How To Harness Digital Marketing – The New Normal For Hedge Funds. Part 2
This is the second in a series of posts examining the new normal of digital marketing – and what hedge funds must do to make the most of it.
In this post, I’m looking at how to produce content that people want to read.
Because when you do that – and distribute it digitally – you can discover vital marketing information by tracking engagement.
This lets you discover things like the new prospects who are looking at your content, those who are showing interest again after being dormant, and the existing investors who are suddenly looking at new products. The sales potential of this information is obvious.
Tracking also reveals when existing clients stop looking at your content – meaning a well-timed call from sales may be needed to clear up any issues and keep them on board.
All this hinges on quality content. But what exactly do people want to see?
Experience has taught me that the best type of content, at least in the hedge fund space, is thought leadership. By this I mean insightful articles, videos, posts etc from senior figures within your company that position your firm as an authority within the fund sector. This, in turn, helps persuade investors that you will look after their money and help it grow. By commenting intelligently on current investment topics, you keep your firm front of mind with your audience. But it has to be regular – one piece every six months won’t cut it, as people just forget about you.
Thought leadership is you displaying your knowledge of the space you are operating in and your philosophy of how best to approach the tricky job of investing. This is what people want to read and hear. We recently ran a straw poll of ProFundCom webinar attendees and they said that investment philosophy, which effectively means thought leadership, is the most important factor in regards to digital engagement with funds. This was seen as way more important than performance, for example.
The beauty of thought leadership content is that it has multi-channel potential. You can link to articles and videos through social media, and put everything in a dedicated thought leadership section on your website.
And, of course, you must send each piece out through email.
But how you actually present your content is also important, particularly when it comes to email.
If you just throw all your content into two massive paragraphs, few will get through the first couple of lines – as large, solid blocks of text are off-putting. People tend to scan content before reading it properly. So, if you have an email template that encourages scanning – through short and snappy paragraphs, well-placed bullet points, and links to find out more – then you will vastly increase readership.
And the more people that read your content, the more valuable engagement data you have to analyse.
But what exactly do you do with all this data? How can it make a discernible difference to your sales figures?
