Tag: Marketing Firm

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.

Categories
Marketing Management

Trends in Marketing

Knowing which trends are popping up in marketing and which trends are outdated is a way to remain relevant and engaged with your audience.

In – Dynamic Personal Voice
Out – Bland, Third Person Voice

First, let’s talk about using your voice. Try to avoid a bland, third-person voice. Use the words “us”, “we” and “our” to make your materials personal. People tend to gravitate toward the human element and will continue wanting to hear more and ask questions or read more.

In – Simplicity
Out – Deciphering What You’re Saying

The second focus is to keep it simple. We tend to compact so much into one piece or into meetings and conversations. And we often use a lot of jargon. Keep it simple – and keep them wanting more by being clear, concise, and making it simple for your target audience. Creating a compelling teaser will keep them interested and wanting to carry the conversation further.

In – White Space
Out – Cramming It All In

The next trend that we are seeing is white space. Don’t fill it up! Maintaining white space on your fact sheets, your white papers, or your website makes it cleaner, professional, and more inviting to the eye. A design that is aired out attracts more attention and conveys a sense of organization.

When you have a jumbled mess of content or its extremely cluttered, people equate that to what you’re doing on the backend – it’s a mental stumbling block. So, utilize white space appropriately to keep your readers engaged.

Thing’s Don’t Have to be Perfect

Marketing doesn’t have to be perfect on the first try. There’s going to be multiple iterations. We see a lot of asset managers hold onto papers, fact sheets or emails because they want to get their wording exactly perfect.

Now, do the facts need to be correct? Of course. But that first iteration doesn’t need to be perfect. The important thing is to get that first draft out there – and iterate over time based on feedback. Having a couple other people chime in on what they think may sound better, or some questions that came up when the first draft was used is what’s going to help drive it to eventually being perfect.

Would you like more insights about what’s working for asset manager marketing and what’s not? Contact us today at info@marketingintent.com.

Categories
Email Segmentation

One-Hit Wonders

What does this list have in common: Carl Douglas, Los del Rio, Soft Cell, Vanilla Ice and Wild Cherry?

They’re all “one-hit wonders”. They all have a song that we know, like Kung Fu Fighting, The Macarena, Tainted Love, Ice Ice Baby and Play That Funky Music. Those were their big hits – and they never had another one.

So what’s that have to do with alternative investments and asset managers?

One-hit wonders are advisors who do one trade with your product, and they never do another one. We know they have done a lot of research on your company and your product, they’ve completed the paperwork, and they found enough value to invest a client’s assets. So, why would they go through that entire process and do one trade and not another? The reason isn’t always clear, but the good news is we can do something about it.

Let’s talk about ways we can turn a one-hit wonder into a loyal producer for your firm.

Have a System in Place

When an advisor makes a trade, make sure you have a system set up where you thank them. Send them an email, thank them for their trade, and also highlight why they invested in your product. Give them your value add and what you plan to deliver to investors.

You also need to regularly check in with advisors. Set up a schedule after the first sale to check in with advisors at 30, 60 and 90 days or every quarter. A streamlined way to manage this is through marketing automation.

Have a Conversation

Even after – or especially after – an advisor has allocated a portion of a client’s assets with your firm, your sales team should continue to have conversations with them to understand their latest thinking about your company and product. And make sure you arm your sales team with a list of who is a one-hit wonder, so they understand where an advisor stands and that they may need additional support telling your investment story.

Always keep that dialogue open, that’s where you’ll learn why a second trade hasn’t been made. If your sales team is having that conversation, they will be able to better understand why an advisor only did that one trade and it will help you fill in the gaps.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you convert one-hit wonders into loyal producers, contact us at info@marketingintent.com.

Categories
Webinars

On-Demand Webinars

What’s the first thing you think of when you think of on-demand webinars? It’s likely that you think of a replay distributed by email. On-demand webinars are replays, but they can be a lot more than this.

The process to create a webinar is also extensive. You’re scheduling time with executives, developing and completing presentations, routing through compliance, scheduling invites and developing a follow up plan.

With all this work, why not elevate your final product for more than one webinar?

Maximize Your Webinar

The first thing to do when you’re thinking about a webinar is identify the topics. What do people want? What are you hearing in the field that advisors want to hear more about? Is it always about your product? Is it educational? Is it both?

Do they want a webinar series? Can you split one large webinar into three small webinars to make your content go further? And take a deep dive into what you’re doing? Maximize it since you put all that effort into creating the webinar and getting speakers lined up.

Develop Strong Visuals

When people are attending webinars, they want to be intrigued. You have to keep their attention. So, if you have a presentation up and it’s a bunch of words, everybody’s likely tuning out and nobody’s listening. They may read the words, but they may not. And they are likely doing something else as well while attending your webinar. You have to grab their attention with strong visuals, video and easy-to-understand wording.

Using Technology to Your Advantage

Finally, be sure you’re ready to use technology to your advantage to create your on-demand webinar. There are platforms where you can upload a webinar recording. You can then set a schedule, so it gives off the perception that it is a live webinar. You can send out an invitation with simple wording like, “Please sign up for our webinar. It’s next Wednesday at 2:00 p.m.” 

What your audience doesn’t know is that it’s every Wednesday at 2:00 p.m., and it looks like advisors have easy access to your management team.

You’re able to see if advisors register and if they attend. You can automate your follow up procedures and your sales team has a reason for a follow-up call with the advisor.

If you would like to learn more about how we can help you maximize your webinars, please contact us today at info@marketingintent.com.

Categories
Marketing Management

Participating and Planning

How great does it feel to be asked to participate in a task force to plan an industry conference?

Pretty darn great.

Planning the Summit Conference

That’s how Cherie felt when Stacy Chitty from Blue Vault, asked her to participate in the task force to plan the upcoming Blue Vault Bowman Alts Summit 2023. This conference is focused on alternative investments.

We’ve been hearing for a long time that the 60/40 portfolio is no longer working. Alternative investments are the way to help the financial industry break out of that mold…although it’s been a bit slow moving to do it.

A Wide Range of Alternative Investments

What we’re doing on the Alts Summit task force is looking at the different types of content that advisors need to know to understand alternative investments. This includes making sure that a wide range of product sponsors are present at the conference. It also includes making sure that whether an advisor is new to alts or has been offering them for some time, there are educational opportunities for everyone.

In addition to product sponsors, we’ll be hearing from industry experts on topics like technology, compliance, and marketing in relation to alternatives, as well as advisor practice management. 

Register Today

If you haven’t registered yet, plan on joining us in Atlanta, March 6th through March 8th for the Blue Vault Bowman 2023 Alts Summit.

We look forward to seeing you there and helping you learn more about how you can incorporate alternative investments in your practice. Register now.

Categories
Websites

3 Ways to Improve Your Website

Does your website provide a compelling journey for financial advisors, or is it a confusing maze of information? If you haven’t positioned your website as the start of your client journey, you’re missing out on a key engagement tool.

Below we’ll discuss three ways to improve your website and engage financial advisors to a greater level.

First, we’ll talk about how to design your website for financial advisors. Second, we’ll cover the information that will help them stay on your site longer. And third, we’ll discuss what you want them to do next.

Customizing Your Website

Let’s talk about customizing your website to financial advisors. In our industry, there are a lot of facets of business that commercial real estate or asset managers are involved in. There are different types of businesses, lines of business and investment strategies and sometimes we try to do a one size fits all approach to websites.

That can end up being too much information for financial advisors. So, it’s important to develop a specific path you envision advisors going down or develop a site that is specific to advisors.

Website Stickiness

How do you keep advisors on your website for longer? As you’re thinking about developing a site, think about what advisors want to know, their frequently asked questions and how to engage them. It’s a balance of giving them the information they need without providing too much information. Think about how to keep them engaged and capturing more of their time, so they go further and further into your content.

Tell Them What to Do Next

Finally, tell the advisors what you want them to do next. Do you want them to contact you for more information or to set up a meeting with your sales team? Make sure your calls to action are clear on your site.

We Can Help Improve Your Website

If you need help improving your website to engage financial advisors, please reach out to us and we’d be happy to help.

Categories
Marketing Management Marketing Team

Is It Time to Outsource Your Marketing?

Marketing can be a pain point for many asset managers because there’s a lack of understanding, time, and resources. As a result, marketing is commonly one of the first things to get pushed to the end of the list or to cobble together.

In this article, we’ll discuss a few key indicators that it’s time to outsource marketing.

#1 – You Don’t Thoroughly Understand Your Audience

The first sign is that your marketing team doesn’t have a good grasp of your target audience. Maybe they are new to the industry, new to the distribution channel or don’t understand what your audience needs in terms of information. If you are not able to understand your target, you can’t produce the marketing needed to help you raise capital efficiently. A deep knowledge of who you’re speaking to and how to communicate with them is essential to effective marketing.

#2 – Your Marketing Team Doesn’t Understand the Sales Process

The second sign that it’s time to outsource marketing is when your marketing team doesn’t understand the sales process. Maybe it’s because they don’t have relevant experience or maybe you have a junior marketing team. You may have people that have come from outside the industry, and they don’t understand what goes into the day-to-day of the sales process.

A lack of understanding of the sales process leads to marketing not asking the right questions of the sales team to make the sales job easier. If you’re not fostering a feedback loop with your sales team and understanding the reception of the marketing materials out in the field, you’re missing the opportunity to facilitate conversations with advisors for your sales team.

For optimal capital raising, sales and marketing should be aligned. And that responsibility often falls heavier on marketing teams to accomplish.

At Marketing Intent, we help you align your marketing and sales teams for a unified capital raising effort and a relationship that benefits both departments. Contact us today.

Categories
Social Media

Maximize Your LinkedIn Potential

What’s one of the first things people do when they meet you or see one of your posts on LinkedIn? They check out your LinkedIn profile.

Plan to use LinkedIn to its maximum potential to show your credibility and gain trust with prospects and clients.  

LinkedIn Newsletter 

A great way to do that is through the LinkedIn newsletter, which is a newer feature. It allows you to publish an article each week. And by doing that, you can stay in front of your prospects in a really easy way.  

First, think about what to talk to your prospects about. What’s a short and compelling topic? It doesn’t have to be a long white paper length piece of content. Next, think about your target audience and what they’re interested in learning about from you, what their pain points are or new information that might benefit them. 

Setting up Your Newsletter 

To set up your newsletter on LinkedIn, go to the same place you want to make a post.

  • Click on this prompt and there will be a section that says, “write article”.
  • Once you click on this function, if you have creator mode, you’ll have the option to create a newsletter.
  • A nice function with LinkedIn is when you create that first newsletter article, it sends a notification to all your first level contacts in LinkedIn and sends them an email to notify them you now have a newsletter and invite them to subscribe.
  • This is a great way to engage with every contact. Subscribers will be notified every time you publish a newsletter article. We suggest publishing a newsletter once a week.  

Using a Newsletter to Your Advantage 

How are we using the LinkedIn newsletter article? When we do the videos you see on LinkedIn, we’re turning them into our LinkedIn newsletter articles as well. It’s a great way to multipurpose content and use the LinkedIn newsletter articles to stay in front of your prospects.  

If you need help creating a LinkedIn newsletter article or want to explore it further, give us a call. 

Categories
Social Media

Embracing Social Media

Social media can be daunting. It might be one of those tasks that sits on the bottom of the list because you have a hard time embracing it.

In this post, I’ll share three ways to help you learn to love social media and ultimately help you with your career.

Plan and Create

Let’s go over how to plan and create your content time block. Sit down, block out a couple hours, a half hour, or whatever works best for you, but sit down and take a moment to plan.

  • What’s the content you want to put out there?
  • Are there special messages you’d like to share at certain times throughout the year?
  • What are the key points you want to put out?

You don’t necessarily have to put it all together at once, but if you time block your calendar, you’re going to make sure it gets done. Then you’ll start making progress towards what you’re trying to complete, which is to get your social media plan moving.

Reuse Your Content

The second social media best practice I’m going to discuss is reusing content. There’s so much content out there that asset managers have- reports, fact sheets, emails – dig into that content and reuse it.

Take simple topics out of a report and repurpose them as graphics. You can break that up and have multiple videos, or you can have multiple posts. You’ll really be amazed if you sit down and look at the content you already have available for social, how far you can take it – and that you’re not having to reinvent the wheel.

Find the Right Software

The third best social media practice is to find a software that you like. You’ve planned out your content, you have it written out because you’re reusing some existing content, and now you need to find a software that will upload your post automatically at the time you want it to publish.

The right software can make it appear that you’re participating day to day, showing up in your client’s and prospect’s feeds by using the scheduling function. This will put your social media plan into action, so you have the full package out there. With the right approach and tools, it’s no longer daunting, and you’re making yourself and your firm present out in the world.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you with your social media plan, contact Marketing Intent today.

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