My aim here is to give you a comprehensive guide on establishing thought leadership in the alternative asset investment industry. I provide you with practical steps, industry insights, and step-by-steps of what to do and when.

Introduction

As fintech companies jostle to stand out in a crowded market, thought leadership can become a beacon that attracts investors and builds a resilient brand. 

In this report, I  will guide you through the process of creating impactful thought leadership content, highlighting best practices and offering practical steps to get started with your own thought leadership pieces. 

Why Thought Leadership in Alternative Asset Investment is Important

When thought leadership in alternative asset investing is genuinely done with the intention of helping your ideal clients, it transcends just creating “content”. 

Seriously high quality thought leadership pieces fundamentally shape how your brand is perceived and how your ideal clients feel when they hear your name or see your branding. 

Done well, thought leadership pieces have huge potential to be shared widely and picked up by the media for some valuable PR, so it’s really worth spending time and effort on getting it right. 

Clients of mine have had thought leadership pieces picked up by Forbes and have even been invited to become regular contributors on the Forbes Council. This has been huge for their reputation, lead generation, and growth. 

The evolution from just making-content-because-I’m-supposed-to, to putting sincere time and effort into saying something new, useful, and helpful is crucial for fintech companies who are looking  to establish a lasting presence and strong, profitable, credibility in the market.

Enhancing Brand and Credibility with Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is a strategic tool that does much more than share hot takes. Done properly, it positions you or your firm as a trusted source of knowledge and commentary in the alternative asset investment sector. 

This perception is extremely important in a field where trust and expertise are paramount before investors will consider letting you steward hundreds of thousands of their pounds or dollars or yen. 

Articulating forward-thinking ideas and providing insightful analysis is more time consuming than churning out short form content. 

BUT, it means you can stand out from the bland, recycled content that so many of your competitors are churning out.

Creating premium thought leadership pieces in alternative asset investing means attracting not only attention but also respect and trust from potential investors and industry peers. Win-win. 

Here’s How to Actually Do It

1. Do a Brand Audit

The first step in establishing your own alternative asset thought leadership is to audit what you’ve already got.  

This involves an in-depth analysis of your current market position, brand perception, and the effectiveness of previous marketing efforts. 

Assess how your brand is currently perceived in the context of alternative asset investment. Identify strengths to capitalise on and weaknesses to address. 

This audit will provide a clear(er) picture of where your firm stands and where there is potential to grow through thought leadership.

How To Conduct a Brand Audit

To do an in-depth analysis of your current market position, brand perception, and the effectiveness of previous marketing efforts, there are several tools and professionals you can use. 

You can pick and mix between these depending on your priorities and available resources:

Market Research Tools and Analysts:

You can use market research tools like Nielsen, Kantar, or Gartner to gather data on your market position relative to competitors. This costs money, but will save you a lot of time and simplify the process. Ain’t that always the way. 

You might be able to do this in-house, or you might wanr to hire market research analysts to interpret this data, offering insights into where your brand stands in the alternative asset investment industry. Hiring a specific analyst on contract might be an even more convenient, time-saving choice than using tools like the ones above.

Suppose your firm is less recognized than competitors in certain HNW investment circles. Market research might reveal this gap, helping you to strategize on increasing visibility in these areas by creating thought leadership content that addresses the interests and concerns of this niche group.

Brand Perception Surveys and Brand Consultants:

Carry out surveys or focus groups with current clients, potential investors, and industry experts to gauge brand perception. Tools like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics can be useful for this.

You can also hire brand consultants to analyse this feedback. They can identify how your brand is perceived in terms of reliability, expertise, and innovation.

If feedback indicates that your brand is seen as knowledgeable but not very innovative, you might focus on showcasing more innovative investment strategies or new technology adoption in your communications. 

Of course, it’s also possible that you don’t want to be perceived as innovative. You might want to be perceived as old school and super sturdy and predictable.

In which case, great, feedback and market research has confirmed that you are doing this well. 

Social Media Analytics and Digital Marketing Specialists:

You can use social media analytics tools (like Hootsuite Insights or Google Analytics) to assess the reach and engagement of your marketing efforts.

Digital marketing specialists can analyse this data to determine which types of content resonate most with your audience.

Analysis might show that your articles on emerging markets generate more engagement. This insight can guide you to produce more content in this area.

Ok – we are still on tools and techniques for carrying out a brand audit and we are nearly at the end of that section now. 

SWOT Analysis with Strategic Planners:

You can also conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to get a comprehensive view of your brand’s position.

Strategic planners or business analysts can facilitate this analysis, helping to identify areas of strength (like a strong network of industry contacts) and weaknesses (like a lack of presence in certain investment forums or at large industry conferences).

Content Analysis:

I highly recommend that you do this once a year. Review your past content, including white papers, blogs, reports, social media, etc. 

Tools like BuzzSumo can provide insights into the reach and engagement of your content.

Identify which topics or formats have been most effective and which have not resonated as well with your audience.

What do the popular pieces of content have in common? Are they advice pieces, analysis pieces, product summaries, personal anecdotes?

The insights you get from this exercise will set you up for success in creating the most impactful and far reaching piece of thought leadership that you can. 

By using the right combination of these tools and professionals for your firm, you can gain a really detailed understanding of your brand’s current standing in the alternative asset investment market. 

The brand audit and analysis stage  is an important first step for developing a laser-focused approach to strengthening your brand and addressing any areas of weakness through your thought leadership pieces.

Now You Should Have: A Brand Audit Checklist for Alternative Asset Thought Leadership

✓ Completed Tasks

Market Position Analysis

• Conducted market research using tools like Nielsen, Kantar, or Gartner.

• Hired market research analysts or a contracted professional to interpret market data.

Brand Perception Evaluation

• Done a few surveys or focus groups with clients, potential investors, and industry experts.
• Used tools like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics for gathering feedback.
• Hired brand consultants to analyze feedback and understand brand perception in terms of reliability, expertise, and innovation.

Social Media & Digital Marketing Analysis

• Used social media analytics tools (e.g., Hootsuite Insights, Google Analytics) for marketing assessment.
• Consulted digital marketing specialists for analysis of content types that resonate with the audience.

SWOT Analysis

• Completed a SWOT analysis for a comprehensive view of the brand’s position.
• Engaged with strategic planners or business analysts to carry out the SWOT analysis.

Content Analysis

• Reviewed past content including white papers, blogs, reports, and social media.
• Used tools like BuzzSumo for insights into content reach and engagement.
• Identified effective topics or formats and commonalities in popular content.

✓ Insights Gained

Understanding of Market Position

• Clarity on firm’s position relative to competitors.
• Identified areas for visibility improvement in specific investment circles.

Brand Perception Insights

• Insight into brand’s perception regarding innovation, knowledge, reliability.
• Decision on desired brand image (for example innovative vs. traditional/sturdy).

Audience Engagement Insights

• Identified which types of content have higher engagement and reach.
• Understanding of audience preferences in terms of content topics and formats.

Strategic Opportunities and Threats

• Identified strengths such as industry contacts or market presence.
• Recognized weaknesses like lack of presence in key forums or conferences.

Content Strategy Foundation

• Insights for creating impactful and far-reaching thought leadership pieces.
• Determined most effective content types for future strategy.

Awesome. On to step two!

2. Develop a Unique Voice

Developing a unique voice is core to distinguishing your content from that of competitors. This voice should be an honest representation of your firm’s expertise, values, and approach. 

Establishing a unique voice can be a real tricky one in the alternative assets and investment space because there is also a strong need to convey professionalism and an amount of seriousness when dealing with such large sums of investor money. 

There are also compliance and legal obligations to consider in all of the content you create. 

Be reassured that it will likely take several iterations and experiments to find the right balance of warmth and professionalism, uniqueness and compliance. 

You don’t have to get it exactly right the first time around. 

The unique voice of your thought leadership content is both about what you say and about how you say it. 

Your unique voice should connect with your target audience, conveying authority while remaining accessible and engaging. This voice becomes the signature of your brand, making your content instantly recognizable and trusted.

How to Develop a Unique Voice in Your Thought Leadership 

Brand Voice Workshops and Branding Consultants

You can conduct brand voice workshops with your team and/or hire branding consultants. Both members of your own team as well as designated branding professionals can guide you in identifying the key characteristics that define your brand’s personality and how it should communicate.

A workshop might reveal that your firm values transparency and innovation. Your unique voice could then be crafted to emphasise clear, jargon-free language and shorter sentences that maximise the transparency and clarity of your brand identity.

Copywriting Experts

ou might want to take on freelance copywriters who specialise in corporate branding and finance. These experts can translate your firm’s values and expertise into narratives that connect with and engage your audience.

If your firm prides itself on in-depth analysis, a (good) copywriter can help create content that showcases this depth while remaining accessible to your target audience and in keeping with your brand voice.

Audience Feedback Tools

Here you can use tools like Google Forms or Typeform to gather feedback from your audience about your content. This can help you understand if your message and voice are resonating with them.

Feedback might indicate that your audience appreciates a more conversational tone, prompting you to adjust your voice to be more informal and relatable. Crack a few jokes. Include some first person stories. 

Competitive Analysis Tools

Tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs can help analyse competitors’ content. Understand what voice they are using and identify gaps or opportunities for your firm to stand out.

If competitors use very formal language, there might be an opportunity to differentiate your firm with a more approachable and engaging voice, maybe using first person or including more anecdotal storytelling. And knock-knock jokes. 

Social Media Listening Tools

You can consider using social media listening tools like Brandwatch or Sprout Social to understand how conversations in your industry are evolving and how you can contribute your voice to these trends.

If there’s a trend towards sustainability in investments, you can align your voice to emphasise your firm’s commitment to sustainable practices in a genuine and knowledgeable way.

Offer some case studies of your ESG policies and projects, maybe host a free webinar on the topic. There’s all sorts you can do! 

Incorporating these tools and/or professionals into your strategy can help you to  develop a unique voice that genuinely represents your firm and connects with your human audience.

 It’s about finding the sweet spot between what your brand stands for and what your audience values and responds to. 

It’s actually pretty difficult to get all of this right, so I invite you to give yourself some grace if you are finding it challenging.

Now You Should Have: Developing a Unique Voice Checklist

✓ Completed Tasks

Brand Voice Workshops and Consultations

• Conducted brand voice workshops with your team.
• Consulted with branding consultants to define brand personality and communication style.

Copywriting and Narrative Development

• Hired freelance copywriters specialising in corporate branding and finance.
• Translated firm’s values and expertise into engaging narratives.

Audience Feedback Collection

• Used tools like Google Forms or Typeform for audience feedback on content.
• Adjusted voice based on audience preferences for tone and style.

Competitive Voice Analysis

• Analysed competitors’ content using tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs.
• Identified opportunities to differentiate your brand voice.

Social Media Listening and Trend Analysis

• Employed social media listening tools like Brandwatch or Sprout Social.
• Aligned voice with industry trends and audience interests.

✓ Achievements and Insights

• Brand Personality and Values Articulation
  • Identified key characteristics of your brand’s personality.
  • Ensured voice emphasises brand values eg transparency and innovation.

Audience Connection and Engagement

• Content lands with your target audience.
• Adjusted tone to be more conversational, relatable, or humorous as needed.

Distinctive Brand Voice

• Established a unique voice that sets your content apart from competitors.
• Incorporated storytelling or first-person narratives to ramp up engagement.

Continuous Improvement and Adaptation

• Open to evolving the voice based on ongoing feedback and industry changes.
• Recognized the challenge and importance of finding the right voice balance.

You’re doing so well! Onto step three. 

3. Engage with Trending Topics

Staying relevant and informative is really important for thought leadership pieces. BUT, not always just so you can jump on the trend. 

What would it look like to write a piece in opposition to a current trend? 

Do you have any ideas around critiquing current trends? What would it look like if you took a current trend, and cross-pollinated it with something that was really popular in 2015, or 1980? 

Thought leadership is an opportunity to get really creative, especially in the ideation stage. 

Engaging actively with current trends and hot topics in the alternative asset investment industry doesn’t have to be too time consuming. 

For example, you could sign up to 3 industry newsletters that you trust and enjoy, and then make a commitment to writing one summary or think-piece of your key takeaways from that week’s industry news, every Friday morning.  

This not only demonstrates your firm’s ongoing engagement with the industry but also showcases your ability to offer fresh perspectives on current issues. 

Through regularly, consistently  contributing valuable insights on alternative asset investing  topics, your firm can begin to lead the conversation.

Now You Should Have: Engaging with Trending Topics Checklist

✓ Completed Tasks

Understanding of Current Trends

• Identified and analysed current trends in the alternative asset investment industry.
•  Explored possibilities for writing pieces in opposition to or critiquing these trends.

Creative Ideation

• Brainstormed ideas to cross-pollinate current trends with popular concepts from past decades, or other industries, or anything cross-polinate-y
• Encouraged creative thinking in the ideation stage for thought leadership content. Have you let yourself / you team get 2% weird and have some fun?

Industry Newsletter Engagement

• Subscribed to at least 3 trusted industry newsletters.
• Committed to weekly reviews of these newsletters.

Content Development

• Written summaries or think-pieces based on weekly key takeaways from industry news.
•  Explored fresh perspectives and unique angles in your content.

4. Building a Thought Leadership Strategy 

A structured approach ensures that your content is not only relevant and engaging but also drives your company’s strategic objectives forward.

Define Your Target Audience and Their Key Pain Points

Start by thoroughly understanding who your target audience is. The actual real human person who you are talking to. 

This could include current investors, potential clients, industry analysts, media or PR folks, or other stakeholders in your space.

Conduct your own market research, use customer feedback, or engage with your sales and customer service teams to identify the specific challenges, needs, and interests of your audience. Your sales team is an AMAZING source of data here because they speak to your actual investors and hear the words they use and the concerns they raise. 

For instance, if your target audience is new investors, their pain points might include a lack of understanding of alternative investments or uncertainty about risk factors.

Aside from your own team, you can use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and CRM software to gather data on your audience’s behaviour and preferences in relation to content you have already released. 

This data can help in creating personas that represent segments of your audience, enabling more targeted content creation.

Identify Topics Where Your Expertise Can Offer Unique Solutions or Perspectives

Here is where you can use your firm’s unique insights, collective experiences, and different pockets of expertise in the alternative asset investment field to address the identified pain points of your audience. 

Maybe you have a founder with some really cool start-up experience, maybe your team is 80% run by women, maybe you were a first-mover in blockchain. 

Put your heads together and have a think about what makes your platform interesting or different. 

Continue this thinking-aloud session with your team to come up with topic ideas that align with your expertise and audience interests. 

For example, if your firm specialises in sustainable investments, you could create content around the impact of sustainability and ESG in asset investment.

Create a Content Calendar to Ensure Consistent and Timely Publication:

Develop a content calendar to plan and organise the publication of your thought leadership material and to save yourself a load of headaches and stress. 

This calendar should account for various content types like articles, whitepapers, webinars, social media posts, ebooks, and podcasts.

It can supercharge the impact of your thought leadership pieces if you align your content calendar with significant industry events, financial cycles, holidays, and other assorted global happenings to maximise relevance and impact. 

For example, schedule content that complements major industry conferences, economic reports, Fed meetings, budget announcements. You get the idea. 

You can use project management tools like Trello, Asana, Notion, or a simple Excel spreadsheet to track content development stages, publication dates, and responsible team members. 

This will help you to maintain a consistent flow of content and ensure that deadlines are met and that you feel as calm and peaceful as possible about the whole thing.

Consider the frequency of your publications. Regular content releases can keep your audience engaged, but the quality should never be compromised for quantity. Striking the right balance is key. 

Plenty of people feel overwhelmed by the endless influx of newsletters into their inbox. Would a fortnightly schedule work better for you? 

Remember, you can always just directly ask your existing clients what they like, what they want, and what they would prefer. 

For instance, a monthly in-depth analysis piece may be more impactful than a weekly superficial update. Are your clients institutional investors looking for deeply researched, data-backed analysis?

Implementing this structured approach requires a deep understanding of your audience, a firm grasp of your company’s unique value proposition in the alternative asset investment sphere, and solid planning and execution. 

By aligning your thought leadership strategy with these elements, your firm can effectively position itself as an authority in the field, contributing genuinely valuable insights and solutions to your audience’s most pressing challenges.

This approach not only elevates your brand’s reputation but also fosters trust and credibility among your audience, paving the way for stronger relationships and business growth. 

Remember, the ultimate goal of your thought leadership strategy is to connect with your audience on a deeper level, offering them genuine value that transcends sales-y promotion and instead builds a foundation for long-term engagement and loyalty.

Now You Should Have: Building a Thought Leadership Strategy Checklist

✓ Completed Tasks

Audience Understanding and Analysis

• Identified and thoroughly understood your target audience.
•  Conducted market research, used customer feedback, and engaged with sales/customer service teams.
•  Used tools like Google Analytics and CRM software for audience behaviour and preference analysis.

Audience Persona Creation

• Created personas representing different segments of your audience.
•  Ensured these personas reflect the real challenges, needs, and interests of your audience.

Expertise and Unique Perspective Identification

• Identified unique insights and experiences within your firm.
• Conducted brainstorming sessions for topic ideas that align with your expertise and audience interests.

Content Calendar Development

• Developed a content calendar for planned thought leadership materials.
• Aligned content with industry events, financial cycles, and significant global happenings.
• Used project management tools for tracking content development and publication timelines.

Content Frequency and Format Decision

• Decided on the frequency of content publication (monthly, fortnightly, an annual ebook, quarterly whitepapers, etc.).
• Considered various content formats like articles, whitepapers, webinars, and podcasts.

Audience Feedback and Preferences

• Gathered direct feedback from existing clients about their content preferences.
• Adjusted content strategy based on feedback and audience engagement data.

✓ Strategic Objectives and Goals

Alignment with Company’s Strategic Objectives

• Ensured that content aligns with your company’s long-term objectives and value proposition.
• Focused on providing solutions and insights to your audience’s challenges.

Authority and Credibility Building

• Aimed to contribute genuinely valuable insights and solutions to audience challenges.

Trust and Relationship Building

• Focused on building trust and credibility among your audience.
• Fostered stronger relationships and business growth through high-quality content.

Long-term Engagement and Loyalty

• Focused on connecting with your audience on a deeper level.
• Offered genuine value that transcends promotional content, building a foundation for loyalty.

5. Using Content Marketing for Your Thought Leadership

This is the cherry on the cake. You’ve diligently researched and created your fantastic thought leadership essay: now you share it with the world.  

Here’s a breakdown of how to implement each step with examples:

Develop a Mix of Content Types

You can use tools like WordPress for blogs, Canva for infographics, and Adobe Suite for more sophisticated design work. For podcasts, tools like Anchor or Audacity are helpful for recording and editing.

You can also engage content creators who specialise in financial content. For instance, a skilled writer can produce qualilty, data-rich whitepapers, while a video production team can create videos that explain complex investment concepts in ways that are fun, high energy, and clear.

Suppose your firm specialises in real estate investments. You could create blog posts about market trends, a whitepaper on investment strategies, and a podcast series interviewing successful real estate investors.

Use Social Media and Email Newsletters to Amplify Your Content Reach

Tools like Hootsuite or Buffer allow you to schedule and post content across multiple social media platforms. They also provide analytics to gauge the performance of your posts.

Platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact can be used to create, send, and track email newsletters.

After publishing a new whitepaper on emerging markets, you can share highlights or teasers on LinkedIn and Twitter. Simultaneously, send an email newsletter to your subscribers with a link to download the full whitepaper.

Collaborate with Industry Publications for Wider Exposure

You can se tools like Cision or BuzzStream for media outreach. These tools help you identify relevant industry publications and manage your communication with them.

Make the most of your professional networks to build relationships with editors and contributors to key industry publications. Attend industry events and participate in online forums. LinkedIn is such a powerful tool for all of this kind of thing. 

If you’ve conducted original research on alternative asset trends, pitch the findings to a well-known financial magazine or an industry blog. A feature or a guest article in these publications can massively boost your visibility and credibility.

The key is to consistently produce high-quality content and use the right mix of tools and channels to distribute it effectively, maximising its reach and impact in the alternative asset investment community. 

Easier said than done, I know. 

Now You Should Have: Using Content Marketing for Thought Leadership Checklist

✓ Completed Tasks

Development of Diverse Content Types

• Used content creation tools like WordPress, Canva, and Adobe Suite, or [insert whichever tools you like best here].
• Produced a variety of content, thinking about the pros and cons of blogs, infographics, and podcasts.

Engagement of Professional Content Services

• Hired professional content creators or agencies specialising in financial content.
• Created specialised content like whitepapers, ebooks, and videos.

Social Media and Email Marketing Implementation

• Employed social media management tools like Hootsuite or Buffer for content scheduling and analytics.
• Used email marketing software like Mailchimp or Constant Contact for newsletter creation and distribution.

Consistent High-Quality Content Production

• Maintained a consistent schedule of producing and distributing high-quality content. The focus here is on quality, not quantity.
• Aligned content production with your audience’s preferences and behaviours.

Conclusion

You made it to the end! Well done. 

Embracing thought leadership is a transformative step for any fintech firm in the alternative asset investment industry.

By implementing even some of the steps outlined in this article, you can up your chances of creating some impactful thought leadership content, creating a lasting impact and some serious gains for your own CV too. 

Following the steps we have gone through in this report and then consistently delivering value through your thought leadership, will not only elevate your brand but also drive fun, interesting conversations in the alternative asset investment space. 

Remember, as cliche as it may sound, thought leadership is a journey, not a destination. 

It requires ongoing effort and a genuine interest in quality.

You can do it!