Fundsters who are pitching products with alternative strategies or are thinking of doing so would find data from Cogent Research of interest. As part of a broader study called Advisor Brandscape, the folks at Cogent polled advisors on their use of alternatives.

Among advisors who use alternatives in their client portfolios, eight percent said they commonly use mutual funds for exposure to alternatives, and 17 percent said they commonly use ETFs for that purpose.

Some advisors are planning to increase their ETF and mutual fund usage in the coming year. Twenty-eight percent of current alternative users said they plan to increase their usage of mutual funds to gain exposure to alternative asset classes and 41 percent said they plan to up their ETF usage.

"This signals an opportunity among traditional mutual fund companies and asset managers for addressing the needs of advisors," said John Meunier, principal and co-founder of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cogent, in an interview with The MFWire.com.

Meunier added that the data underscores a "desire on the part of advisors to provide greater portfolio diversification using products that are easy to use, easy to access and clients are comfortable with." 

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