The A - Z of terrible fund marketing

Gabrielle Israel-Bolarinwa emphasises the importance of patience when delivering your message, and the danger of ‘quiet quitting’.

JD David debunks the notion that utilising the term “proprietary” to describe your edge helps in your efforts to market your fund.

Jon Greene demonstrates why overloading your communications, by trying to say everything at the same time, means that investors will ultimately remember nothing.

You wouldn’t attend an investor meeting wearing a garbage bag. To make a good first impression, you need to secure a sufficient marketing budget. If you don’t, it will always have a negative impact.

Beware mixed messaging; your story is made up. The question is: who made it up? You, or the market? If you don’t tell your story effectively, someone else will tell your story for you.

Lorena Lara Torres explains how to ensure great marketing isn’t undone by an inefficient response to engagements. What can you do to avoid losing traction?

In marketing, just as in investing, you need to understand what is working and what is not working. This is impossible if you don’t set and track KPIs (key performance indicators).

Stop confusing clients with jargon! Garry highlights the benefits of using more accessible language in order to put people at ease, build rapport and help potential clients better understand the benefits of your products.

It’s natural to want to highlight impressive returns but too many fund managers fall into the trap of using IRR as a promise of future success. Sol Teague discusses this is a common a trap?

When you use hyperbole and exaggerated language, you can come across as dishonest and inauthentic to investors, and may fall foul of your compliance team, or worse, the regulator.

Stop it! Just. Stop! You simply cannot get away with it. Investors are too savvy and regulators are too focused on the issue for greenwashing to be a workable strategy anymore.

What did you say? There’s something different, exciting, special about you? And you can articulate how those attributes combine to deliver that performance? Well, now, That sounds interesting. Tell me more…

When you are passionate about what you do, you want to tell people about it. That’s just human. The problem for many fund managers is that they want to tell everybody about everything, all at once.

Alex Carlton discusses LinkedIn’s hidden algorithm, and how you can leverage it to your advantage, ensuring your social media posts rise to the top using MJ Hudson’s VELCRO checklist.

Too many firms build the infrastructure and then struggle to consistently release the content that fuels it. To get the most out of your marketing you need to understand what content to produce, when it release it, and who will do it.

Every company changes as it matures, and a brand must also evolve, to reflect those changes. If it doesn’t, it will quickly become inauthentic. You brand should represent who you are – not who you were.

Strong personalities and legacy thinking can stop a firm from reaching its true potential. No matter how confident or charismatic a firm’s leadership is, failure to ask difficult questions and listen to the answers, can be fatal.