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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.

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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. 

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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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Marketing Management

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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Social Media

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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Communication

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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Client Value

Serving Our Clients and Each Other

Does anyone remember the NBC public service announcements from the late eighties of “The More You Know?” This is the one with the shooting star and the rainbow across the screen. For some reason, that’s always stuck in my head. It reminds me of how much better we can serve our clients and each other, when we know more information.

A major tenet of how we operate with our clients is knowing about the background and backdrop of their projects and their company, so we can serve them well. Communication is the center point between how we work and collaborate well with each other.

Three Types of Information We Need from Our Clients

Let’s discuss the three areas we focus on as we work with our clients to make sure we are getting the information we need. With more information, we can do a better job. The backdrop, the key players, and the expectations.

Backdrop

The backdrop can be anything from a challenge the company has been facing, to a goal the company is trying to reach or even something a company has been trying to do and hasn’t been able to achieve – and initiatives the company has found challenging.

Sometimes there are different priorities within a firm, for different departments, and maybe things aren’t getting done. Progress may have stalled out because there haven’t been resources. It helps us to understand the backdrop, so we understand how much time to put into a project, and how to structure it to be completed in an appropriate time frame.

Key Players

The next key area for us to clearly understand is if there are key players involved in a project.  Is this something the CEO requested that we should put a high priority on? Or is it more of an operational piece that is important, but maybe not as high of a priority or a project that can be on a longer timeframe? When are people expecting this piece to be done or this marketing program to launch?

We need to understand how to prioritize it among our projects for a client, as well as how aggressively we should project manage it through to the end.

Expectations

The third area we need to understand is the expectations. Any good marketing project should have a concrete goal in mind. We like to know what that is, whether it’s brand awareness, or generating additional conversations with clients or investment advisors.

We don’t assume we know the goal of a project. Instead, we ask our clients exactly what they’re trying to get out of each marketing program. We can then deliver the correct project and program for them.

Communication is important. And the more we know, the further we can go with our clients. This includes knowing the backdrop, the key players involved in a project, as well as the expectations.

If you’d like more information about how Marketing Intent can help your firm with marketing, please reach out to us.

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Client Value

Marketing Intent and the Resources We Have Built

Let’s talk about how Marketing Intent is structured and the network of resources the firm has built.

Cherie Fournier, our CEO, has been in the financial services marketing arena for 25 plus years. After working in corporate environments for most of that time, she decided at the beginning of 2020 to start her own marketing firm.

Marketing Intent focuses efforts on helping asset managers market to their target audiences. We also help streamline their marketing operations and develop plans and strategies.

The Thinking Behind Marketing Intent

The reason we started Marketing Intent in 2020 is because we wanted to tap into our financial industry experience to serve a wide range of companies. But we knew we weren’t experts in all facets of marketing. We’re not graphic designers or web developers, and we know our clients have a broad range of marketing needs. We felt it was an ideal time to tap into the gig economy, which has gotten even more attention after COVID. People started working from home and seeking better work life balance.

We found ourselves with a lot of great talent available to us to build out a network of professional marketers who could help our clients. For example, Cherie’s background is marketing management, strategy and copywriting, and Alise’s is marketing strategy and project management. Obviously, marketing goes far beyond that. Our professional marketing network helps us offer our clients a much greater bench depth of professionals to help with their projects and make them successful.

Our Network of Professionals

We structured Marketing Intent around these networks of professionals. Cherie and Alise are front and center with each of our clients. We look at our network and choose the right professionals for each project, and each client.

If we have somebody who’s looking at rebranding and doing a website, we may pick a design resource that might be different than a firm that is just redoing a brochure or wants to freshen up something that’s existing. We look at who is going to be the best match for each project and we deliberately select the best team.

How We Developed Our Network

Throughout Cherie’s career, she has had many relationships on the client side of working with different professionals. Marketing Intent has tapped into those cultivated relationships. Some are are decades long and other resources are newer.  We continually look at contacts and see who we can get connected with to grow our base of professional marketers. We are never static. We’re constantly growing and constantly looking for new people to add to our roster of contract resources.

The Ever-Changing Market

Sometimes we have a client that needs a resource that we don’t have. Marketing is ever changing as we know, and we don’t always know what is going to come our way or what type of requests are made. Often, if we have a request come up on something that we haven’t yet done, we tap into our current contacts to see if they have a trusted resource that we can use for a project. If not, we do research and vet different companies to see which ones are going to work well with us and who is going to serve our clients to our standards. We then bring that firm or individual on board as a contractor to help us with a certain project.

If you would like to learn more about how Marketing Intent can help your business grow by tapping into our network of professionals, please reach out to us.

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General

Your Success is Our Success

What does client success look like for us here at Marketing Intent?

Our philosophy is “Your Success Is Our Success.”

We start off by setting expectations and then delivering on those expectations, which in turn results in a meaningful experience for the client and building trust. We can then develop long-term relationships.

We Make Sure You Reach Your Goals

We make sure that our clients’ success is aligned with their goals, and we make sure they’re reaching those goals. A big part of that is communication and planning. While communication in or work lives is common, we have a keen focus on ensuring high-quality communication and strategy planning.

Communication = Success

We lay out when we are going to communicate, our plan for a client’s projects and the deliverables – and then we make sure we meet those deliverables. We also strive to go above and beyond those deliverables. If we can add value to a project or take it a step further to help clients reach their goals, we will.

But first and foremost, we make sure we provide the deliverables promised. We communicate and keep the client apprised of everything going on. There’s never a question in their mind of where their projects are.

What Can You Do?

Here are a few things that a client can do, either working with us or other marketing firms, to be successful on their end.

Don’t stop being curious. We’re in an ever-evolving industry and since the pandemic it’s even evolved quicker, so stay on top of what is going on and what is available out there. Doing research on how to solve some problems or get around roadblocks is going to help people advance and be leaders in the industry.

If you would like help with your marketing and you want us to help guide you along the way to reaching your goals, we’d be happy to help. Reach out to us today and let’s have a conversation.

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Marketing Team

Why a Marketing Firm Can Help Bolster Your Marketing Team

Is your marketing team underwater? Have you been struggling to find quality candidates to fill positions?

An outside marketing firm can help bolster your marketing team in three key areas: strategy, execution, and training junior or new employees.

Strategy and the Planning Process

Let’s start with strategy. The strategy and planning process is the foundation of your marketing activities. We see our clients struggle with putting plans in place, having the time and energy to dedicate to developing their strategy and understanding how to effectively move forward.

In thinking about how an outside firm can help, a qualified marketing firm that’s familiar with your industry is going to be able to come in, look at what you’re doing and understand it quickly. They will get up to speed on what you offer, who you’re targeting, and identify ways to help you fill the gaps in your strategy.

Those gaps can either be the communication between sales and marketing – which is pretty common in our industry – gaps in your story, or even gaps in the materials that you are putting together to help educate advisors on your offerings. An outside marketing firm can help you develop a strategy to better tackle that communication.

Put a Plan in Place

Next, let’s talk about execution. A strategy is worthless unless there’s a plan in place to make it a reality. Once you have a strategy in place, a qualified marketing firm can manage all the pieces, moving tactical marketing and deliverables forward. They will ensure everything’s happening on time and in the correct sequence to make your marketing successful.

Training Junior and New Employees

Let’s talk about an area that a lot of people overlook as far as where a qualified marketing firm can be beneficial to your team – training junior or new employees. We all know in the financial services industry how complicated marketing is – SEC regulations, FINRA requirements, what compliance is looking for, how selling agreements work or the numerous audiences we’re targeting. An outside marketing firm can be key to helping new or junior employees understand the industry, shorten their learning curve, as well as build their confidence.

We’ve talked about how an outside marketing firm can help with strategy, making that strategy a reality through solid planning and project management, as well as help you educate junior or new employees on the financial services industry and how it works.

CONTACT US FOR MARKETING HELP

If you need any help with bolstering your marketing team, contact Marketing Intent. We’d be happy to help in any of these areas.