Archie Graves takes the reins for Brackendale's debut "PR Corner", a guest editorial series for The Line. Here, he draws key parallels between investor relations and PR professionals; both of which must know their audience, do their homework and play the long game to build trust and credibility.
Investor Relations and PR share common goals and characteristics. In both arenas, professionals are tasked with finding the right angles and audience for a story, honing messaging to cut through noise and communicate effectively. Both disciplines require tenacity, patience and knowing inside and out the message you are trying to convey, and, crucially, your recipient.
There are many tactics that these disciplines can employ to attract the attention of a would-be allocator or journalist from catchy headlines, thought-provoking hooks to dazzling statistics. Courting LPs for that first meeting or cold emailing journalists to drive interest in a story can feel a Sisyphean task, one that can only be overcome through determination and perseverance.
Even the catchiest headline, however, will fall flat if it is of no interest to the person reading it. What really separates the bad from the good, and the good from the great, is knowing your audience and offering a tailored solution that actually meets their needs.
Know your Audience
Generic pitches fall flat. It can be all too easy to reduce a recipient to a number. We have all received, and no doubt quickly discarded, countless copied and pasted marketing emails for products that bare no relevance to our businesses. At best, these messages bound across the periphery never to be thought of again; at worst, they can have damning reputational effects, ruling out any possibility of future work.
LPs and journalists alike are inundated with meeting requests and proposals, with hundreds of emails flooding their inbox on a daily basis. With so many sources competing for limited attention, be it a fund allocation or covering a story, neither has the time to decode vague, over-generalised “marketing speak” – they want clear and concise messaging and, most importantly, relevance.
Journalists need to know, above all else, why your story matters to their readers. As a journalist, all you think and care about is your reader, and the best journalists develop an innate sense of what will grab their audience’s attention. As PR professionals, the least we can do is offer the same courtesy.
Rather than just being told how insightful or “market-leading” your client is, PR professionals are tasked with connecting the dots, taking time to research a journalist’s beat and recent coverage and demonstrating why this story, why this client helps them achieve their goals. The objective of a well-aligned PR strategy is to build credibility and expertise amongst investor circles before the fund manager sets foot in the room through targeted coverage, thought leadership and positive exposure in the media.
Do your Homework
In very much the same way, before even approaching an LP, IR professionals should take time to educate themselves on the strategies investors are allocating to, attitudes to risk and the make-up of their portfolio – at the very least. Advice that we often give to clients when helping them to prepare or refine pitches is that, even after IR managers have managed to cut through the noise and secure a meeting, all too few feel like an actual conversation.
What we hear from our LP network is that some GPs are all too ready to plod through their presentations come hell or high water, extemporising responses to unprepared, yet ultimately foreseeable questions. It feels like a paint by numbers exercise and does little to convince allocators of a genuine interest to partner with them. PR and IR managers should be minded that a piece of coverage or a single meeting does not create a relationship, but a sloppily thrown together pitch or outreach email can certainly break one and curtail any future chances of working together.
Thinking Long-Term
Even something as simple as asking questions at the outset of a pitch can help refine an otherwise carbon-copied pitch and make the investor feel its time is valued. This not only serves to avoid misfires, but it also builds credibility, and shows you want to understand their priorities and build a relationship for the long-term. Journalists and LPs value long-term relationships over quick wins or one-time allocations. The goal isn’t just to land a single story or secure a commitment. Every meeting, every well-crafted message offers the chance to show you truly understand the goals of the recipient.
Ultimately, PR and IR share the common goal of cultivating trust, expertise and credibility in their respective markets. Regardless of who is on the other side of the message, success lies not in the volume of outreach or sophisticated marketing speak, but in the ability to demonstrate genuine interest in forming an enduring two-way relationship. In practice, this all starts with doing your homework, knowing your story and aligning goals to cut through the noise. Lest we forget, private equity is a people business, after all.
By Archie Graves, PR & Marketing Manager
