RAISING MONEY IS ALWAYS CHALLENGING.

If you're trying to raise capital, these 16 things will make the process a little easier:

1.) Be humble. (Investors get approached a lot.)

2.) Pick up the phone and talk to investors as frequently as possible.

3.) Create your own, high quality content and email it to people, making sure you have the back end systems in place to understand who is absorbing what information.

4.) Don’t say the same thing as everyone else in your marketing deck. (And if you only talk about performance, deal flow, and experience you aren’t saying anything original.)

5.) Build marketing materials that look and feel more sophisticated than the competition. (If you are building a marketing deck in power point this is literally impossible.)

6.) Don’t start the marketing process when you need capital. (We all know it takes 18 months to secure a commitment from a large allocator. Why start that process when you need the money?)

7.) Produce a high quality video that explains why someone should invest with you. (Your greatest marketing tool is your passion, not the numbers.)

8.) Layer the distribution of information. (When have you ever seen a paragraph on a freeway sign?)

9.) Build a micro-website and / or digital marketing deck specific to your investment opportunity. (Not only can you navigate through information more effectively, they make you look sophisticated and smart.)

10.) Create a resource where someone can access every single piece of information that they need to give you money. (The diligence process is typically butchered. How information is presented is a huge marketing opportunity.)

11.) Respond to people faster than you think you need to respond to people. (Start thinking minutes, not hours.)

12.) Don’t discount the importance of dialogue in the marketing process. (Marketing materials will never close anything. Human interaction does. Make it a part of the process.)

13.) Find a way to measure the ROI on your marketing spend. (Going forward you can allocate resources towards marketing initiatives work.)

14.) Stop thinking that you shouldn’t have to invest heavily in the marketing process to raise capital.

15.) Focus on developing brand loyalty above all else.

16.) Adopt a multi-channel approach. (Don’t rely on any one channel to source capital.)

(Source: Kyle Dunn for meylercapital.com)