And One Way to Make It Work: Get Them Offline

Most hedge fund startups are eager to get online. After all, the mere presence of a website opens you up to investors around the world. Unfortunately, what most hedge funds find is that the standard internet marketing tactics – tactics designed to get your website traffic and sales – don’t work well for hedge funds.

Why Internet Marketing Doesn’t Work

Internet marketing can sell international surfing adventures. It can sell week-long yoga retreats. It can even sell Koran-reading lessons. People seem to be willing to buy anything online and are equally willing to type in their credit card number to make huge purchases – something the previous generation of consumers wouldn’t dare do.

A hedge fund’s online marketing campaign is going to have to return to the online marketing style that was popular and successful a decade ago, when people weren’t willing to make large purchases online. The reason is simple: A decision as involved as investing in a hedge fund cannot be made simply through a visit to the fund’s website. This is obvious to hedge funds and is probably why so many don’t even bother working on their website or online marketing.

But internet marketing can work for any business, even hedge funds, which are often quoted in the news as not worth the money. The goal is to change the definition of success from a sale to something that will actually lead the prospect toward becoming an investor. For most hedge funds, the best goal is to get the investor to leave the website and either get on the phone, go to his mailbox (where your educational materials will be waiting), or come in the office for a meeting.

To do all this, you need a comprehensive system. Without one, you are just flailing in water.

An Internet Marketing System for Hedge Funds

Most hedge funds make the mistake of thinking that all they need is a professional-looking website and a good Google ranking. These are two pieces of the internet marketing puzzle that are nice to have, but not always necessary.

Other hedge funds use their websites to promote themselves as industry thought-leaders – a noble thought. But thought leadership alone won’t get you investors. It’s more likely to get you praise and attention from other funds than anything.

My point is that no matter your approach to your website, the goal should always be the same: to get investors to connect. You want your website, your SEO campaign, your thought-leadership blogging, and everything else connected to your online marketing to be a cog in getting a prospect to reach out to you for more information. Once you realize this, every piece of content you write online has a benchmark to be judged against.

The Hedge Fund Content Benchmark

For a hedge fund, the only benchmark you should be using for your online content is whether it plays a role in getting the prospect to think the following:

I would be stupid to invest in a hedge fund, or any other financial vehicle for that matter, without first contacting XYZ Hedge Fund for their free information/meeting/consultation (or whatever your main offer to get investors connecting with you is).

You will find that this way of judging your online messages actually falls in line with other online marketing tactics. Getting the prospect offline is easier when you follow the standard playbook that other successful (non-hedge-fund) online businesses follow, which basically looks like this:

1. Establish your website as an authority in the industry.
2. Write every non-blog page as a sales letter, with a strong headline and a call to action on every page.
3. Collect contact information from readers, placing the info in a database.
4. Run SEO to get your site ranked high in Google for the keywords that are the most relevant for your business.
5. Optimize conversion rates via testing.
6. Generate non-SEO traffic via advertising and social media.

The only real difference is that you’re not striving for on-site conversions; you’re striving to get your prospects to leave the site and physically act.