Three Ways To Use Your Website To Boost Your Fund Marketing

In the digital age, getting found online is a vital part of any company’s marketing efforts – in any sector.

And fund marketing is no exception, particularly as the new generation of digitally-savvy investors are increasingly using internet research to guide their investment decisions.

So, a website is a vital part of your fund marketing arsenal.

And how you use your site to boost interest in your fund basically boils down to three things:

Content, User Experience, and SEO

Let’s unpack these topics, starting with the actual content you have on your site.

 Content

Firstly, it’s important to understand that content on your site can’t just be ‘brochureware’ that talks about when you were founded, where you’re based etc etc.

That is pretty much useless. Instead, you need good thought leadership content on your site that offers an informed opinion on the fund sector.

This must do three things – educate, enlighten and entertain. Do this all correctly and you build trust and become an authority in your sector, both of which are essential elements of the buying process. Perhaps the most difficult of those three to pull off is the third, but it is essential to have content that people find entertaining. So, it’s worth putting in the time, expertise and money necessary to create content that’s both authoritative and actually keeps people reading – as they enjoy it. And don’t forget that just talking about performance won’t get you very far. It’s OK to touch on it occasionally, but potential and existing investors are more interested in your investment strategy and attitude to risk.

When you have a stock of quality thought leadership content on your website it shows your firm as an authority in the fund sector. This also gives you a pool of content that you can repurpose and distribute across social and via email.

 User Experience (UX)

It’s an oft-overlooked fact that a good website user experience can boost your assets under management.

That’s because quality UX – where a site is easy and simple to navigate and use – means that potential investors that visit it are more likely to watch and read your marketing content.

Another way to improve the user experience is to go beyond content provision – important as that is – and provide an investor portal for existing clients, where they can find information about their holdings. Also, potential investors should be able to quickly find details about a certain fund or product.

 SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimisation.

Don’t worry if you didn’t know that – neither did 57% of marketers asked in a recent study. But I’m sure you do know that SEO is about improving your search engine rankings, so that more people come to your site and are then encouraged to engage with your firm and, ultimately, invest.

But I should point out that SEO is actually the hardest way to bring prospects to your website, so you should first concentrate on easier methods such as email, social posts and DMs, networking, and communicating with existing investors.

But if you’ve done all that – and become good at it – then you can move onto SEO, as obviously the more people who find your website, the better. But you must be aware that nobody has a proper idea of how Google looks at funds, so be careful when hiring SEO ‘experts’ – especially if they recommend techniques like guest blogging, posting links to your site all over the Web, keyword-heavy content, and website pop-ups. These are all counter-productive. The best advice is to hire an established SEO agency – rather than a lone consultant – with a proven track record in the funds sector.

Or, if you do want to try it without external help, you can use a plugin called Keywords Everywhere, which can act as a great guide on the best keywords to use in website articles. You can also use this tool to update existing articles with SEO-friendly terms. But you must remember the golden rule – write for humans first and search engines second. By all means use keywords, but you must make sure that they work as an integral part of the text.