Thought Leadership 101 for Fund Marketers and Fund Managers
Ray Dalio
Matthias Knab
Patrick Boyle
Besides being highly successful in business, these people are known as thought-leaders in the fund space.
Similarly like Ray and Matthias and Patrick, as a marketer in fund management industry, being an expert in your field is crucial. To become that marketing expert you need to
• drive traffic to your site
• nurture and convert leads
• build brand authority and reputation.
That’s where thought leadership comes in – along will all the help you will need from your fund managers to produce great content!!!
After account-based marketing, big-data and block-chain, fewer terms raise the ire of the buzzword police more than thought leadership. However, when should you consider using thought-leadership, and how do you balance the talent and experience of your fund managers with the humility and authenticity today’s audiences demand?
The main goal of thought leadership is to be seen and recognised as an expert in your field. The most successful thought leaders create and promote educational, helpful content and become active in the fund community, particularly on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Research has shown (Edelman and LinkedIn) that almost 60% of thought leadership content is read at least once a week and a similar amount use thought leadership content to vet fund and managers they may invest in.
Consuming thought leadership content also affects investment decisions. Whilst not specifically relating to fund marketing, 60% of decision-makers said thought leadership convinced them to buy a product or service they weren’t previously considering (Hubspot). As fund marketing and the investment process moves to the new digital world, there is a trend emerging that this change in decision making may be coming sooner than we think.
Here are some of the best practices we have found for thought leadership in fund marketing.
1. Know Your People
It goes without saying that knowing your audience is the key to succeeding with any fund marketing strategy. Thought leadership in fund marketing is no different. Knowing what micro and macro trends are interesting to investors is key to generating great content. It is also important to understand when these interests are changing as the topics, industry and audience evolve.
2. Get Social
Social media will not directly get you new investors however it is an effective opportunity to build brand and expertise. It is an excellent and subtle way to comment on fund and finance industry news and your thought leadership is heard in conversations regarding relevant industry trends.
3. Publish, Publish, Publish
Wherever your audience is, that is where you want your thought leadership content to appear.
Don’t just post your thought leadership pieces on your blog and think the world will be flocking to it. It needs to be promoted on social media, posted on news sites, and being made into topics for webinars and potentially video and podcasts.
4. Analyze You Competition
Imitation is the greatest form of praise, so on that basis get inspiration from your competitors. Analyze what they’re doing, how often are they posting and what they are posting about – and just fill in the gaps.
5. Create Great Content
This probably should have been the first point but you need to create valuable content. Do not get tempted to create content about everything under the sun but rather show deep understanding in individual articles
6. Do Not Annoy
Imparting knowledge is less about your fund and more about thoughts, insights and trends. If you want to talk about your fund talk about your investment philosophy, your attitude to risk and then your performance – in that order. The more you talk about yourselves, the more annoying it can be if you are attempting to create thought leadership marketing content.
