Crossing the Chasm – what’s on the other side of Hedge Fund Marketing?
Crossing the chasm in hedge fund marketing means finding investors that dwell outside your immediate network, thus making contact with people that are in your extended network.
You probably have many contacts that you email your fact sheets or send event invitations to, mainly out of a sense of duty but you never speak to them or have any idea if they are interested in what you have to offer, or if they know anyone who may be interested – ie new prospects.
Investing in finding these prospects requires a process-driven marketing approach and needs to be coupled with a sales model that looks at how contacts who are not investors are engaging with information relating to your fund or products.
The first part of any investigation should start with this question – What is my personal motivation to increase inflows? Work this out, as it will determine how well you perform. Is it personal glory, creating corporate and personal wealth, or is it just doing a job? Following a process is hard work and it is not something that comes naturally to a lot of us. Research has found that a deep sense of motivation and self-worth actually encourages discipline and gives the strength to follow a process.
Who is interested in my funds and how do I find out who these people are?
The quote that marketers often use is “I know that half my marketing budget is effective, I just don’t know which half”. This is perhaps why doubling your marketing budget – as we all know – does not double your sales; it just exposes inefficiencies. By not doing the analysis of what works and what doesn’t based on actual evidence, the risk is that marketing people lose confidence in what they are doing, salespeople lose confidence in marketing and then, as sales suffer, the whole organisation suffers.
The way out of this is to be process-led by:
1. Analysing what has worked in the past to gain new investors
2. Building processes that keep you informed on new developments
3. Actively and passively marketing your fund
4. Communicating on a regular basis with good and bad news
The next step is getting the detail and granularity as to who these people are. Whether you are in hedge fund marketing or asset management marketing or prime broker marketing, knowing these details adds huge efficiency to the sales process.
Other information you need to know is:
Which prospects are interested in which products?
Where are the cross-selling opportunities?
Which contacts are the best placed to target sales effort at?
What type of communication works best?
How are contacts engaging with your communications?
What affects the success of a marketing campaign?
The only hedge fund marketing product that provides this detail according to Google is ProFundCom. To find out more about this visit the following link for the email marketing solution review by Google.
