5 Ways to Add Impact to Your Hedge Fund Pitch Book

It’s essential for financial services and hedge fund marketers to create transparent, informational, and engaging pitch books.

Nobody likes being in the dark when it comes to the topic of investing.

This is where a dialed-in pitch book can be used as a strategic guide to opening a discussion with potential investors.  The simple creation of a deck goes beyond performance data and includes next-generation data and strong analytical techniques, to display a company that understands the navigation process of investment management.

Of course, it can be challenging to fulfill these vital needs and get your message across to the investors over a story of slides.

Here’s where our top suggestions can help.

We took some time to create an impactful approach to hit a home run when it comes to creating the perfect pitch deck every time.

But first, some details on hedge fund marketing.

Hedge fund pitch book development and design by Launch Module Media.

What Is A Hedge Fund Pitch Book?

A pitch book is one of the most critical components of a new business’s communication and marketing efforts.

Content creation is pivotal. A hedge fund pitch should be structured as follows:

• Identifying the firm
• Investment strategy
• Performance results
• Marketing strategy
• Firm management
• Equity knowledge

Hedge fund managers are responsible for delivering a pitch that outlines the essence of their business with the most up-to-date information.

Investment banking books and pitch books are created with the investor’s goals in mind, resulting in an easy to comprehend messages and impactful brand information.

All in all, hedge fund pitch books are a crucial marketing tool for money managers, wealth managers, CTAs, etc which highlight the distinctive value of an investment program to prospective clients while also providing an overview of its performance.

Now that we are finished explaining what a pitch book is, let’s dive in on the details of an impactful deck.

What Makes A Compelling Pitch Book?

A great pitch book clearly defines the key market areas that your fund focuses on. Then it backs the opportunity through figures and stats and emphasizes why it is a good time to invest now.

Over three-quarters of asset managers believe that their messages are differentiated from industry players, but only 21% of advisors feel that managers’ statements are different. This alone shows a greater-than-ever need to distinguish your offerings and invite readers to learn more about the opportunities you offer.

Stellar pitch books encapsulate the most convincing reasons to make fund investments and constitute your engagement and sales strategy with stakeholders.

Whether you are planning to revamp your pitch book or are in the fund-launching process, here are some of the ins and outs of what you need to make an appealing pitch book design.

Set Your Fund Apart – You may have an entire list of factors that make your opportunities worthwhile, but so does the competition.

It is vital to have a laser-sharp focus on elements that offer a competitive edge over other firms. Use the presentation to communicate these distinctive features and augment your pitch to the investors.

Showcase Your Team – Investors are interested to see if you have a big track record to back up your claims of expertise.  A hedge fund pitch book allows you to effectively highlight your team’s capability, skills, and accomplishments.

Highlight Your Philosophy – When you drive your overall process by a distinct set of principles, it is called an investment philosophy. It also sharply outlines your success factors and provides a rationale for how you will thrive in the future.

Break Down The Entire Process – For starters, piece together all the critical components of your approach – e.g., screening, sourcing, investment selection, and more. Then build a persuasive investment process and thoroughly explain it to your potential client.

Process fluency is a key need to communicate that you have a clear-cut method to secure their funds.

Tell Your Origin Story – Every pitch book related to hedge funds consists of a story. Whether you initiate it upon a specific investment belief or align with the recognized leadership skillset, sharing and exchanging this information with the investors will create a strong foundation.

Display Your Mission Values – Pitch books present a great opportunity to convey your commitments to the investors through a brief value or mission statement.

Any reputable company or service has a strong set of Mission Values that they live and breathe, and engrain into their company culture.

Plug Your Culture – Let your audience know that your organization is all in favor of diversity, proprietary research, and collaboration. Set your environment apart from others. Examples of how you come up with productive investment ideas and other exciting tactics go a long way.

Underline Your Past Performance – If you have a rock-solid track record, sharing the results is a given. Practical hedge fund pitch books highlight the most appealing aspects of their past performance through persuasive content and creative design.

If you are launching or growing your fund, you might not have a track record to show or highlight. However, you can still boast about your performance from professional accomplishments or previous roles that centers on your achievements.

Now that we know what it takes to create a very compelling pitch book, let’s go over our Top 5 Tips.

Remember, this is the material that can make or break a potential investor’s decision.

How Do I Improve My Hedge Fund Pitch Book?

Use these tips to see what simple actions you can take to improve your process.

1. Cover Your Branding

Strong branding plays a role in your success with the funds. Your message has to be consistent and transparent throughout the entire deck for your message to be effective. Yes, even hedge fund managers need to think about branding before selling returns.

Consider the following:

• What do your investors value most? How does this translate into your brand?
• What images resonate with your audience?
• How does your brand compare to leading funds in the marketplace?

Now that you have an idea of your branding, it’s time to cut unnecessary detail from your presentation.

2. Remove All Irrelevant Material

It is essential to create a clear, focused, and engaging presentation. Simplicity and proven results are key.

With hedge fund pitch books, less is more. You need to strategically highlight your fund benefits in minimal words by concentrating on your content, using a more natural tone, bullets, and writing the message in an active voice.

The point of the pitch is to make your potential investor believe you are the best in the game. Any surplus of irrelevant material will take away from the core competencies we are trying to prove.

Excessive information includes:

• Going overboard on statistics: Statistics and data matter! But it’s key to get the right info in the right places. Anything more than that will confuse or worse, distract.
• Excessive content: This goes back to the point we made earlier, simplicity is key. While narrating a story might help you better communicate your point, excessive content may obscure your message’s purpose and baffle the audience. The way you define your strategies in writing can affect an investors’ opinions. The more content a reader has to explore, the more difficult it is to appreciate your communicated value proposition.
• Jargon Language: Jargon is an unreasonably complex language that is often used to impress the audience rather than inform them. This doesn’t mean that you leave out necessary technical terms but ensure that your language is as clear to the listener as possible. When you go beyond essential technical terms while conveying your message, it can cause alienation or misunderstanding, even if your readers are experts.

Make sure every slide has just one or two critical messages and centers on the main benefits. Use compelling punch-up headlines to brief your slides and eye-catching graphics to help guide the readers via your story.

3. Make A Statement

Marketing has a golden rule: you should always make your point with your recipient’s interests in mind.

Creating and maintaining your pitch book for hedge funds is no different. When you are drafting content, you should be well-informed of what your potential investors will resonate with most.

A great practice we utilize is creating a story that can help build an emotional connection between your prospective investors and your business. Highlight the effectiveness of your approach should show them how well you understand their need. Leveraging elements or characters from your story will help address your investor’s questions.

Great communication is highly important- you get your process, but it is your job to ensure the audience understands your approach. A correct statement will manage their expectations by setting the right tone of services that you offer.

Established audiences require fewer in-depth explanations but sometimes even savvy investors need help understanding the opportunity, mainly if it is not their expertise.

4. Be Consistent

Investors like and expect consistency from you in every aspect. They want their quarterly and monthly reports on time, and they want the reporting data to be consistent and clear.

When millions or even billions of dollars are at stake, the slightest wrinkle can be amplified into a massive blunder. Every facet of your deck must appear meticulously structured and thought-out to demonstrate trustworthiness and integrity.

If a hedge fund pitch book’s marketing materials look disordered, it rightfully may cause investors to contemplate the other things that may be inaccurate with the fund, such as your asset allocation. Make sure that you present yourself as someone credible at every touchpoint.

5. Pay Attention to Formatting

Wrangling your message into a clean format is vital. It is imperative to make sure that your content is appealing to the viewer’s eyes.

Make sure all the critical formatting components are aligned and visually pleasing. This will help your audience better grasp your message and compel them to take the desired action.

Here are some tips to help get your points across:

• Font – A suitable font plays a crucial role in reflecting the personality and tone of what you are trying to convey. Every variety and style of font serves a unique purpose. If there are no images alongside your written content, your font is the visual interpretation of the written text. Make sure that it compliments your overall brand and design of the hedge fund pitch book.
• Imagery – Directing the reader’s eyes to your message is critical to getting your point across. It helps to make sure that they understand the intended message as quickly as possible. Consider your audience’s visual literacy when designing your pitch book. Make sure that the visual cues you choose are suitable to their cognitive characteristics.
• Color – Color is a powerful element as it can enhance learning by up to 75% and increase understanding of a matter by up to 73%.

While warm colors convey optimism, enthusiasm, and energy, cool colors communicate professionalism, peace, and dependability. It is imperative to incorporate the appropriate colors into your hedge fund’s pitch book to captivate potential investors’ attention.

Wrapping Up

To pique your potential investor’s interest, your hedge fund pitch book must narrate a compelling and persuasive story about the fund. You should organize the information rationally and address the frequent questions your investors might have in mind about a specific opportunity proactively.

If a deck leads with the fund’s most predominant aspects and skills that are most relatable to the potential investors’ needs, the presentation will be a home run. This approach helps your audience grasp the core fundamentals: the what, who, when, how, where, and why, as well as allow them to understand the subsequent detail with ease.

Finally, when you speak to your audience, make sure to sharpen your edge with key differentiators and don’t forget to flaunt your competitive advantage.

If you have any questions about building your hedge fund deck, don’t hesitate to reach out to our pros here.

About the author

Leslie Morales is the CEO of Launch Module and a Certified High Performance Coach. Learn more about Leslie and her team on our About Us page.