12 Marketing Essentials Before Launching A New Fund

Promoting a fund is a big deal, and nobody knows this better than the marketer. There’s many steps an effective go-to market strategy entails, so with this comprehensive tick-off guide, breaking down each stage into manageable chunks can make a stressful task simple.

Whatsmore, this can be utilised over and again once each vital part is tweaked to your own fund’s needs. Here’s how to plan, execute, and analyse your GTM from start to finish.

Define Your Target Audience

●     Think initially about who will be the ideal audience for the fund launch, based on their characteristics and investment profile.

●     Factors that should come into play include:

●     Investment background: experienced vs beginner

●     Risk appetite: aggressive vs risk-averse

●     Their financial goal: income generation, capital appreciation, portfolio diversification

●     Minimum and maximum investment amount

●     Geographic location

●     Between marketers and investor relations/sales teams, create various investor personas to receive personalised messaging accordingly.

●     Segment target accounts into these personas.

Cement Your Value Proposition

●     Identify what the fund’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is, and how its features (not benefits) outweigh competitors’ products.

●     Match this to the investment strategy and expertise of a fund manager, and highlight its potential returns.

●     Document this information internally and use where necessary: for emails, website copy, or factsheet details etc.

Outline Fund Philosophy and Key Messaging

●     Tell the story of the product through its ties to the firm’s values. Develop resonant messaging that focuses on investment challenges and concerns, and the fund’s ability to address these.

●     Document reusable email subject lines, headings and taglines, elevator pitches, scripts and pitch decks to create consistent marketing and sales collateral.

Use the Correct Marketing Channels

Identify a mix of effective online and offline platforms to convey your fund launch, including:

● Website: Consider a fund-specific page with performance details and investment process, with UX-minded pop-ups to guide visitors to it.

● Content: Create short blogs, infographics, videos or long-form white papers on related investment themes.

● Email: Send campaign launch emails to a segmented list of qualified leads.

● Social media: Advertise your content with insightful comments and engage with investors on channels they use for one-to-one communication (such as LinkedIn).

● Public Relations: Distribute a fund press release with reputable PRs for leading financial news outlets (online and offline publications).

● Events: Host your own thematic webinars to connect with investors old and new, or attend sector-wide conferences.

● Paid Media: Advertise on popular search engines or social media channels according to targeted parameters.

● Traditional Media: Print advertising may apply to your fund’s specific customer base.

Plot a Content Marketing Strategy That Matters

●     Brainstorm and plan a series of multi-media promotional content under relevant themes, aimed at potential investors and/or addressing the current landscape.

●     Think of narratives that outline why a prospect should care about the fund, linked to the fund’s own investment strategy.

●     Track these ideas in a centralised document, such as ExCel, and think about which high-quality formats can convey them effectively. An interview video can give a quick portfolio manager introduction to the fund. An infographic can detail its features in a visual way. A manager-led podcast can discuss its relation to the market.

●     Craft one long-form piece of content that can be broken down and repurposed into different formats over upcoming months.

●     Keep a tab for where individual content pieces should be distributed: on which parts of the website, email roundups, PR outlets, and/or social shares.

Hinge on Marketing Automations

●     Email marketing tools and sector-specific automation platforms can send personalised updates around the clock according to investor behaviours, segmented via your profiles/personas.

Integrate With Your CRM

●     Ensure your automation platforms and outreach channels are linked to your CRM via APIs, AI integrations, and plugins to track and manage all touchpoints and identify campaign performance.

Define Traceable Metrics

●     Think of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can define marketing attribution to increased assets under management – essentially evidence that the GTM strategy is picking up steam for the C-suite boardroom meeting, such as:

●     Website (and fund page) traffic: page views, times spent, bounce rates

●     Lead scores, tracked via the CRM

●     Conversion rates: email, form and event sign-ups and investment enquiries.

●     Blog and social post comments and engagement

●     Mentions in media outlets

●     Fund subscriptions

●     Build out dashboards into a CRM to paint a visual picture of these KPIs being met, especially if they can be tracked to monthly inflows.

●     Monitor the statistics consistently to make strategic changes where necessary.

Allocate Budgets

●     Consider where to get the most low-cost value for effective global marketing reach, such as free social platforms and the website.

●     Distribute the budget across marketing channels when needed, focusing on those with the highest potential for ROI.

●     Track spend according to KPIs and adjust accordingly.

Plan a Realistic Timeline

●     Define clear milestones and dates, and fill in the gaps with each GTM activity.

●     Think of deadlines for the above tasks and plot them using planning software or a simple internal collaboration spreadsheet.

Align With Your Team

●     Identify the core members of the GTM plan, and include them in cooperative meetings and documentation.

●     Grant each member clear responsibilities so workloads are free from repetition and as efficient as possible.

●     Ensure everyone’s on board with the given timelines to execute the launch to the correct dates – planning apps such as Asana or Google Calendar may be useful.

Check For Compliance

●     Check how any outward facing collateral can come under scrutiny with regional financial regulations, investor protection guidelines, and data privacy laws.

●     Disclaimers and terms and conditions can be repurposed through templates, while email testing services can scan for compliance requirements, offer previews, and identify and blacklist threats.

●     AI editorial tools can check for market sentiment and language nuances.

And that’s that! Making a fund well known, particularly in line with the fund’s overall brand, is the cornerstone to the marketing AuM-building effort.

With these steps taking into account personalised outreach, your fund launch should go according to plan and to the right people – while constant evaluation should be undertaken to adapt this to changing market conditions and any stage that undoes potential success.

Be sure to get investor feedback, check competitors’ marketing strategies, and always be optimising to ensure every new fund gets the best GTM treatment it can.