Published: 13 March, 2025

Gain a Deeper Understanding into Today’s Ideal Investors

Gain a Deeper Understanding into Today’s Ideal Investors

In the good old days, a fund manager may have met a potential investor over a coffee at a hotel bar, spoken about their goals, made some fund recommendations, and eventually, that was “job done”. How often does that happen these days? It’s rare given that investors are digitally savvy, comparing funds themselves, and consuming preferred content to inform them where they might invest their hard-earned cash.

Knowing who your typical investors are is still useful, namely for searching for prospects who may have similar lifestyles or financial needs. But it does limit your ‘lead catchment area’. Times are changing, investment opportunities too, and audiences come and go.

Understanding exactly who these potential people are and why they may want to invest with you is like chipping away at an iceberg. But that granular information is the best way to make your demand generation tactics that much more effective. Not only that – it can strengthen your brand too.

The Aims of a Target Audience

If you’re a standup comedian, your theatre audience will comprise attendees that think you’re hilarious, others that were dragged along, and those that want to leave after the first five minutes. Those ones that came for you were there for a reason: to get the jokes (in other words, the service) they expected and paid for, leaving satisfied. The ones they brought with them might like what they see or hear as well.

They’re the ideal person that gets your brand. In the fund context, every fund will adhere to certain groups of people and make their investment needs feel met and valued when marketed to them correctly. With time and long-term value for a few investors, the word can spread, increasing customer loyalty and raising assets for the fund. A target investor acts as a guide to construct tailored blog posts, videos, or infographics that will adhere to similar groups experiencing the same pain points when building their portfolios.

Developing Ideal Profiles

Ultimately, you can’t market to everyone at once. A brand suffers when it doesn’t understand who gets the most value from their product or service. Plus, spreading campaigns far and wide will not funnel the strongest leads in an already lengthy sales cycle.

This is why constructing pictures of the ideal investor that would be likely to invest in a certain fund is so important. A persona can have various tiers. For one, the surface level, the basic facts that describe them and could allude to their interests:

Gender

Demographic

Occupation (and job title)

General lifestyle and interests

Geographic location

On top of these, financial marketers will need to understand the drivers for why a persona would choose certain investment opportunities, which involves delving into the psychology a little:

What is their experience with funds and investments?

What are their goals? To diversify portfolios, generate high returns, capital appreciation?

Do they have a minimum investment amount?

Would they rather choose convenience over price?

Do they have an aggressive or cautious attitude to risk?

Different demographics, ages and jobs can inform these financial motivations: a younger, conscientious investor may be looking for sustainable low-risk funds, but a tech company founder may have a deeper understanding of ETFs. But we’re complex beasts. Building out a whole range of appropriate investor personas can help you better assign bespoke ideals to certain funds, or group profiles that would be interested in similar investment content or fund offerings. Priorities shift, but having these clear targets are great starts.

Where to Develop Understanding

Your existing data is a first port of call, where the traits and behaviours of your ‘best’ customers helps to highlight gaps or successes in previous fund marketing campaigns. Existing data can sit in a CRM, or marketing automation platform, where marketers can see their historical touchpoints including purchase histories, email opens, communications preferences, website downloads, and so much more. Google Analytics is also useful, while benchmarking tools can show where competitors’ funds are succeeding with differing investor bases.

Dashboards offer the ability to drill down into certain profiles, while digital tools can segment existing investors according to their likelihood to invest once more into a different fund. Previous successes can inform the most beneficial content themes to adhere to future ideal investors, or where SEO can be boosted on a website.

Sending out surveys using email automations or in-person networking events can identify customers’ challenges and priorities first-hand. Experimenting with campaigns aligned to your constructed personas is worth doing to assess the success of different digital journeys, and reiterating them to identify ROI.

Initial persona planning, doubling down on existing ideals and testing new branded content all combine to help understand the modern investor. It can be trial and error, but having quality data to hand in a one-view platform helps to make wiser choices in personalising fund marketing to investors that will matter most, hopefully increasing the chances of conversion.

The ProFundCom platform is specifically designed for the fund sector to gather pertinent prospective investor information to inform high-quality strategic campaigns:

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.

Integrated CRM Systems: By integrating with CRM systems commonly used by fund marketers, data synchronisation between ProFundCom and the CRM is seamless, ensuring that all customer interactions are centralised and easily accessible.

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.

Lead Scoring and Qualification: Prioritise leads based on engagement levels and interactions through scoring and focus efforts on high-potential prospects.

Data Analytics and Reporting: Track the performance of lead generation campaigns, measure conversion rates, and analyse the effectiveness of their marketing strategies to monitor key metrics and optimise lead generation efforts for reliable results.

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.

If you’d like to find out more, get in contact with our team today!