Tag: Clients

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506(b) 506(c) Private placement

Why Hire a Marketing Firm for a 506(b)? 

Some firms offering 506(b) private placements wonder why they would hire a marketing firm. While a 506(b) can be very limited on how you can market the offering, there are a number of ways you can stay in front of financial advisors with compliant marketing, and market your firm and expertise. 

We Collaborate with Compliance and Legal Teams  

At Marketing Intent, we collaborate with your compliance and legal teams to understand what they are comfortable with in marketing your 506(b). While there are (many!) rules to guide us, comfort levels range as do the “whys” behind a compliance or legal team’s stance on a marketing approach or messaging. Understanding the compliance/legal perspective and any sticking points helps us set the stage for a marketing campaign or materials that are going to make it through the compliance review process and become a reality.  

Start from the Ground Up 

While there are many limitations on marketing a 506(b) itself, you still have much to market and talk about with advisors. Many firms offering private placements are smaller and may not have brand recognition within financial advisors. That is priority #1. You must build trust with advisors. Raise brand awareness by attending conferences and sending pre- and post-conference emails and sharing posts on social media. No mention of your offering – just your firm, your asset class and key differentiators. 

Asset Class and Offering Type 

Next up is your asset class. How can you make sure advisors know what you invest in? You want them to think Firm Name = Asset Class. Describe your asset class in terms that are easy to understand and grasp. What lifestyle trends affect demand for your asset class – bring those to light. Then think about your offering type…what education can you provide advisors on how that structure works and how it benefits clients? While advisors are analytical, they still need education – and they still have the same 8-second attention span as the rest of us…so keep it jargon-free and short.

Marketing Intent is skilled at helping firms offering 506(b) offerings market in collaboration with compliance and legal teams…and helping asset managers gain the brand awareness that starts sales conversations. Contact us to learn more about how we can help your firm.  

Categories
Communication

Utilizing All Marketing Platforms

Have you seen that meme where it says, “You’re not my friend if I’m not tweeting you, Instagram messaging you and texting you all at the same time, but about different things?” 

Let’s discuss how this concept can apply to your business successfully.

Using LinkedIn, Website and Emails Together

We often see asset managers create a report or a paper and just post it on their website for financial advisors to find. They think that’s enough to distribute their content and they don’t email it out as well. And if they do email it, they often don’t also promote the content on social. We know there are times you can’t share certain types of content on social, but when you can, you should.

Getting Information in Different Ways

All advisors you’re targeting are not reading their email, and all are not visiting your website. They are interacting with your firm in different ways, seeing different messaging and building their knowledge base about who you are and what you do.

So, make it easy for them. It’s very likely advisors aren’t seeking you out. You need to show up where your target audience is and demonstrate thought leadership. Educate them. Help them solve client problems. And don’t worry about repeating content. People need to see/read messages multiple times for them to sink in.

Getting more views of your content creates more interactions which drives conversations.

Take your content, repurpose it, put it out across all possible mediums – and help drive advisor engagement and capital raising.

If you would like to talk more about how we can help with your content strategy, reach out to us.

Categories
Capital Raising Sales Support

Marketing That Helps Bring Capital in the Door

If you’re not doing marketing that’s helping bring capital in the door, why are you doing it?

The reality is that there’s a lot of marketing done in our industry that just does not support the sales effort.

Sales-Focused Marketing Strategy

Yes, we’re a marketing firm. And we appreciate all things marketing. But in the asset management and alternative investments world, we focus on marketing not just for the sake of marketing, but to help raise capital for your investment offerings.

For example, while we appreciate branding and the importance of it, it can be taken too far, which can take the focus off sales-focused marketing efforts. For example, instead of using effort to make sure an advisor lunch is well branded on site, consider instead putting resources into providing a solid marketing follow-up effort for the event, which will better support the sales team and the capital-raising effort.

Educate Advisors

Another key area that can help push capital raising is advisor education. Educating them on your asset class, your company, your management team and your offerings. Think about how you’re giving advisors updates and staying in front of them so they develop trust and faith in your firm. And how you’re providing the information they need so they understand your offering and can explain it to their clients. Make that easy and your sales team will have an advantage with advisors and establishing the type of relationships with them that lead to capital coming in the door.

Deciding Where to Focus

Thinking about where to focus your marketing can be overwhelming. As you’re prioritizing your list, evaluate each marketing project by what it does for your sales team. Does it help explain something better? Address a common advisor objection? Highlight what differentiates your firm? Explain the investor problem your firm’s investment solves?

If you’re looking at your project list and don’t know the answers to the above in relation to each piece, get the sales team involved. The marketing-sales feedback loop is critical in understanding which marketing efforts move the capital-raising dial. And remember, that marketing is iterative. You won’t always get it right the first time, but through collaboration with the sales team, you will consistently improve and make sure marketing contributes to bringing in capital.

At Marketing Intent, we help our clients focus on prioritizing marketing that helps bring capital in the door. If you need help deciding which marketing projects to focus on, we would be happy to talk to you about it.

Categories
Marketing Management Project Management

The Power of the Pivot

Your fund just closed and you expected it to be open for six more months.

Your marketing plan is out the window.

So what do you do next?

This is where the power of the pivot in business comes into play.

Changing Direction Quickly

In marketing, we love to create project plans, line up our content calendar, schedule campaigns and set everything in motion.

We have this ideal set out on how everything’s going to go. Your fund is launched, it’s live, your sales team is raising capital and your firm is planning on selling it until it reaches $X in capital or as of a certain date. But then your sales team raises capital faster than you expected.

All your marketing plans are out the window. What do you do next? The sales team doesn’t get time off until the next offering. And the next fund launch is likely months away.

This is where strategy comes into play. And your ability to change on demand. Especially in a volatile market. It’s important to prep yourself mentally and with strategy to quickly change direction. 

Develop Your Next Steps

First, bring the entire marketing team into what is happening and the pivot your firm and your team need to make. Sketch out the situation, which marketing programs are now obsolete, what advisors’ information needs will be around the business event that just occurred and what they will need to know going forward as you launch a new fund.

When you have a gap between funds, a great place to focus is on brand awareness. Just because your fund is closed, doesn’t mean your brand’s gone. Your sales team works hard to establish relationships with financial advisors…part of your job is to help them keep those relationships intact even if you don’t have a product in the market. Miss this as a marketer, and capital raising will be slow going at the start of your next offering as you try to make up for lost time in maintaining a presence in the minds of advisors.

For example, advisors are looking for education – on alternative investments, on your asset class, on lifestyle trends affecting commercial real estate. Focus on that between offerings. You can also distribute content from third parties and note how the information relates to your firm. And keep featuring your management team on webinars to provide advisors with updates or insights.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you plan for the pivot, reach out to us today.

Categories
PowerPoint Presentations

Don’t Be Held Hostage by PowerPoint

A client we recently worked with was frustrated with their PowerPoint presentations.

Every slide was an image created by a graphic designer appearing very polished (and very hard to update).

Problems with PowerPoint

We get it. You want your presentations to be on brand and look amazing. But that doesn’t make sense when you have regular updates to make – like that last minute change from the CEO before a webinar – and you’re frantically calling an outside designer for a revision because you can’t make it yourself.

Pasting in images instead of using native PowerPoint functionality takes away PowerPoint’s…well, power. PowerPoint is meant to be a support program to make your life easier and not hold you hostage and limit your flexibility and productivity. It’s meant for you to easily update presentations. And when set up correctly, it’s like a right-hand man that can make you far more efficient.

Maximizing PowerPoint’s Functionality

Learn about the functionality that is built into PowerPoint and utilize it. One of the amazing things about PowerPoint is the master slides function. Master slides allow you to apply your brand to the template, set fonts, heading styles, a color palette, spacing, bullet styles, etc. You can set up various types of slides as well, like a cover, a content slide and a diver slide. There are very detailed settings that can be created to help you maintain your branding.

Although, branding alone does not help you raise capital. Branding is important (obviously) but if a bullet’s off or a logo is placed a little bit too low on a page, it’s not going to affect an advisor’s ability to understand or bring capital in the door. It’s a balance between maintaining brand standards to a T and ensuring you’re positioning your firm in a way that allows you to develop and deliver clear messaging to advisors on your offering that generate sales conversations.

Making PowerPoint More Efficient

How do we make our clients’ PowerPoint presentations more efficient? We always start with the master slides. Behind the scenes, it sets the stage for more efficient work going forward and less management team disappointment in timeliness of updates. We call this “being kind to your future self” because you’ll be able to be nimbler with changes and more responsive to requests for changes from management and the sales team.

We design as many elements as possible in the native PowerPoint platform. These can be supplemented with designed graphics, but any element that may change frequently we suggest keeping in PowerPoint.

We also convert charts of data to native PowerPoint charts that are linked to Excel files…another big time saver and a play that helps non-designers be more self-sufficient in PowerPoint.

A lot of people dislike PowerPoint, but if you’re using it correctly, it’s actually a great tool. When you put the work in behind the scenes, it’s easier, it’s smoother, and it just works better to help support your marketing goals.

Do your PowerPoint presentations need an overhaul? Do you need help making them more user friendly? We would love to work with you to provide suggestions on how you can improve your presentations and improve your relationship with PowerPoint. Contact us today.

Categories
Marketing Management Marketing Team

Hiring the Right Marketing Agency

How is hiring a marketing agency like prom?

I know you’re probably thinking, “I haven’t been to prom in so long, I don’t remember.” For me, I never enjoyed prom. There was the buildup to the event…getting your dress, your shoes, figuring out what you’re going to do with your hair. But then you get there, and it wasn’t what you expected. I know I felt disappointed with my prom experience.

When I was working in corporate marketing, that’s the exact feeling I had anytime we had the need to hire an outside marketing firm.

Few Marketing Firms Truly Understand Alts

You’ve been searching and you finally find a marketing firm that looks like they’re going to be amazing. They have great work on their website, they look like they’re creative and fun to work with, they have experience…but you quickly learn that they don’t have the experience you need.

Financial services marketing – and even more so alternative investments marketing – is truly unique and requires a specific marketing skill set that balances being detailed oriented and analytical with creativity. It requires an understanding of financial products and more importantly, a deep understanding of the target audiences of advisors and investors.

A challenge in the alternative investment industry is that few marketing firms understand the ins and outs of commercial real estate offerings, the compliance requirements and how to explain offerings to advisors.

Marketing Intent Has Decades of Alts Marketing Experience

When we started Marketing Intent in early 2020, we did so with the goal of bringing a firm to the alternative investments industry we wished we’d had in our corporate lives. A firm that understands the industry, the lingo, the requirements. A firm that can balance the analytical with the creative. A firm that helps its clients produce and distribute marketing that generates sales activity.

We have decades of experience, not only financial services, but alternative investments as well. We understand your offerings, we understand the compliance requirements, and we understand how to talk to financial advisors in a way that helps them engage with your sales team. We partner with our clients to help elevate their marketing and stand out among a growing number of alternative investment offerings.

Nothing Happens Until Something is Sold

At Marketing Intent, our mantra is that nothing happens until something is sold. Raising capital is at the heart of your business. That’s why our approach centers around making sure your sales team has what they need to bring capital in the door.

We start by identifying the gaps between marketing and the needs of your sales team. Next, we prioritize where marketing can generate the most activity—and streamline the sales process. Then, we bring marketing in alignment with sales.

Need help avoiding the disappointment of hiring an outside marketing firm? Do you want to work with a firm that understands your industry, the needs of your sales team, your target audience, your product and your compliance requirements? Marketing Intent will help you avoid the “prom disappointment”. Contact us today to set up a meeting.

Categories
Websites

Make Your Website Great

Websites are a journey.

When somebody visits your website, they should be taken along a path. Even though they may not necessarily know they’re on a path, you need to guide them.

Poor Functionality Interrupts the Journey

Recently, as I was searching for some clothes online for a weeklong trip, I thought of asset manager websites. I searched online at a cute boutique’s website and found some items I wanted to buy. However, the purchasing process was horrific. The functionality was outdated and time consuming. So, I just tapped out. I figured I could find the items elsewhere. I Googled the clothes and ended up spending longer on this than if I had just bought the clothes on the boutique’s website. However, I couldn’t take how annoying the boutique’s buying process and functionality was.

While advisors aren’t making a direct purchase on your website, this is exactly how you’ll make them feel if your website is clunky and cumbersome to navigate or doesn’t provide enough information to engage them. They will “tap out” and discard your firm from consideration for an investment allocation for their clients.

Clear and Concise Websites

Sometimes asset managers are too content sparse on their websites. Their homepage has little wording – it looks like a temporary page. It appears a bit boring so advisors don’t engage.

Or, there is too much information or jargon language that doesn’t immediately indicate what they do, what they invest in and what their offering is. Advisors aren’t going to spend the time to stick with this and sort through it to find the information they need.

Think about your homepage as an advertisement. You need to give enough information to gain interest, but don’t have to include detailed information on what you do, your firm and your offering here. Your goal is to tease the content, so advisors click through to additional pages to learn more. Tease your track record, your property portfolio, demand drivers and get advisors further into your site.

The Journey is The Key

After you engage advisors on your homepage, continue to lead them through your site.

Why should they invest client assets with your firm?

Why should they trust you?

Why is your asset class superior?

Tell them what to do next, where to go on the site, how to learn more. What do you want them to do next? Do you want them to contact you for more information? Do you want them to inquire about what types of properties and or investments you have to offer? Make it clear. We need to tell people what to do or else they won’t take action.

Lead them through the answers to their questions. The alts industry continues to grow, so advisors will move on from your site if you’re not answering their questions and developing trust. Build their confidence so they follow your call to action, follow the journey and ultimately engage with your sales team.

If you need help making your website clear, concise and with a clear journey for advisors – and keeping it out of the “not great” category – contact us today.

Categories
Communication Marketing Basics

How to Make Your Firm Easy for Advisors to Work With

You’ve probably heard of CX, which is customer experience. But in the asset management world, it’s also important to think about the AX, which is the advisor experience. As you launch an offering or you continue to try to appeal to advisors, the easier you make it to work with your firm, the better.

Here are a few ways to make sure that your firm is being accessible and easy for advisors to work with.

Access to Your Materials

First of all, it’s important to make sure advisors can access your material easily, whether that’s on your website or through contacting your sales team. Same holds true for obtaining information about your firm. You don’t want advisors to have to go to your website and search around trying to find key pieces of information. It should be front center, clear and easy to find.

Access to People

Advisors are looking for access to people. Whether that’s that sales team and being able to talk to them on demand, or the management team – accessing them through events or even one-on-one meetings. Access to the humans behind the firm and the investment can be critical and important for creating a positive experience for advisors.

Updated Materials

Advisors need the asset managers they work with to be consistent in updating their materials. No one wants to invest a client in a product and then have only outdated information to provide status updates and answer questions. That is the signature of a bad advisor experience.

For example, the latest property acquisition should be front and center, easy to find, and current. This also helps create trust with advisors by showing them you are following through on your investment philosophy

Clear Communication

Finally, clear communication is essential both before and after an advisor makes an investment in your firm. Advisors need to know and understand:

  • Your story and your investment philosophy
  • How you approach doing business
  • How you operate
  • How you communicate with advisors and investors
  • What your statements look like (are they easily understandable)
  • What types of updates are you providing on an ongoing basis

All these things can help develop trust on both the front end, as well as after advisors and investors are invested in your product, which can then help perpetuate additional investments.

If you need help evaluating your strategy and the type of experience you’re creating for advisors, contact Marketing Intent today.

Categories
General

Your Brand Is More than a Logo

Designer Branding a Business Illustration

Is your brand coming across as a Nordstrom or a Kmart? In the asset management world, we’re asking investors to commit a significant amount of money to invest in companies and products.

It’s important for your brand to come across as high quality as possible, and that goes beyond just your logo.

Develop Your Brand From the Beginning

When you’re thinking about beginning your offering, develop your brand from the get-go. This means BEFORE starting your website and launching it. We see a lot of firms start with a website, then they think about how it’s coming across and want to go backwards and develop their brand. It’s much easier to start with the brand and then go with your website.

Your brand is part of your firm’s personality. It includes your logo, fonts and colors, but it also outlines graphic treatments, the types of photographs to use and the messaging tone you’ll use in your pieces.

Consistency Across the Board

From there, it’s important to think about consistency across the board. As you’re going to trade shows, conferences, sending emails, providing offering materials and creating videos, you want your brand to come through and be consistent in all of those different types of marketing communications. Over time, this helps create brand awareness with advisors – which is the first step in engaging them in conversation with your sales team.

Show Your Personality

Finally, make sure your brand is real. We are a very professional industry, but that doesn’t mean that the personality of your firm can’t come across in your brand. You can showcase qualities that are unique about your firm in your brand, as well as in your marketing pieces.

As you think about launching a new brand or product, or if you need a brand refresh, please contact us today at Marketing Intent. We’d love to help you stand out in the marketplace and with advisors.

Categories
Offering Materials

Creating a Powerful Fact Sheet

Female businesswoman readind financial report analyzing statistics pointing at pie chart working at her desk.

If you’ve seen one fact sheet, you’ve seen them all. Stats are crammed in and there’s no white space. That poor fact sheet is trying to fit every little bit of information about your product into one page, because we all know the second page is full of disclosures.

What if your firm wants to take a different approach to this critical marketing piece? Let’s discuss some things you can highlight on your fact sheet to make it do its job better and give advisors a quick overview of your product.

Beyond the Numbers

When creating a fact sheet, go beyond the numbers. While your stats are important, they don’t all need to be on the fact sheet. Highlight some key points advisors need to know, but don’t include every single bit of information. Keep in mind you can also create other pieces, like a terms sheet that details the exact terms of the offering. Sometimes our focus gets so granular that we forget to think outside the box.

Highlight Your Firm’s Best Qualities

The next focus should be to highlight your firm’s qualities on your fact sheet. What is your firm known for? What about your firm stands out with advisors? Where is your experience focused? Investment objectives and legalese are a dime a dozen…bring out what really makes your firm unique.

Make Your Images and Graphics Stand Out

We often see asset managers wanting to make their fact sheets look just like other firm’s fact sheets. While we agree there are some key components to fact sheets, they don’t need to all be identical. Use graphics and images to make your fact sheet easier to read and to help get your story across. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that works here too. If you have the right graphics, you’re going to pique their interest.

You’re motivating advisors to reach out to your wholesalers, ask questions and even to set up meetings. It’s a conversation piece to drive towards the end goal of getting their business.

If you would like us to take a look at your fact sheet and give you some ideas on how we think you can improve it, or help you create your next fact sheet, contact us today.

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