Historically, private equity and venture capital have not been great at marketing, due to the conservative and highly regulated nature of the industry. However, “really good marketing shortens the first-point-of-contact-to-close-of-business, whether that's on the funding or founder side,” says Laurel Mintz.

In this episode of The Corner Series, McGuireWoods’ Geoff Cockrell welcomes guest Laurel Mintz, the CEO of Elevate My Brand, a digital and experiential marketing agency, and general partner at Fabric VC, a venture capital and private equity firm. 

Tune in to hear Geoff and Laurel discuss the importance of branding and marketing in the world of private equity and venture capital, including how to target the right audience, the need for consistent communication and messaging, and finding the right mix of omnichannel platforms.  

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This podcast was recorded and is being made available by McGuireWoods for informational purposes only. By accessing this podcast, you acknowledge that McGuireWoods makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in the podcast. The views, information, or opinions expressed during this podcast series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect those of McGuireWoods. This podcast should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state and should not be construed as an offer to make or consider any investment or course of action.

This is The Corner series, a McGuireWoods series exploring business and legal issues prevalent in today's private equity industry. Tune in with McGuireWoods' partner Geoff Cockrell, as he and specialists share real world insight to help enhance your knowledge.

Thank you for joining another episode of The Corner Series. I'm your host, Geoff Cockrell, Partner at McGuireWoods. Here at The Corner Series, we bring together thought leaders and deal makers at the intersection of private equity and healthcare. We end up talking to a lot of bankers, private equity investors, sometimes attorneys. Today's going to be an interesting one. I'm thrilled to be joined by Laurel Mintz, the CEO of Elevate My Brand, and also a leader in an investment firm as well. But Laurel, can you spend a minute and just give a little bit of your history and background, because we're going to be talking about the intersection of marketing and sales, as you think of branding, which touches a lot of industries, my industry, private equity investors, everybody.

Yes, all the things as they say. Thank you so much for having me, first and foremost, big fan. I've been going to your conferences for many, many moons now. Robert Fox actually was at my house for brunch yesterday, so very much in the McGuireWoods ecosystem. Elevate My Brand are a digital and experiential marketing agency, so that means we work on web, content, social, advertising and creative. And then on the experiential side, launch events, trade shows, conferences, and national field marketing for brands like GEICO, Verizon, Meta, Sprinklr, Zendesk, and then smaller brands as well. And then to your point, as a spinoff of that, we've recently launched Fabric VC, which is our venture arm, which is very exciting, investing in the companies that we see every day.

Laurel, in your work in advising private equity funds, let's narrow the universe there a little bit, a lot of what they are doing is elevating their brand broadly, but a lot of what they're doing is also cultivating relationships with a lot of people. How do you think about that intersection a little bit?

Well, I have to say it's refreshing when brands, like our companies, like McGuireWoods really take marketing seriously, because I will say historically, private equity and venture has not been great at marketing, because it's such a conservative industry and highly regulated as you well know. So, we've typically come in and done some of the more, I would say, operational work, like creating great newsletters and content and building a consistent cadence of communication, to your point, to build those relationships both on the funder and founder side. But it's really been only recently, I would say, where the digital universe is catching up to private equity. But really it's all about building that funnel, so that when companies are looking to invest in specific categories, that there's this ecosystem that they're building that's a natural fit. And we always say, really good marketing just shortens the first point of contact to close a business, whether that's on the funding or founder side.

Let's take a private equity fund, they of course have a webpage that's facing out to the world. If that's all that they have, what are some of the first categories of things that they should be thinking of?

Well, first, they need to understand from a branding perspective, how they want to be seen in the world. We have attention spans of gnats these days. We have a few seconds really to capture someone's attention. So, I would say the first, most important part of the conversation is around branding and messaging. So being really clear on who you are, how you speak about your brand, who you're focused on, and making sure that that comes across in a few seconds on that homepage. And really that's that high level branding and messaging conversation, which usually isn't something that teams have really thought through. So oftentimes we'll take our private equity or venture clients through an exercise to really hone in on that messaging piece, because getting that tight and right is so critically important.

From there, once you have done the soul-searching and thought of who you are, who you want to be in the world, what are the pathways that they should consider elevating their brand in?

Yeah, so oftentimes we talk about branding and messaging as the squishy stuff. It's the touchy-feely, the I think, say, feels. But in order to really build a brand, a firm the right way, we've got to back that up with data. So instead of just resting on the creative components, which are super important, we need to back that up with data. So at Elevate, we go through what we call the roadmap process, and that is where we plug in all of the platforms of a private equity or venture firm, so their social channels, their website, et cetera, but equally as importantly, Geoff, we ask them who they believe they're up against, like; who are their direct and aspirational competitors, or equals in their space. And then we take those firms and the firm that we're focused on and we plug them into this listening software. And that tells us where they lie in the ecosystem from a comparative analysis perspective.

And that honestly is what we call being center brained. And it's the most helpful piece, because while you can be inspired by creative, and you absolutely should be in the marketing realm, you need to be driven by data. And especially as a venture funder, a private equity fund, the data really, really matters. And most of the time the GPs, the leaders in the firms are not the most creative. That's not their bailiwick. And so we need to make sure that we come to that conversation with the creative piece, but also backing it up with metrics and numbers, which is the language that they speak more fluently.

So a private equity fund is presenting to a couple different markets. They are wanting to be known out in the world by investors, so limited partners who would be investing in their fund and having a presence out in the world can help in that. They also are targeting owners of companies, which is a very different pathway. In your discussions with both venture and private equity investors, do you hear them articulating that difference and how do you wed those two very different markets together?

That's exactly right. It's a bifurcated content and communication approach, and it's really that next step of understanding, "Okay, this is who we are and how we are speaking to ourselves, but more importantly, what do those different audiences want and need from us? How can we really be thought leaders in this space?" Because it is a very nuanced industry and heavily relationship driven. So we want to make sure that we are, quote-unquote, "marketing," but that it never really feels salesy, to our pre-conversation, Geoff, it needs to feel really authentic and attract that right audience.

So the first step in doing that, just like the first step in branding and messaging, is going down the path of understanding who that target audience is. So going through a personification exercise where we give both of those audiences, and oftentimes there's multiple layers within each of those audiences, giving them a real humanized approach, so that then as we move past the branding and messaging point, we can talk to how do we create great content or how do we create great events both digitally and experientially that speak to both of those audiences?

So I would suggest if anyone's listening and hasn't done a personification exercise, think about who these audiences are and then give them a real name. Really go down both the demographic and more importantly, the psychographic approach to why someone picks up the phone or sends you an email and makes a buying decision or a hiring decision within your category. Really understanding what those trigger points are and aligning those with the branding and messaging for each individual firm, because each firm is, again, very nuanced and differentiated, will help you hone in on who that right target audience is. And then the data piece that we mentioned with the roadmap piece helps us to understand where that audience is and how we can reach them.

I do a lot of coaching of folks here at the law firm of attorneys and partners who are similarly trying to build their brand out in the world and develop relationships. And one of the ways that we talk about that exercise is endeavoring to be a value added partner to folks that you're ultimately wanting them to trust you with their legal work, but being a value added partner to them over time, which means having a whole series of beneficial points of contact with them, where what we are doing is helping them, solving a problem, giving them information, and folks can wrap their heads around that. But one of the things that the attorneys struggle with is it's one thing to reach out and connect with someone, maybe you take them to lunch, do something, and you can think of the next thing you want to do, but it gets harder over time to have continued value added points of contact. And the corollary to that theory, of course, is that every relationship is either being nurtured or slowly going into the mist and they struggle with what are those next points of contact. When you're thinking with and advising a private equity fund, how do you advise them of what that series of points of contact can look like that'll be beneficial?

That's a great question. One of the first things we always talk about are; what are the top three to five questions that you get as a firm every single day from either the funders or the founders that you're trying to speak to? And then we build a content series around those different questions. So, it's not like a retail brand where someone lands on a website and you're giving them a discount code to sign up to their newsletter, but newsletters and content in general are still absolutely critical touch points. And it's also really important, just from an educational standpoint, that firms understand it's not really the wild, wild west anymore. We are very intentional and firms should be very intentional about developing a drip marketing campaign that, to your point again, adds real value and context for what these founders and funders really need to understand about the ever-changing landscape of private equity and venture.

But it's also important to understand that there are different layers of touch points. So, social media is a great option. Content marketing, content aggregation platforms, if you've not tried that, is an amazing tool, especially for private equity and venture and for law firms as well. Advertising is still very relevant. There's a multitude of omnichannel platforms and we need to find the right mix of all of those in order to, again, shorten that first point of contact to close a business or hire a firm. And unfortunately, I'm sure you've seen this, these are old school industries, and so it's very challenging to get firms over the hurdle of understanding the value of marketing and really digging into it, because they don't want to seem aggressive and they don't want to be overwhelming and a turnoff, frankly, to the founders or funders that they're targeting.

I do believe that that is evolving and shifting. And again, back to the earlier point I made, we back that all up with data. So instead of a GP coming to us and saying, "Well, I don't think that anyone's reading my newsletter," or, "I don't think that newsletters are important," we can actually come back to them and share with them, "Well, your newsletter has grown X percent over the last year. Your open rates are Y, and that is exactly what we need to see." Or, "Compared to industry standard, you're sending less consistent emails, your open rates are below average, and so this then is the go forward plan accordingly." So again, it's that balance of creative and data, and I really do believe that we're seeing an evolution, a digital evolution as it relates to these firms around their marketing, and I'm very happy to see that in such an antiquated market.

I'm trying to figure out if this exercise of marketing and branding, I think everyone knows it's important, but is it getting easier or harder? At one level, I could see these different channels and electronic formatting of all of these things makes it easier to do and do at scale, but at the same time, all of these different pathways can be overwhelming and makes it harder and more troubling. It does make it easier, but it makes it easier for everybody else and your competitors. And so, you're fighting into a much more crowded space of noise. Is this important exercise getting easier or harder?

That is a very loaded question, because I still think that the heritage brands, the heritage firms out there are still doing business as usual, but you have younger firms that are evolving, that have significant AUM that are coming in and understand the power of digital. So it's this weird bell curve, so to speak, where you've got younger firms that really understand the power of marketing and are leaning into that, and you've got these heritage, older firms that are still very hesitant to double click, so to speak, into that world. So I don't think there's a one size fits all.

One of the things that we do with all of our clients is take them through a digital mind map exercise, and that piece is really educational and it empowers the leaders of the firm to really truly understand the power of marketing. That is usually a super eyeopening experience, because again, the I thinks, I feels are so prevalent when you've been in the same industry for so long, sometimes it just takes that 30,000 foot view for a firm like Elevate to come in and share with the powers that be how and why digital is so critically important. And the other piece is per platform, for example, social media, you put a post up, only 1 to 2% of your audience ever will see that post. So there's this sentiment that if I'm posting every single day or posting three times a week, that that's overwhelming. But when you look at it from the actual numbers perspective, you're just scratching the surface of audience who actually sees any piece of that content. So, usually it's about education and empowerment, but again, I think it's this really interesting bell curve that we're seeing younger firms adopt earlier and starting to take over more traction in the market versus the more heritage firms.

In doing my development training, I've started to pull together why I think people struggle and I talk to them about it, and I'll tell them on the front end that this exercise is hard, but it's not hard in the way that you think. It's not hard like trying to lift a car over your head. It's hard in stringing together a thousand steps and doing this long enough for it to work. And when I see people stumble, they stumble because they can't sustain that effort long enough for it to work. Do you see similar dynamics in the clients that you're advising?

100%. We are in this omnichannel environment, so you can't just pick one channel and double click into that and double down on that. It's really going broader versus going deep in all these different channels, and that definitely can be overwhelming from a human capacity standpoint. If you don't have someone who's dedicated to marketing or a team even that's dedicated to marketing at your firm, I think it can be very overwhelming, because it's not the core nature of these firms, especially again, the heritage ones, they're so relationship driven, one-on-one, and that is still very relevant and important as are live events, but it's really about differentiation. But yeah, to your point, it can be overwhelming and a very heavy lift, but that's why we have a job.

As you look at, in particular, a private equity fund, if they're not doing well, what are the nature of the mistakes they make?

Not doing well in terms of marketing? What are the mistakes they're making? They're silent, so they don't do newsletters, they aren't building up their newsletter audience, they aren't creating that multi-level, omnichannel touchpoint. They're not building content that allows them to really be thought leaders in their space. They're not speaking on panels, they're not coming on podcasts like this to preach what they teach, and everyone has to be their best advocate at this point. You can be elegantly loud, as I like to say, you don't have to be screaming from the mountaintops, but if you're silent, there's going to be someone, a younger firm that's going to take over and lead the pack. So I think that that's the thing that we see is a little bit too much of a conservative approach to their marketing. It's really because of lack of understanding of how digital holistically works.

So again, that's why so much of what we do is education and empowerment, and we can see these light bulb moments when we're talking with these GPs and their teams, when they're like, "Oh, I had no idea. I'm reaching," let's just call it for easy numbers, "1000 people through my newsletter, but my open rates are only 10%," which is significantly below industry average. "What that indicates is that either my content isn't landing, my list isn't clean, or it hasn't grown significantly, so we've got to make some tweaks and changes." And it's all an evolution, as you know, digital is an ever expanding landscape. There's new platforms and new channels, but I always recommend that they at least do the basics; make sure your website is set up appropriately and is sticky, as we say, so that people are looking at different pages and really digging into the team, the people, your approach, what your differentiation is, content that you're building to add value. There's really sophisticated and elegant ways to do marketing, but I think that, again, because it's such an old school industry, the thought around marketing was that marketing was a bit of a dirty word back in the day, and I think that that is significantly shifting. The industry has not 100% caught up on that yet.

Is there a pretty wide diversity in the amount of investment that firms will make towards this exercise?

Oh, definitely. But again, in that first session that we do, that digital mind map, we talk through what we call our marketing map. So it's the number one question we get is, "Well, how much should I be spending on my marketing?" And so it's got to be a combination of the comfort level, in terms of expense for the firm, and then that comparative analysis tells us how much the firms that you're going up against for deal flow and for funding, what they're spending within each category. So again, it's taking that art and science approach to understanding what's right for each independent firm.

When you look at engagement rates, you described it as open rates on things that are sending out, but I'm sure there's other ways that you can tap into levels of engagement. What are some of the drivers of higher engagement? You mentioned the cleanness of the list, which that's a math problem which I can wrap my head around, but what other areas cause low engagement or can drive better engagement?

I would say lack of branding consistency. Consistency is the word of the day, honestly. We have so many firms that bring us on that they do a newsletter every now and then. There's no cadence, there's no consistency, there's no marketing plan, there's no marketing calendar. So it's like the spray and pray model is what we often see with firms that aren't elevating their brand appropriately through their marketing initiatives. But again, we come in and we say, "All right, here are the five baselines that we need to fix. Is your website technically set up appropriately?" So for example, we had a firm that came to us and they had what are called toxic inbound backlinks. So they thought that they had all this great traffic coming to their website, but most of it was coming from click farms overseas. That does not bode well when you want to make sure the numbers are clean that you're looking at, so you can build that funnel.

So let's say, again, you have 1000 people landing on your website, is a minimum of 10% or 1 to 2%, depending on the volume, converting into that next phase, which would be a phone call or signing up for your newsletter or clicking through to a piece of content? So that's one aspect of making sure, from a technical perspective, the site, for example, is set up properly, but ultimately it comes down to consistency across all the channels. And to your point earlier, it's a heavy lift. It takes a lot of commitment and budget and time, and that's why firms like ours are such a great support, as an outside consultative capacity, to make sure that the firms can focus on what they do best and we can help elevate their brands externally.

Laurel, I'm a development guy, so I could talk about this forever, but I think we'll call it an episode there. I really appreciate you joining us. This has been a ton of fun, super insightful.

Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us on this installment of The Corner series. To learn more about today's discussion, please email host Geoff Cockrell at gcockrell@mcguirewoods.com. We look forward to hearing from you. This series was recorded and is being made available by McGuireWoods for informational purposes only. By accessing this series, you acknowledge that McGuireWoods makes no warranty, guarantee or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this installment. The views, information, or opinions expressed are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect those of McGuireWoods. This series should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed, professional attorney in your state, and should not be construed as an offer to make or consider any investment or course of action.