Are YOU the one?

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Ever wondered if you could improve your financial or investment blog posts?

You can benefit from a FREE critique by a professional financial writer whose clients include leading investment and wealth management firms. That’s me.

Some of your colleagues have bravely volunteered their blog posts for my review. I’ve written about the strengths–and opportunities for improvement–in Nathan Gehring’s “And About That Financial Plan” and Jonathan Smith’s “Opportunity Arriving Daily” in the Discussion section of my Facebook business page.

When you read my recommendations, you’ll get ideas about how to tweak your own posts.

To volunteer for a critique

If you’re a financial advisor who’d like to volunteer for a gentle critique of a blog post you’ve already published, please email me at info@investmentwriting.com with
* Your name
* Contact information
* Link to your published post

My gentle critique of a financial advisor’s already-published post is intended to be a monthly feature in the Discussion section of this Facebook page. That means there are only 12 openings each year.

Feeling shy?

It’s no problem if you feel too shy to learn in public. You can sign up for “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Week Teleclass for Financial Advisors.” If you sign up by 12 midnight on AUGUST 31, you’ll pay the Early Bird rate.

Guest post: “Generate Quality, Low Cost Leads with Facebook Ads”

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Kristin Harad’s video series on marketing for financial advisors caught my eye-especially because she talks about niche marketing. I’m a big believer in niche marketing.  So I was delighted when she offered to write a guest post for my blog.

By coincidence, Kristin’s guest post arrived not long after a wealth management firm executive suggested to me that Facebook ads could be a powerful tool for financial advisors.


Generate Quality, Low Cost Leads with Facebook Ads

by Kristin Harad, CFP®

Adding new prospects to your sales funnel can be a costly endeavor for financial advisors.  Workshops, mailings and other tactics can be effective, but the cost-per-lead from these channels is often quite high.  Recently, I’ve discovered how to effectively use a new marketing channel that’s been right under my nose to bring in a steady stream of quality leads at an incredibly low cost:  Facebook.

Now, you probably know that Facebook has become the second largest Web site in the world and last month it was all over the news for registering its 500 millionth user.  But what you perhaps didn’t know is that Facebook also offers an incredible self-service advertising platform that is an absolutely amazing tool for laser-targeting ads to your precise audience.  There are four reasons I really love Facebook Ads:

1)  It’s really easy to create and manage ads.  No technical nor design expertise required.
2)  You can target practically any niche.  Target your ads by location, demographics and interests. You can reach your EXACT audience.
3) It’s highly effective. Put together a well thought-through campaign and you can move people through your sales funnel to becoming paying clients!
4)  It’s really cheap! You don’t pay anything for impressions and some of our ads cost just six cents per click!  I’m adding targeted prospects to my marketing database at a cost of just 83 cents each.

It’s fast and easy to start testing your own Facebook Ads campaign.

Start by going to www.facebook.com/ads where you can sign up online in just a few minutes and instantly begin creating ads that appear on nearly every page of Facebook.  It’s very easy to create the ads — you can make one in just a couple minutes and you don’t need to have any technical or design expertise.

Be sure to design at least five different ads so that you can test different ideas to see which performs best.  The headline and the image you use in your ads have the most impact on click-through rates, so write a few very pithy headlines.  Images of people generally attract better click-through rates.  The more often people click on your ad, the more it will be shown and Facebook will actually reward you with a much lower price.

Next, and most importantly, think carefully about how to target your ad.

Start with location.  My firm mostly serves families within 25 miles of San Francisco, so in the Location section, I target by City, then type in San Francisco and select cities within 25 miles.  Under demographics, identify who your best potential clients are.

Next comes age, relationship status, likes and interests. Since I work with expectant parents and young families, most of my clients are between their late 20s and early 40s, so I put 28 – 44 as the age bracket.  I choose ALL for relationship status, especially since many people on Facebook don’t state theirs.  However, many advisors base their niche off of relationship status, so it can be a really power way to target.  (If you are focused on couples who are getting married, think of the precise messaging you can deliver when you target people who are engaged!)  Then, you’ll come to the small Likes & Interests section, which is where the real power targeting comes from.  This identifies users by what they have placed on their own Facebook page, and you can target them based on practically anything!

As an example, I put in ‘pregnant’ and ‘pregnancy’ as two keywords.  Based on what I picked for location, age, gender and these two keywords, Facebook estimates that my ad will reach 2,200 people.  That’s 2,200 pregnant women between 28 – 44 in the San Francisco Bay Area — my exact customer demographic!  You can’t find that kind of precision anywhere else.  More importantly, now that I know exactly who is going to see these ads, I can write messages that speak directly to them.  For instance, “Pregnant in San Francisco?” or “What New Bay Area Moms Must Know.”  It’s pretty easy to catch my audience’s attention when I know exactly who they are.  Plus, I can quickly create other ad campaigns that micro-target other groups, like expectant fathers or parents of a kindergartner.

These ads work incredibly well for me.  Dozens of people click on them each day, visiting special pages on my Web site that I’ve set up for them.  About 1-in-5 visitors take a further action on my Web site, like subscribing to my email newsletter or signing up for the monthly events that I hold.   It’s critical that you design a Web page with a specific action in mind for these visitors.  Send them to your company’s home page and they will bounce off without spending two minutes on your site.  But, if you offer an informative and relevant free report in exchange for their email address, they will opt-in to your marketing database by the dozens!

That’s what makes Facebook a great way to fill the top of the sales funnel.  Is anyone going to click on a small ad and instantly purchase complex financial products for thousands of dollars?  Of course not!  But by structuring a well-thought out campaign that is designed to pull targeted prospects into the start of my sales funnel, I can begin to form a relationship with them that will evolve over the months ahead and I absolutely convert a portion of these leads into paying clients over time!

Finally, Facebook ads are incredibly low cost.  You can set your own budget, and I’m only spending about $25 per day.  You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, and the price is usually well under one dollar per click.  I think it’s a great marketing tool that is absolutely worth experimenting with, so give it a try today at www.facebook.com/ads.

About the Author:  Kristin Harad, CFP® is the President of VitaVie Financial Planning, a fee-only financial planning firm in San Francisco.  She offers a free video series on marketing strategies for financial advisors at http://www.next10clients.com.

“CFA credential implies a standard of care not always upheld,” says Forbes opinion piece

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Edward Siedle questions the integrity of some CFA charterholders in “Investors Misled By Brokers Masquerading As Fiduciaries: CFA credential implies a standard of care not always upheld,“ an August 9 “Expert View” on Forbes.com. Siedle is a former SEC attorney and the president of Benchmark Financial Services.

While I think Siedle overstates his case, he raises an interesting point.

Suitability standard vs. fiduciary duty

His basic argument: If CFA charterholders work for broker-dealers, they’re bound to a standard of suitability, rather than fiduciary duty. This is a conflict I hadn’t thought about before reading his article.

Apparently many brokerage firms handle the potential conflict by forbidding use of the CFA credential by those who use the suitability standard.

Siedle quotes Robert Dannhauser, the CFA Institute’s director of advocacy outreach. Dannhauser says, “…in many such instances, the firms do not allow CFA charterholders to display the CFA designation after their name on business cards or other publicly available material, so that clients do not perceive any different standard than what the firm has adopted for all of its employees. This hopefully offers clients a clearer view of what they’re getting. The key is for practitioners to not represent themselves as one thing but offer a different level of service than might otherwise be expected given that representation.”

Siedle counters by saying, “However, in my experience, many brokers do use their CFA status in marketing themselves to investors–especially to institutional and high-net-worth investors who are most likely to be familiar with the designation.” Moreover, “Unfortunately, it’s only after the retail broker dressed up like a fiduciary screws up that the investor might discover that he and his employer do not accept a fiduciary standard of duty.” I don’t know the details of the case that Siedle uses as an example.

Siedle seems to imply that every charterholder who works for a company such as Bank of America works for a broker-dealer. This is an exaggeration. The companies he names are not pure broker-dealers. Many of the charterholders at these firms may work for registered investment advisors that explicitly require them to act as fiduciaries.

Challenge for the CFA Institute’s ethics curriculum

Still, I’d be curious to know if the conflict between fiduciary duty and the suitability standard comes up in the CFA Institute’s ethics curriculum. If not, it sounds like a good topic for the future. As a CFA charterholder myself, I feel confident that the CFA Institute will tackle this issue.

Great lines from Raymond James

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“There is no one exactly like you. Raymond James financial advisors understand that.”

These lines from a Raymond James advertisement get right what so many financial ads and brochures get wrong. They focus on you, the client, instead of us, the firm. They also make the client feel unique. These are qualities I’d like to see more of in financial advisors’ marketing and communications.

How do YOUR marketing materials measure up?

First, pick your target market and niche

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Scattershot marketing of your investment or financial advisory services will sap your energy. Plus, it makes it harder for you to distinguish yourself from your gazillion competitors. This is why I’d like you to pick your target market —the group of people whom you target—and niche, meaning the services you provide, before you write any marketing materials, including your blog.

Don’t know how to choose your target market or niche? “Why People Buy What You’re Selling,” Chapter 2 of Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid offers exercises that will help.

“What are your clients’ compelling desires?” asks Port in this chapter. Understanding the answer to this question is a key to your marketing—and blogging—success.

Knowing your target market, niche, and your clients’ “compelling desires” will tell you who to address in your blog and which benefits of your services you should stress.

Edited July 21, thanks to comment from Ben.

Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.

My May blog posts by category: Blogging, economy/investments/wealth management, marketing, social media, writing

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Did you notice that I went wild in May, posting every day as part of the Word Count Blogathon? For your convenience, I’m listing my May posts by category.

Blogging

Economy, investments, and wealth management

Marketing

Social media

Writing

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Copyright 2010 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved

Executive’s lesson for your communications with clients and prospects

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Financial advisors who want to communicate effectively will follow the example set by Bill Carter in “The Scoreboard Can’t Tell You Everything.” Carter’s lesson boils down to this: Put yourself in the mind of the person with whom you’re communicating.

Here’s what Carter, partner and co-found of Fuse, said in his interview with Adam Bryant of The New York Times:

In terms of communication, I think that I do my best to try to step away from my own belief system and my own priorities, which are the priorities of a 41-year-old man who’s married and has a young daughter. Instead, I try to evaluate decisions based on what the 25- to-32-year-olds in our office are trying to get out of their career, what they want in a workplace. 

Your articles and conversations will be more persuasive when you phrase them in terms of what your clients, prospects, and referral sources care about. 

For example, say “Your interests come first because we don’t accept payments from product providers” instead of “We are a fee-only financial advisor.”

Do you apply this rule to your communications? Please share your examples.


Related posts
* Focus on features, not benefits, in your marketing
* Encourage good communication or lose your multi-generational clients

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Copyright 2010 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved

"Have mutual fund fees gone up or down?"

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Investment expenses have been on my mind this month, as you know, if you’ve read “Morgan Creek Capital’s Yusko on investing,” “Morgan Creek Capital’s Yusko riles up Tweeters with comments on investment fees” or you follow me on Twitter.


This prompted me to revisit my article, “Have mutual fund fees gone up or down? Are they fair or unfair? It depends on whom you ask.” 


Many of the points raised in this 2006 article still apply.

  •  For most advisors, it’s a no-brainer to pick the fund with lower expenses, assuming the fund’s style, market capitalization and other major factors are equal. 
  • Controversies swirl around several topics related to fees, including their fairness, their correlation with higher fund returns, whether they’re rising or falling, and whether fund firms are responding adequately to advisor demands.
  • Some financial advisors say both critics and boosters of mutual funds may be missing the point by focusing on disclosed expense ratios. 
  • One thing seems clear: Advisors will continue to gravitate toward low-cost funds that also meet their other investment criteria.

One change since my 2006 article: The Investment Company Institute’s research no longer shows that overall mutual fund expenses are dropping. The headline for its latest study says, “Mutual Fund Expense Ratios Ticked Up in 2009, While Total Fees and Expenses Remained Steady.” Morningstar Advisor put a more negative spin on fees in “Mutual Fund Expense Ratios See Biggest Spike Since 2000.”

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    Copyright 2010 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved

    Tip for how to connect with your workshop attendees

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    Advisors, you can deepen your connection with folks who attend your investment or financial planning workshops using a technique I observed at the Financial Planning Association of Massachusetts annual conference on May 7.

    Consultant Shari Harley, whom I wrote about in “How to improve your financial planning client relationships,” handed out postcards to her audience. There’s nothing unusual about that. But what she said next grabbed my attention.

    Harley asked us to write on the postcard (shown in the photo above) at least one thing that we learned from her presentation that we’d like to apply. Then she promised to mail the postcards to us in one month, if we dropped them off on our way out of the auditorium.

    I like Harley’s postcard idea because

    1. Her question spurs the audience to think about what was most valuable in her presentation.
    2. She gains valuable feedback when participants hand in their cards.
    3. She reminds potential clients of her existence–with their permission–when they receive their cards one month later.
    4. If audience members haven’t acted on their goals by the time they receive the cards, they may say, “I need a consultant to help me act on this.”

    This postcard technique should work nicely as follow-up to any sort of financial seminar or workshop.
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    Copyright 2010 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved

    Financial bloggers’ posts may violate copyright law

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    Copyright law isn’t on the curriculum of most business schools or for CFP or CFA candidates. So it’s not surprising that I’ve seen well-meaning financial advisors unintentionally violate copyright law in their blogs. 

    What NOT to do
    You cannot copy someone’s entire  newspaper article or  blog post  word-for-word, then make it okay by giving credit to the author. This won’t suffice. Not even if you link back to the original article. You are violating copyright law. 

    When in doubt, paraphrase
    U.S. law allows you to quote part of a written work under the doctrine of fair use, which you can read about on the federal copyright website.

    Fair use is a murky concept. “There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work,” as it says in the federal government’s FAQ on on “How much of someone else’s work can I use without getting permission?”

    As the Copyright Office says:

    If you use a copyrighted work without authorization, the owner may be entitled to bring an infringement action against you. There are circumstances under the fair use doctrine where a quote or a sample may be used without permission. However, in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained.

    Your safest course is to simply paraphrase or summarize the article that interests you, while also citing the source. It’s courteous to provide a link to the article, if it’s available online.

    Using quotes very selectively will keep you safe, while protecting other authors’ copyright.
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    Copyright 2010 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved