When the Fund Climate Shifts, Here’s 4 Ways to Adapt With Digital Marketing
You can picture financial changes very vividly: think the cinematic trope of stock brokers staring at huge interfaces of rolling numbers, green upticks, red downturns, and manically manning telephones. For the fund world, those day to day differences are all felt, be them caused by investor interest or geopolitical movements which, let’s face it, seem more precarious than ever.
Small firms may feel their niche services appeal greatly to their audiences that may distrust larger corporations. ESG is also highly valued, flaunted by funds that know their stuff in the area (rather than checking off a solution that’ll earn brownie points). Digitalisation has meant initial meetings between managers and investors occur over Zoom rather than face-to-face conferences, and very often these will follow investors’ own dedicated market research online to see which brand they’d trust to place their money with.
Whenever these seismic changes occur, it can influence how a firm conducts its best practice in constructing campaigns, as well as which platforms to roll them out on for increased AuM. That’s all handled best through automations and integrations making the marketers’ life easier even as the world turns. What’s fundamentally important is conveying to investors that things may change for better or worse, but you have the passion, philosophy and expertise to help their needs. If you can back that up consistently, confidence in your brand can remain a constant.
Applying the Personal Touch
In this day and age, ‘lead catchment areas’ can cover the surface of the planet. Within that, there’s your typical investors already aware of your investing opportunities, but plenty of potential future customers in regional pockets that will have different attitudes to risk or where market volatility may affect them more.
Feeling thought about is what we all seek when ‘buying in’ to a sales journey. Personalisation is not a silver bullet for marketing ROI, but it certainly helps with today’s high expectations. Fund marketers need the tools to understand where their ideal investors are based at changing points in time, and then serve them content to get the demand generation boulder rolling.
Granular data – what thematic investing strategies they like, their occupation, demographics, jurisdiction, risk appetite etc – is key to help a fund reflect their audience’s styles through communication. AI tools within the CRM (essentially the ‘Yellow Pages’ of all your touchpoints) can crunch data from every digital platform at all hours of the day, across the globe, into formats easier for an aligned team to digest. Keen investors ripe for a sales call can be spotlighted using lead scoring, also making obvious where subscription lists may need to be tweaked to give still-interested prospects more appropriate market outlooks, or otherwise.
Even cold leads with stalled engagement are valuable. A changing investment market may change their minds, where funds can start re-warming their interests based on their historical activity.
Where to Place Your Experts
Every fund out there knows their investors best and vice versa; existing customers may have a brilliant personal relationship with a member of an IR team. Creating continually perceptive financial information is paramount when factors can change in an instant.
This educational role of content is so vital. Luckily, your money managers with all the intel in the going-ons in the world can get the fund’s view out there in a flash. A quick quotation or reaction can be posted to social media in seconds, or summed up in a podcast, while a short video can clarify multiple market changes in different regions. These explain so much so smoothly, promote interaction in comments section, and can be shared through online platforms to get your expertise out there – PR made simple!
Whereby an investment trend or topic starts to gather steam, it’s well worth sharing your evergreen content in line with snappy multimedia bites. You can get more out of our existing content, which can still reflect the context of the current environment.
Maintaining a Flexible Website
While you’re working away on timely investment pieces, the website stands as the ultimate resource centre to draw conversions. It’s got to be interactive rather than the static ‘brochureware’ standard, which does not necessarily mean breaking the bank.
Web design trends change, yet an investor will want to find your fund philosophy, resource centre or product range in a flash when markets change. Layouts need to be clear and compelling. Toolbars and buttons should tie all their associated pages together, and provide integrated links to reports and downloads that capture investor data and give them something in return for a sign-up. When linked to the CRM, fund marketers can spot whether investment topic pages are resonating at that moment in time based on pageviews or completed forms. To remedy poor numbers, it may be worth thinking of more engaging ways to present said content.
As you continually react to new market shifts all the time, keep the webpages up to date. This can be done so using AI for dynamic content, able to promote relevant content on homepages or through pop ups designed to catch investors’ eyes.
Put the Machines to Good Use!
The website is just one octopus-arm of the fund marketing function. It’s recommended to set automations into motion across the whole stack that do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, even in time-sensitive times as changing markets.
Email Templates: pre-formatted and compliant templates help contain multiple thematic content pieces into one whole, all shareable to the segmented user base interested in them. Templates make the harsh reality of sharing bad news a little less hard by sticking to an authentic and resolute brand voice that’ll show investors you’re with them all the way.
Social Media: Linked Sales Navigator can personalise messages to regionally-sporadic personas and gather data around their success. Being able to chat with prospects through a professional profile shows an even greater effort that you understand their needs, and wish to assist them in achieving financial goals.
Web Portals: existing investors should be able to inspect their holding information from your homepage, where a prominent link can lead to a personalised dashboard that’s automatically updated.
Extra AI Tools: When the investment world shifts, gauging market sentiment using AI makes sure your communications are sensitive to the time. Some funds may also utilise chatbots for investors to gain real-time assistance when they have queries. The human/tech hybrid is a sure-fire way to channel dialogue efficiently.
Funds may not be able to control the changing tides, but a mixture of proactive strategy and having data insights to-hand make adhering to investment trends not just achievable, but powerful. When adaptation is the key to survival, digitalisation is making that evolutionary marketing need possible.
ProFundCom helps fund marketers adapt their content strategies tailored to changing investment themes using digital tools including:
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.
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.
A/B Testing: Conduct A/B testing on website elements such as landing pages, call-to-action buttons, and forms to identify effective strategies for lead generation and refine website content for better conversion rates.
Social Media Integration: Amplify brand messaging across various social platforms by sharing content, engaging with followers, and participating in industry discussions.
Website Optimization: By improving website design, content quality, user experience and SEO strategies, marketers can attract more visitors and strengthen brand visibility online.
Email Marketing Campaigns: With ProFundCom’s email marketing platform, create targeted campaigns that promote brand messaging, thought leadership content, and industry insights to a segmented audience, increasing brand visibility and recognition.
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.
