Disqus - Latest Comments for fabeetle

Re: Talking To Clients About Breaking Away

fabeetle — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:18:06 -0000

There is another advantage. As an RIA you can have more flexibility w/ your marketing efforts. Not that you can do things that the wirehouses can't but you don't have the broad policies that go beyond the regulations to ensure compliance.

Re: Pro Athletes Are Financially Challenged

fabeetle — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:15:55 -0000

This is a strange article/entry but a valid point. See our blog post about wealth management for athlete's and entertainers here: http://fabeetle.me/6frm

Re: LUNCHTIME POLL: What Web Services Are Worth Paying For?

fabeetle — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:50:22 -0000

Netflix, Evernote, Jott, MobileMe.

Re: Is social media worth your marketing dollars?

fabeetle — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:35:07 -0000

This was well written though I am not sure it answered the question of "...is it worth your dollars...". Brant did a great job of explaining segments, speaking about adoption and usage, and the intricacies of such vehicles but is it worth your money and more importantly your time?

This misconception with social media is that you sign up for Facebook, LinkedIn or twitter and something magical happens and you never have to look for a customer again. Not the case obviously. As Brant mentions that social media is simply and extension and digital reflection of something that is core to our being. The desire to connect and share. Social media helps on better visualize how customers are connected, where they build communities, what they do, and more importantly how they talk about your product. Whether that be remote control cars or financial planning. So how does that relate to your marketing dollars?

First when you spend money, on say a Facebook, advertisement, you are getting a couple of things that are to your advantage over traditional media.

1. The clients are populating the database with information. As opposed to traditional lists, survey's, etc. that you pay for. When you are using Facebook's tool you are targeting your dollars towards a better quality list. A list that people voluntary update daily. No assumptions, no motivations, no "chance to win a TV if they fill out a quick survey." Per dollar this increases your impact and per unit of time you win because you are not arguing with your list provider or spending time exchanging leads.

2. You can control your expenditures more by setting budgets and monitoring it daily. With traditional media methods you often incur your expense up front and evaluate at the end of the campaign if it was successful. With Facebook or say Google you can set budgets, wade into the waters, look at your effectiveness on the fly and decide to invest more or hit eject.

3. Seth Godin speaks of Permission Marketing which is what we are all seeing with these networks. Past communication channels have not offered the level of control that today's channels do. Your email can be sent and sold all over the world, but on Facebook you have to let someone into your "circle of trust" as Dinero would say. Social Media allows you to speak to a customer that is more open to hearing your message because it is at their convenience. Take the same prospect that you may be pursuing. Send them and introductory email at 10am to their office email and it will be sent straight to the trash by their executive assistant that checks their email. Imagine you were able to send that same message to their Facebook mail where they could check in when they are ready to see it. Effectiveness goes up. If you are not their "friend" you can't but you can put it in an add right next to their inbox. Getting closer.

The above examples speaks to if you are actually committed to spending marketing dollars on social media type advertising. The truth is you can do a lot with free tools as well. Many small business are significantly increasing their reach, image, and customer base by simply combining Facebook, Twitter, a Blog and their website. This can practically be done for free (depending on the website variable). In this case, is it worth your dollars? Absolutely. Is it worth your time? That is a more specific question as it has to do with your product and your customer. If you are selling knitting needles to a 85+ yr old target market...probably not worth your time. You get my point.

I think to answer the question that was posed in the article, yes, it is "worth" your dollars because for those dollars, if you know what you are doing, you will get higher quality message delivery than other methods. That said, and as I mentioned before, these efforts need to be part of an integrated plan that consistently represents a brand online and off. The consumer still needs to receive your message a couple of times before and a couple of times after a purchase. Social media gives you another, more impactful, more transparent, and more controllable tool to do this.

Re: fabeetle: halfbaked idea or the bomb for matchmaking financial services

fabeetle — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:19:50 -0000

Good points here. Sorry about the moving of my comment. Noticed a spelling error and tried to fix it but seems like I screwed everything up as I was logged in under the wrong twitter account. Anywho...Stephanies response was to my post below.

Thanks Steph, you bring up really good points with the regulation aspect and we are very familiar with it. We think we have come up with a solutions and will reveal it at a later date. As far as a survey of HNW with fabeetle specifically, we do have such a data set and feel confident about the results. We will also be releasing this at a later date.

Re: fabeetle: halfbaked idea or the bomb for matchmaking financial services

fabeetle — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:08:51 -0000

Great points guys. I think the main question I see from the comments below is whether or not the HNW will participate in such a site. It makes sense that we are all asking this question, so here are our thoughts:

I tend to believe through my research that the HNW target market is made up of the same contributors and observers as other, less affluent audiences. That said, we would disagree with Stephanie's statement of:

"...I don't believe that higher net worth investors will have the time nor the interest frankly to participate in this type of process...and those happen to be the clients we want as advisors."

I believe that the HNW are actually more likely to "participate in this type of process" than other target markets. (One thing that we should point out here is that both Stephanie’s comment and my response are very broad statements, the reality is that there are groups within any target market that will and won’t participate, we are just wondering how the HNW have a propensity to act given an relevant solution).

In October of 2008 a study was released from Google and Unity Marketing, giving some insight into the way that the HNW, or "millionaires", are making purchasing decisions. The article is written with luxury retailers as the audience and to an extent financial advisors could be included in this category. FAs either work with people who don't want to, or can't manage their own money. Whether you agree with this specific linkage or not is not the point. It is the overall purchasing behavior of the consumer that we are interested in. According to Google's Retail Director, John McAteer, millionaires seem to involve the internet in their purchasing decisions more than one might think:

"We were surprised by just how much information they wanted online. Just over 90% of millionaires say they always or often read other customers' reviews online, for example, compared with 68% of affluent shoppers. "

In my opinion these types of trends indicate that the HNW do have an interest and therefore are actually more likely to participate in reading and writing online reviews.

With respect to the question of the HNW having enough time, John McAteer says that it is this very lack of time that is pushing the HNW to the internet for buying decisions. In the very first Question and Answer we find the following:

"Q: What are the biggest misunderstandings that marketers and retailers have about millionaires?"

"A: There's this deep-seated conviction that the wealthy are very idle people--a sort of "ladies who lunch" crowd. They often don't understand just how time-poor their rich customers are--90% of millionaires in our survey work, and often at very demanding jobs."

I believe that it is this misconception that will allow fabeetle to become successful. The misconception that somehow the HNW are so busy they don't have enough time to logon, read or write a rating or review but they do have enough time to ask for, meet with, evaluate and keep up with multiple referrals, meetings, pitches, value propositions, etc. This research and more suggests that as solutions present themselves to the HNW which allow for them to consolidate a process efficiently and effectively, they become strong adopters. My calculation is that as we introduce such a solution they will become adopters, and this will benefit both FAs and clients alike.

It seems that behavior trends and needs of the HNW audience are already heading in a direction that would make our solution appropriate. The question is whether or not fabeetle will be the one to bring to market that solution.

Of course I could be wrong, but that is what taking risks is about right?

You can read the articles referenced here:
http://www.mediapost.com/pu...

http://www.networldingblog....

Re: Top 12 financial advisors using social media

fabeetle — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:30:38 -0000

Check out http://tweet.fabeetle.com. We have a great list of tweeting FAs. You can also rate their tweets.