Posts Tagged ‘Media Platforms’

Reach Out Through Social

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

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by Anthony Lam, The Covenant Group

Finan­cial ser­vices pro­fes­sion­als and orga­ni­za­tions have been ret­i­cent to reach out to and engage their clients through social media plat­forms. This may be partly due to com­pli­ance fears, although a lack of famil­iar­ity with the chan­nel could also be to blame.The Covenant Group blog is work­ing to squash any fears that exist.

A dri­ving aspect of high-quality client ser­vice is doing what­ever it takes to sat­isfy your clients. Trends indi­cate that peo­ple of every age are start­ing to expect the com­pa­nies they do busi­ness with to be avail­able not only over the phone, via email and (when appro­pri­ate) face-to-face, but also on social net­works such as Twit­ter, Face­book and LinkedIn. Social media has already been tapped by many sec­tors as a means of mar­ket­ing, but it also presents sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­nect­ing with clients.

Have you con­sid­ered how social media can advance your busi­ness goals? Do you already use social media to con­nect with clients? Have you used the infor­ma­tion you’ve found on these net­works to inform client inter­views and interactions?

At The Covenant Group, we encour­age clients to learn more about these plat­forms and inte­grate them into the exist­ing client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment strat­egy given the increas­ing rel­e­vance of these com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels. Since most of these sites’ basic ser­vices cost lit­tle more than your time, it is wise to start think­ing about how you can work them into the daily sched­ules of your team.

For exam­ple, Twit­ter can be a great way to “lis­ten in” on con­ver­sa­tions about a vari­ety of top­ics, and may give you insight into what your clients want but have not yet artic­u­lated. Addi­tion­ally, it can enable you to stay up to date with the lat­est news and prod­uct offer­ings, help­ing you deter­mine the ways in which your busi­ness needs to evolve and grow. You man not find your clients are Twit­ter users, how­ever, all news sources and most finan­cial and busi­ness colum­nists are. They can pro­vide you with rel­e­vant con­tent that you can com­mu­ni­cate to clients via other social net­works or in a newslet­ter or email.

As Lorie Kon­ish writes for OnWall­Street, the net­works can also serve to build and deepen client rela­tion­ships. Face­book can reveal what prospects and clients are pas­sion­ate about — their fam­ily, a social issue, a busi­ness — and may be a means of show­ing the human side of your busi­ness through the back­sto­ries of your advi­sors and sup­port­ing staff.

On a more pro­fes­sional level, Kon­ish empha­sizes the net­work­ing and reputation-establishing poten­tial of LinkedIn. This can help you con­nect with oth­ers in your sec­tor, research clients before sales inter­views and expand aware­ness of your own areas of expertise.

Anthony Lam has spent more than 20 years hon­ing his cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment skills. He has demon­strated his com­mit­ment to high-quality cus­tomer ser­vice in the retail, bank­ing and air­line indus­tries. Anthony is the Man­ager of Pro­gram Deliv­ery and Client Rela­tion­ships at The Covenant Group and coaches finan­cial advi­sors on client ser­vices through The Covenant Group’s finan­cial ser­vices train­ing.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Financial Services Shouldn’t Fear Social

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

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by Shauna Trainor, The Covenant Group

It’s no sur­prise that many inde­pen­dent finan­cial advi­sors have been hes­i­tant to join social media net­works — even many of the 50 most impor­tant pri­vate banks and wealth man­age­ment insti­tu­tions world­wide have lagged behind, accord­ing to a studyby Asset​inum​.com.

Mea­sur­ing the FIs’ use of Twit­ter, LinkedIn, Face­book and YouTube, as well as their website-social media inte­gra­tion, the researchers deter­mined that the banks aver­aged 43 out of a pos­si­ble 100 points. Assentinum​.com also observed that clients across the globe want greater trans­parency and edu­ca­tional con­tent from their banks. The demand is there, yet finan­cial pro­fes­sion­als and insti­tu­tions have con­tin­ued to ignore it.

Finan­cial ser­vices firms that fail to engage with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients on social net­works may be miss­ing out on vital oppor­tu­ni­ties to build client cap­i­tal and estab­lish deeper rela­tion­ships. These web­sites can also prove use­ful in the sales stage of the buy­ing cycle, when you are research­ing prospects’ busi­nesses, val­ues and goals in order to devise a solu­tion that will help them. Social media can make your sales, mar­ket­ing and client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment respon­si­bil­i­ties more effi­cient and bring your firm into the 21st century.

“Espe­cially for renowned banks with a demand­ing clien­tele, it is increas­ingly impor­tant to be present in the vir­tual social net­work,” the com­pany notes. A sur­vey from Cogent Research found that more than 5 mil­lion investors with more than $100,000 investable assets use social media plat­forms when research­ing and mak­ing finan­cial deci­sions.. Finan­cial Plan­ning reports that the study also deter­mined that 75 per­cent of the 5-million investors men­tioned in the research study turn to LinkedIn most fre­quently when con­duct­ing invest­ment research.

There is no rea­son to shy away from social media. Although it may seem com­plex in the­ory, the reg­u­la­tory issues asso­ci­ated with the chan­nel can be avoided if you care­fully plan your social mar­ket­ing strat­egy. Before set­ting up blogs and pro­files, take time to iden­tify the goals you have for mar­ket­ing and pro­mot­ing your prac­tice and yourself.

Are you join­ing these net­works sim­ply to spread aware­ness of your brand, or do you gen­uinely want to cre­ate more mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions with the pub­lic, prospects and clients? How do you cur­rently use social media for busi­ness pur­poses? What do you hope to gain by expand­ing your online presence?

Side­step­ping social media and keep­ing it out of your mar­ket­ing mix is no longer an option. Increas­ingly, high net worth indi­vid­u­als, as well as the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion, are join­ing the net­works and using dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools to stay in touch with their busi­ness associates.

Shauna Trainor is The Covenant Group’s Mar­ket­ing Man­ager. She focuses on The Covenant Group’s own mar­ket­ing strat­egy and also helps entre­pre­neurs through finan­cial advi­sor train­ing to lever­age social media and other tech­nol­ogy to spread the word about their ser­vices and prac­tices and build relationships.

 

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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