Content marketing attracts and engages prospects at each stage of the buying process.

The FeeOnlyNetwork.com: A Bid to Build Visibility for Fee-Only Advisors

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That’s the goal of NAPFA (National Association of Personal Financial Advisors) with the recent launch of the FeeOnlyNetwork.com for its more than 1,500 Fee-Only member advisors across the country. A parallel goal is to build the NAPFA brand and promote the benefits of working with NAPFA-registered investment advisors (RIAs) for comprehensive financial planning and fee-only compensation.

This comes as Fee-Only Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) have surged and changed the way Americans invest.  This in a climate where investors are more risk adverse, want to be involved in the investment process and, for all generations, increasingly use the web to “self-sell” before engaging.  Having a strong web presence  — including a dynamic web marketing hub, social media significance, thought leadership content and digital marketing programs — is not an option, but an imperative for advisors to be relevant and competitive today.

With FeeOnlyNetwork.com, Individual NAPFA members receive a free, search optimized profile and those who wish to pony up $250, receive a more sophisticated profile with more content, enhanced optimization and linking features. The value proposition seems solid: members can piggyback on the broader branding effort around “Fee Only” with NAPFA and generate leads and SEO value at a reasonable cost per year.

There are a number of things for members to consider in maximizing the value and effectiveness of their profiles. (See FeeOnlyNetwork mockup)

    • Differentiate the message beyond “Fee-Only”
      Use the bulleted specialties adjacent to photo and paragraph beneath it, to provide more depth and breadth surrounding resources and investment options offered, akin to what you might get from a broker dealer.
    • Choose messaging carefully
      Avoid “generic” messages like “specializes in financial planning and investment management”; be more sophisticated.
    • Align Profiles & Links
      Make sure your profiles line up across all your channels – LinkedIn, Website, Facebook, Twitter, FeeOnlyNetwork, etc. – including key words, messaging and positioning.
    • Include Links 
 Make sure all your publicly available links are reflected on the profile and picked up by FeeOnlyNetwork.
  • Complete all of the Profile Features
    This includes links to all of your social media profiles, recent articles, media mentions, welcome video and the like.  If you have more than one location, be sure to include it as well.  Also complete the company profile tab.  There will be an ability to cross-link with other NAPFA members in your company.
  • Show Bench Strength:
    The network is very “planner” and individual based rather than the firm… some investors may want to see that they can engage a firm with a broader set of expertise and specializations within the firm.  This can be done with the company profile tab, but perhaps you can influence the site’s positioning if you want to highlight both you and your company more strongly.
  • Generate Leads:
    Currently, the “Contact Me” button generates an email, however there are plans to enable a form.  Be on the look out and perhaps influence its development.  For example if it were a “Learn More” link instead of “Contact Me”, that could lead to a landing page on your website where they can further “opt-in” to learning without feeling the need to email you right away. Many “buyers” want to self-sell and learn about you (and others) without converting immediately to an email or meeting.

NAPFA says it has made a significant investment and allocated considerable resources to the FeeOnlyNetwork.com, a partnership with Advisorology, LLC, the parent company of the FeeOnlyNetwork.com and FinancialAdviceNetwork.com.  The partnership promises to continue to enhance the FeeOnlyNetwork.com.  Members would do well to actively participate in its evolution.

 

Thérèse Byrne is a Client Partner & Digital Strategist with Revenue Architects specializing in helping clients take advantage of modern marketing approaches to projects from the vantage of creative, innovative and agile solutions to growth. She works with a number offinancial advisor clients developing strategies and implementing compliant marketing solutions enabled by technology and inbound marketing.

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Everything's Going Mobile…End of Story

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We were fortunate to escape the confines of the office in order to attend a NEDMA (New England Digital Media Association) Conference at the Boston Common Hotel and Conference Center.  From the moment we walked up to the second floor, we were immediately submerged in innovative ideas and new data that will help shape future marketing campaigns.

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Considerations in Newsletter Publishing

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It is not new news that a newsletter can help to strengthen your relationships with clients and to draw in potential new clients.  Small and medium sized business owners that we work with are publishing issues on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. The format, time frame, and content will depend on budget and  priorities, but we recommend a level that you can maintain easily with your capacity and resources. While more publishing and corresponding social media engagement can increase the level of activity on your website, it is pointless to over-commit and detract from your brand identity.

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Software eCommerce – A New World Order

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Revenue Architects recently released a white paper exploring the rapidly evolving nature of software eCommerce and sharing insights on how to manage this change for maximum revenue growth.

Abstract & Download

With the increasing use of the Internet for eCommerce, many pundits had announced the death of the distribution channel for software perhaps assuming that software would be digitally distributed directly to the end user.  But now, more than ever, channels serve an increasingly important role for the software industry. And within just a few years it will likely change more than any other channel in businesses globally.

IndepenWhite Paperdent software vendors (ISVs) will need to understand these changes and the  underlying technology needed to support them.  For example, ISVs must continue to manage their existing channels, many of which are undergoing dramatic change, while taking advantage of new on-line app-stores and affiliate style eMarketplaces.  The corresponding vendor technology solutions for software eCommerce are different from traditional e-Retailing solutions.  Therefore ISVs must also leverage the right solution type, providing both multi-channel management and deep software trade functionality.

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Lead Nurturing: An Overview

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An Overview of Lead Nurturing: For Every Business

Up to 95% of qualified prospects visiting your company’s website are there to research but are not yet ready to make a purchasing decision; ultimately, as many as 70% of these prospects will buy from you or your competitors. How do you gradually mold these prospective leads into buyers?

This is where lead nurturing comes in. A lead nurture program involves adapting calculated marketing strategies to share useful, relevant information with prospects regardless of how ready they may or may not be to buy. The goal is to establish your brand and build a relationship based on trust and credibility, which will ideally position you to be their first choice once they are ready to make a purchasing decision.

First, identify a set of new prospects by monitoring certain activity on your website, such as who has downloaded a white paper or filled out a form, and determine which leads are ready to be sent to sales and which need to be nurtured. This can be achieved through a lead scoring methodology, which should take into account demographic attributes; budget, authority, need, timeline (BANT); lead source; and level of engagement with your materials.

For those prospects that you have determined to be nurturing candidates, establish permission to be included in your nurturing campaign by asking prospects to opt in or out. This is the first step in building a relationship that is based on trust and relevancy. At the very least you need to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act by providing a clear way to opt out, but you might want to go the extra mile and ask for explicit permission on registration forms. Not only does this earn you the prospect’s trust by proving your concern for privacy, but it also increases your deliverability and sender reputation scores.

Throughout the nurturing process, gradually send pertinent information over time. Timing is critical; consider the duration of the buying process and the communication approaches you will use to determine the best frequency of communication. A general rule is to contact prospects at least one a month but no more than once a week.

Personalize the content of your communications to ensure that it will be relevant to your prospect, which will keep them interested in staying on your list. Develop profiles of your prospects that include characteristics that will help you best tailor your communications to their needs, rather than simply providing less valuable generic content.

Do not let leads sit at any point in the process. You should always be communicating with prospects and continuing to move them along a cycle, even if they are not ready to buy. Pay attention to a prospect’s activity and engagement with your website and adjust your communication according to these cues. Accelerate communication with prospects identified to have a higher interest, and reduce communication with prospects that are slower to respond.

By building a positive impression of your company and keeping the prospect engaged and interested throughout the lead nurturing process, they will be more likely to select your company once they decide it’s time to buy.

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Successful Email Marketing – Crafting Your Message

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Emails are one of the most often used communication methods used by businesses to reach clients and potential leads, and if used correctly email marketing can be among the most effective methods as well to grow your business. In a climate where communication is becoming increasingly digital, crafting effective email marketing messaging is vital for any financial advisor. Successful emails that clearly communicate their message enhance customer experience and generate business, while unsuccessful emails lead to may lead to confusion or lack of action. The following are a few simple steps that can be taken to maximize the effectiveness and clarity of your email marketing message while also optimizing the user experience of the email’s entire audience: the foundation of any successful email marketing campaign.

Like all good writing, email is most successful when the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the message is taken into consideration. For the purposes of user experience, the what, where, and how are the three most important of these categories.

“WHAT are you saying to me?”

  • First impressions matter- make the most of your subject line: Is it recognizable, trustworthy, and relevant? What is the relationship between the receiver and the sender (whether an individual or company)?
  • Use client friendly language
  • Make a clear point, and provide enough context for understanding. Avoid ambiguity and a lack of call to action
  • Make the email interesting and not too dense- use imagery, data, and personalization if possible
  • Create a hierarchy in content, message, and visual elements- prioritize the important information and eliminate extraneous details. Differentiate colors, fonts, and placements.

“HOW do you want me to take action?”

  • Take advantage of opportunities to engage your audience- linked imagery, video, buttons, charts, colored backgrounds, forward and share links
  • Make the call to action obvious- Use active language. This comes back to the clarity of the message and the hierarchy of the content, message, and visual elements.
  • Leave no question as to what the reader (your client) is being asked to do.

“WHERE am I reading your email?”

  • Bigger is better- Be aware of recommended minimum font sizes (body 14 px, header 22 px). Body copy of less than 13 px will often be re-sized.
  • Create touch targets- Include tappable touch targets and make them easy to activate with a 44 px x 44 px minimum. Try both text and image buttons.
  • Streamline- Simplify content and stay within a single column template. Confine content to a skinny 320 px X 540 px frame. Make sure to prioritize the “What” and “How” aspects of the email, with short, direct content and a clear call to action.
  • Ditch the automatically-created mobile version- it only represents an extra click for the reader. Instead, design with a “mobile first” mentality.

Customer relationships are so important and client experience should be the basis of the design of any email. Making sure the what, how, and where of the email from the audience’s perspective is analyzed and accounted for will help ensure that you compose a successful marketing message.

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Multi-touch: More than just Inbound Marketing

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With all the emphasis on inbound marketing, I thought I would put in a plug for the good old US Post Office.

email_guyThere is no doubt that the shift has happened – we buy and are influenced increasingly via the web. For the organizations we work with – those with F2F and more complex sales and marketing – the disruption has already taken place. We are helping our clients integrate an entirely new marketing-to-sales value chain. But while this is happening, more and more businesses are jumping onto the Content Marketing bandwagon and it is getting noisy. Just like with traditional media, we are able to filter and tune out much of the content coming our way.

Great – especially creative – content is still very powerful for inbound marketing, but what about when your rifle [target] list for a campaign is in the 100s of companies? What about when your contact universe is highly focused? Can you rely on these target companies to search for and find “you” on the web when they are ready to make a buying decision? No!

Enter the multi-touch digital and direct campaign. Sometimes, you need to bring out all the fly-fishing tackle and a range of flies. We are doing this with early success at one of our clients right now. We are running integrated multi-touch revenue programs. Creative campaigns to drive leads and nurture potential new relationships toward highly targeted audiences:

  • Creative and entertaining theme – a serious business messages delivered to real people
  • Direct mail – yes we are sending packages to these clients… just like the old days
  • F2F inside sales – we pre-call, call and post call at each touch point
  • eMail – we continue to use email as another impression – researching to find the right people
  • Content – white papers and video help to reinforce the value proposition
  • Call to action – we make an offer you can’t refuse -attend the briefing /webinar and get a thank you gift
  • Landing pages – using the latest in innovative marketing automation technology
  • LinkedIn ads – LinkedIn ads help you target down to the very specific people you want to reach

So far so good. This audience has been inundated with competitive messages, but we are getting our client’s brand out front with engaging content and enough brand touches to nurture the relationships for the long term.

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Value of ebooks and infographics: An Overview

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Developing ebooks and infographics can help your business be recognized as a thought leader in your industry. By creating a larger compilation or visual representation of the knowledge you want to share with your target market, you can create appealing material for downloads and viral sharing.

  • Infographics: Taking advantage of readers’ love of visuals, infographics can help provide traffic and links to your site if they address an interesting subject. When done well, they can also pump up the aesthetic of your site and provide a visual representation of your knowledge.
  • Ebooks: An ebook allows you to position yourself as an expert in your field. Ebooks can be guides, comprehensive resources, and can be tailored to suit the needs of the audience.

What are the benefits to you?

  • Establish your expertise and thought leadership
  • Highlight your own business standards and set them as necessary. A persuasive ebook or infographic can convince readers that your standards are the standard, leading them to expect your level of service at other companies. If they don’t find it there, they’ll be back for you.
  • Clarify your own thinking as you try to put into words or images what you believe. This will make it easier to share that doctrine with your staff and clients.
  • Give your clients everything they need to know. Having more content readily available to potential clients helps them know you better. The more they know, the easier it is for them to trust you.
  • Get viral. Infographics and ebooks are easily shared via links and email, making it possible for them to go spread among the right audience if you hit a nerve.

If you have an ebook written and ready to go, take some final steps: add chapter titles, page numbers, and proofread. Then check out tools like scribd.com, which can publish your ebook for free. Place the book on your website, link to it in online forums, include it in your email signature, and be sure to send it to all your friends and colleagues. Requiring visitors to fill out forms before downloading them is a great way to capture leads – just make sure the content is of a high enough quality to justify the registration!

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Choosing Your Blog Domain Name

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We usually recommend that our clients avoid launching their blog under a separate domain name / URL from their primary brand website. The reasons are both related to branding (brand affinity) and search engine optimization (SEO). While this general recommendation remains, with Google’s recent announcement about link treatments, brands can now add some subtle branding structures and URL treatments for their blogs while still maintaining SEO value to their core domain.

Matt Boynton and Laurent Magloire from the Revenue Architects team point out that Google recently announced that sub-domains and domains are going to be treated equally. So blog.brand.com and brand.com/blog will both maintain the same SEO value. Prior to this announcement, blog.brand.com would have been treated as a separate domains and brand.com would not have received the SEO value of incoming links to blog.brand.com.

We will still suggest that to maintain SEO value and brand affinity, you should not create a separate domain for the brand blog (i.e. do not create something called brandblog.com), but now you can make some additional choices for how to brand your blog and structure your blog domain name. Here is the article.

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Participatory Marketing and Audience Engagement

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This blog has discussed various aspects of Permission Marketing at (see here or here) however there has been a recent trend of Participatory or “opt-in” marketing. This post explains a few techniques that two firms (with very different products) are using. Both of these companies have fulfilled five of the steps we outlined previously to generate prospective clients and along the way used several key attributes required in a participatory community:

1. Low Barrier to Entry

2. Support for creating and sharing ideas

3. Informal Mentorship

4. Participants feel their contributions matter

5. Participants engage in a community

These two particular companies are being exemplified because they both fulfill the requirements of inbound content: Entertain and Educate.

E*Trade Babymail: Entertain

The E*Trade baby has reached meme status after his debut during Super Bowl XLII and has been parodied by a few comedy talk shows and a headlining sit-com. In addition to this year’s Super Bowl Ad, the E*Trade baby has also been launched in a write-your-own-skit via www.etradebabymail.com. The website allows visitors to create their own talking baby segments which, naturally depending on the comedic prowess of the user, can be hilarious. While the actual use of the tool has nothing to do with E*Trade’s core business, website and email of the clip sent to the user’s friends is peppered with implicit advertising.

More importantly, E*Trade’s main marketing vehicle becomes participatory. The simplicity of the website all but removes the barrier of entry for the user both to the tool and the brand. The dual effect of this is to increase civic engagement and provide strong support for creating and sharing the creations with others. The first increases brand engagement while the second increased brand exposure to the user’s friends. E*Trade has provided the tool to create a participatory culture which shifts the focus from individual expression and consumption to community involvement.

Zacks Investment Research: Educate

The day after initiating coverage of Trius Therapeutics (TSRX), Zacks Investment Research published an article on SeekingAlpha.com explaining the analysis behind the firm’s initiation of coverage with an outperform rating. The forum is as important as the content for this example.

Seeking Alpha self-describes as “the premier website for actionable stock market opinion and analysis, and vibrant, intelligent finance discussion.” The model of the website is simple: Unpaid authors contribute, editors cull, readers read and the platform collects revenues from advertising. An important structural feature of the website is that it is made clear that anyone can submit an article for publication. This enables participation of members who believe that their contributions matter and who feel some degree of social connection with each other. Zacks released their report on this particular website because of the single biggest thing they and Seeking Alpha have in common is audience: individual investors looking to for an edge.

Zacks’ poster, Jason Napodano, comments on his own article first – with an offer of the 20 page Initiation Report for free (!) if you email him. He also provides thoughtful responses to the community’s questions and critiques. The entire dialogue is available for public consumption and comment.

Conclusion

Reviewing the points we outlined in our discussion of constructive content marketing, both of these firms selected their vehicles and content to be relevant, integrated, aligned, “peanut butter” (sticky and spreadable) and – most importantly – free. Let’s run through the list of attributes (and their manifestations) that a healthy participatory community has once again:

1. Low Barrier to Entry – Free internet sites

2. Support for creating and sharing ideas – The tool to create a presentation or post a comment

3. Informal Mentorship – Watch other user’s clips and forum postings

4. Participants feel their contributions matter, or at least are seen – See above

5. Participants engage in a community and therefore create a social connection – The Result

It is useful to note the specificity of both advertising methods: A Super Bowl ad exposes about as broad a spectrum of possible clients as a single thirty second spot can get while posting a (what is normally paid content) article on a website for readers with specific interest exposes a narrow band of possible consumers. These are two very different methods, both in audience and cost, to produce audience engagement. Both of these cases have the requisite value exchange for this Permission marketing to be consumed, enjoyed and passed along.

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