Why Your Alternative Asset Firm Is Struggling with Content Marketing and How to Fix It
You can get content marketing right and get happy in the process.
Content marketing is a core tool for alternative asset firms, but many (most?) struggle to harness its full potential - mostly because CMOs don’t have enough time, can’t produce enough volume, and struggle to create content that genuinely engages their readers.
In this article I’ll address the primary reasons behind these struggles and offer you solutions to overcome them.
In this article, you’lll learn:
Specifics behind the key challenges alternative asset firms face with content marketing.
Strategies to simplify complex financial content and get it out the door quick and high quality. .
How to do content marketing when nobody is buying / when fear is high (like now).
Content Marketing in Alternative Asset Firms Can Make You A Lot of Money
When you do it well, content marketing can be some of the strongest material you ever make, with some of the highest ROI. Some studies suggest that top-performing content marketing strategies can achieve ROI figures as high as 300% or more.
Quality content marketing lets you demonstrate your expertise without being pushy or salsey. It gives you the chance to offer real value and it doesn’t carry any of the invasive or irritating flavour of targeted ads.
But it’s the very core of the value of excellent content marketing that makes it so difficult to produce: quality content marketing is a high effort asset.
This article, for example, took me just over 7 hours to plan, research, outline, draft, redraft, edit, enrich with images, links, and alt text, and then publish. I am giving it away for free with the express intent that it helps somebody solve a problem, at no cost to them.
Seven hours is a long time to spend on something that I am giving away for free, especially when I invoice my time out at around $350 an hour. It’s a $2,450 investment with no guarantee of return.
But.
I have a high level of confidence that my time, energy, and resource investment in creating this piece is a good one. I am confident for three main reasons.
Data shows that content marketing works
The first is that the best available data overwhelmingly supports the idea that content marketing helps businesses attract quality leads and convert them into happy, loyal, paying clients.
I have over fifteen years of academic training and a strong belief in the value of empirical data and researched based, logical decision making. The data on the effectiveness of quality content marketing is unequivocal.
Content marketing has grown my own business
The second reason I have a high level of confidence is because I have grown my own business from zero to just shy of six figures in ten months, exclusively using content marketing. No paid ads, no social media, nothing else at all. Just the best quality long form content I can possibly make.
Content marketing has made my clients money, saved them time, and grown their brand equity
My business has delivered the highest quality content marketing on the internet for our alternative asset clients. White papers we created for a client over 18 months ago are still bringing in leads and converting today. Weekly blogs for another client have supported over $300,000 additional revenue per annum. Case studies we created for another are helping them bring on board multi-billion dollar financial services enterprise clients. The list goes on.
Learn how task batching can save time and improve content quality for alternative asset firms.
Common Challenges Faced by Alternative Asset Firms
My experience in partnering with my own clients has shown me that there are 6 core factors preventing fintech and investment management firms from fully leveraging content marketing to drive growth in their own businesses.
How many of these apply to you?
You don’t have enough time
You can’t create a high enough volume of content
You struggle to create content that your readers find genuinely helpful or interesting
You don’t know where or how to start; you feel overwhelmed
You’re not sure if your marketing is actually working towards the goals of your business
You have no clear focus or overarching strategy and you’re not able to take consistent action
Related to these core issues are several 2 other factors which are more specific to alternative asset investment and financial services more broadly. These are:
You’re struggling to make content that is interesting whilst remaining compliant
You’re struggling to pitch your content to the right level of expertise; it’s either too basic when it needs to be aimed at experienced investors or it’s too technical and jargon ridden when it needs to be aimed at non-experts.
I’m here to solve your problems, so let’s do that.
The High Cost of Time: How to Create Quality Content in Less Time
One of the biggest problems I hear from alternative asset firms is, “We just don’t have the time to produce quality content.” And, let’s be real, you’re not wrong. Content creation can feel like an endless grind—strategizing, researching, data collection, writing, editing, revising, all before you even think about publishing.
The good news is, there are specific strategies that can help you reduce the time you spend creating content, without sacrificing quality or impact.
1. Batching Tasks: The Productivity Hack You’re Not Using
Let’s talk about batching. And while we’re here, let’s also talk about making multi-tasking illegal. Your team could be MUCH more efficient if they didn’t switch gears constantly. Research shows that multitasking actually makes you less productive. By a LOT.
The brain operates best when focused on a single task. Neuropsychologist Cynthia Kubu shows that what people often perceive as multitasking is actually rapid task-switching, which leads to decreased efficiency and increased errors. Bad news.
Multitasking also hampers your ability to learn and retain information. For instance, college students who multitask while studying tend to take longer to complete assignments and achieve lower grades compared to their peers who focus on one task at a time. This is because the brain's capacity for attention is limited, making it difficult to engage in deeper processing when distractions are present. Also bad news.
Research also shows that multitasking can lead to a major increase in mistakes. For example, emergency medical professionals who multitask may make errors in critical tasks like prescription writing. Yikes. The costs associated with switching tasks can amount to a loss of up to 40% of productive time, especially as task complexity increases.
TLDR: Do not multitask. Ever.
Instead of jumping between different types of tasks (like writing an article whilst editing another, and promoting a third, whilst updating Instagram and replying to an email), try grouping similar tasks together.
For example: If your team is producing multiple blog posts, have one day dedicated purely to research. Another day can be reserved only for writing, and another day just for editing and polishing the content.
When you focus on one type of task at a time, you can get into a flow state, and you’ll get more done in much less time. And it will be higher quality. It also feels better to do compared to multitasking. This is such an obvious win-win-win-win.
This approach doesn’t just save time—it will almost certainly also improve the quality of your content because it reduces the mental fatigue that comes with constant task-switching.
Allocating a block of time to each activity can be tricky though if you don’t have a big enough content team. Very often, I see firms who have a marketing department, but no designated writers or no specialist brand voice expert, for example.
If you want specialists to take some of this demand away from your team and free up your time to focus on strategy or management, we can help.
Key takeaway: Stop torturing your brain with multitasking.
2. Outsourcing Smartly - Why You Don’t Have to Do It All In-House
Following on from the above, outsourcing can be a life-saver, especially when your team is stretched thin. The trick is to outsource smartly—don’t just hire the cheapest freelancer you can find. Look for specialists who understand your industry and can bring a highly specific skill set to your content that you don’t already have in-house.
How to do it well: Partner with financial content writers or agencies who know your space and can produce high-quality, compliant content. You want to do this because it frees up your internal resources for strategy and client relationships while making sure your content marketing is super sharp and massively valuable - because it’s been executed by laser focused specialists.
Bonus tip: You might want to consider outsourcing specific stages of content creation, like editing or research, rather than the entire process. This gives you more control over the final product without burning your internal team out.
3. Use Templates and Frameworks to Work Smarter, Not Harder
Don’t reinvent the wheel every time you sit down to create content. One of the easiest ways to speed up your process is to build a set of templates for different content types. Whether it’s a market report, a blog post, or a client case study, having a framework in place allows you to focus on the content itself, rather than how to structure it.
Pro tip: Develop templates for the core formats you use most often like your quarterly updates or your weekly client newsletters. Then, you can just plug in fresh data and insights into the template without having to start from scratch. This not only saves you time but will give a lovely consistency to tone and structure and UX across your whole content ecosystem.
When you combine task batching, smart outsourcing, and templates, you’ll find that creating quality content becomes less of a time drain, less taxing on your sanity, and more of a smooth, repeatable process.
Scaling Content Creation Without Sacrificing Quality
It’s one thing to produce one or two high-quality pieces of content, but how do you maintain that level of excellence when the pressure is on to scale?
Alternative asset firms, in particular, face a unique challenge because the content needs to be both insightful and compliant, while also engaging a sophisticated audience. But increasing your content volume doesn’t have to mean a drop in quality.
Here are two quick & unconventional strategies to help you scale content creation without sacrificing the quality that sets your firm apart.
1. Repurpose Content: One Piece, Many Uses
Repurposing is where it’s at. If you’re not doing it, you’re causing yourself major headaches that don’t need to be happening. Creating brand-new content from scratch every single time is an inefficient use of your resources. Instead, think of every piece of content you produce as an asset that can be repurposed in multiple ways. This is a game-changer when you need to scale.
For example: A detailed whitepaper or market report can be broken down into a series of blog posts, infographics, and email newsletters. You can even create video content or podcasts based on the key findings and insights in the report. Each of these formats allows you to reach different segments of your audience while minimising the need to start from scratch every time.
A lot of my clients have taken the white paper we’ve created for them and used it to create months worth of blogs, social media posts, and emails.
2. Use Internal Knowledge: Tap into Your Team’s Expertise
Your firm is full of experts—portfolio managers, analysts, compliance officers—each with unique insights into your industry, deal flows, investor relations - the list goes on. But, many alternative asset firms fail to make the most of their internal knowledge bases for content creation. If you want to scale, why not tap into this reservoir of expertise? It also makes your team feel great to be asked for their expert opinion, so this is a double win for team building too.
Practical approach: You don’t need to turn your entire team into writers. They will not like this, and neither will you :) Instead, I recommend you do brief interviews with team members on key topics and turn those into articles, videos, or even a Q&A series. Keeping it light touch reduces the burden on your marketing team but also gives your content authenticity and depth that’s hard to achieve otherwise.
Bonus: What would it look like for you if you held once per month whole-team "content brainstorming" sessions? If that feels too much, what about once per quarter? When you get your team involved in content ideation, you’ll discover untapped sources of insight that can be turned into high-quality pieces without as much additional effort.
Balancing compliance and creativity is key to successful content marketing in finance.
Creating Engaging Financial Content by Speaking to Your Audience’s ACTUAL Interests
Let’s be honest: financial content has a reputation for being boring. That’s a huge problem when you’re trying to engage sophisticated investors or prospects who are inundated with information from all directions.
The reality is that if your content doesn’t capture your audience’s attention within seconds, they’ll move on. Please see scary data re: 96% of all web pages go unread. Yikes.
The challenge for alternative asset firms is making complex, technical content not only digestible but also actually interesting.
Here’s my 2 cents.
1. Tell Stories With Stats to Make Your Data Come Alive
Numbers and data points are obviously core in finance, but they’re not enough on their own to engage people. Human beings connect with stories, not statistics. The trick is to weave your data into a narrative that speaks to your audience’s interests or pain points.
For example: Instead of simply publishing a market report filled with data tables, try telling a story about how a specific trend in alternative assets is affecting a certain type of investor. Relate it to real-world examples or case studies that illustrate the implications of those trends. Suddenly, you’re not just presenting facts—you’re telling a human story that matters to your (human) audience.
Private equity growth story
So, instead of simply stating that private equity investments have seen a 10% growth this quarter, tell the story of a mid-sized business owner who secured private equity funding and expanded her business into new markets, creating 200 jobs in the process.
Explain how this trend is opening doors for similar entrepreneurs looking to scale, and how investors stand to benefit from backing these types of ventures. When you illustrate the real-world impact of your data, you connect the growth trend to tangible, human outcomes that resonate with your audience and make them a lot more likely to take action with you.
Pro tip: Try using the “problem-solution” format in your content. Start by identifying a problem that your audience cares about, then show how your firm or the asset class you’re discussing can help solve that issue. This approach makes the content relatable and shows how you can directly help your good readers to reduce some pain in their lives.
For you, it might look something like this:
Many investors are frustrated with the volatility of traditional stock markets and are looking for more stable options. Enter real estate investment trusts (REITs), which can provide consistent income through dividends and are generally less susceptible to market swings. By diversifying into REITs, investors can reduce their exposure to volatility while still potentially achieving steady returns, offering a practical solution to a common problem.
You get me.
2. Give Real Value by Going Beyond the Basics
One of the most common mistakes I see in financial content is that it’s either too basic or too promotional. Your readers, especially if they’re RIAs, Family Offices, or institutional investors, are looking for real value— insights they can genuinely use, not just generic industry overviews.
Actionable strategy: Go deeper into niche topics that others might overlook because they’re too complicated, or too difficult to do well. Quality will always be recognised, high effort speaks for itself and reflects extremely well on you as a CMO and on your firm.
For instance, as well as talking about alternative assets as a general asset class, you could focus on the intricacies of an emerging or growing asset class or investment region, like private credit or infrastructure investments in Latin America. You can give your readers insights that are unique to your firm’s expertise and experience, and don’t be afraid to include contrarian viewpoints.
3. Use Engaging Formats by Breaking Away from Traditional Written Content
Traditional blog posts and whitepapers are great, but sometimes you need to shake things up to keep your audience interested. Exploring different formats can make your content fresh and interesting, even to people who see it all the time.
Interactive content: You might want to think about using interactive tools like quizzes, calculators, or polls that allow users to engage directly with your content. For example, a quiz titled, “Which Alternative Asset Class Fits Your Risk Profile?” could help your audience understand their preferences while introducing them to asset classes they might not have considered.
I have made a lot of these for my clients and they are great for growing your email list as well as offering something a bit fun and unusual to your leads & clients. Super effective.
Visual content: Don’t underestimate the power of visual aids. Infographics, videos, and even animated explainers can simplify complex ideas and make your content far more shareable. A short, well-made explainer video about a complicated financial topic can often do more to engage your audience than a 2,000-word article.
Animated videos are so effective, again, because they are so much higher effort than just whacking out a chatgpt blog about nothing. We can make animations for you - book a free marketing strategy consultation call here and we can talk about it.
Long-form but varied: Another approach is creating a content “hub” around a specific topic, where readers can choose from different formats—like articles, videos, podcasts, and downloadable guides—to suit their preferred learning style. It gives your audience control and creates a more interactive experience. So you might have a hub or content pillar around your ESG investments, another on your infrastructure funds, and another on how to diversify multimillion dollar portfolios, for example.
By focusing on storytelling, giving your readers real value, and experimenting with fun, engaging formats, you can create really stand-out content. Remember, your audience may be looking for insights, but they’re also human—they’ll respond to content that feels relevant and engaging on a personal, human level.
Stories are what the brain craves and looks for.
Getting Compliance Right Without Sacrificing Creativity
One of the biggest hurdles in content marketing is the need to remain compliant with regulatory guidelines. Often, firms feel like they’re walking a tightrope—wanting to create eye-catching, creative content while ensuring they don’t run afoul of legal restrictions. The result? Content that feels stiff, overly cautious, or downright boring.
We don’t want that.
Here’s how you can stay compliant without stripping the life out of your content.
1. Work with Your Compliance Teams Early to Create Collaboration, Not Bottlenecks
One of the most common mistakes I see firms make is treating compliance as an afterthought. You draft an exciting piece of content, only to send it off to legal and have it come back with half the substance removed. It’s annoying for everyone and it’s a waste of time and effort. The key to avoiding this is to involve compliance teams early in the content creation process. Like, right from the beginning.
Proactive approach: Set up a meeting between your content creators and compliance officers at the start of a campaign. This way, the team understands exactly what’s acceptable and where the red flags are, so they can shape the content accordingly. Compliance becomes a partner, not a roadblock.
Pro tip: Something I’ve seen work really well is when my clients ask their compliance teams to provide a checklist of common issues or guidelines to follow. This massively speeds up the approval process and gives your content creators more freedom within clear parameters that everyone has agreed to in advance. *chefs kiss*
3. Maintain an Educational Focus by Adding Value, Not Hype
When you shift the focus of your content from promotion to education, you naturally sidestep a lot of compliance concerns. Educational content is far less likely to raise red flags than promotional or speculative material. Plus, it aligns with what your audience is genuinely looking for—insight and understanding.
For example: Instead of pushing a specific investment product, you could write an evergreen article on the benefits of diversification in alternative assets. This provides real value to your readers while keeping the tone neutral and compliant.
Long-term gain: Educational content positions your firm as a trusted thought leader, which is far more effective at building relationships than heavy-handed sales tactics.
4. Use Case Studies to Get Real-World Examples Without the Pitfalls
Case studies are a great way to showcase success stories, but they can also be a bit of a minefield for compliance. The key here is just to focus on the journey rather than promising specific outcomes. Think of your case study as pointing out the interesting landmarks along the way on a lovely hike.
Compliant approach: Instead of highlighting how an investment can deliver a 20% return, focus on the process your firm went through to find and analyse the opportunity and then manage the investment. You can discuss the challenges faced and how your team dealt with them. And you can point out what results have been in the past or for certain clients. By focusing on your methodology, you keep it compliant while still demonstrating your firm’s expertise.
Building a Long-Term Strategy and Sticking to It
Many alternative asset firms fall into the trap of sporadic content creation—writing a few blog posts here and there when time permits or when a specific event occurs. Sound familiar? But without a consistent, long-term strategy, it’s almost impossible to see meaningful results.
Here’s how you can build a long-term content strategy and, most importantly, stick to it.
1. Create a Content Calendar so You Can Plan for Consistency
A content calendar is one of the simplest, but most powerful tools you can use to make sure your content marketing remains consistent over the long term. And 90% of firms don’t have one. A content calendar helps you plan ahead, align content with key business initiatives, and avoid the dreaded “we haven’t posted in a while” scramble.
How to build a content calendar: Start by mapping out your business goals for the next 6 to 12 months. Are you launching a new fund? Targeting a specific type of investor? Opening investment opportunities in a new region? Identify these key events and build content around them. Then, break down the types of content you’ll need—blogs, whitepapers, case studies, podcasts, animations, social media posts, videos—and schedule them accordingly.
We can do this for you if you want, book a free 15 minute strategy session here and we’ll chat about what you need and what it makes sense for you to do next.
2. Be Adaptable by Staying Aware of & Responsive to Market Trends
Consistency is important, but so is adaptability. The alternative asset market can shift quickly, and your content strategy needs to be able to respond to new trends, regulations, or opportunities as they arise so that you don’t look out of touch. If you work in crypto or digital assets, for example, this will be a big one for you.
Flexible approach: Keep room in your content calendar for spontaneous content that addresses hot topics or market movements. Maybe add a one hour block once per week to review breaking news and decide if you need to comment on it. For example, if there’s a sudden surge in interest around cryptocurrency or ESG investments, quickly producing relevant content can help you stay top-of-mind for your audience. Being agile means you can take advantage of trends and position your firm as a thought leader in real time.
3. Commit to a Core Message & Brand Voice to Build Trust and Recognition
One of the most important aspects of long-term content success is consistency in messaging. Your audience should be able to identify your firm’s voice, values, and expertise across all content channels. Think of Innocent Smoothies, for example. They do this extremely well, down to the expiry date copy on the bottle.
Attention to detail and consistency builds trust, just like it does between you and any other person you meet. Trust is the foundation; it’s the central thing we come back to again and again in building business relationships with someone. Trust is core for my clients because relationships often matter more than anything else in the investment space.
How to do it: Develop a core message that reflects your firm’s unique value proposition. Whether it’s your deep expertise in a niche asset class like private credit for bridge financing or whether it’s your white-glove, client-centric approach, make sure this message is woven into every piece of content.
Over time, this consistency helps your audience recognize and trust your brand. It is a big piece of work to get this all centralised and agreed on, but the dividends are huge. We can help you do it if you want.
4. Review, Adjust, and Improve
Building a long-term content strategy isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it process. The best in the business build in regular reviews to assess what’s working, what isn’t, and how they can improve. Like a training program at the gym.
Review process: At the end of each quarter, I do a content review session where I analyse key metrics like lead generation, engagement, and SEO performance. I look at which topics resonated most with my audience (you, hello!) and which fell flat. Based on these insights, I tweak my calendar for the next quarter and experiment with new formats or approaches as needed.
Final thought
Don’t be afraid to iterate over time. I know that CMOs are often under pretty intense pressure to get results and to get them yesterday. Your job is hard. But because marketing’s core function is to build trust, it simply can not be achieved immediately. Especially when you’re serving institutional investors, accredited investors, and family offices - there can be a high barrier to working with new fintechs & investment management firms.
I took this screenshot of the fear & greed index on Monday 16th September, and it’s been fear for a year. If things have felt slow for you, or your usual marketing strategies haven’t been bringing you the same results as they did a year ago, this will definitely be a factor in why: When fear is high, trust is low.
The Fear and Greed Index indicates a lasting sentiment of fear
Conclusion
Content marketing can feel overwhelming, especially in an industry as specialised and regulated as alternative assets. But with the right approach, it can be one of your most effective tools for attracting high-quality leads, building trust, and driving long-term business growth.
If you follow these strategies—batching tasks, repurposing content, integrating compliance from the beginning, and committing to a long-term plan—you can overcome the common challenges alternative asset firms face and stay way ahead of the game in content marketing.
So, here’s the final takeaway: content marketing is an ongoing investment in your firm’s success through trust building.
With a strategic, consistent, and adaptable approach, you’ll be able to turn your content into a powerful growth engine that drives results for your company and drives results in your own career for years to come.
We can help you if you’re looking for a specialist partner to create genuinely useful content that speaks to the right people in the right way.
