No earthly material sparks as much intrigue, excitement, and greed as gold.

The enduring allure of gold quite literally moves mountains, shapes empires, and changes the course of history. Brave men and women don’t risk life and limb to stake remote claims for iron ore. There has never been a copper rush.

Famous gold rushes of the 19th and early 20th centuries shaped modern North America. Wealth generated from gold exploration built the cities of Denver and San Francisco. Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and Wells Fargo are direct consequences of the California Gold Rush. The Klondike Gold Rush contributed enormously to northern settlement in both America and Canada.

Since 1800, North American mines have produced at least a billion ounces of gold worth an estimated $2.5 trillion today. USGS surveys estimate that there’s another billion ounces of gold left to be extracted in the United States alone. Another $2.5 trillion of wealth just waiting to be found!

It’s no wonder that gold exploration continues to attract such interest from investors big and small. Gold exploration not only offers high upside to compensate for its high risk: it tells a great story. An S&P 500 index fund is a safe investment. Mineral exploration is an *exciting* investment.

Let’s explore how junior mining firms—of all kinds, not just gold mining—can leverage brand storytelling to grow their investment base. We’ll take a look at some of the unique attributes that defined prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush, relating their stories back to the modern minerals investor. Then, we’ll interpret those stories into clear insights that will help you build an effective and honest brand story.

The audacious optimism of gold prospecting

It is difficult for a modern person to understand the call of the Klondike.

In a three-year span from 1896 to 1869, roughly 100,000 people attempted the perilous trip to Yukon territory, braving deadly mountain passes and crossing thousands of miles of rugged country for a chance to strike it rich. Hundreds, if not thousands, died on the journey. Tens of thousands never made it to Dawson City, turning back or settling on the route. Of the tens of thousands who did make it, only hundreds would strike it rich. Nearly all of these newly wealthy individuals would die penniless due to bad investments, extremely high costs while mining, and general reckless spending.

Giving up the comforts of home, sacrificing your health and happiness, and ending up flat broke, if not dead, in some mining town at the edge of civilization. That’s a real gold rush story.

By the time of the Klondike Gold Rush, there had been half a dozen rushes throughout North America in the past fifty years, all of them widely publicized. While not everyone understood the harsh realities of gold prospecting, many did. Yet people went all the same.

Call it blind greed. Call it the pioneer spirit. At its core, gold prospecting is an adventure, a gamble, a pursuit. There’s a certain type of person attracted to such pursuits. It’s the type of person that modern mining operations want as an investor.

Gold speculation as a lottery ticket?

The odds of making money off a gold rush seem depressingly low, but it’s a matter of perspective.

Taking the Klondike as an example, if 30,000 people made it to the gold fields and 300 turned a significant profit, the odds of success, even if short-lived, are about one in a hundred.

The odds of winning the Powerball lottery are about one in 300 million. If you bought a ticket every single day, it would take about 8,000 years for your cumulative odds of winning to equal one in a hundred.

The extreme difficulty, risk to health and safety, and time commitment of gold mining compared to lottery ticket buying make this far from an apples-to-apples comparison. It does help put things into perspective for modern mining investment. It’s said that one in a thousand mining exploration projects result in significant production. This means a junior mining stock is 300,000 times more likely to hit a jackpot than a lottery ticket.

Investing for the frontier spirit

The American frontier famously attracted a certain type of individual. “Individual,” in fact, is a great word to describe pioneers. Through a combination of need, desire, and sheer audacity, pioneers left the relative comfort of the settled East for the wild and deadly West.

Today, there are no unexplored frontiers short of outer space and the depths of the ocean. Did the frontier spirit die along with the Old West?

From revived interest in homesteading to bold “moon shots” in the tech sector, it would seem that the frontier spirit has evolved rather than perished. We see its continued legacy in tech startups, from Google to SpaceX. The desire to see what’s beyond the next ridge seems to be intrinsic to humanity.

Pioneers still live among us, eager for exploration. Today, they are less likely to strap their belongings to a mule and trek across a mountain pass to satisfy that explorer’s spirit. But some of the same personal and economic motivations that inspired such perilous journeys in centuries past remain in effect today. If economic desperation drove people to a frontier lifestyle, mightn’t slow wage growth, high cost of living, and the allure of investment create the same sort of economic crucible today?

Gold fever: the virulence of excitement

Gold fever refers to a sort of madness caused by the presence of gold. It’s the dark, irrational side of mineral speculation. The colourful reputation of mining towns was indeed well-earned: murder, theft, sabotage, and betrayal were all commonplace during gold rushes. We see the same sort of salacious tales play out in today’s volatile crypto markets: prominent figures dying under mysterious circumstances, huge stores of wealth vanishing overnight. Gold fever is, in most ways, a bad thing.

But it’s a real phenomenon. Behind the rational, or at least understandable motivations of each miner who set out for the Klondike, there was an undercurrent of mania. All those deeply individual pioneers were subject to a compelling form of group-think that we’ll call gold fever. How many would-be prospectors would have turned back long before reaching Dawson were it not for some irrational motivation, some momentum carrying them forward?

For all our innovation, the human organism remains an animal—a social animal, at that. Our psychology remains vulnerable to mass hysteria, to gold fever.

Much of the value of gold is fundamentally irrational in the first place. Its market value far exceeds its direct utility. Were it not for its non-reactive nature (thus, its permanence) and attractive appearance, gold would be just another metal. No better than zinc, or tin, or iron. For all the greed and criminality associated with gold fever, it’s a valuable motivator. The right brand story can foster gold fever, intensifying interest and galvanizing action in an investor audience.

Investor personas: who you need to reach and what motivates them

As we get ready to dig into actionable brand storytelling strategies, let’s consider the types of investors mining companies want to woo. The following investor personas describe the attitudes, wants, and needs of a range of likely mining investors. Keep these personas in mind when developing marketing assets. Note that not every story told will resonate with each investor type. (Click to enlarge investor persona graphic below.)

The Gamblers: Day Traders and Swing Traders

Whether they hold or fold, go all in or simply ante up, some investors just like to gamble. Gold rushes attracted more than just miners and shopkeepers. Mining towns became home to some of the most infamous names of the Wild West, like Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, and “Poker Alice,” who made their living at the card tables. These men and women sought to make a fortune off mining, but indirectly. Why toil in a mine or on a placer claim if you can make more money at the saloon?

Gold rushes created the perfect environment for gamblers. The high cost of living paired with high income and few avenues for saving and investment fostered a highly liquid, high-velocity local gambling economy. Skilled gamblers could extract a great deal of wealth in short order, moving on to the next town before the boom ended or they ran out of willing opponents.

Today’s day/swing traders carry some of that freewheeling gambler DNA. To these investors, junior mining stocks are a game to be played, not a company to be supported. Any investing in the junior mining sector is high risk, but for the gamblers of the world, that’s part of the appeal. There’s no need for these investors to parse arcane drill reports or time commodity markets. They’re looking to exploit short and medium-term movements in stocks regardless of their underlying fundamentals. A gambler is attracted to action: highly liquid stocks with plenty of volatility. The bigger the swings, the more exciting—and dangerous—the game. Their only loyalty is to the jackpot: gamblers will enter and exit stocks quickly with little regard for business operations.

In the end, the gambler is more of a scavenger feasting on market movement than a pillar of your investor base. It is good to remember that not every gambler is a skilled gambler. Though you can’t trust a gambler to stick it out long-term, they do keep money moving through your company.

Do’s and Don’ts of Attracting Gamblers

Do

---

• Focus on the speculative aspects of junior mining investment
• Accept day traders for what they are and what value they deliver: trading volume and liquidity, not long-term investment in the sector
• Use interest from day traders to attract other types of investors, building a diversified investor base

Don’t

---

• Expect day traders to become a stable investor base.
• Try to woo them with highly technical drill reports and geological surveys
• Fixate on the swings. Day traders leverage volatility and so can you.

The Prospectors: Speculative Investors

Without prospectors, there are no gold rushes. Prospectors are the ones who see past the great risk inherent in mining, focusing instead on the tremendous opportunities available.

A prospector is optimistic by nature but not naive. They are often aware of the fact that any given claim is worthless until proven otherwise and that most will never prove it. A prospector knows that the motherlode is out there waiting to be found. Someone is going to find it! Why not them?

As an investor, the prospector isn’t fazed by red numbers in their portfolio. One day, they think, one of those red numbers will turn green. So green, in fact, that it will wipe out every loss accrued. Prospectors balance facts and feelings when evaluating their investments. They want strong drill results, exciting developments, and frequent communications. They may also base their decision-making on more personal factors: familiarity or personal interest in the region or general excitement about the specific sector the prospective mine will serve. Consider a renewable energy enthusiast who believes in the long-term value of rare earth minerals, lithium, or base metals like copper.

Just as a prospector during a gold rush might work several claims, so will a speculative investor diversify their investment across multiple promising projects. They accept huge losses most of the time in the hopes that every now and then, they’ll make it all back with interest. They may hope to meet or exceed the earnings of a more conservative investment strategy through a couple of big wins among many small failures.

A prospector shares the same adventurous spirit as the gambler with a key difference. The prospector is a believer. Where a gambler might ignore drill results and operations reports, a prospector pores over them in great detail. Prospectors might ride a stock they believe in all the way to zero, holding their position even when most indicators tell them to sell. A gambler will never make that kind of sacrifice. There is a difference between wishing to profit from mining and wishing to be involved in mining.

Both the gambler and the prospector are speculative investors. Of the two, only the prospector truly cares whether an exploration ever becomes a mine.

Do’s and Don’ts of Attracting Prospectors

Do

---

• Focus on your vision. Why will your project succeed where so many others fail?
• Balance technical and emotional storytelling in your reports and press releases.
• Polish your brand marketing: presentation, logo, website – they will look at those.

Don’t

---

• Stop updating your social media and newsletter: Show them that their investment is hard at work.
• Forget to engage the person. Use webinars, Q&A sessions, and mailbag features to make prospectors feel like they’re part of the team.
• Commoditize yourself. Prospectors need to believe in your project, not just in the sector as a whole. Keep it specific and personal!

The Tycoons: Hedge Funds and Institutional Players

Much of the wealth realized during gold rushes ended up in the hands of tycoons.

These business leaders were the ones offering financial and business services like banking and mail to mining towns. Others manufactured and sold goods for miners. Both Levi Strauss & Co. and Wells Fargo emerged as industry leaders by virtue of their success during the California Gold Rush.

Tycoons had the capital, vision, and infrastructure to benefit enormously from gold rushes without exposing themselves to the same risk as miners did. A tycoon can use its substantial capital and financial sophistication to buy up and control the entire swathes of the gold rush economy, either by providing goods and services or by directly investing in the most successful claims and miners.

Today’s gold rush tycoons are the established institutional investors. These funds have enough capital and enough diversification to make otherwise catastrophically risky plays palatable. They typically have major stake in large mining companies, and may view investment in the junior mining sector as a form of vertical integration, owning current production while speculating on future projects.

Just as tycoons in history both exploited and enabled gold miners, providing necessary services and supplies at sometimes ludicrous prices, today’s institutional investors facilitate retail trading. Their high trading volume ensures liquidity in the junior mining market. Institutional investment in a junior mining stock can intrigue retail investors, causing an influx of interest. This follow-the-leader effect can be amplified when a junior mining stock finds itself included in a mining sector ETF. While holdings in an ETF belong to a major fund, it’s often retail investors that fund the ETF itself.

Tycoons take an analytical approach to business. They are not motivated to invest by personal reasons. In this sense, they can be as fickle as gamblers, though far more focused on long-term performance and business fundamentals. While attracting their attention is crucial for junior miners, institutional investors can wreak havoc on stock prices if and when they choose to sell their position.

Do’s and Don’ts of Attracting Tycoons

Do

---

• Understand your role in a larger portfolio. Junior mining is at the extreme end of the risk/reward spectrum. Don’t pretend to be anything you’re not!
• Provide rich and robust technical reporting. This is a highly sophisticated investor base and they want all the details.
• Tailor marketing efforts to specific accounts. Each tycoon is worth a great deal versus each retail investor. Going the extra mile to customize your approach is worth it.

Don’t

---

• Try to dress up discouraging results. Tycoons are too savvy to be distracted by fancy documents and flashy designs.
• Ignore broader market trends. When evaluating opportunities to secure institutional investment, look at the biggest picture possible. Sometimes it isn’t the right time to pursue big investors due to macro factors.
• Be afraid to plan an exit. Institutional investors want to know how they can realize returns on their position, regardless of whether the project succeeds. Show institutional investors that you have contingencies to mitigate the risk of their investment.

The Pioneers: Growth Investors

Pioneers want more than just money. It takes a certain type of person to leave behind the comforts of home for an uncertain life on the fringes of society. It takes another kind of person to do so before everyone else, before the promise of riches make such a journey more appealing.

Pioneers represent today’s growth investors. This type of investor looks to get in on the ground floor. They aren’t speculating or gambling. Where a speculator focuses on exploiting swings in stock price, the growth investing pioneer wants to realize wealth through the company’s success. A speculative investor might be attracted to cryptocurrencies or other highly volatile stocks. A growth investor is attracted to vision and hopes to contribute to the success of a soon-to-be-great company. They’re believers who want to build something.

Pioneers will invest long-term in companies they believe have a chance to be the next big thing. They’ll suffer losses and slow growth, often for years, if the company shows strong growth indicators (market potential, quality of management/leadership, strong positioning) and a clear path toward major profits. Despite employing a long-term, more fundamentals-based approach to investing, pioneers expose themselves to the same levels of risk as other investor profiles. For every Tesla or Nvidia, there’s a Peloton or Zoom. The consequences of growth investing may take longer to materialize, but they are every bit as dramatic as speculative investing.

In some cases, the pioneer spirit borders on obsession. Many business firms suffer from a syndrome called ‘founderitis,’ where the company’s founder is too emotionally attached to the business and cannot make clear-headed decisions about its future. Pioneers believe in a grander vision than their peers. While growth investors are rational actors, the human element cannot be discounted. Perhaps inclined toward optimistic analysis and blinded by visions of a golden future, pioneers must be mindful of their own biases. Once they buy, they’re far more likely to hold. At least some of that instinct to hold is sentimental in nature.

Do’s and Don’ts of Attracting Pioneers

Do

---

• View pioneers as allies and partners. As these investors are less speculative in nature, it’s a good idea to foster a sense of community and camaraderie among them.
• Find intersections of interest. Pioneers want to connect with their investments. Foster that connection by going beyond financial reports. Connect your project to history, people, places, and ideals.
• Go big-picture with your brand storytelling. This investor group is motivated by vision, so provide one. If a pioneer believes in your long-term plan, they will hold through thick and thin.

Don’t

---

• Shy away from reality. The pioneer wants to believe in your project. Belief and trust are two sides of one coin. By being honest, realistic, and relatable, even when the news is bad, you can foster trust among this audience.
• Be afraid to get passionate. Some investors just want the facts and figures. Not pioneers. They want to see your legitimate passion for mining, because it mirrors their own.
• Forget to check in. Growth investors will appreciate a personal touch. Keep your pioneers in the loop and try to personalize their investment experience. Listen and respond to feedback from this engaged audience.

The Outlaws: Contrarian Investors

Wherever there’s wealth to be had, there are those who will seek to earn it dishonestly. Frontier gamblers might ride the ragged edge of the law, but only a select few became outlaws. Outlaws of the Old West thrived in the boom-and-bust cycle of gold rushes. Exploiting fragile supply lines and insecure banking systems, outlaws made their fortunes through robbery, extortion, scams, and even mercenary work.

In the context of investing, the “outlaws” we’re talking about aren’t violent criminals. Instead, they’re daring outsiders. An outlaw investor is one who sees the way the crowd’s going and chooses to take their own path instead.

Some people zig when everyone else zags. It’s not always wise, but contrarianism can be an effective investing strategy. The investors who substantially beat the market are often the ones who plot their own course; market leaders be damned. After all, the market doesn’t beat itself. The average investor is the market, in some sense. In order to achieve outsized returns, an investor must differentiate their strategy from the mean.

A typical investor might see bad drill results or a shakeup in leadership at a mining firm and sell their position. They value certain fundamentals. They know a mine without gold isn’t a mine at all. They know that in mining, skill and experience are everything. Instability in leadership is a bad sign.

The outlaw investor sees the same stock and buys more. This isn’t a blind bet or a needless risk. They look beyond the easily understood negative narrative and see something more. Maybe the shakeup in leadership introduced youth and vitality to an experienced leadership team. Maybe that youth and vitality will encourage more daring exploration, leading to unexpected returns. Perhaps they contextualize those poor drill results and find that they’re limited to one segment of the claim being explored, while other more promising segments are still awaiting results.

Whatever the case may be, an outlaw investor sees opportunity where other investors see only risk. More than that, they love it. They love being right when others are wrong. These mavericks operate on wit, will, pride, and perceptiveness. It’s not enough to merely come out ahead; outlaws want to win big.

In some cases, this can look like gambling. Taking a big risk on a short-term position is one form of outlaw investing. In other cases, it can look more like growth investing. Outlaws hold long-term positions that defy general market sentiment, hoping to prove the doubters wrong.

Do’s and Don’ts of Attracting Outlaws

Do

---

• Get weird and audacious. Outlaw investors target meme stocks and novel cryptocurrencies. These aren’t stuffed suits in board rooms. Informal and irreverant plays well with this audience.
• Be open-minded. These investors may have unexpected motivations and investment strategies. Within the bounds of ethics and good taste, don’t be afraid to explore novel methods of engaging with your stock.
• Share technical information in a variety of ways. This is a diverse investor audience with widely ranging levels of sophistication. Providing reporting at different levels of complexity will help investors of all kinds understand your company and projects.

Don’t

---

• View volatility as a negative. Outlaws are distinct from but similar to other speculative investors. Where many investors shy away from extreme volatility, many outlaws see it as an asset, using volatility as leverage to accelerate other investment strategies.
• Rely solely on conventional metrics. Outlaw investors want to feel like they’ve got the inside scoop. They may be interested in novel and unusual reports that provide a different perspective on the project.
• Forget who you’re dealing with. Outlaws are contrarians. They love taking the dissenting view. They love being right when everyone else is wrong. Produce against-the-grain content that aligns your business with their contrarian views.

Brand storytelling for junior miners

Traditional marketing focuses on products and their features. Magazine ads from the 1950s exemplify this product-focused approach:

Chocolate, nougat, and nuts. Those are the product’s features, and that’s why you want to buy one.

When we look at marketing from the ‘50s, we quickly see how out of date this type of messaging is. Yet when many of us think about marketing today, we rely on the same outdated product-first strategy.

Brand storytelling flips marketing on its head. Instead of product-first messaging, brand storytelling is all about the customer and their journey. In the context of investor relations and marketing for the mining sector, the ‘customer’ can mean many things. Investors, workers, government employees, local residents, indigenous groups…every shareholder has their own story. Brand storytelling is a tool mining companies can use to shape those narratives to their benefit.

Marketing with a plot: making the customer the hero

Brand storytelling places the customer at the centre of their own story. This is fundamental to story-based marketing. Where conventional marketing puts the company in a starring role, brand storytelling uses the customer as the star and the product as a supporting cast member.

For example, we can imagine two video ads for a running shoe company. The conventional ad focuses on new technology used in their latest model that makes their shoes lighter and more breathable than ever. The storytelling ad follows a father’s weight loss journey. In a voiceover, the father explains how a health scare made him want to prioritize his health so he can be there for his wife and daughter for years to come. In a montage, we see the father’s struggles on his weight loss journey, from early morning jogs to weight training after work. Though the product features in every shot, it’s not the focus of the story. The ad concludes with a happier, healthier looking man enjoying time outside with his young family.

The conventional ad format has its benefits. It’s generic enough to reach a wide audience and its message is simple: our shoes are lighter and more breathable. The storytelling ad is more specific. This risks alienating audience members that can’t relate, but that risk comes with reward. For those who can relate, the ad resonates emotionally. It reaches a deeper part of the psyche than a product-focused ad ever will. Instead of stating specific product benefits, a brand story implies a wide range of both tangible and intangible benefits.

Why junior miners need to tell a better story

Junior mining companies struggle to tell compelling stories to would-be investors, despite sharing characteristics with many successful high-risk investment opportunities. Biotechnology is every bit as boom-and-bust an industry as mining exploration, yet the biotech sector experiences higher trading volume and more investor interest than similarly valued mining stocks.

An analysis of over 300 Canadian junior mining and small cap biotech stocks on the TSX and TSX:V reveals that biotech companies have higher mean and median trading volumes despite near-identical returns, higher volatility, and higher maximum drawdown than the mining sector. In short, small cap biotech fundamentals are even more volatile than the mining sector, but they receive more investor interest.

Metric	Small Cap Canadian Biotech Stocks	Canadian Junior Gold Mining Stocks
Mean Return (Daily)	0.325%	0.295%
Mean Volume	122,963	107,166
Median Volume	19,800	17,500
Daily Volatility	14.4%	11.2%
Max Drawdown	91.5%	87.1%

Biotechnology companies generate excitement through innovation and novel new products. They attract investors because of their potential to change the world. Consider vaccine manufacturer Moderna. In 2018, their market cap sat around $7.5 billion. At its peak in 2021, the company was valued at over $100 billion. The right kind of innovation at the exact right time allowed this small cap pharmaceutical company to explode in value, delivering massive returns to early investors.

A gold mine can produce significant monetary value, with major projects capable of delivering biotech-sized returns to early investors. But mines aren’t innovative, at least not in the same way that biotech is. Biotech companies have a relatively straightforward narrative for attracting investors: if their product pans out, it will change the world in meaningful ways. Without that world-changing angle, junior miners need to get creative.

Building better brand stories in mining

Now that we understand brand storytelling and likely investor personas in the mining sector, let’s apply these concepts. The following ideas target specific concerns and challenges faced by junior miners, offering actionable suggestions on how to reframe the industry for a wide range of possible investors.

Highlight innovation in the mining sector

Perhaps the single biggest reputation issue faced by mining companies is environmental impact. From news stories about tailings pond breaches to scary photos of massive open pit operations, there’s a lot of negativity broadcast about the sector. Mining is fundamentally non-renewable, carbon intensive, and disruptive to local ecosystems, but it is also necessary. One of the only ways for miners to become cleaner and greener is through technical innovation.

Investors may be intrigued by innovation in mining exploration for a variety of reasons. Some will appreciate the way small footprint drilling or biogeotechnology reduce the environmental impact of exploration. Others will be intrigued by advancements in geological modeling and imaging, improving the accuracy and speed of site assessments.

Then there’s today’s hot topic in tech: AI. Mining exploration firms that integrate AI to improve predictive modeling and rapidly assess sites benefit not only from improved efficiency, but also from improved perceptions. Call it a trend, call it a bubble: right now, AI is the buzzword. Miners who make use of it should certainly highlight that fact.

This type of messaging might resonate most with The Tycoon, The Pioneer and The Outlaw.

Action items

• Showcase your high tech innovation. Not just the what but the why: how does this technology make mining better for investors? For society?
• Lean into trendy technology like AI (if you’re using it). There’s nothing wrong with capitalizing on a trendy idea, provided it’s done with due care.

Connect mining to social good

Many mining companies report dissatisfaction with ESG initiatives, not out of a lack of care but because they don’t always feel meaningful. Once ESG becomes an expectation rather than a value add, a box to be checked to continue operations, it ceases to move the meter from a marketing perspective. Today’s mining world may lack differentiation from a social good perspective, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

From gold to lithium to metallurgical coal, miners can make a case for the sheer social necessity of their industry. It doesn’t have to be environmental in nature, either. In the midst of a housing crisis, miners can talk about how their exploration supports the construction sector. In an era of high inflation and diminishing wages, mining companies can showcase high-paying job opportunities in otherwise economically depressed regions.

Then there’s the argument used in Canada’s oil and gas sector, the concept of ethical oil. Despite ongoing efforts to decarbonize, the world still runs on oil. Would Canadians prefer that oil be extracted at home by Canadian companies employing Canadian workers? Leaving domestic resources in the ground means purchasing them from someone else. Often, that means buying materials from problematic countries like Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia.

It’s more than a matter of ethics. When it comes to critical metals, it’s a matter of security. Supply chain breakdowns during COVID proved the value of on-shore industry.

These angles demonstrate how ‘social good’ can extend beyond a conventionally liberal definition. Across the social and political spectrum, there are compelling ways to frame mining as not just necessary but desirable.

This type of messaging might resonate most with The Prospector and The Pioneer.

Action Items

• Explore benefits across multiple dimensions: social, economic, environmental. Break out of the ESG box and get creative.
• Find the social good story that resonates, both with you and your anticipated audience. If you believe it, so will your audience!
• Don’t be afraid to highlight different social good stories for different audience segments. Consider segmentation along political and socioeconomic lines. What can you say to intrigue conservative middle class men? Liberal upper class women?

Engage with less informed investors

Like any specialized sector, mining has an existing base of highly informed investors. These are the typical targets for junior mining companies. As such, marketing materials in the mining sector tend to be jargon-filled and dense.

This thoroughness is surely appreciated by experienced investors, but it may prove intimidating to a broader, less informed retail investor market. When mining companies assume that their addressable investor market already understands the sector, they limit their potential audience size considerably.

We encourage mining companies to employ what we call the roast chicken content strategy. Imagine each primary deliverable—a quarterly report or major press release, for example—is like a roast chicken. Your main investor audience digs in and takes what it needs, but there are leftovers to be repurposed. From that big, bulky primary resource—the chicken—we can create many smaller resources. Process some leftovers into simpler, snack-sized offerings. Boil the bones of the report down into stock—something lightweight and easily understood like an infographic or short explainer video.

An added benefit of providing simpler reporting for a less sophisticated audience is that it improves the ability to translate resources into new languages. Translating a 10,000 word PDF report into ten languages is prohibitively difficult. Translating the 500 word summary report into ten languages is relatively easy. This can help junior miners reach international investors more effectively.

Don’t be afraid to go back to basics. If nothing else, producing content covering mining investing fundamentals can demonstrate your expertise to search engine algorithms, improving your visibility online while potentially reaching an as-of-yet untapped investor audience.

This type of messaging might resonate most with The Gambler, The Pioneer and the Outlaw.

Action Items

• Take your existing content calendar and see how you can expand it by repurposing major deliverables.
• Consider ways to share key findings across different media. What can become a LinkedIn infographic? How can you share your drill results on TikTok?
• Don’t neglect international audiences. Use smaller, simpler deliverables that can be translated into a variety of languages. If possible, consider adjusting content based on cultural contexts. Perhaps your Chinese resources get some design and messaging tweaks to correspond with Lunar New Year?
• Consider how you might pitch your company to a complete novice investor. This exercise can help you identify bloat in your marketing materials while simplifying your pitch.

Build a community, not an investor base

Junior miners struggle to hold onto investors. Any high volatility stock will attract speculation, which can exacerbate volatility further. Fundamentally, a junior mining stock is not a ‘set and forget’ investment for most people. It’s a challenging dynamic that puts the interests of junior miners (stable capital base, reduced cost of capital, consistent support throughout each phase of the project) against the wants of investors (a highly volatile speculative investment vehicle).

Junior miners who work on building community experiences can bridge the gap between their interests and the interests of their investor base. Community experiences encourage long-term investment through two social principles. First, it turns a transactional experience into a social one. Humans are social animals. Investor forums, workshops, newsletters, and other community-minded resources create a sense of community. Our human social drive makes it harder to leave a community than to exit a stock market position.

The second principle is FOMO: fear of missing out. By introducing exclusivity—investor-only access to high quality resources or intriguing events—a greater share of investors will hold their position to maintain access. It’s a small but potentially powerful value add for investors.

This type of messaging might resonate most with The Gambler, The Tycoon and the Outlaw.

Action Items

• Implement community features for investors such as specialized newsletters, private forums, meet & greet events (in person or digital) and even contests and giveaways if applicable.
• Use welcoming and inclusive language. We want investors to feel like part of a team. Focus on turning your investor from an exploiter to an ally, committed to your shared success.
• Leverage FOMO by highlighting exclusive events and content for investors.
• Promote the community itself, not just your business. Remember that the customer (investor) is the hero in a brand story. Highlight interesting characters in your investor base. Tell their stories as a means to make your own brand more relatable.

People-first: let your personality shine through

Building a community seems simple on paper, but most companies will fail to make it happen. Even if a company commits vast resources to community-building, it may not have the intended effect if the effort is perceived as inauthentic.

**Investors, even institutional investors, are people. And people buy from people.**Too many companies present themselves as faceless enterprises. Sure, they may have a leadership page on their website highlighting their experience and credentials. But is that really people-first? Does it feel authentic?

Consider the cryptocurrency market. Cryptocurrencies start without any intrinsic value. A new cryptocurrency is worth nothing. Passionate, sometimes idealistic, and frequently irreverent crypto market makers leverage social media to build communities and engage would-be investors in an authentic way. Their vision and enthusiasm turn coins with no intrinsic value into highly lucrative investment vehicles, and it’s not done through dry press releases and jargon-filled reports.

Effective marketing in mining may mean adapting a more human tone. Like it or not, the business world has changed. Billionaires share memes on Twitter and get into debates with their followers. AI tools spit out bland and inoffensive content in seconds. Today’s audiences crave more than corporate-speak from businesses. If you want to get more investors, you need to get real.

This type of messaging might resonate most with The Outlaw, The Prospector and the Pioneer.

Action items

• When appropriate, use natural and human language. Try to reduce the amount of corporate speak and jargon used in social communications. Leave that in your press releases!
• Make your team more accessible to investors. Provide avenues for outreach and interaction.
• Share your passion! A great teacher can make students fall in love with a subject. A great business leader can inspire passion and commitment from their investors!

Junior mining has an exciting story to be told. To excite, intrigue and engage investors, you have to look beyond conventional marketing methods. With a brand that makes the investors’ wants and needs the hero of the story, mining companies can realize better financial stability and connect with a more diverse and global investor base.

Junior miners dream big, even if their projects start small. Their marketing should be just as bold and audacious.