Among marketing strategies in investment management, conference and event participation isn't the easiest.
Events take time to prepare for, travel to and attend. They can be expensive. It's hard to identify relevant events and know which will work for your firm. And even with careful planning, some events will end up being a waste of time.
Yet, despite these hurdles, we believe conference and event participation is one of the most effective marketing strategies for asset managers and related service providers.
As evidence of this, when we look at event sponsor and attendee lists, we see active participation from the largest and most successful organizations.
If anyone shouldn't need to participate in events, it would be firms with big brands, powerful sales teams and strong market share. Yet there they are, repeatedly engaging with events in meaningful ways.
Conferences and events have unique attributes that other marketing opportunities can't replicate. These attributes (listed below) make events highly effective in helping investment management organizations build their brands, raise capital, and sell products and services.
1. Multi-dimensional
Few marketing strategies offer the range of tactics and touch points contained in a single event.
You can build relationships with potential investors and clients. Expose your product, fund or brand to a large audience. Sell 1:1 or on a group basis. Boost your online exposure and SEO. Communicate a view or an idea to a large group of people.
Events offer valuable "top level" branding and "on-the ground" sales and relationship building – a powerful combination for accelerating product and business growth.
2. Efficient
Conferences and events take time, but they often take a lot less time versus trying to achieve the same outcome through other means. Events efficiently bring together people you want to reach, all in one place and all at the same time.
With the right events, you can create relationships and conduct sales pitches that would take months or years to accomplish via individual outreach, separate meetings and travel.
And for lessor known firms or products, this efficiency is multiplied since it's much more difficult for them to get the attention of in-demand investors and prospects.
3. Granular
There are thousands of events across hundreds of topics in investing and finance globally. This allows firms to micro-target very specific audiences.
Want to find hedge fund compliance professionals in the UK? Private equity operating partners in the Midwest? Institutional investors in Houston? Wealth managers and financial advisors in Ohio? There are events for all these scenarios and thousands more.
Finding events that fit specific needs takes work, but for firms willing to look beyond the well-known mega conferences, they'll discover events for virtually every region, sector, function and type of individual they can imagine.
4. Serendipitous
The work environment usually exposes us to the same set of things on a day-to-day basis. We work with the same people. Receive emails from the same organizations. Network with the same contacts. Read the same publications and browse the same websites.
When daily work is largely the "same", it can be hard to break out of established patterns, be creative, and reach new levels of growth.
Events help us escape the repetitiveness of daily work. They expose us to ideas and connections that can lead to a groundbreaking business insight or a valuable client or strategic partner.
It’s hard to know when (and if) serendipity like this will happen, but events increase the likelihood exponentially given the diverse array of new relationships and insights they bring.
5. Return on Investment
Conferences and events cost money, but when you compare their cost versus the incremental value from additional clients or investors, the ROI is often impressive.
We suggest firms do a scenario analysis where they establish a hypothetical event budget, and then estimate clients they could acquire through these efforts. Even in downside scenarios where client acquisition is modest, the economic value from new clients is usually multiples of the event budget.
High ROI is why successful firms devote resources to events year after year. It's not a cost, but a high return investment that accelerates growth.
Given these benefits, a natural question is why isn't everyone in investment management devoting more time and resource towards conferences and events?
We believe it's because events aren’t easy. The industry is opaque and finding the right events is difficult. Establishing a successful events strategy takes time, money, experimentation and patience.
These hurdles discourage some organizations from actively participating. But these hurdles are also a major upside. For firms willing to evaluate the wider universe of conference and event choices, they're likely to find opportunities with less competition and high quality contact with in-demand audiences.
To learn about how we can help investment firms drive sales and growth through marketing and communications strategy (including in-depth, customized conference research), read more about us or send us a note.
