One Private Equity Firm that Won Big Online
Private Equity Firms are marketing online more and more, but few are doing a decent job of it and even fewer are seeing success from it.
Our experience has shown there are several key reasons for this.
- They Don’t Have the Skills In-House
- They Don’t Have a Strategy
- They Don’t Take it Seriously
These reasons should make sense to everyone, but as it relates to digitally marketing private equity firms the typical strategies that most marketers speak on are more aligned to consumer marketing, or where the company needs to have a high public visibility.
For Private Equity Firms it is more important to gain the intelligence of how your targets behave online to create a personalized approach and identify how and where they seek advice.
This is a story of how one Private Equity Firm Won Big Online
A Private Equity firm who focused primarily on B2B manufacturing companies wanted to increase dealflow but felt they had exhausted the personal and professional network of the team.
So the question was, “How do we get ourselves in front of new deals?”.
They Took to the Streets
The Managing Directors of the firm started calling on anyone they had met in the past who could potentially refer them to deals. Attorneys, CPA’s, Money Managers, etc.
While some seemed promising and the likelihood of deals in the future would likely come, they would also come slowly and with no predictability.
They Attended Conferences and Trade Shows
Another easy idea was to get in front of company owners and board members at trade shows and conferences. This too is great and can build trust quickly with potential targets.
The problem with this is that it is not scalable and again can result in slow acquisition.
What About Marketing?
For some reason many Private Equity Firms don’t participate in marketing.
Maybe it’s the rules that you must deal with from FINRA and the SEC.
Maybe it’s a belief that it doesn’t work.
But this firm decided that it was worth a try.
After looking at options and talking to many different agencies, they decided that digital marketing would be their best choice.
They came to this decision based on the fact that they could start finding businesses who were actually looking for growth opportunities which are closer to converting as deals and they could target and track the people and companies they would like to do business with.
What were the results?
The firm decided to optimize their website for search and for conversion.
They started doing content marketing focused on drawing in new business opportunities directly from owners, boards and deal makers.
They used paid ads and retargeting to stay in front of their prospects.
They tracked and measured the activity to identify high value contacts.
All of these actions resulted in 20% higher deal flow volume than their record year and a 25% reduction in time to close on those new inbound deals.
This resulted in Millions of dollars in new revenue and a greater profile / status as a solid firm in that particular sector.
You can read more on Private Equity Marketing here: https://acumenstudio.com/private-equity-marketing/
