Five reasons why your marketing deck might be due an upgrade

If your marketing deck was a phone, what type would it be? 

Would it be the latest iPhone or a 20-year-old Nokia using T9 predictive text?

To some fund managers, marketing decks are a bit like phones. You need one, but, in most instances, you assume an average one will do the job.

Sure, it’s nice to have the latest iPhone every year, but that’s an indulgence, not a necessity. Do you really need your phone to recognise you by the pH level in the sweat of your fingertips?

Marketing decks, however, are not phones.

An average one will rarely do the job. LPs see 100s of decks – only the very best will be remembered.

Here are five reasons why your marketing deck might need an upgrade. 

It’s too complex

Many fund managers fall victim to a cognitive bias known as the Curse of Knowledge. This is when subject experts fail to understand that non-experts do not have the same level of knowledge they do.

A manager may understand their investment strategy better than anyone, but that doesn’t mean they can articulate it in a clear, concise manner.

And it shows in their decks.

The best teachers aren’t necessarily the most knowledgeable people. Their skill is their ability to simplify and communicate complex ideas.

Sometimes only an outsider can help a manager articulate their strategy in a way that is easily understood by investors.

You’re saying too much

The Illusory Truth Effect leads us to trust information more when it is easier to process.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of this point.

So many of the problems we see with fund managers come from trying to say too much at once.

Managers tend to instinctively want to say as many positive things about themselves and their funds as they can. They believe that the more they say, the better their chance of saying whatever that investor needs to hear to make an allocation. 

In fact, the opposite is true. In marketing, words are like money – they are subject to inflation. The more words in circulation, the less each is worth.

The trick is to zero in on a clear, easily defined and digestible message, and stick to it.

Repeat it. A lot. They will remember it. They will believe it. And, with luck, they will repeat it.

That is what good marketing is all about.

It fails to focus on what makes you special

Most managers we work with believe they are unique. But when we ask them to describe how, they invariably struggle.

Psychologists won’t find this surprising. Fund managers, like the rest of us, are often victims of a very common cognitive bias: the False Uniqueness Bias. This convinces people they are more unique than they really are.

This misconception can give managers a false sense of security when pitching investors. They believe their message is blowing investors’ minds. More likely, investors have switched off. They’ve heard it all before.

In fact, we are all unique in our own ways. The trick is finding out how – and then building a compelling story around it.

Your deck just isn’t getting the response you want

When managers are struggling to make an impression on investors, it isn’t always obvious to them that the problem is their marketing materials.

They might suspect the issue is performance or bad timing. They might even blame the investors. Investors are just too risk averse to try something so unique and innovative.

Often, the message is to blame, rather than the messenger or audience.

The Law of the Instrument is our tendency to rely on familiar ways of working and our disinclination to try something new. It describes why many fund managers are reluctant to change their messaging.

Giving a deck a cosmetic overhaul is one thing. Fundamentally rethinking how you communicate who you are is something else entirely.

It isn’t an easy step to take. But if we are brave enough to take it, the results can be transformational.

The text assumes everyone agrees with you

In markets, everything can be measured and quantified. There is always a right answer and a wrong answer.

It may not always be obvious which is which, but time reveals the answer in the end. A stock goes up or it goes down. The investment makes money, or it doesn’t. A wrong prediction is a failure of analytics.

Many people who are successful in markets maintain a particular mindset. They see it as their job to lay out the facts, trusting reasonable, rational investors to draw the same conclusions as them.

This leaves them vulnerable to the False Consensus Effect, where people overestimate the extent to which other people agree with them.

Investing is as much about emotions as it is about reason. Your goal isn’t to get investors to agree that your strategy works. Your goal is to get them to agree that they should make an allocation.

Facts alone will not be enough.

If you would like help crafting a message that investors will find compelling, talk to our IR & Marketing Team. It’s the logical thing to do!

Talk to our IR & Marketing Team