Home > Resources > Category > Uncategorized

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Getting people to ‘like’ you online – endorsement?

January 22, 2012 – 7:52 am

The financial community has been slow to adopt social media. One big fuzzy gray zone has been compliance.

But that process is evolving. Last week, a National Examination Risk Alert went out that called into question the Facebook ‘Like’ button.

Testimonials:  …The term “testimonial” is not defined in Rule 206(4)-1(a)(1), but SEC staff consistently interprets that term to include a statement of a client’s experience with, or endorsement of, an investment adviser. Therefore, the staff believes that, depending on the facts and circumstances, the use of “social plug-ins” such as the “like” button could be a testimonial under the Advisers Act.16…

Steph and I discuss this issue (and a lot more) on our AdvisorGo Podcast this week. Go to AdvisorGo to listen/subscribe via email or listen below:

Taking the Social out of Social Media by AdvisorGo


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Build a financial website for a fraction of the cost (or, 1 resource web designers would like to keep secret)

January 16, 2012 – 12:04 pm

Advisors ask me all the time about their websites.

Most of the time, they’re asking for help in terms of optimizing their site’s performance: capturing more leads, driving new prospects, expanding their reach.

To be honest, building a website for most advisors (for most people, really) is an utterly overwhelming process.

Why building a website is overwhelming

It’s human nature: when we don’t quite understand something, we seek professional help.  That’s why your clients seek out your advice, right?

I’m guilty as charged, too. Here — and on my exclusive Advisor Insider newsletter – -I’m also trying to provide you with powerful tools, tips and technologies to help you build your financial practice.

But when it comes to something so far out of our expertise — like technology, website design, Internet marketing — we seem to slink away from making big, bold decisions and almost over-delegate to the work.

Most advisors will turn to someone who understands this stuff and empower them to get the project done. Without oversight, without true understanding of what’s going on technologically, without understanding design best practices — as advisors, we overpay on technology projects and frequently, get underdelivered on our results.

That’s just the facts.

A better way to get a better website design

Many designers — good, honest people — wouldn’t want you to know about the resource I’m going to give you next. It’s major competition for them (in a good way). It keeps prices competitive and standards high for designing awesome websites.

It’s www.99designs.com

With 99 designs, you can get a professionally-designed website for about $600 (not the thousands that you would normally need to pay).

Q: What is it? How does it work?

A: Essentially, you hold a design contest where thousands of web designers compete to design a site you’re 100% happy with — or, you get your money back.

So, for about $600, you get to plumb the ideas of designers around the globe, tweaking your site until you get an awesome design. The great thing is that this process is transparent, so you see the ideas designers are generating and you can build upon them to get exactly what you want.

By the way, you can get almost anything designed here — logos, stationery, book covers, etc.

How it works

Here’s how www.99designs.com works:

Why 99 designs is good for advisor websites

  1. competition is good: We’re in the investing game and we know competition is good for business. Getting multiple ideas and designs only makes the final product — your website — better.
  2. diversification keeps costs down: Getting numerous designers to compete for your business means you place less responsibility on a single service provider. You have less chance of getting screwed — or at least, taken for a ride.
  3. transparency is awesome: the contest is held in the raw — wide open for everyone to see. It keeps standards high and ideas flowing.
  4. cost: I know from speaking with friends in the web development business that they like advisors as clients. Because we don’t know a whole lot about technology or web design, we don’t ask too many questions. Costs aren’t always competitive. Designing a site via 99 designs ensures they are.

That’s it.  Check out www.99designs.com

Let me know what you think — I’m curious to see if this is helpful for you.


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off

The right way to ask for referrals (and why so many advisors bungle it)

January 2, 2012 – 8:45 am

Asking for referrals isn’t easy.

Alll the data show that as professionals, we are sitting on gold mines of referral value (!), just ready for us to unlock it to build a super practice.

Clients should be lining up, checks in hand, begging — pleading! — for us to manage their portfolios.

Yeah, right.

The truth about referrals in the financial business

The truth is that very few of us are able to fully leverage referrals.

Why is that?  Have you ever asked yourself that?

If it’s so easy – all you have to do is ask! — why aren’t we all managing $40B like Ken Fisher?

Well, the first thing is that it’s not.  that.  easy.

It just isn’t.  I don’t know about you but my clients don’t suddenly call tons of hot prospect friends when I pop the question.

It takes guts to work up the question.  Beyond that, who wants to sound like a sleazy salesman?

Second, I’m convinced that just asking the question is certainly NOT enough.  Maybe it used to be but there are plenty of reasons your clients aren’t manning the phones — right now! — dialing for dollars, hitting up all their friends to bring you business.

The real reasons clients aren’t referring you business

  1. referrals cost A BOATLOAD of social capital — by referring someone to a professional, you spend some of your social capital.  If your contact isn’t happy for any reason, that looks bad on you.  Rightly or wrongly (caveat emptor, right?), your contact will blame you for making a poor referral.

That’s it, one reason.  There has to be a damn good reason for your client to open his rolodex, risking his street cred with his friends and contacts. There’s too much at stake for you to screw up.

In other words, it’s risky — and getting riskier with social media — to make important referrals to a financial advisor.

You’re still TOO FAR OUTSIDE YOUR CLIENTS’ SOCIAL CIRCLES TO GET REFERRALS.

In fact, the more I think about it: asking the common referral question — hey, who can you refer to me? — is the wrong question.

One financial advisor found that he was able to grow his practice 5X by tweaking the question.

He went from…
OLD SCHOOL REFERRAL QUESTION: Hey, you know my business requires referrals from happy clients.  Who do you know who you could refer to me right now?
to…
NEW-FANGLED MONEY REFERRAL Process (2 parts):

  1. Hey,what are your hobbies? Interests?
  2. With this question, find some overlap with your own interests.  If they like PLAYING SQUASH, tell them you do too. Hey, can I get in to your weekly game?

Of course, this isn’t a direct plug for your client to open his Outlook and begin scheduling meetings for you with his wealthy friends.

And that’s the point — it’s an indirect referral process.

Let’s carry this SQUASH PLAYING example through

  1. So, you go to the game
  2. Hopefully, you can play squash well-enough to not embarrass yourself
  3. Get invited back and begin to integrate into the social circle

Once you’re in the social circle (how many times has this happened to you?), the referrals will happen naturally.  One of the regular players will come over (make sure he’s not sweating in your ice tea) and tell you about a money problem he has or a friend who’s looking for ‘someone good’.

By the way, research has shown that these crucial social bonding questions come in 4 flavors:

  1. hobbies
  2. interests
  3. lifestyle
  4. values

Why does this work?  Well, if making a referral means spending social capital, this puts everything on sale.  Suddenly, by integrating into your clients’ social circles (online and off), making that referral is less risky.  They have to spend less social cred to get you in.

Everyone wins.

Referrals aren’t about just asking for networking opportunities or some hoogie-woogie esoteric mindset.  Getting referrals is about creating an ongoing process to ensure that those opportunities present themselves to you.

Ultimately, it makes for good business — you’ve always got to listen to your clients and determine what gets them juiced.  If you can help them get juiced, they’ll help you, too.

******Free offer************

Like this content? Get more of it.

Subscribe below to my weekly (free) newsletter, AdvisorInsider — full of tools, tips, and technologies to grow your investment practice.


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Use LinkedIn to network and prospect – with Wayne Breitbarth

December 20, 2011 – 7:47 am

LinkedIn is such a powerful tool for researching prospects and networking with professionals, I’m always surprised when I meet advisors who aren’t using it.wayne breitbarth's power formula for linkedin success

Oh, and it’s free. Hard to beat that.

Wayne Breitbarth, the author of The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success, joins me to discuss the power of LinkedIn and how financial and investment advisors can quickly get on the platform and begin getting real value out of the business social network.

Make sure you listen to the whole recording because Wayne takes aim at my own LinkedIn profile (connect with me here) and dismantles it — with powerful advice to really sharpen up my presence on the network.

Listen to this episode and you’ll learn:

  • why your profile on LinkedIn is so important and how to optimize it
  • how LinkedIn is NOT a resume and how to structure your story to maximize
  • networking and prospecting activities
  • how Wayne dissected my LinkedIn profile with real action points to make it stronger
  • how advisors can use LinkedIn redefine their value proposition to go after new business

Listen to the FULL program

Using LinkedIn to network and prospect – with Wayne Breitbarth by newrulesofinvesting

About Wayne Breitbarth

author of the Power Formula of LinkedInWayne Breitbarth was an accidental user of LinkedIn.  After seeing the light, Wayne’s become a leading expert and is the author of the top selling book about LinkedIn on Amazon.

More Resources


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

10-step checklist for seminars that will energize your practice

December 13, 2011 – 6:45 am

If you’re been running successful seminars to help prospect for your business, you know how hard it is to get everything right.

From getting your list, to creating engaging invitations, to finding a facility, to RSVP’ing your guests.   It’s a lot of details and processes.

That works in our favor — getting a good event off the ground isn’t easy, so if we can do it, that’s something our competitors can’t.

While it sounds easy to do a good marketing event, the truth is few are able to them well consistently.

Prospecting seminar checklist

Here’s a checklist of what you’ll need to do to put on an awesome marketing event.

  1. Goals first: Before you do anything, you need to make it clear why you’re putting on this event.  Who’s your target attendee?  What does he/she look like?  What’s that person struggling with that I can solve for them?  What type of event suites that target’s schedule? Without looking at your goals, your event may miss its target and there’s no way to really judge your performance.
  2. Concept:  This may sound too softy-feely but the best event-driven prospecting advisors are really good event planners.  Not only do they make sure everything looks good, the topic/concept of the event tends to be really tight.  Again, this goes back to your goals — the event should be really appealing to your prospects.  What’s going to get them to shlepp out on a cold winter night to hear what you have to say? The draw may not even be you — maybe it’s a wholesaler (though you could do better :-) ) or a respected author or analyst that could attract an audience.
  3. Location: Whether its online or offline, the event needs to be housed somewhere.  So, either find a compelling facility in your target location or find online meeting software to stream your event (like GotoWebinar).
  4. Scheduling: Make sure there aren’t any major conflicting dates (like Super Bowl weekend) that may prevent prospects from taking you up on your invite. You can check your local paper for upcoming events, a local website or something like Lanyrd — a repository for many events around the world. Spend some time to make sure you’re the headliner that night.
  5. Target list: Your list can be bought from a local data provider or it could be made up of prospects you already have in your database (like people you’ve met but haven’t closed yet).  Partnering with a local service provider (lawyer/accountant) expands your prospecting exponentially (if you can ensure your marketing partner will hit his prospects, too).
  6. Coordinating signup: Whether you are emailing or sending a mailer, have someone follow up with a phone call.  It’s a nice touch and could answer some questions have about the event but haven’t answered for themselves.
  7. Coordinating signup v2: If you’re doing an online event or an event that you’re charging for, consider using a full service ticketing solution like Eventbrite.  If you’re charging for the event, Eventbrite has a built-in credit-card processing tool that is REALLY easy to use. Secret tip: You can also incentivize others to help you market your online event (like that lawyer/accountant marketing partner).  If you use Eventbrite, you can provide your marketing partners with their own link and they get a percentage (set by you) on all  proceeds from the tickets they’ve sold.
  8. Deliver a great performance: Just getting prospects to show up is a big deal.  Now that they’re warm, you’ve almost there.  You’ve still got to put on a great presentation.  Here are some tips on a great prospecting presentation.
  9. Provide accessibility: Finish speaking and allow for questions before the scheduled end of your event.  Make sure you mingle about afterwards.  This gives your audience the chance to corner you to ask personal questions.  Your call to action should happen right there — set a meeting up on the spot.  Carry around your iPhone or organizer or have an assistant schedule people there on the spot.  That’s key — when the prospects leave the room and the event, they lose the drive to find help for their problems.
  10. Follow up: Whether you follow up personally or have an assistant do it, follow-up closes the circle on the event.  It provides context to the entire process and again, makes you accessible to prospects who want to take the next step.  This is also a chance for great market research — if they’re interested, ask them why.  If not, find out what events/topics are important to them.  Get permission to invite them again to exclusive events.

What are you doing that works for seminars?

Like this content? Get more of it.

Subscribe to my weekly (free) newsletter, AdvisorInsider — full of tools, tips, and technologies to grow your investment practice.

 


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

Stuff your pipeline with warm prospects via social media

December 5, 2011 – 7:38 am

Social media gets a bad rap for being ‘social’.  Many advisors with whom I speak see it as a noisy distraction — its social-ness getting in the way of doing real biz-ness.

…stands on a soapbox: And that’s a HUGE mistake.  It’s precisely the social-ness of social media that’s able to identify your ideal prospects, connect them to your content engine, and find the hooks to prepare them to become clients.

How investors buy financial services in today’s market

I’ll explain: readers of my AdvisorInsider newsletter have learned about what I call the learn-try-buy cycle of today’s financial services.  Motivated prospects first encounter an advisor online, reading investment opinion or financial planning advice (learn).  This enables them to quickly gauge whether there is a good client/advisor fit (try).  Lastly, successful advisors are able to guide prospects to pick up the phone or email to secure an account opening or at least a first meeting (buy).

My learn-try-buy framework of how investors buy financial services is super simple which is why I liked Christine Candell’s post on Forbes, Social Media Solves the Demand Generation Riddle.

Candell uses what she calls a Buyer’s Journey to describe the process of how marketers can attract interested prospects.

There are four major steps that buyers typically go through before they purchase: Enablement stage: Problem Definition, Solution Search, Evaluation and Validation.

Buyers begin their Journey not by looking for a vendor but by understanding the issue’s root cause, exploiting best practices, and learning how peers have addressed the need.  In the Problem Definition stage, buyers are doing the homework necessary to decide if and how they might want to approach solving their problem.   In the Solution Search step the organization agrees on target outcomes and success metrics, the desired approach, and any particular constraints that need to be addressed.

In a way, for advisors, social media is a doubly-useful tool.  Sure, advisors can use it to communicate their USP and value proposition, stand-out from their peers, and all that jazz.  But to be used effectively, social media becomes a powerful listening and learning tool — enabling service providers to join the conversation already happening in their prospects’ heads.

What are you doing to listen?  To communicate?

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Like this content? Get more of it.
Subscribe to my weekly (free) newsletter, AdvisorInsider — full of tools, tips, and technologies to grow your investment practice.

 

 


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Convert prospects by delivering awesome presentations

November 22, 2011 – 7:43 am

This post is sent free to growth-minded subscribers to my weekly marketing and sales email, Advisor Insider. Subscribe (free) here.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Brokers aren’t used to creating their own presentations.  Compliance rules, you know.  Series 7s take stock presentations and add their names to personalize ‘em.

I’ll let you in on a secret though: most of the largest producers DO create their own presentations.

Why do you think that is?

Well, because the largest advisors understand that canned speeches have a harder time converting prospects.

Big advisors understand that better sales pitches are attuned to the audience receiving them.

Big advisors understand that they need to differentiate themselves.

Big advisors understand that their content, their pitches, and their delivery occupy the space where they meet the needs of their prospects.

The art of the advisor presentation

It’s time to move on from the ways we’ve presented in the past.  Here’s the framework that I’ve seen work for advisors and their marketing efforts:

1.    Build EXPERTISE: Need to demonstrate your mastery over you subject matter quickly in the presentation.  This is the starting point for delivering any powerful message.
2.    Create AUTHORITY: Knowledge isn’t enough.  Applied understanding of your material has to be followed with your status in the industry — with your peers, affiliated institutions, and clients.
3.     Establish TRUST: Key to establishing a bond with your audience, they need to trust that the advice you’re giving them is sound.  That you’ve got their backs.
4.    Convert prospects to CLIENTS: Once the previous 3 steps have been executed, it’s relatively easy to convert those ready to enlist your services.  Marketing is all the work that goes into making an easy sale.

I think this is an effective delivery mechanism no matter what you’re selling but if your presentation doesn’t do this, you’re not going to see a lot of ROI.  Think of the topic of your presentation (investing in emerging markets, retirement planning) as the vehicle that moves you from Expertise to Authority to Trust to Clients.

Useful tools to conceive and create presentations

There are a ton of resources online and off that can assist you in conceiving, creating, and delivering your presentation. Here are a few I use.

  • Sliderocket (tools): This is particularly useful for online presentations — it’s slick, easy to use multimedia, and even has a function you can use to schedule and run a webinar around your presentation.
  • Presentation Zen (strategy, how to): Garr Reynolds’ site.  Garr is one of the preeminent speakers, analysts on making powerful presentations.
  • 100 top speeches (examples):  This site has actual audio of some of history’s best speeches.  You don’t have to recreate the presentation wheel.  Learn from the masters and adapt their techniques to your own.
  • Download HubSpot’s free ebook The Ultimate How-To Marketing Guide: Looking to drive more traffic to your website?
  • Edward Tufte (strategy, how to): Considered many as the father of modern presentations, Tufte has numerous books and resources to help business people convey persuasive ideas.
  • Skitch (tool): I use skitch to annotate images or webpages I pull off the Internet.  It’s super easy to grab an image or chart and add it some text or arrows to drive your point home.
  • Duarte (strategy, how to): Nancy Duarte is on fire.  Her firm, books and training are behind some of the greatest presentations today.
  • Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule (how to): Guy’s template for font size, length of presentation, and number of slides is used by many smart prospecters around the world.
  • Slide design for non designers (tools, how to): I like this how-to demonstration of how someone put together a visually-compelling presentation

Don’t just put up bullet points and read from a script.  Inject your personality, spend some time thinking of what kind of information your prospects are looking for.  Deliver it with authority and build trust.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

To make you life easier (and help you grow your practice), I’ve done 3 things for you (2 free and one that requires a small commitment):

  1. A weekly marketing podcast called AdvisorGo (free)
  2. AdvisorInsider — my weekly email full of real tips, tools and techniques to help you grow your practice (free)
  3. The Marketing Tearsheet (example below) which is my weekly compilation of the most actionable marketing advice from the best sources around the Web

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Want to maximize your career in the new era of finance? I’m hosting a week-long ONLINE conference to help finance professionals and those looking to break into the field.  Learn more here.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Like this content? Get more of it.
Subscribe to my weekly (free) newsletter, AdvisorInsider — full of tools, tips, and technologies to grow your investment practice.

 

 


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

The magic formula to growing your financial practice: use content curation to attract warm prospects

November 8, 2011 – 7:44 am

Building your expertise — your differentiated expertise — is key to creating a pipeline of warm prospects.

By establishing your authority on a subject, you’ll soon find the users of your website begin to trust you.

And we all know that TRUST is what closes prospects.

TRUST is… what moves people through your sales pipeline.

TRUST is… what gets them to ACAT their accounts over.

TRUST is… what keeps your clients as your clients.

So,for you mathies out there,the magic formula to growing your financial practice is:

+++++++++++Magic Formula to Growing your Financial Practice++++++++++++

Build EXPERTISE ==> Create AUTHORITY ==> Establish TRUST ==> Convert prospects to CLIENTS

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The easiest, quickest and most powerful to build expertise and create authority is by writing. Writing about investing. Writing about what’s important to your prospects.

If you’re not doing that yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? Seriously.

But, writing — writing well — takes a lot of time. We have to balance all the daily needs of our practice with marketing for the future.

The EASIEST way to create authority (in addition to your writing) is to curate.

Curation is merely identifying important information that your prospects would find useful and then feeding it to them — through your website, email newsletter, social media, conference calls, whatever.

The next best thing to writing about a particular subject is pointing people towards trustworthy, useful information.

What I do: an example

See what I’m doing here on Twitter (by the way, you can follow me at @newrulesinvest). I’m trying to establish EXPERTISE, AUTHORITY, and TRUST in helping advisors grow their practices online. If I’m really diligent, I can write a real good, useful post maybe 2x a week. I send out my Advisor Insider newsletter every Wednesday — full of tips, tools, and technologies to help advisors grow their practices.

I don’t have the time (or energy!) to do more. Instead, I spend a little time each morning lining up links to articles I think speak to my expertise. I didn’t write the articles – I just link to them. If you’re an advisor and interested in really growing your practice by using cutting-edge marketing techniques, you can find useful info throughout the day on my Twitter feed (see image to right).

As a consultant, I don’t necessarily have the internal resources to write extensively about every subject I’m expert at. Instead, by curating others’ content, I accomplish a similar goal.

In fact, through curation, you sit on top of all the links you pump out.  You’re almost like the expert’s expert.

What are you expert in? Are you curating?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

To make you life easier (and help you grow your practice), I’ve done 3 things for you (2 free and one that requires a small commitment):

  1. A weekly marketing podcast called AdvisorGo (free)
  2. AdvisorInsider — my weekly email full of real tips, tools and techniques to help you grow your practice (free)
  3. The Marketing Tearsheet (example below) which is my weekly compilation of the most actionable marketing advice from the best sources around the Web

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

If you’re interested in learning more about curation, check out some of our other articles on the subject:


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Best actionable marketing links for financial advisors

November 4, 2011 – 6:15 am

Online marketing is really just beginning to take off in the investment management field.  I get asked almost daily from financial advisors and RIAs what they should be reading, what they need to learn, where they should spend their time to bring in new prospects.

Like Stephanie Sammon’s recent LinkedIn poll of hundreds of financial professionals, advisors want more prospects.

I can help you answer the question of how do financial advisors get more clients.

To make you lives easier, I’ve done 3 things for you (2 free and one that requires a small commitment):

  1. A weekly marketing podcast called AdvisorGo (free)
  2. AdvisorInsider — my weekly email full of real tips, tools and techniques to help you grow your practice (free)
  3. The Marketing Tearsheet (example below) which is my weekly compilation of the most actionable marketing advice from the best sources around the Web

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The Marketing Tearsheet for the week ending October 31, 2011

Fall marketing activities are in top gear as financial firms continue to invest in online marketing.  Investors are spending more and more time online and the largest social networks (like Twitter and Facebook) continue to post impressive growth.

Caution: Lots of how-to advice for advisors to ramp prospecting and grow their practices…

Marketing advice — the best from around the Web to help you grow your practice

Media trends — stay ahead of the curve

Investor profile — what today’s evolving investor looks like

  • How to choose a broker (investor profiling): Graphical representation/flowchart providing advice to retail clients on how to chose a broker.
  • The unfaithful client (wealth personalities): Almost 30% of households with over $5M in assets use 4 or more advisors. More on the barriers — and opportunities — to get the high-net-worth to consolidate assets.
  • Do more frequent financial communications make clients rest easier? (investor behavior): When markets fluctuate, many of us pull back from proactively communicating with our clients.  Perhaps the opposite would work better — clients frequently fire advisors over “insufficient communication.”

Presentations/data

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

To make you life easier (and help you grow your practice), I’ve done 3 things for you (2 free and one that requires a small commitment):

  1. A weekly marketing podcast called AdvisorGo (free)
  2. AdvisorInsider — my weekly email full of real tips, tools and techniques to help you grow your practice (free)
  3. The Marketing Tearsheet (example below) which is my weekly compilation of the most actionable marketing advice from the best sources around the Web

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

If you’re interested in learning more about curation, check out some of our other articles on the subject:

 


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

The financial advisor’s #1 objection to curation

November 2, 2011 – 11:51 am

My 3 tools for content curation for financial advisors saw more interest than a photoshopped image of Paris Hilton in a dentist’s chair.

And it makes sense: by pointing your clients to important news, data and analysis, you’re effectively playing financial coach.

But the awesome thing is that you’re the coach — without having to call the plays.

You just point your clients and prospects to those smart people who ARE doing the research.

The financial advisor’s #1 objection to content curation

The Internet is opening things up and making some of us old-school financial advisors a little uneasy about the newfound, uber-transparency.

When I talk about the technique of curating investing content for your clients, the #1 objection I get is:

But why would I send them away from my site?  By pointing them to other sources, don’t I risk losing my clients???

Ah, so herein lies the rub: your ability to effectively steer your readers/prospects/clients to valuable information establish credibility — your street cred.

It’s almost like a bad marketing theorem for financial advisors: (street) cred + ability (to inform) = credibility = client satisfaction = better prospect conversions

There is so much noise and disinformation online (especially as it relates to investing) that people are looking for a trustworthy voice as a guidepost to navigate through it all.

That’s you, by the way.

Don’t listen to me

I made the same mistake when I began marketing my financial practice.  I latched onto marketing fads, I paid for useless courses.

I felt like I was always on the verge of a breakthrough (though not quite breaking through).

I made a lost of goofs — but I learned a lot, too:

  1. I learned that I could have avoided wasting a lot of time (and money) learning how to market.
  2. I learned that I could have avoided wasting a lot of time (and money) learning how to market.
  3. I learned that I could have avoided wasting a lot of time (and money) learning how to market.

Yeah, in retrospect, I should have found an expert willing (I would have paid him, actually) to teach me all I needed to know about marketing a financial practice online and off.

A better way to consume marketing advice

So, to cut through all the blah blah, I actually created that product for you — to help you and your marketing team (are you a team of 1? :-) ) cull through the reams of online marketing advice to find just the trusted– and actionable –  information that will help your practice grow.

Sample Marketing Tearsheet newsletter

No pressure — it is a premium product (So, you’ll have to pay to get 1 weekly email with all the actionable advice from around the Web to help you save time learning and marketing).

For those of you who want to spend the time and energy staying on top of this stuff — this isn’t for you.  And that’s cool.

For those who want to free themselves up from the endless surfing, it’s called the Marketing Tearsheet and it’s part of the collaboration I’m doing on AdvisorGo (check out our weekly marketing podcast) with Wired Advisor’s Stephanie Sammons.

Sign up here.


By Zack Miller | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off
intellibridgeIR - © 2012