YOU CAN HAVE A SUPERB PRODUCT OFFERING, BUT IF PEOPLE DON’T HEAR ABOUT IT, IT ISN’T GOING TO BE WORTH MUCH.
There are singers in the world with voices as good as Frank Sinatra’s but they’re only singing in their showers because no one has ever heard of them. The question is: what needs to be done then? You need to generate interest, and you need to create excitement. You need a brand identity.
Just about every fund manager boasts about performance, has risk-mitigating strategies, and uses a unique blend of investments. Real money can’t be raised because everyone is saying the same thing! Try something unique that will get ears twitching. Real money is raised by using a more sophisticated way at attracting new clients – being different, or even a little outrageous. If you do things that are different and out of your comfort zone, people are going to be interested. People will be more receptive to starting a conversation with you. Take that good performance and turn it into something a lot more attractive by investing smartly in the right marketing tools to build a brand identity.
As Seth Godin wrote in his book, “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable”,
It is actually safer to take risk
Playing it safe and avoiding criticism does not accomplish your objective
There is nothing to lose and a lot to gain when you attempt to change the rules
Topturn Capital hired a professional surfer and used a video to replace an ageing introductory production. What happened? The world noticed. This video was picked up by Fortune, Barron’s, CNBC, and Bloomberg among others. They essentially received free advertising all over the place. From a business point of view, a full-page ad in a newspaper would have cost nearly $100,000. Having their video launched cost them a whole lot less, and got them a whole lot more. This was something the industry didn’t see coming, and they built a brand for themselves.
How can you convince people that it takes more guts to make a decision that could make or break a billion dollars than it does to ride a bike off a cliff? You have appeal emotionally to people and it has to be something that they aren’t expecting. Brand yourself as someone exciting, not like the 1,000 other fund managers who spew the same lines over and over again. Dare to dare. Dare to be uncomfortable.
By Alan Chu