Once you’ve thoughtfully designed and structured a fund, it’s time to bring it to market. And, to effectively attract your ideal investor, you’ll need a solid marketing strategy in place. To craft that strategy, it’s good to get a concrete understanding of how fund marketing operates, along with the key activities that occur in each stage.
So when is the exact right time to market your fund to new LPs, and how can you best do it to secure funding from your target investors? The right answer depends on exactly where they are in the funnel.
The Fundraising Marketing Funnel
When bringing your fund to market, you can think of it as broken down into a few core stages – design concept (and aligning content), go to market/first launch, fundraising, first and second close (i.e., securing investments), and engagement, each with their own substeps to best align to your target investor.
Stage One: Design Concept and Content
Before you bring your fund to market, you’ll need to spend a considerable amount of time designing your concept and learning as much as you can about your target audience.
Investor targeting is an essential step in the fundraising process. By developing a concrete understanding of your ideal investor prior to launch, you can best cater your messaging and content to their needs and preferences and reach them through their preferred channels.
Begin by thoroughly researching the investor types you’re targeting, and learn their preferred needs, interests, and where they spend their time (i.e., email, social media, news outlets) so you can meet them where they are. Once you have an idea of the types of channels and tactics you’ll leverage to reach your target investor, it’s time to prepare your content pillars.
Content pillars are used in marketing to help align your content to each stage of your fundraising funnel. For example, in the launch stage, your top-of-funnel content should aim to provide a general overview of your fund through social media posts, email blasts, or blogs that layout basic information for investors just learning about the fund. This content should include why you’re launching the fund, what differentiates it from the competition, and provide answers to basic frequently asked questions.
By having your content ready for every stage of the funnel in advance, you can easily automate the fundraising process throughout each stage of your outreach. Whatsmore, by leveraging LP management software (like Altvia’s CRM), you can run your content pillars on autopilot. Arm your team with the exact messaging and content they’ll need to automatically enable, and convert, investors at any stage in your funnel.
Stage Two: Go to Market / Launch
Your go-to-market stage, aka your launch, is critical to the overall success of your fundraise. Before you do so, however, be sure to educate your internal teams on all launch material and content, so they’re ready to tackle any conversation that comes their way.
You’ll also want to ensure you’re not relying on a single, standard pitch angle. Work with your PR team to prepare diversified pitch angles that align to each investor demographic, so they’re more likely to relate to your pitch and engage with your firm. Then, when it’s time for launch, effective PR positioning is crucial. There is far more value in reputable journalists and writers saying nice things about your fund than just having you talking about it. In turn, be sure your PR team is armed with the resources they need to make a big splash on launch day. Helpful material for the PR team includes announcement material, social media posts, videos, emails – anything that helps you get the message out effectively to your industry.
And finally, be sure to keep your campaign going well after launch day. As part of your marketing strategy, you’ll want to have at least six months of promotions planned out that focus on converting those simply aware of your fund into qualified leads. Think: lead generation material, like trade shows, webinars, downloadables, and value-adding content.
A consistent and persistent approach to drive and convert leads will fuel your pipeline with sales-qualified investors on an ongoing basis, making your fundraising that much more successful.
Stage Three: First and Second Close
Now that you’ve done the hard work of setting up your content for each stage of the fundraising funnel, it’s time to partner with sales to best enable them to take those leads through to close.
This supporting content and messaging should align and provide value to LPs that have already met with your sales team and are ready to invest. Think: information-packed white papers and sales sheets that contain relevant statistics and decision-driving material.
By having your bottom-of-the-funnel content locked and loaded in your LP management software, your firm’s sales team will be able to easily access material to best answer questions and support potential investors through to close.
Stage Four: Engagement
After helping an LP cross the finish line and close, your marketing doesn’t end. In fact, we could argue that this is the most critical stage and opportunity to provide additional value.
By leveraging your LP management software and CRM, you can set up custom marketing flows that deliver content on an ongoing basis, including tips and resources from your blog, sales check-in emails, and general resources to add value and keep an open line of communication.
Keep Different Demographics in Mind
Regardless of the funnel stage, it’s important to keep in mind that your marketing approach and messaging may differ depending on your target demographic. The US vs. Asia-based managers have different rules and regulations regarding marketing and knowing them before you launch your fund can be key to closing the deal.
For example, while social media and web pages may be an essential part of your strategy in the US, for non-U.S. managers, ensuring there is no “general solicitation” (i.e. broad marketing of fund interests, including via social media or publicly available web pages) is critical.
Level Up Your Marketing with LP Management Software
Marketing a fund to LPs has a lot of moving pieces. It’s easy for content and messaging to get lost in the shuffle between different funnel stages and different approaches depending on demographics.
To centralize and automate your approach at each stage of the funnel, a solution like Altvia’s can help. By providing detailed investor-level insights and information, your entire team can gain access to conversations with each investor and powerful data as to how each lead engages with your firm and content – including emails they’ve opened or clicked and web pages they’ve visited.
To learn how you can better execute your marketing and optimize your campaigns at each stage of the funnel, get in touch with our team to see how Altvia can help fuel your firm’s marketing strategy.
