Tag: Marketing Partner

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Asset Managers General

Marketing & Sales Alignment Better Supports Capital Raising

Do you remember the game telephone when you were a kid? At one end of the line, your friend said “Chuck E. Cheese” and what you ended-up actually hearing was “Would you please?”

Communication Between Marketing and Sales

A game of telephone is exactly what it can be like when the marketing and sales teams don’t talk to each other. They are hearing direction from the management team and attempting to translate it into what the sales team needs from marketing.

That can often end up in a high-level mandate of: “We need more marketing materials,” “We need more leads,” or “We need more marketing activity.”

But what does that really mean? And what is the true need the sales team is expressing?

What I found in my experience is that when the people who are doing the work sit down and talk to each other, a lot of great things can happen. It opens the lines of communication to really understand what the needs of the sales team are. In our view, this is exactly what marketing should be focusing on. Syncing with the sales team.

The Feedback Loop

When sales and marketing start talking, you open a feedback loop that will allow you to create more impactful marketing materials that start and support sales conversations. The worst place to be as a marketing professional in our industry is working in a vacuum. Interaction and feedback from the sales team is critical to your success and your firm’s ability to raise capital.

As you open the lines of communication with the sales team, you may learn that they are continually encountering a certain objection that current marketing materials don’t address. Or you may learn that the same question is coming up that is blocking advisors from making the next step in investing capital with your firm. A marketing piece answering that question may help smooth the interaction and better support the sales team.

As you open the lines of communication and listen to feedback from the sales team, you’ll learn what’s working and what isn’t, as well as which topics need to be highlighted a little bit more. The conversations may also lead to ideas for other types of campaigns you can create from the marketing perspective.

Some friendly advice: salespeople love to share their opinions! Don’t take it personally. Your goal is to produce marketing that helps bring capital in the door. When you determine what this is for, your firm and for your salespeople will take some iterations. You will put out pieces that flop…it’s inevitable since marketing and what resonates with advisors over time is not static and not black and white. Do not take feedback from the sales team personally, but do take it to heart and make your next piece even better.

It Pays to Communicate

It pays to continue to meet with the sales team, have regular meetings and open the lines of communication. Start a weekly meeting between marketing and sales to get the ball rolling. Get to know each other and help each other bring capital in the door.

Syncing marketing and sales is one of our sweet spots. We love finding the gaps and bridging them so your firm can solidly compete in a crowded marketplace.

Contact us if you’re feeling tension between marketing and sales, or if you’re feeling like you’re working in a vacuum, disconnected with sales. We’d love to help sync your marketing to the sales team’s needs.

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Asset Managers 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.

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Asset Managers General

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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Asset Managers General

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.

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Asset Managers General

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.

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Asset Managers

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.

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Asset Managers Featured

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.

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Asset Managers

Your Marketing Strategy

According to a recent survey from LC Kirk & Company, twelve to eighteen months is the amount of time it takes an advisor to learn about your offering before they make an allocation to it. For some sponsors, especially new ones in the commercial real estate and alternative investment space, that can seem like a very long time.

How can we shorten that long sales cycle? The answer – sync up your sales and marketing.

Shortening the Cycle

A lot of times marketing operates in a vacuum, and they don’t understand what the sales team is seeing in the field, the objections they’re facing, and the questions they’re getting from advisors. So, it’s important to open the communication channels between marketing and sales to help shorten that sales cycle and bridge the gap between what sales actually needs and what marketing is delivering.

Brand Awareness

Next, you should focus on brand awareness. Make sure everything is synced up across the board from email, to what you’re doing at conferences and how you’re helping advisors understand what you’re doing. Some firms feel hesitant about emailing, but email is a great way to increase brand awareness about your firm and offering. Building a strong brand helps build trust and break down barriers for advisors in looking at and completing due diligence on your firm.

Boil Down Your Story

It also helps shorten the sales cycle when you communicate what you do and the details of your offering in a simple way. Get away from complicated jargon. Advisors are not going to dig into what you’re doing if they don’t understand it immediately. Make sure you’re boiling down your story into digestible chunks, so it’s easily understood. That could be anything from the demand drivers behind your commercial real estate assets or lifestyle trends that are driving demand, and what supply looks like.

If you need help syncing marketing and sales, raising brand awareness, and boiling your story down into something that’s easily understandable, contact us at Marketing Intent. We’d be happy to help you shorten your sales cycle.

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Asset Managers

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

You may have noticed that we at Marketing Intent have been using LinkedIn a lot more to stay in front of our target audiences, as well as our clients. LinkedIn can be a really powerful connection tool.

How do you optimize your LinkedIn profile to connect with both your prospects and your clients?  

Use the Tagline

There’s an area underneath the name on your LinkedIn profile, and a lot of people use that for their job title, but we think there might be better ways to use that real estate.

One great thing you can use is a tagline. It can be a tagline on what your company does but stay away from any jargon or messaging that may be confusing. It should be quick and to the point. It’s a great way to advertise exactly who you are. And a tagline can allude to your title and what you do, so you don’t need to have a title featured.

There is another place, as well, that a lot of people don’t use and that’s the banner. You can do the same thing there and include your tagline or feature another point about what your firm does or what you focus on.

Include Your Target Audience

We suggest making sure you include your target audience in the two areas outlined above and highlight who they are. For example, “We help single women better prepare for retirement.” That way prospects clearly understand who you serve.

Something we want to point out is that it is okay to be repetitive, because we all know that everyone skims. The key is ensuring your target audience is highlighted – it will quickly grab their attention.

Building Trust

How can advisors help build trust with prospects and clients on their LinkedIn profile? Trust is huge, especially for advisors. There is so much going on these days and during rapidly changing market conditions, building trust is very valuable. We think it serves advisors further than most people realize.

One thing you can do to earn trust is to feature content you create. Don’t just repost other people’s content. Feature content you create. It shows your personality, how you communicate and who you are.

It also gives people a glimpse of what it’s like to work with you because they can see your perspective and what you’re trying to get across to your audience.

If you need help optimizing your LinkedIn profile and making sure that it speaks to your target audience, reach out to Marketing Intent, we’d be happy to help you.

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Asset Managers

The Importance of Communication

Everybody understands the importance of communication in projects, in your day-to-day, in work life and in everything that you do. But sometimes the effectiveness of our communication gets lost in the shuffle.

Let’s talk about how to emphasize open communication with clients.

Focusing on Communication

As a marketing firm with multiple clients, we have to focus on our communication. It has to be at the forefront of every morning, every evening and every week of what we do. Let’s go over some of the things that we do at Marketing Intent and review some options on how you can help improve your communication.

One of the first things that we do is hold weekly status updates. Every Monday we get together with our internal team and go over every single project, even if we’re not involved, that way we understand what’s going on. If one of us needs to be pulled in, or if we can offer some insight, we do.

Providing Weekly Email Updates

The other thing that we do is provide weekly email updates. If something’s changing throughout the week and we don’t have a meeting on the books, a quick way to update everybody is through an email. We really focus on making sure that we’re keeping everybody included and aware of what’s going on, even if it’s not time for a meeting.

The Best Way our Clients Receive Communication

When we bring on clients, we follow our onboard process and start off every client the same. Each client starts with a weekly project meeting and then we will also provide weekly status emails, but that doesn’t always work for everybody.

We tune into how clients best receive communication. We may have a client that likes to text, we may have a client that prefers phone calls, or we may have a client that loves emails. As we’re onboarding, we analyze the way that they are receiving our information and we adjust and tailor our communication specific to them. 

We are providing them with the most effective communication that is shareable with key stakeholders that is effective and easily digestible. This is a great way to help smooth out their process for projects and keep everybody in the know, so that there are no surprises that come up.

If you would like our communication experts to make sure your next project runs smoothly, please reach out to us at Marketing Intent.

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