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Category Archives: Web Sites
Site Update: Best Practices Are Out, Resources & Insights In
We’ve published some changes to the Web site today that we’d like you to know about.
The Best Practices Page RIP
Not every Web site can win awards or rank on a top Web site list. The Best Practices page, part of RockTheBoatMarketing.com since its launch, was our way of acknowledging our readers’ flashes of brilliance or functionality on the investment Web sites they direct. We imagined we’d build out the page as we continued to spot best practices. Well, we did a sorry job of refreshing the content and for the last year we’ve considered the Best Practices page the shame of the site.
What One Advisor Wants From Asset Managers
What do financial advisors want? Marketing staffs (and others) spend their days developing products and creating communications they hope will resonate with the advisor community. Despite all best efforts, some fall short.
In the 11 months since the launch of AdvisorTweets, we’ve learned a lot by “listening” to financial advisors’ tweets. In this post, we’re publishing excerpts from an interview we had with John Benedict, a 12-year financial advisor who recently broke from the FINRA-regulated broker-dealer world to establish his own registered investment advisor (RIA) J2Capital Management of Troy, MI. On Twitter, Benedict is @GeckoJB.
Are You ‘Spying’ On Your Web Site Users?
You may have left work Friday thinking that you knew what this workweek would bring. But our guess is that a Saturday report by The Wall Street Journal will reset priorities for Web marketing teams at many companies, including some mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firms.
“Marketers are spying on Internet users,” said the Journal in an extensive report on its investigation of Internet tracking technology used by the 50 most popular U.S. Web sites plus WSJ.com.
Two financial sites—Chase.com and BankofAmerica.com—were included among the 50 reviewed. According to the Journal’s “exposure index,” users of Chase’s Web site have medium exposure and Bank of America low exposure to tracking technologies such as cookies, beacons and other trackers.
A Photo Album To Showcase Mutual Fund/ETF Adoption Of Social Media
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this post sincerely flatters Kevin Dugan, a digital marketing and public relations professional whose accomplishments include the Bad Pitch blog.
I happened to hear in Monday’s For Immediate Release podcast that Dugan had created a Flickr group to track Signs of Social Media. The group’s purpose, according to the description of Dugan’s Flickr set, is to “show how retail, food and other brands are reaching out to consumers and asking them to follow on Facebook, Twitter and the like.”
And Now For A Splash Of Cold Water About Venturing Onto Other Domains
We consistently urge you to consider sharing your content and even limited functionality on other domains, primarily but not exclusively social networking sites. We’ve seen the effectiveness of content syndication and we stand by the recommendation.
But now seems like a good time to call your attention to the range of possibilities when venturing onto other domains. If you print and mail marketing pieces, if you advertise, if you send emails—heck, if you count on wholesalers to support a marketing campaign, you’re already familiar with the surprises/disappointments that can happen when you rely on others to deliver your message.
Google’s Top 1,000 List Includes 5 Investing Sites—And Why You Might Care
I trust that you will let me know if this blog starts sounding like a broken record. But some data became available this week that might give you added inspiration to plan for syndicating your content and exploring off your own asset manager domain.
I was checking my RSS feeds this morning when I came across the announcement that Google will now publish a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the Web by unique users as measured by Google’s AdPlanner. Huge, which is what I tweeted. Whether you’re buying online media or not, this is just interesting.
Asset Managers And Social Media—Now Via Video From ICI
Here’s a companion to our longest blog post ever, which was coverage of the May 7 Investment Company Institute panel on social media that I was privileged to moderate plus some notes from other sessions.
This morning the ICI made a video available and now you’re able to listen directly to the panel featuring:
- Amy Dobra, principal at Vanguard and head of the Retail Client Experience Group
- Sheryl Larson, Vice President and Online Marketing Manager at Northern Trust
- Lawrence P. Stadulis, partner in the Investment Management Department at the law firm of Stradley Ronon (not shown above)
Note that the image here is just an image—to watch the video you’ll need to go to the ICI site. You’ll see other presentations that you may want to check out, as well.
Evolving Away From Site Tours And Toward ‘Likeable Objects’
What are you doing to prepare for changes taking place online today that affect Web content?
Despite the fact that content is the value underlying much of the social media phenomenon, the discussion about social media has largely dealt with other issues—the practices, the practitioners, the policies, the enabling technologies. Content is my first love and I’m guilty, too, for having given it short-shrift in recent posts.
The sharing of Web content has sweeping implications for the development, delivery and analytic resources you invest in your firm’s content portfolio—Marketing and non-Marketing text, images and especially charts and graphs, video, audio. And it has direct bearing on how you build out your Web site, especially those of you who are working on redesigns.
The Fragmented Business Of Reaching Financial Advisors Online
Life has gotten more complicated for asset management marketers interested in reaching financial advisors online.
In the simplest scenario, financial advisors—current producers and prospects—would regularly visit asset managers’ password-protected Web sites, and marketers would be able to meaningfully interact with them there. But, this is a pipedream—as defined: “a fantastic but vain hope.”
A financial advisor communications plan that puts your site at the center ignores at least two market realities:
- An increasing number of Web sites are using frequently refreshing content, peer networking and other functionality to draw the attention of advisors.
Asset Manager Web Sites Lose Their Flash On iPad
The eagerly anticipated Apple iPad just may force a rethinking of asset managers’ reliance on Adobe Flash Player as a means of delivering some much-needed life and vitality to their Web sites.
In an industry not known for its innovation online, Flash-based presentations on a home page or on a financial advisor home page have been the go-to site enhancement on mutual fund sites. Given their young age, almost all exchange-traded fund (ETF) sites employ Flash in some way.
If your site uses Flash, you’re not going to be happy with how your pages display through Apple’s Safari browser on the iPad.