As businesses expand, so do their marketing strategies. They need to sharpen, adapt and scale to match the pace of growth. Carne Group knows this well.
Since founding in 2004, the management company, which provides fund management solutions to improve operational efficiencies, has expanded from its team of five in Dublin into a global presence, with offices in eight countries and a client base of more than 650 asset managers and institutional investors.
Naturally, with such growth, the demands on marketing leadership will shift.
Recognising this, Carne created the new role of chief marketing and communications officer and appointed Noreen Biddle-Shah to the post in November 2023.
Her appointment reflected Carne’s commitment to not only refreshing its marketing approach but also embedding it more deeply within the firm’s overall growth strategy and client focus.
Nearly two years later, Biddle-Shah continues to adapt marketing strategies with the aim of ensuring alignment between marketing activities and the organisation’s wider strategic objectives.
A fresh take on an existing role
Starting a new role at a new company can be daunting, as there’s a natural drive to prove oneself. However, stepping into a newly created role can feel even more intimidating. When a new position is introduced, scepticism often arises within the organisation about whether it’s truly necessary.
Fortunately for Biddle-Shah, she says she was able to approach the challenge with hope and optimism, as the board was the driving force behind the creation of the role.
The board recognised it had a brand issue. While Carne Group was very well known within a niche network of asset managers, the firm’s ambition was to go wider. The board understood that this newly created role could help facilitate that, Biddle-Shah notes.
“The sales team might think we don’t need a new role, but we are ambitious, and we want to go wider,” she says. “The board fully understood that. The calibre of the board spoke about how communication and marketing can help move the needle. They made life easy for me.”
While the leadership team recognised the need for an expanded marketing role, Biddle-Shah notes that there was a greater need for education further down the ranks.
She explains that many people simply don’t have the time to “come up for air” and fully grasp how marketing works.
“Marketing often suffers from a bad reputation,” she explains. “There are still people that think we pack bags at conferences and organise client lunches. Changing that narrative is very difficult. That’s always been an issue in every workplace.”
As a result, Biddle-Shah recommends marketers embark on a journey to bring along those who often have negative perceptions of the role. She also emphasises the importance of marketers being “people people” to make this shift in understanding smoother.
However, she cautions marketers to be patient with this process. “There comes a time when great things start to happen in an organisation after a strategic marketer has been in place and it tends to be around the 12-month mark. It takes time,” she says.
To earn the trust of other employees within the organisation and demonstrate the value of marketing, Biddle-Shah advises marketers to deeply understand the organisation, including the internal and external audiences, and adopt a strategic, collaborative approach. Ultimately, marketers should aim to be the insightful voice at the table, offering valuable advice to the organisation, she says.
“You have to start delivering on the metric side and proving yourself again and again. Once you do that, you are in a good place. It is a lot of hard work at the beginning, but it gets easier,” she adds.
This approach ensures that teams within the company feel confident in its marketing efforts, she explains. One of the great things about marketing and communications, she notes, is that when marketers excel, the impact is highly visible.
For example, effective marketing results in the company being featured in the right publications, saying the right things and receiving inquiries from clients interested in thought leadership and wanting to schedule calls.
Even though being noticed creates a buzz and is really rewarding, Biddle-Shah acknowledges that it also creates pressure to ensure the organisation’s efforts are not “one and done.” At this point, marketers need to be consistent and assess whether their approach is working or if a pivot is needed, she says.
Adding to this pressure is the growing expectation for more from marketers than ever before.
“You can’t do the same thing again and again. You need to be creative,” she says. “We are now in year two and that is what we are doing. We had a great year one, but we can’t do the same thing in year two. The messages and everything will have to be different because the world is changing.”
Accounting for growth
Not only do marketing strategies need to evolve year-by-year to avoid repetition, but they also must adapt to reflect the company’s growth. As Carne Group has transitioned from a startup to a well-established company, Biddle-Shah notes that it moved from experimenting with various ideas to see what works, to being a more mature organisation where teams have a clear focus.
However, the entrepreneurial spirit remains strong, and the company is always ready to pivot and innovate when new opportunities arise.
Knowing what the company is good at is important, but even more crucial is ensuring that the whole company knows this and where the focus should lie, she notes. To do that, Biddle-Shah recommends clearly communicating this vision with every employee.
“Helping to articulate that strategy and communicate it through townhalls, writing it down and making sure the business always went back to ‘is it relevant to Carne’s strategy?’ really helped change how people think and how they work,” she says.
She notes that the 100-day plan when she joined resulted in a persona-mapping from the brand, the product and recruitment perspectives. As a result, everyone was clear on the business’s priorities, including what it wanted to sell and who the right partners were, internally and externally.
It’s important to keep regularly reviewing this strategy and adapt it based on market conditions, she adds. For example, this year, Carne is taking a more granular approach, after recognising developments within the pension industry and the huge push for private markets offers a great opportunity for the company.
“There is a regular monthly sales and marketing forum. We know what the big picture is, what the strategy is,” she says. “We have a really good idea of what we are doing for the rest of the year. The subject might change but it doesn’t matter. It is a great way of working.”
Keeping clients central
Even though the focus might adapt, Biddle-Shah maintains the importance of keeping close to the client and internal teams.
“At the moment, we are very relationship focused. We get great feedback and testimonials, and we want to use and organise all of that into more actionable insights and data,” she says.
She explains that her focus on deepening relationships is supported by her background, having started in PR before transitioning into marketing. This provided Biddle-Shah with a skill set from both areas, helping her realise that both roles are equally important and serve the same purpose.
This understanding is why the chief marketing and communications officer position was created, as there was a clear, shared recognition of the need to consider the entire client experience.
She adds that this approach aligns with the values of Carne’s CEO, John Donohoe, who is a firm believer in the power of partnerships.
“He wants to get to know our clients inside and out,” she says, “His family had a hardware business, and that was always about the client. It was about loyalty and knowing what they need.”
This is where the marketing team truly shines, as their mission is to bring the brand to life and build on what’s already in place. If the CEO is already focused on client centricity and the value of partnerships, the marketing team can leverage these existing principles and amplify them further, according to Biddle-Shah.
She says marketers must understand from the outset how they will engage with clients to gain insights rather than assuming what they are thinking to build strong relationships.
In addition, she recommends that marketers adopt a more holistic approach to be able to identify what they can do to be more relevant in what they offer to clients. In Carne’s case, Biddle-Shah acknowledges that the firm must take a more scientific approach, such as embracing digitalisation, utilising AI and incorporating more data scientists to improve client interactions.
“There are lots of things you can do to offer the clients a better experience. Standardising client experience is the next step in the CMCO remit. It’s great to get this underway, working with all main partners across Carne,and, of course, keeping clients at the centre of it all,” she says. →
The next chapter
When Biddle-Shah joined Carne, she brought fresh ideas to revitalise some of the existing marketing strategies. Nearly two years later, this mindset hasn’t changed, and Biddle-Shah continues to reassess and adapt existing strategies.
For example, she says she would like to enhance email marketing and content creation. While email has been effective for Carne, Biddle-Shah says she wants to make sure this strategy is optimal.
As a result, there is a significant project underway to segment the distribution list by persona and by product to allow the marketing team to create more targeted and customised content. The goal, according to Biddle-Shah, is to ensure that no one unsubscribes.
Meanwhile, event-based marketing strategies have long been a cornerstone of Carne’s overall approach, with collaborations like Funds Congress alongside consultant PwC and legal firm Dechert.
“It has huge recognition within the industry. We have always been very lucky from an event perspective. That was the thing I needed to worry about the least,” she notes.
The company also hosts educational webinars, an area Biddle-Shah identifies as one where the strategy could be refined as she aims to introduce more rigor around topic selection.
Specifically, Biddle-Shah says all webinars should align with Carne’s strategy to ensure they are purposeful and contribute to the company’s overall business objectives, rather than being held just for the sake of it. “Focus is your friend, so don’t get distracted,” she says. “We make sure it all comes back to Carne’s strategy.”
Events have emerged as the key tool to meet wider business objectives for Carne. In addition to more refined webinars, Biddle-Shah says she also plans to host more exclusive, smaller events in the second half of the year. These events will seek to establish Carne as thought leaders, which is one of the firm’s business objectives, according to Biddle-Shah.
“We want to be the premier brand and bring it all together between the asset owners, the fund managers and all the stakeholders in between,” she says.
It’s important for Carne to be seen as a thought leader because the business exists to serve the asset management community and help them transform how they operate their fund operations.
“There are plenty of reasons to outsource. Asset managers can be smarter, use the right talent and take that off their fixed balance sheet,” Biddle-Shah says. “They are the big things we are looking at and that is all in our thought leadership platforms.”
To achieve this broader business objective, the industry needs education on what a management company like Carne is, as it often remains hidden within fund operations, Biddle-Shah says.
“The ‘ManCo’ industry is still a bit of an unknown, so we are building the education side. What is a management company? People assume we are like a fund admin – we are not. We are certainly part of the fund ecosystem though and work closely with fund admins,” she says.
As a result, Biddle-Shah says she is focusing on targeting the C-suite to educate them on how Carne’s services can provide value. However, she also highlights that teams within Carne need to be educated about the challenges asset managers face, so the marketing team can better understand the key priorities and how the company can address those issues for clients.
She emphasises the importance of working closely with the business development team, looking at private markets and ETFs. Importantly, in a world dominated by profits and loss, being mindful of industry cost pressures and macro issues helps to make sure marketing aligns with client pain points.
Showcasing the value
Given the time and resources that goes into marketing strategies and the ongoing need to demonstrate the team’s value to certain individuals, metrics are crucial. That’s why Carne is placing a strong focus on them, according to Biddle-Shah.
“Marketing and comms can sadly still get the rep of being wishy washy. We want to show the exact impact,” she notes.
Carne’s marketing team has developed dashboards to track PR, client emails and events. As a direct result, the team can show how many hundreds of thousands have engaged with the firm whether through attending an event or downloading content, Biddle-Shah explains.
“We also have impact,” she adds. “Where we have warm leads or have engaged or request a call back. We are able to measure that and keep track of that on a monthly basis.” She also highlights the importance of involving other teams in this process. That’s why she participates in a quarterly board report, collaborating closely with the global executive committee to demonstrate the direct impact.
She also ensures that the business development and product strategy teams are included in the sales and marketing forum to ensure there is a master dashboard to track every metric that can be obtained, such as website traffic and media clipping.
However, Biddle-Shah doesn’t want to stop there. She believes this will improve even further once client experience is integrated into the metrics, which will require more extensive data collection and the use of digital tools.
She adds that it’s not only important to collect this data but also to present it in a clear way that communicates what it actually means as “that dashboard helps us to tell a story.”
That story demonstrates the tangible, measurable benefits of marketing and the power of an approach that focuses on aligning marketing with the company’s wider strategic goals.