t4 Marketing Innovations Blog

“When the 4 and 5 year olds of today grow up they won’t know what filing is”. So argues marketing guru James Myers. “They may not even understand the concept of folders. That is because everything will be tagged, they will think in terms of search even now I have given up saving files in neat folders on the computer. Save it anywhere and find it again with google desktop. They will also think video. A Forrester type organisation estimate that 91% of new content in 2014 will be video. … Continue Reading

We picked this up from a useful web site called econsultancy.com.  They have been monitoring the development of digital media world-wide.  Here they give us 20 mind blowing stats about the way electronic media is developing and how it is changing the way we live and work!

• Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours… A considerable increase from the previous 120m.
• Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around … Continue Reading
  

Any last words dear...?

Investment News – a specialist trade publication for Financial Advisers in the US has been doing some research on advisers use of social networking and blogs as part of their marketing strategy.  This is interesting because the structure of the financial advice industry in the US is similar to ours and what happens in America tends to predict what will happen in the UK 5 years down the line.

More and more advisers we talk to want to integrate social media into their marketing plans. They … Continue Reading

How was your day?

Investment News – a trade journal for financial advisers in the US published a great article on how blogging works to the good for financial advisers – it is full of practical examples.

They account for only a minuscule fraction of the world’s estimated 100 million bloggers, but financial advisers who maintain their own commentary-oriented websites are finding that blogging can pay.

Blogs can be an inexpensive way to attract prospects, market a practice and communicate with clients. They’re also a way to … Continue Reading

Investment News – a trade journal for Financial Advisers in the US – has been looking at how social networking, the web and blogging are increasingly being combined to help advisers market their businesses.  The article below looks at social networking – what is it and how can advisers use it?

Social Networking Map

A legion of intrepid financial advisers are twittering, linking in and in many other ways harnessing the power of the Internet to network socially in a bid to expand their practices.

They … Continue Reading

Bloggers Map

Blogs are worth doing for financial adviser firms.  They are easy to do and you don’t require an IT PHD to run one.  Tools such as WordPress and Google’s Blogger allow anyone to keep one.  If you integrate your blog with your website it is a great way of keeping your website updated with fresh material.  Keeping a blog and updating regularly also helps with your Search Engine Optimisation and is one of the key ways to push you up those search engines searches – … Continue Reading

Email Marketing

As companies cut budgets to streamline operations in these tough economic times, e-mail marketing is coming into its own to deliver cost effective results. In many instances, direct mail budgets are being slashed, with some of those funds diverted to e-mail.

The people making the budget decisions have high expectations that e-mail will make up for the sales they expected from direct marketing.

Sharpening your company’s e-mail subscriber list is a key factor in improving results of online marketing campaigns. Look at these tips to help make … Continue Reading

21st Century marketing

How to step up your marketing in a recession

There is a 21st century shift in marketing that is affecting small and medium sized businesses – and it is affecting financial adviser businesses as much as  other industries.

What are the traditional methods of marketing your services?

• Networking – referrals, golf club, business club, round table…
• Direct mail
• Telemarketing – phoning up prospects and potential prospects
• Local press advertising – national press and trade press as well for larger IFAs.
• Seminars

These methods are still valid but in the modern world … Continue Reading

If you are marketing a financial adviser businesss, test social media

Social Media

Several conversations with both B2B marketers and financial advisers have really opened my eyes to the role that social media can play in B2B demand generation – and, yes, even for the marketing of financial adviser firms and services.

Blogs, LinkedIn groups, Twitter feeds, and the like don’t replace workhorse tactics like referrals, direct mail, email marketing or seminars (or even webinars), but those channels increasingly are where your customers and prospects spend time … Continue Reading

Twitter.com

Twitter is becoming more and more popular. The Twiterati – as one wag called them – are making a lot of noise. Stephen Fry and Richard Branson are heavily into this tool. The first news and pictures of the plane crash landing on the Hudson came out through Twitter and the news of the Mumbai hotel siege was coming faster and more comprehensively through Twitterers than it was from the big news networks.

So what. So it’s all the rage with all the Facebook and Bebo junkies. But what … Continue Reading