of comments call for a stronger digital presence — better websites, short-form video, social media and regular shareholder emails — with website weaknesses mentioned repeatedly and unfavourable comparisons drawn with the digital output of larger, better-known trusts.

“The retail ambition is understood, but tangible results remain hard to see”

3.5 Headwinds: performance and sector sentiment

Respondents are realistic that marketing operates within constraints. Weak investment performance, unloved asset classes or regions, sector-wide outflows and persistent discounts are all cited as limiting what marketing can achieve: "poor performance has not made this an easy sell", "it is difficult pushing water uphill when performance is as it is and investment trusts are out of favour", and "maintenance of, rather than growth of, retail shareholder percentages has been the realistic goal". A number of boards report deliberately pausing or curtailing marketing spend during periods of poor performance, planning to "step up to the plate" as conditions improve. A minority counter-argument also appears: that visibility matters most precisely in difficult periods, and that investor contact is "equally important in times of tough performance as in good times".

“Weak performance and sector headwinds make promotional work an uphill fight”

3.6 Resource, budget and value for money

Comments on resourcing pull in both directions. The more common complaint is under-investment — "more resource needs to be put behind marketing to deliver on objectives" — with one board reporting the unusual step of unilaterally increasing the marketing budget because the marketing team was not being given the resources to execute. A smaller group questions value for money, noting large spends relative to peers or observing that spend was cut with no discernible detriment. Several respondents asked for clearer budget propositions: an annual breakdown of marketing, IR and promotional costs presented to the board for sign-off, and explicit statements of the expected return on each budget line. The shared thread is not the size of the budget but the absence of a framework for justifying it — which loops back to the measurement theme above.

“Without greater backing, marketing is unlikely to meet its stated goals”

3.7 Company brand versus manager brand

A distinct group of comments concerns the blurring of the company's identity with that of its management house. Respondents describe trust-level marketing "becoming lost" within the manager's wider group marketing, uncertainty over "how the company is promoted vis-à-vis the group", and the tension between promoting the manager's stable of trusts generally and promoting the specific company. Some see the manager's brand as a clear asset that lends credibility; others want the company's own branding to "take second place" no longer, or ask for a company-specific marketing plan rather than inclusion in a house-wide programme. Boards also flagged a governance dimension: the need to continuously monitor where the manager's commercial interests and the company's interests diverge — for instance, sales teams who are better rewarded for flows into open-ended funds than into the trust.

“The company's identity risks being absorbed into house-wide group campaigns”

3.8 Board visibility and coordination

A meaningful minority of respondents scored questions down simply because they felt unable to judge: "I don't think we receive enough info to have an informed view", "I don't really have sight of what marketing and sales goes on by our brokers", and "I cannot really judge this because I don't see marketing and sales activities close up". Others pointed at fragmented arrangements — multiple parties (broker, PR agency, research provider, manager's marketing team) reporting separately with "no central product head describing progress against agreed targets", staff turnover disrupting continuity, and the observation that it is "odd to have marketing and sales reporting separately". These comments suggest that on some boards the problem is less the marketing itself than the architecture of oversight around it.

“Too little reaches the board for directors to judge marketing with confidence”

3.9 Portfolio manager engagement — the bright spot

The highest-scoring question concerned portfolio managers' availability and willingness to promote the company (77.6%), and the comments are correspondingly warm: managers are described as generous with their time, effective presenters and increasingly active in webinars, podcasts and conferences. The reservations that do appear are practical rather than attitudinal: geography limiting face-to-face access, the many competing demands on managers' time, and the balance between managing the portfolio and promoting it. Several respondents suggested smarter marketing design or the addition of dedicated investment specialist or investment director resource so that promotion can scale without diverting the managers from their primary role — a point made with particular urgency by boards approaching continuation votes.

“Managers give their time willingly, communicate well, and are stepping up their public-facing work”

4. Question-level summary

The table below summarises the nine questions, ordered by average score.

5. Conclusions and suggested priorities

Taken together, the scores and comments describe a function that boards regard as competent and improving, but not yet convincing. Sales execution and portfolio manager engagement are genuine strengths. The weaknesses are concentrated in the connective tissue: knowing whether marketing works, converting a clear retail ambition into delivery, and giving boards the information architecture to oversee it all.

Four priorities emerge naturally from the evidence. First, monitoring and measurement: this is the lowest-scoring question and the loudest complaint. The practices already used by the best-scoring boards — pre-agreed annual budgets with KPIs, regular shareholder register analysis, reporting at each board meeting and an annual marketing deep-dive — amount to a ready-made template, and boards without them should consider adopting them. Second, the retail strategy: boards should press for an explicit, resourced plan for reaching retail and younger investors, including the digital channels (website quality, short-form video, social media, regular shareholder communications) that comments repeatedly identify as underdeveloped, rather than treating retail as an aspiration attached to institutionally-oriented machinery. Third, brand and accountability: boards of externally managed trusts should satisfy themselves that a company-specific marketing plan exists, that the company's identity is not submerged in the manager's house marketing, and that a single accountable owner reports progress against agreed targets. Fourth, board information: a simple annual statement of marketing, PR and IR spend by line, with the objective and expected outcome of each, together with consolidated (rather than fragmented) reporting from the various advisers, would address the significant minority of directors who currently feel unable to judge this area at all.

Finally, expectations should be calibrated honestly. Many respondents recognise that sector sentiment and investment performance set the ceiling on marketing outcomes. The realistic test for the next evaluation cycle is not whether demand has been transformed, but whether boards can, for the first time, see clearly what their marketing is doing — and whether the widespread promise of "work in progress" has begun to convert into measurable results.

Appendix: notes on the data

Scores are percentage ratings as provided in the source data; averages are those calculated across all responses to each question, including responses without comments. Comment counts reflect substantive written comments attached to scored responses. Theme frequencies in Figure 5 were derived by coding each comment against keyword patterns and reviewing the results; a single comment may be counted under multiple themes. Where individual comment scores appear in unusual increments (for example thirds), this reflects the underlying rating scale used for that question. All names of individuals and organisations appearing in the raw comments have been removed from this report, and quotations have been edited where necessary solely to preserve anonymity.