As a digital agency owner that has built several private equity websites for various clients over the years, a large part of my day is spent helping companies go beyond their products and services to bring something far larger to wider audiences:

Their identity.

Branding is about more than just what you do. It goes beyond your logo or the design of your website. It’s that feeling potential customers get when they interact with your business for the first time. It’s that indelible first impression that you make. The one that – if made properly – will serve you both well for years to come.

According to one recent study, consistent branding across ALL channels has a tendency to increase revenues by approximately 23% – regardless of the type of business you’re running or even the industry that you’re operating in. Along the same lines, a full 91% of consumers say that they would rather do business with an “authentic brand” versus a more generic or “calculated” one – underlining just how critical this seemingly-simple concept has become in the modern era.

Startups and capital-hungry companies are well aware of the value and effectiveness of branding on their overall digital marketing efforts. But at the same time, it’s also an area that many private equity firms in particular have neglected over the years. I was working with one PE firm, for example, that was struggling with the alignment of elements around their brand. They were hard-pressed to come up with the visual and verbal identity that they could use to communicate who they were and who they wanted to attract as a firm. Naturally, they were suffering as a result.

One PE client of mine even went as far as to say that their website and brand was a liability to their firm in its then-current form – which is obviously the worst type of problem to have.

Yes, successful branding will require a tremendous amount of effort but at the same time, this is one of those situations where the stakes are too high to ignore. Getting it wrong – or worse, not getting it done at all – could potentially cost your firm thousands or even millions in lost deal flow.

Luckily, getting it right isn’t necessarily as difficult as it may seem. You just need to keep a few key things in mind regarding your firm’s brand and digital marketing platforms along the way.

The Ins and Outs of Private Equity Branding

In the past many PE firms have just not spent the time and/or money needed to properly build their own brands. Those core elements usually lack a critical design aesthetic needed to attract the newer generation of portfolio company founders and stakeholders. Those firms are suffering greatly as a result.

This is because the newer generation of prospective portfolio companies is looking for MORE than just someone who can “write them a check.” They’re far more design and brand-savvy than ever by virtue of the generation they’ve grown up in. They want cash infusion AND a partner who can help them take their own businesses to the next level.

That’s no small order, to be sure.

As a private equity firm, it’s imperative that you understand that a poor brand or website could negatively influence a portfolio company’s view on your own understanding of marketing and sales. If you can’t properly market yourself, how do you prove that you can “talk the talk” AND “walk the walk”?

It’s simple. You don’t.

Your Path to Better Private Equity Web Design Begins Today

Luckily, avoiding these issues is far more straightforward than you may be expecting. It’s a process that begins with an assessment (or, preferably, an audit) of your current situation. Take a look at everything – from your logo to your website to your social media channels and beyond – and rate them as if they were part of another business.

If that wasn’t YOUR website, what would you think of it? If that wasn’t YOUR logo, how would you feel about it?

Next, identify at least five websites that you admire or believe is close to how you want to present yourself. Separate them into categories based on factors like:

• Admiration, or the ones where you can see your own brand being presented in a similar fashion.
• Aesthetics, where you like the visual look of the site – either in part or in total – and that you’d like to align with what you’re doing.
• Action, which is when a website has all the right calls to action that align with your own firm’s online objective.

In other words, you need to get clear on who you are. When there is a gap between who you THINK you are and what your website SAYS you are, this is when branding becomes a liability.

But when those two ideas perfectly align, both with where you are and where you’re going, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish.

When those two ideas align, your website becomes an asset that helps your firm grow through a higher flow of new deals in an instant. It’s a tool used to weed out those clients who are a bad fit for your personality, thus saving both of you a tremendous amount of time.

But it also brings with it the most important benefit of all: it inspires confidence in prospective portfolio companies, which is all you were ever trying to do in the first place.

If you’re interested in learning more about how a new brand or website could dramatically improve your private equity firm, great – I want that, too. At this point, I recommend you reaching out to either myself or a colleague for more information. It doesn’t actually matter to me whether you become a firm of my agency – I still want to help as many people as I can. I want to assist people like you in leveraging the power of the brand and the web to achieve better results and I won’t stop until I do.

I’d also be happy to answer any questions that you may have, either via email or private chat. Please also feel free to leave a comment below.