Our approach is built around some fundamental truths of fund marketing:
Your brand is the most valuable asset you own and also your sharpest tool.
Your name, your reputation, your values and your culture are more fundamental to your success than anything else. Your brand is what tells your story when you are not in the room and supports your story when you are. You are operating in a saturated market and the only way to stand out and compete is to build and leverage your brand.
There’s more to you than your track record.
Whatever you tell yourself, past returns are not a guarantee of future performance — and if any investors didn’t know this before, they do now. Building brand around performance is like building brand around promises you can’t keep. That’s not a good idea. You need to ask those that know you best what makes you truly exceptional. Build on that.
You don’t become a leader by being a follower.
It is futile to produce marketing materials that look and sound the same as your competitors’ materials. If you want to succeed, you need to stop looking at what everyone else is doing and instead, look at yourself. You need materials that set out your vision, express your values and speak with your voice.
If you try to please everyone, you please no one.
The more generic your approach, the less true you are to your fundamentals and the less differentiated you are to your audience. No one can be all things to all people. Instead, focus on what you are great at and don’t pretend to be what you are not. Everything comes out in due diligence eventually, so always be glad when you hear an early “no”.
You can’t expect outsized returns on your marketing without assuming risk.
We understand that change can be unnerving and some of our strategies are very different from what others do and from what you may have tried in the past. But that’s exactly the point — you can’t change your destination without travelling a different path. Every day you take calculated risks in your investing. Why not also take a calculated risk with your marketing and communications?
You can no longer market effectively without putting technology to work.
Our lives are moving increasingly online and the sophistication and effectiveness of marketing technology is improving continuously. Nevertheless, few fund managers realise the impact a small investment could have on their capital raising and investor relations. Our advice is to join the vanguard, rather than watch them march over the horizon, taking the investor community with them.
The six truths above have shaped the approach below:
Our process starts with an audit of your existing materials and current positioning.
We then conduct research to gain a deep appreciation for how your brand and business are currently perceived, both within your firm and outside of it.
Next, we coordinate one or more strategy sessions to identify and articulate what is intrinsically important to your business and to build consensus around the core attributes of your brand: your vision, your voice and your values.
It is here that we build out a comprehensive road map for your brand, detailing the brand strategy and key messages.
Having built an anchor to tie your brand and messaging to, we now start to build the necessary tools.
It all starts with the approval of a creative concept that we can overlay across all deliverables.
We then focus on the fundamentals of your visual identity: your logo, document themes and templates. We will also provide options for business cards, letterhead and other stationery.
After that, we typically produce a profile video —
nothing better captures the passion, charisma and expertise of a manager.
EXAMPLES
Next, we take some time to detail the investor journey (there can be more than one) and determine the materials that need to be produced. Are you launching a new product or strategy? Is a successor fund on the way?
There are a number of aspects that will need to be taken into account.
In most cases, it is worth taking a fresh look at your website and extended digital footprint (LinkedIn, etc.).
In every case, a marketing presentation is a must, as well as a digital deck to support it.
This is typically followed by an executive summary.
Depending on the investor journey and your short-term priorities, you may need support with a due diligence questionnaire, a PPM and a data room. We can build all of this for you, drawing in specialist legal and administrative expertise from other parts of our firm.
We then need to structure a comprehensive plan to build audience and brand awareness and support your investor relations activities.
None of this is possible without the implementation of the right marketing technology.
And throughout this process we continuously test and refine the activity.
Interested in getting started?
“We came to MJ Hudson Meyler with a complex proposal for our institutional funds, with numerous and varied needs to be met across our client base. The team worked closely with us to make that proposal a reality, helping find innovative ways to achieve our goals. Their industry knowledge, flexibility and experience proved invaluable.”
“Matthew and his team produced high quality fundraising materials for us and also redesigned our corporate website. We very much appreciated Matthew`s detailed understanding of PE investor requirements, his creativity and clear way of thinking and, of course the advanced technical expertise of the team to produce top standard output. We very much look forward to continuing our cooperation on subsequent projects.”