ethnicomm - the blog part I

If you’re a financial advisor, you’re probably feeling overwhelmed because you’re wondering when the bad news is going to stop.  The media is not helping. There is unprecedented market volatility! Declining consumer confidence, declining property values and declining share prices.  This can really take a toll on you and your ability to think rationally and logically - which is more important than ever right now!

The recommended actions below will help you weather the storm and reposition you for future success.

Connect with your clients – do it now and do it often. Communicate with them in a way that makes sense for you and for them. They probably need a lot more hand-holding now than you do! Think about it from your client’s perspective. What would you want your financial advisor to do? Can you keep them informed and updated with the facts on what’s happening out there? Reassure them and ensure they have all the facts – in the absence of information, it is human nature to assume the worst. You can phone, send emails, newsletters, create podcasts, videos or even host receptions. Connect and reduce the potential for client volatility.

I would recommend that you personally contact your clients. It can be overwhelming so break it down and call or meet your clients in rotation. The more personal time you get with clients, either face time or over the phone, the better. It’s bad enough when the portfolio is not growing but when it is down double digits, clients get understandably irate. The reality is that if the market is down, say 35%, and your client’s portfolio is down 15-20%, it is considerably less than the market. When your client is made aware of this, they will value you even more! This is a client retention (and acquisition) strategy. Other financial advisors may not be contacting their clients because making the call is painful. It can be downright scary but it needs to be done so just do it! You will be happy that you did and your clients will certainly appreciate it. They may even tell others how good their financial advisor is!

Get out! This is not the time to stay in the office and avoid contact with clients and people in general. Like the politicians during election time, you have to get out, meet the people, understand the issues and give them the confidence that you know what you’re doing and are the best person for the job. Join a service organization, volunteer your time and experience to help others and connect with as many new people as you can.

Cut Costs. Identify what is a nice to have versus a need to have. A little saving here and there can add up over time. Are you picking up coffee on the way to work? Why not fill a thermos at home? While you’re at, make yourself some lunch and pocket the savings?  Skip the bottled water – tap water is perfectly fine and much more environmentally friendly. Have a movie night at home and save on the parking, movie tickets and snacks. You can watch pay per view, borrow a DVD from your library, rent one or even download a movie to save on gas as well. Try to renegotiate your rent and other ongoing expenses like your phone, cellular and internet services.  Don’t cut back on anything that reflects on you or your brand like voicemail, client amenities or office cleaning and maintenance.

Look in a Mirror. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, look at the opportunities and threats and develop a strategy to take advantage of the situation you’re in. What has worked in the past and what hasn’t worked as well as you had expected? Should you run your practice differently? Alter your marketing? Redefine your “ideal client”? Do you have the skills that you need for continued success?

Network with your peers. You can always learn from your peers. That’s why you are (or should be) members of your local financial planning association.  Hear about best practices and innovative ideas that other financial advisors might be doing during these tough times. Bounce ideas off of them. Even getting together to discuss the market drop helps you stay on your game. Organize a meetup.

Seek help. Your wholesalers call on many successful advisors and they are a gold mine for information. Vendors, lawyers, accountants, mortgage brokers, and other service professionals in different industries will have an ‘outsiders’ perspective on your business. Ask them for some constructive criticism, learn what other professionals are doing, and brainstorm ideas on what you can do to differentiate and grow during this tight economy.

Invest in yourself. Financial advisors are so busy managing clients, working with their broker/dealers, wholesalers and vendors and staying compliant that they do not have time for self-development. You probably have more time now than ever - use this time wisely so that when things pick up, you are able to grow your business by leaps and bounds. Learn about new technologies, read those inspiring or motivating books that you’ve always said you wanted to do if you had more time.  Attend conferences and seminars that will help you in your personal or professional life.  Engage the services of a consultant that can help you assess your practice, create the strategies to do things more efficiently and effectively, and see opportunities that you might not see because you’re too close to your business.

Keep marketing. During tough times, the first thing that businesses seem to do is cut their marketing budgets. This is the best time to raise your profile and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Provide information and your expertise (compliant with FINRA and the SEC of course) to local newspapers, radio and TV stations. Offer to speak at a community event. Write a press release with your own tips for coping. Add your comments to blogs (like this one).  Create accounts at social networking sites like LinkedIn and include who you are and what you do so that others can get to know you.

Leverage your relationship with wholesalers. Your wholesalers are your one stop resource for market commentary and are often more than willing and able to speak on the state of the market. Their presentation has been created for you, and is probably already approved by FINRA, so there is no need to reinvent the where.  Use that content in your marketing but be sure to seek approval from your firm first.

Take care of yourself. As my friend Rita Cheng, CFP, a financial advisor in Maryland USA says:

“People are counting on you to stay strong and healthy. You have to keep up your energy level, get adequate rest, exercise and proper nutrition. If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of your family and your clients.”

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written by Bhupesh \\ tags: broker/dealer, compliance, financial advisor, finra, Marketing, rita cheng

These are tough times for all of this. The market is down, consumer confidence is low and people aren’t spending. Businesses are not sure when things are going to improve and they are scaling back on their own purchases. On top of that, there are a gazillion web pages out there and it is even more difficult to be noticed.

photo credit: Shiny Things

Bloggeries.com, an Ottawa-based company that provides directory information, ratings, links, resources, and top rated blogs, is running a contest right now that is really creative. The prize for the winning entrant is a blue 8GB Apple iPod Nano. All you have to do is write a blog and substitute the word bloggeries instead of blog post in your blog post…err…I mean in your bloggeries. After you’ve posted it, either Twitter or Plurk bloggeries.com with the URL of your blog post to enter the contest.

Why I like this contest

1. It probably created a ton of traffic to his site. I follow the person that goes by the name bloggeries on Twitter and Plurk but have never visited his website…until now. In fact I’ve gone back several times to learn more about his services.
2. There is a story behind this. He originally won the iPod in a contest but got dinged $66 for COD which really sucks. Sharing this tale of woe engages the reader and one cannot help feeling bad for the guy. He makes an emotional connection.
3. Instead of ranting about UPS, he simply suggests that he will be using FedEx (because it may not have been UPS that decided that freight was not included). He gets kudos for taking the high road.
4. No link back to bloggeries.com is required. Every decently ranked website that uses the word bloggeries will provide further brand exposure back to bloggeries.com. If the blogger actually links back to the site, bloggeries.com will benefit from this one-way link. He gains trust and respect from bloggers that are sick and tired of sneaky, snaky linkfarms.
5. The contest only runs from Oct 9th – 16th. This creates a sense of urgency for the blogger and more importantly, a huge SPIKE in the use of the keyword bloggeries. Imagine if it made it to the top 10 list in Google Trends as a result of people searching for bloggeries? He gains his equivalent of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame.
6. This contest brings out the community aspect of blogging, albeit for the selfish motive of winning an iPod.
7. Instead of whining about the economy, he is actually doing something to increase awareness of their service in a creative way.

Do you think this is creative? Have you entered the contest?

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written by Bhupesh

Image via Wikipedia

Great slide show on the psychological basis for user interface (UI) design rules! It is always important to be customer-oriented…your message not only gets out there, but it gets received in the right manner.  Following UI guidelines helps ensure you take into consideration how people perceive, think, learn and act. Note that this is not a recipe, just a list of common ingredients that work well together. You will still need to be a marketing chef to make it palatable and ideally delectable.

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written by Bhupesh \\ tags: design, Marketing, powerpoint, UI, user interface

Image via Wikipedia

Tommy Lee gets it once a day.

He has his on/off lover and former wife Pamela Anderson on Google Alerts, so he can ask her about stories that break online, even before she’s aware of it!

Google Alerts are “emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms.” Alerts can be sent once a day, as-it-happens or once a week.  You can get alerts on topics, names or search terms that show up in the news, on blogs, on websites, in videos, or in Google discussion Groups.  If you chose the Comprehensive option, it will consolidate the results found in the news, blogs and websites. You can get it as an HTML email or text email and can create up to 1000 alerts. BTW, this is delivered to your in-basket for FREE!

With all the emails and other information coming at you via SMS, IM, Twitters, Facebook updates, Plurks, and RSS feeds, I’m sure you’re wondering why someone would knowingly add yet another information source. There are many reasons to set up an alert but below are the three main ones:

1. Catholic Guilt

You Google yourself but are too embarrassed to admit it. I don’t think the Vatican knows what Googling means but trust me, you won’t go blind doing it…unless you try to do it in the dark.  Seriously, many individuals and businesses need to monitor what is said about them for a variety of reasons: personal and corporate brand management, compliance, consumer feedback and chatter, identify theft, or market research for example. Financial advisers for example should be reporting every instance of their name appearing online…whether they were the providers of the content or not. Better safe than penalized!

2. Competitive Intelligence

You can track trends, competitors and industries. Let’s say you’re a fence manufacturer. A Google Alert on eco-friendly fencing would have told you that TimberWolf now has complete fence kits available at certain Lowe’s stores. An alert on Trex (a competitor) would have shown that some people feel that Trex is less suitable for vertical applications like rails and fences. An alert on Fence, Deck & Rail products (FDR) would have told you the minute a study on this industry was released. You would know that the market for FDR is “likely to continue to correct downward into 2008, but should begin to pick back up thereafter.”

This is good information that can be used as part of your marketing, sales and web strategy.Would you rather let Google do the searching for you 24/7 or do it yourself? What if…gasp…your buyer actually told you about some competitive activity that affected the buyer and your company? This is one tool that can help you with that.

3. Research

You can watch for new videos on a particular topic of interest, like “Make Google Alerts your virtual research assistant.” If you are working with a client you can use alerts to research their customers, their competitors and their competitor’s customers. If you’re a celebrity stalker, you can get the news as you make it happen!

Need to keep up with those old-school suspender wearing, cigar-chomping, name-dropping big boys in the ivory towers that say things like “Hey did you catch the game yesterday? Boy was <insert name of sports celebrity that you could care less about here> sure <insert appropriate expletive(s) here> on the <insert appropriate playing surface here> eh?“Get a leg up on the old fart by using technology!

Now that you know what Google Alerts is and three main reasons to use it (four if you consider tracking info on Pamela Anderson), can you think of a particular use for Google Alerts in your personal or corporate life?  Have you had much success with it in the past? How would it fit into your own marketing, sales and web strategy?

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written by Bhupesh \\ tags: competitive intelligence, financial adviser, Google Alert, identity theft, market research, marketing strategy, Pamela Anderson, TimberWolf, Tommy Lee, Trex

The latest rage these days for traffic and search engine rankings is to get postings on blogs. And one of the easiest ways to get those blog posts is to pay for them. In fact there are now numerous services that act as blog advertising aggregators ? advertisers can visit a site like Blogsvertise and simply pick and choose the blogs they want to get a paid review from.

There’s some problems with this approach however. The first one is that these blog posts are the victim of their own success. Paid blog links work so well in getting site’s ranking in the search engines that the search engines are actively seeking to prevent this from working. They have not managed to stop this yet, and may never do so, but it’s a risk. The second problem is that the very best grassroots websites that have both traffic and that will help your search engine rankings will not generally accept paid postings to their blog.

So what’s an online marketer to do? The solution is easy and works far better than paid blog postings. Offer to write a guest blog post! Grassroots and high traffic blogs love these offers. It makes them look better because they are big enough to have ‘guest bloggers’ they can feature and provides them with free content they can publish in between their own postings. Anyone who runs a blog knows how burdensome it is to keep fresh content all the time.

Problem: Finding the blogs.

Solution: Try Google

Three easy ways to find good blogs to offer your ‘guest posting’ services to.

1. Google ‘your industry’ plus the term ‘blog’. That’ll give you a great list of blogs that we already know Google likes since they’re ranking. Have a look at the first 50 or so.
2. Look at their blogroll. Good blogs typically have a list of other blogs that they like in the same industry. Have a look at those blogs, and the blog rolls on those blogs…and so on.
3. See who links to the blogs you’ve found so far. The following search done in Yahoo! will tell you who links to the blog: linkdomain:thebloggerswebsite.com ? site:thebloggerswebsite.com

Problem: Convincing the blogger

Solution: Tell them why it’s good for them, not you.

We all have our best interests at heart. Nobody’s going to let you publish a blog post on their site for your benefit. They’ll do it if it’s good for them. So why would they publish your post? Tell them why it’s good for them. Let me go back to the salesjob I did on Bhupesh (the blog owner of this site, who agreed to let me do this guest blog post) to illustrate why he would let a life insurance agent post on his marketing site.

1. It will provide some additional content they can use in between their current blog posts.
2. Their visitors will find it interesting. I’ll write an on topic blog post that’s informative and authoritative. And I won’t market products or services, this will be an informational post.
3. Give them some ideas as to what you might right on and let them pick one. That gives them a list of things they can look at and increases the chances there will be a subject that piques their interest.

Problem: The implementation of the article

Solution: No need to write an article until they accept.

Once the blogger has accepted and you’ve decided on an article subject, go ahead and write the article. Make sure you offer the blog owner the ability to have final approval on the article prior to publishing. That will set their mind at ease so they know they won’t be publishing a commercial solicitation.

Within the article, link out to relevant sites. And give yourself credit at the bottom of the article including a link to your website. See? That’s not spammy at all.

The benefit to you:

There are multiple benefits to doing this. First, search engines love links pointing to your website. They love even more links from strong authoritative websites that are on topic. Secondly, you will find you can get links from websites that simply wouldn’t link to you (or your competitors!) ever, ever, ever. No money is changing hands which keeps them happy. And finally the strong blogs will actually send you traffic and visitors from your guest blog post.

And finally, have fun with it. There’s something to be said for getting your articles published on other’s blogs. It’ll help your rankings, send you traffic, and help you become perceived as an expert in your field.

About the guest poster: Glenn Cooke is a Life Insurance Broker in Canada. You can read his blog about
life insurance for consumers at TheTermGuy.com.

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written by Bhupesh \\ tags: guest blogging, links, search engine ranking

A lesson in marketing and consistency.

I was recently selected to save up to 75% off VOSTRO systems from Dell.  Pretty exciting eh? The glossy enviro-green and white direct mail piece was personalized and they even got the spelling of my name right! The headline had two footnotes. One said that I was selected based on factors such as historical purchases but I never bought a Dell through my company name so I wonder what other factors it could be.  The second footnote said that it was a promotional offer valid between March 21, 2008 and April 3, 2008 etc…good thing my business does not have to put laptops into a capital budget first! The strong call to action was duly noted.

If you are one of Dell’s target business customers, as I apparently am, you are probably too busy to muck around a website getting educated on the various systems and configurations that Dell offers. So this offer was particularly enticing. In 3 simple steps, I could find out if my business was selected to save 25%, 50% or 75%. Here is what I had to do:

1. Visit their website or call their toll free number.

2. Enter my personal access code to find out how much I’d save.

3. Choose my technology and enter the access code (again) to purchase it.

Sounds simple enough so I decide to give it a try as one can always use another laptop right?

Step 1 - No problem getting to the Dell site that immediately redirects to a tracking page with “mystery coupon” in the URL. First thing I see is the header Direct Mailer Offers. Now I wonder if I got the best offer. Second thing I see is a text box header with the question “Did you receive a Coupon Code”. Umm…I don’t know…I received a personal access code. Is that the same thing? I check the fine print on the direct mail flyer and it calls the personal access code an E-Value code so maybe I don’t have a Coupon Code? Figuring that Dell would not waste their money sending this to me only to have it fail on Step 1, I decide to try using my personal access code. That’s gotta be the same thing. As a potential customer, I’m not feeling too comfortable right now. I think I’m on a legit Dell site with the blue corporate colour in the navigation buttons. But the flyer was all green so now I’m not too sure - something phishy going on? Oh wait, there are green buttons lower on the page so all is good.

Step 2 - The personal access code is 14 alphanumeric characters long. Dell will know exactly who came to the site, when they came and how far along the sales funnel they went by simply using this tracking code. I unfortunately got stumped at this step. The personal access code…oops, I mean Coupon Code, did not work. I try again - still no luck. I realized I keyed in an I instead of a 1 and probably an O instead of a 0. I can’t tell the difference since they used ALL CAPS in the code. Woohoo….I can save a whopping 25%! Good thing I did not call the toll free number. I can’t imagine repeating a 14 letter and number combo over the phone. What if I had to key them in and ended up at a remote call centre? On to Step 3 now.

Step 3 - I look at the laptop solutions and desktop solutions, wondering why they are called solutions and not just business computers. Must be some marketing jargon. Does anyone google “laptop solutions” when looking for a computer? Google “laptop” and you get all the smart retailers that know what keywords are relevant ranking high on the search page. Hmmm…just made a mental note to contact Dell about helping them optimize their website

Ok not interested in a solution at this point and also not very impressed.

What are the lessons learned?

Be consistent.

The personal access code was referred to as the E-Value code in the fine print on the flyer. It was also referred to as the Coupon Code on the website. One of these is the appropriate and relevant term from a marketing and legal standpoint. That term should be used consistently.

The layout of the flyer was similar to what one would expect to see on a tech oriented website. However, the Dell website is blue, with an orange and black graphic but the flyer is various shades of green. Not disconcerting but it would be nice for some design elements to be consistent across various marketing media.

Make it easy for the customer.

Don’t have a title that suggests better offers might be available. I was feeling special when I received the direct marketing piece but after reading Direct Mailer Offers, I’m not too certain that I was specially “selected” for this amazing limited time offer. Why does a customer even need to see this - it’s more for the marketing folks at Dell that say “go to the Direct Mailer Offers page” when describing their latest promotional offer to internal people. I would recommend calling it VOSTRO system special offer instead. A unique landing page for each customer could be created to really personalize the experience but that involves a bit more work. Hmmm….ANOTHER mental note to contact Dell and offer my consulting services!

The 14 character personal access code was not very user-friendly. Instead of ALL CAPS, they should have made it all lower case so there would not be any opportunity for confusion with i’s, 1’s, o’s or 0’s.

If I made a purchase I would have to key in the 14 character personal access code again. I can think of a solution here - capture the personal access code from Step 2. Better yet, knowing that I had keyed it in already, don’t ask for it again. Instead, personalize Step 3 by including my company name in the window. That would make it really easy for me and I’d feel oh so special too.

Have you received any direct mail marketing pieces that made you feel special? Did you end up acting on the offer? Please share.

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written by Bhupesh \\ tags: dell, direct mail, Marketing, sales funnel

Ever wonder how those marketing geniuses come up with incredibly creative ideas? Well now you can too can be creative just by continually giving your brain hardware upgrades. Not a techie? No worries - below are my 7 easy steps towards becoming more creative:

1. Go against the flow.

Don’t do what everyone else is doing. In fact, try doing the opposite. Challenge assumptions. When they zig you zag so to speak. Be a contrarian. Be counter-intuitive.

Take a different route to work, instead of putting on your left sock first, put your right sock on. Hold your phone in your left hand when you’re chatting in that restaurant. Have cereal for dinner and pasta for breakfast. And don’t forget to smile while you’re talking because a happy mind is a creative mind. Force your mind to do the unordinary and it will become extraordinary.

2. Chatter incessantly.

The more you talk, the more you expose yourself to opportunities to have a conversation with someone. And if you tie this in to point #1 above, even better. Just be careful that you’re not always talking to yourself. The barista at your local Starbucks, the cab drive driving you to your innovation seminar, the math teacher at your child’s school, the annoyed and tired looking gentleman on that transatlantic flight can all help with your verbal rapid prototyping efforts. Someone might even give you an insight that later could lead you to step out of your bathtub and run naked in the streets shouting Eureka! Warning…do not try this in the winter and check with municipal by-laws before opening that door! Or maybe not.

3. Consume text like Kwame Kilpatrick.

Read often and as much as possible. It can be Twitter posts, blogs like this one, articles, novels, textbooks, StumbleUpon, tradeshow displays, your competitor’s web content, press releases, news related to a totally unrelated industry or the nutrition label on your favourite cereal box. The point is, the more you read, the more you are able to make connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. I think that’s what brought the mayor of Detroit and Christine Beatty closer together.

4. Carry a pen and notebook.

My friend Gabriella Pacione of Concept Genesis, a creative consultancy based in Canada, recommends that we all carry a pen and notebook to capture flashes of brilliance that often get lost as we do the more mundane things in our lives like breathing regularly. She says you can’t discount the visual aspect of creativity. If you scoff at this idea because you’re a digital maven, I humbly suggest that you do what I do. Use your Blackberry as a voice recorder or key-in your thoughts and email them to yourself. Best email you will get all day and no spam - guaranteed!

5. Draw

As mentioned above, the visual aspect of creativity cannot be ignored. Drawing, doodling or sketching out ideas will not only entertain your spouse or Wacom-enabled kids it will give you another way of looking at things. Making unique connections is what it is all about.

6. Wake up and smell the coffee.

Better yet, try some Green Tea to get the antioxidant benefits as well. Stimulating your senses is important to open up your mind to possibilities. This includes the sense of smell. You may remember or hopefully still play the smell game. This is where you blindfold someone and place a series of items under their nose. They have to identify what it was based on the smell. Or, to be more PC I guess I should say scent. It’s very hard to identify what the item is without seeing it as we require both sides of our brain to identify and then articulate what that smell is. Struggle and you build up those connections over time.

7. Look around and be inspired.

There are numerous stories about people getting inspiration from merely observing. Richard Feynman, joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics is said to have been in the cafeteria at Cornell when he saw something that helped him solve an equation that ultimately led to his Nobel Prize. A student was spinning a plate and as it wobbled, Feynman noticed that the red medallion of Cornell spun around at a different rate than the wobble. For “fun”, he calculated the relationship between the wobble and the spin of the plate (2:1). However it also led him to look at the problem about the spin of electrons differently. Solving that led to the prize!

Post your ideas here!

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written by Bhupesh \\ tags: Christine Beatty, creativity, Gabriella Pacione, Kwame Kilpatrick, Marketing, Richard Feynman