One Idea at a Time
Mike and I completed our longest engagement last month. In the engagement, we supported developing a firm’s marketing strategy, including a new tagline. As we’ve helped many firms with this endeavor I thought to share one takeaway.
I recommend selecting a single important theme to use throughout a tagline and introductory materials (i.e., one pagers, Web site homepages, etc.). Instead of trying to include numerous topics, such as “global,” “long-term,” “innovative,” and “client-centric.” Select the single most important topic (From our experience, selecting criteria to select the most important topic is difficult in its own right.). The tagline and introduction will be sharper and more likely to stick in a prospect’s head. During secondary interactions (Web site, follow-up meetings, etc.) you can introduce additional themes. And not including the others will not mean your firm isn’t those things.
For instance, a hypothetical quant shop with 15 math and physics PhDs on the team may focus on data analysis. If a prospect leaves an in-person introduction, glances over a whitepaper, or scans a Web site and concludes those guys are serious about data analysis, then that is a much better outcome than concluding those guys are investment managers.