Be Relevant, Progressive and Impressive

Marketing is about generating interest across the right audience. Assuming you have the audience nailed down, you won’t generate much interest unless you are perceived as relevant, progressive, and impressive. After that, the product or service you are marketing needs to meet expectations. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in marketing alternative investments. 

Being perceived as relevant…

Is there a place for what you do within the market you are in? It seems like an obvious question, yet very few asset managers adequately answer this question. The fall backs, we help mitigate risk, we capture beta, we capture alpha, we target the lower-middle market, etc. All are reasonable answers, however, managers need to look at the broader context. There are a lot of people that do all those things. What is it about what you do that breaks through the noise? How do you rationalize why investors need to invest with you? If they don’t, best change something.

Being perceived as progressive...

Do you look like you are keeping up? It is a very simple question. Interestingly most managers don’t look like they are. Does your website look like it was built in the late 90s? Are you using video? Do you have a voice across one or more social networks? The list is long and very easy to write. My point, no one wants to put their money with someone that still acts like it is 2006.

Being perceived as impressive…

Is there anything about you that is impressive? Ok, for all you performance hawks, this is your chance to tell your story. All said, there are very few track records that are truly impressive. There is always a blip, something unexplained, an anomaly, etc. There are some, however, that truly do have impressive performance, but not many. This leaves a managers having to find other ways to look impressive. And without out the two former attributes in play, this can be hard to do. All said, you have to impressive – figure it out.

I can assure you, if you spend some time thinking about the three attributes above, and bend your process to account for them, your marketing will be more effective.