Can Fund Marketers Beat Industry Trends? With Digital Marketing, They Can!
Can Fund Marketers Beat Industry Trends? With Digital Marketing, They Can!
In this age where investors consume digital content like a Hobbit’s daily meal plan, the race to be first to “break a scoop” feels tempting for fund marketers. As markets shift and news travels fast, it can be great to have your voice in the mix. If your strategist is out there speaking about the current climate on a shareable LinkedIn video, this could kickstart an investor’s journey into your similar thematic content.
However, sales cycles are long-winded and can take up to 11 touchpoints online. Being on the pulse does show your commitment to assisting investors’ needs in the current landscape, but only if your fund can back up that sentiment consistently with value and a deep knowledge of the subject matter. Being proactive relies more on honing your niche and feeding your best educational content right at the time when investors should see it.
Even though trends change quickly, a fund’s commitment to their investors should not, so knowing what your brand stands for should still govern how you approach industry commentary in an authentic way. In the fund world, what goes around comes around, and often you can hinge on what resources you already have (investor profiles, investment writing skills, evergreen content) to beat the news cycle and share topical viewpoints fast, with quick win digital marketing tools, as follows.
Understand the Investor Mindset
Financial trends go in cycles – like geopolitical implications on bond market or environmental concerns and ESG investing – where different topics are covered to varying degrees depending on a fund’s specialisms. Today’s investors are all about online research, looking for convincing and trusted real-world insight into certain pigeonholes of interest as and when they crop up. Those niches are every fund’s secret weapon.
To engage investors old and new that may contribute to that raised AuM goal, you have to understand why they are (or should be) interested in you – preferably what you’re ‘Top 100’ personas look like. Two main concerns will be their motivations for investing and their attitude to risk, where more specific objectives, lifestyles, and buying behaviours feed into these primary differentiators. Your fund knows your investment strategy best, but you’ll only grab the ‘ideal’ investors if you’ve mapped out who you cater for and where to find them. These are obvious from web-based interactions tracked in a CRM.
You can then segment each investor group by their progress in the GTM funnel and their most viewed content, then begin nurturing those identified interests when a certain trend gathers steam again. If those themes are in your remit, you can report on them preemptively, with confidence and without seeming reactive to news.
Stick To What You Know
Your core voice is what sets you apart, content-wise, product offering-wise, value-wise etc., no matter what trends come and go. How you convey your expertise helps more prospects come to you to learn, with the hope of them taking the plunge later to invest.
As such, there are always cornerstone market themes you’ve shown yourself to be a leader in within the space. By always maintaining a centralised repository for your top four of five content themes that ring true to your existing investors, you always stay locked-in to produce or recycle relevant content when needed, and ignore the noise that comes from financial media buzz.
When these themes are aligned to appropriate tags or categories in your CMS, this helps investors find or share evergreen content on your resource centre (or proxy website specifically for thematic content). Repurposing thematic morsels into new formats can also get newer mileage – a rethink of your former ‘AI predictions for hedge funds’ report perhaps. Old content is only old to you, not investors finding you for the first or second time.
Connecting Your Entire Network
This being said, you cannot sit back sipping pina coladas thinking, “we know our stuff, let’s wait for that to crop up again”. Fund marketing today is about maintaining constant vigilance on investment movements and acting as a direct contact. The good news is your fund employs the analysts and portfolio managers that have valued opinions and love what they do, taking in growing trends from Investment Week or the FT like sponges and raring to share their soothsaying thoughts. Collect ideas (on Asana, or even a Word document), split up writing or video tasks and post them to the content platforms where you know your audience is most engaged.
It’s not just what the fund world is shouting about that’s most important either. Sales teams talk to customers all day long and have an in-depth view into their changing attitudes, and this should enable brilliantly focused content planning. Even if a relationship manager’s day-trips to cafe meetings are in decline, they can be an instant mouthpiece to investors via Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp that keep communications in real-time. As an active market participant packed with insight, you’ll build up a community and become a supportive source even across the (mostly anonymous) web.
Use the Computers
More specifically than that: let’s talk about the good bots. AI’s a trend enough on its own, luckily for a great reason, as fund marketers can use it to develop cutting-edge content:
Simple prompts can scan the digital sphere for fast trending topics, map out article structures, or find timely pieces from your own repository to repurpose.
AI can crunch down longer reports, pick out key stats or graphs, or transform a quick voice note into a video or podcast script.
The tech can track the sentiment of your investor base according to the current investment landscape, so your communications can ‘read the room’.
A well-implemented chatbot can be a constant source of knowledge to direct investors to the right place, or provide quick feedback.
Automation techniques are also fantastic for being proactive when duty calls. Email templates can be filled and sent in an instant while trending topics brew, featuring dynamic thematic content that’s personalised for interested investor segments. AI is even able to scan emails for compliance reasons straight away before being sent, sensitive to tricky financial communication regulations.
AI for content creation should of course be taken as ‘augmented intelligence’. Your fund and people have the subject mastery; the AI is there to quicken the pace or even help beat the competition if you’d like, to present trending topics in thrilling and entertaining formats.
Essentially, being on the ball with quality industry takes is about working smarter not harder. Your existing people and platforms are there to showcase expertise, so use them! When the right content reaches the right eyes time after time, your brand awareness campaigns remain refreshing, and draw in that wider audience looking for an informed partner to place their money with – where, hopefully, it’s your fund being talked about most.
ProFundCom can help fund marketers reach engaged investors through content marketing tools and strategies tailored 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.
Scheduled Content Delivery: Send content across multiple channels, including email, social media, and websites, and pre-schedule campaigns and posts to maintain a consistent presence online and reach audiences at optimal times.
Client Engagement Tracking: See engagement across digital channels including email interactions, website visits, and social media engagement and identify opportunities to enhance communication and strengthen relationships with investors.
Personalised Content Recommendations: Using data analytics and user behaviour tracking, ProFundCom can recommend tailored content to website visitors and leads based on their interests and engagement history.
Social Media Integration: Amplify brand messaging across various social platforms by sharing content, engaging with followers, and participating in industry discussions.
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.
Lead Nurturing Campaigns: Guide prospects through the sales funnel by delivering relevant content, educational resources, and timely follow-ups, nurturing leads and converting them into investors.
