How Digital Platforms Add the Human Edge to Hedge Fund Marketing
Each of the financial world’s sub-pockets has its own love-hate relationship with digital. Much of this depends on how ‘with the times’ they are: have they implemented new technologies and upskilled themselves? Or have they chosen to turn a blind eye, thinking old-school investors will want more of the same from their marketing like the past half century?
Hedge funds are one sect that’s found difficulty playing catch up. It’s true that it’s a people business, given the intricate nature of hedge funds and the needs of their clientele. However, there’s no stopping investor journeys starting, continuing and (potentially) finishing online without a manager ever having met them. It’s been a while since the pandemic, and many are not rushing back to the office. A presentation, coffee meet or handshake in public feels lost to lore and perhaps erased for the future!
That’s not to say that hedge funds should feel hard done by. Digitisation is an asset when used correctly, and makes all the difference in displaying one fund’s personality over another if personalised properly. With thought leadership, strategies, risk analysis and more available to potential clients conducting their own due diligence online, a hedge fund whose expertise is a step above should see the (digital) leads flocking into the sales workstream.
There’s a couple of ideas to transform the industry’s sales and marketing prowess: a culture shift away from ‘smile-and-dial’ toward trustworthy, informed outreach, and the adoption of technology to assist that very task – exactly as other industries are doing to take on the space-age tech world we’ll see continuing!
Are We In An Analogue vs Digital Battle?
It’s tough to remember that the appetite for technological change is generational, given how technology is always at all of our fingertips today. Many of us cling to the analogue-to-tape sounds of a vinyl record, where streaming feels devoid from the music we once felt a strong connection with. Kids these days would disagree, even though everyone’s right; we need to remember human emotion can still be felt strongly to well-crafted digital experiences, which works for financial goals as well as music curation!
For many hedge funds, the marketing style has remained a little stale for some time. The same long-form pitchdecks to the same crowds, nothing new to offer, and far from the techniques employed by the successful big tech overlords of today. Apple, Samsung and Microsoft have always thought about the power of the ‘different’: bolstering their products, appealing to various audiences old and new, yet fundamentally steeped in being an ingrained, deeply human partner solving life’s hurdles.
Considering return-on-investment and building up AuM, there’s always focused budget holders fixed on seeing the graphs shooting upwards. How to make that happen is a magic that marketers hold: understanding their audience, feeding them the knowledge the fund knows best, and crafting a personal path toward financial goals, be it portfolio diversity or stability. But continuing to entertain and enrich that ‘analogue’ investor shows longevity, and these days relies on digital tools as fundamental sidekicks.
The Modern Marketer’s Toolbox
It’s a misnomer that technology is a replacement for the marketer’s psychological brain, and that it’s devoid of understanding. In fact, platforms can only help to better identify who a hedge fund’s target market is today, gaining all that alternative behavioural data that truly speaks to the makeup and motivations of online-only, essentially ‘invisible’ investors.
Content for All
You can hardly go into a conversation, financial or otherwise, without someone mentioning a podcast they’ve been into, a recommended video, or an FT article that picked their brain. Investors want authentic insights from the people that know best, and to consume them in their own time.
A few hundred-page report will not be a go-to for everyone, nor a pitch deck of fund performance from the near past (which seems like the dark ages in today’s fast-paced environment!). A CRM linked to a hedge fund website and social pages can identify which types of thought leadership are striking gold – and where timely topics are fuelling investors to delve more deeply into your resource store.
When you go into the granular nitty-gritty per investor, the data paints a surprisingly full picture of their wants, interests, and context.
Bringing Client-Facing Teams Together
One behavioural change toward loving digital is acknowledging how quickly these audience insights are presented in one place. Dashboards still require a mission statement: what touchpoints can you collect to show the marketing and sales effort toward AuM? But once they’re set up, gaining a rich real-time digital footprint is possible, as are segmented lists of reengaged contacts or new customers.
This intel signals to sales where to go next pretty much around the clock. However, it also cements how they and marketers are crafting a co-dependent relationship to achieve AuM. A digital marketing platform is a playbook fuelling a week-by-week conversation over how to get qualified leads over the line, and therefore provides the basis of a successful, ongoing feedback loop.
Managing Complexity
Never underplay the difficulty in what a hedge fund has to do: to align their investment strategy, attitude to risk and fund performance (usually in that order!) with regulatory concerns and outstanding client experiences. Go-to market campaigns are a multi-headed Hydra that need a Herculean effort to perform, and platforms are the route to do so. They can be configured in ways to remain compliant, and be adept at curating, distributing and analysing content all the time.
It’s also worth remembering that sales and marketing people are creatives always trying new solutions to get investors through the door. They should be allowed to do this, just so long as integrated solutions keep the marketing machine moving – and are flexible in bringing together these investor-centric teams to collaborate all the time. While humans can reinvent the fund’s wheel, digital maintains that highly-powered engagement.
The Creative Culture of Specialised Platforms
There’s another ‘understated’ positive going for the hedge fund industry – it’s niche! Customers looking to invest with them likely have their own knowledge of the industry, and do not require highly persuasive hand-holding. Rather, they need targeted emails, invites, content and calls that speak their language.
That’s not to say that white glove service is not expected. Ok, perhaps not a champagne reception from one white paper download, but highly customised communications informed by data. Going an extra step is to consider a specialised platform vs a generic one. One that adopts all the necessary functionality to start getting campaigns into motion as quickly as possible, then running autonomously after some marketing and sales tinkering.
These days, it’s more simple to choose a provider that can build back-and-forth APIs to synchronise data from all sorts of existing systems, to then craft a central hub from which to manage nurturing efforts: pushing out regular content and tweaking it according to audience analytics. They can take a little building to get going with some additional frontline support, but it’s well worth it.
That’s especially true given that the traditional in-person ways of shmoozing investors are long gone. That irreplaceable human choice to give time to a hedge fund’s content and managerial expertise is still analogue, while adhering to regional, cultural and individual nuances requires having an integrated digital platform as your co-pilot to maximise your authentic brand at a more personal level!
ProFundCom can assist hedge funds nurture online investment interest with a specialised range of tools catered to the financial industry:
Thought Leadership Promotion: Leverage ProFundCom to promote thought leadership content, whitepapers, research reports, and industry insights to showcase expertise and credibility within the financial sector.
Targeted Email Campaigns: Reach specific segments of your audience by sending personalised and relevant content to generate leads more effectively.
Website Optimisation: By improving website design, content quality, user experience and SEO strategies, marketers can attract more visitors and strengthen brand visibility online.
Unified Data Management: Fund marketers can consolidate customer data, engagement metrics, and campaign performance from various sources to gain a comprehensive view of their audience and marketing activities in one platform.
Automated Lead Nurturing: Set up automated lead nurturing workflows to engage with leads at different stages of the customer journey, delivering targeted content, follow-up emails, and personalised messages to drive conversions.
Lead Scoring and Qualification: Prioritise leads based on engagement levels and interactions through scoring and focus efforts on high-potential prospects.
