Reach Out Through Social

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

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.

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Tags: Anthony Lam, Business Columnists, Business Goals, Client Interviews, Client Relationship Management, Communication Channels, Conversations, Covenant Group, Daily Schedules, Familiarity, Financial Services Professionals, Group Blog, Management Strategy, Media Platforms, News Sources, Product Offerings, Quality Client Service, Social Networks, Squash, Twitter
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Financial Services Shouldn’t Fear Social

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

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.

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Tags: Client Relationship Management, Covenant Group, Educational Content, Facebook, Financial Decisions, Financial Professionals, Independent Financial Advisors, Investable Assets, Investment Research, Management Institutions, Management Responsibilities, Marketing Strategy, Media Integration, Media Networks, Media Platforms, Private Banks, Prospective Clients, Regulatory Issues, Social Marketing, Social Networks, Vital Opportunities, Wealth Management
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Using Pinterest for Financial Services

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

by Shauna Trainor, Covenant Group

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Tags: Aite, Amount Of Money, Bank Of America, Communicating With Friends, Covenant Group, Credit Unions, Financial Advisors, Financial Services Sector, Linkedin, Marketing Materials, Merrill Lynch, Newspaper Column, Pinboard, Posting News, Printed Marketing, Saving Money, Senior Analyst, Skeptics, Social Networks, Visuals
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