Rock the Boat Marketing Blog

Marketing Executives' Focus on Social Media ROI Should Lift The Role Of Analytics

Pat — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:38:53 -0600

There’s a lot of promise in research released yesterday by the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) and Anderson Analytics. MENG is a national group representing senior marketing executives from across industries. Until the revolution when digital marketers claim their rightful place as eCMOs or some such, these are the people who green-light online plans. (At this point, I should say that I’m a MENG member, agitating on your behalf from the inside.)

It’s good news that two-thirds of respondents to the Third Annual Marketing Trends Study have a more optimistic business outlook for 2010. Marketing budgets are being increased (by 24% of respondents), innovation and research and development (R&D) is being funded (36%) and about 30% of executives say they’re hiring.

You can find a complete copy of survey results at www.mengonline.com/visitors/newsroom. We went straight to the Online Marketing & Social Media Strategy part of the report and there it was. Overall, marketers intend to spend 45% of their budgets online this year, 55% offline. Nice, very nice.

Company size factors into the spending. Large companies (defined as having 2,000 or more employees) will spend just 30% of their budgets online versus 48% spent by small companies. That’s OK, large companies have bigger budgets. The dollars will be there.

Research is conducted to answer questions, but one looming question emerged out of this research: Will the results of heightening spending be there?

What’s Good On This Site? Popular Content Lists Create A Community Feel

Pat — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:50:38 -0600

Participation, engagement, community—asset manager Web sites have a long way to go to foster these. Ultimately, in all likelihood, most companies will cede community-hosting to Facebook or other social networking sites.

But don’t be too quick to assume that you can’t deliver community-like value for your Web site visitors. Two unconnected news items took place last week that might trigger some ideas.

Example 1: It was an impressive accomplishment Thursday when the 10 billionth song was sold in the iTunes store, but it was a long time coming. And ultimately that story was about Apple’s innovation.

Concurrently, Apple released a list of the top 25 most-downloaded songs. To us, this was the more interesting announcement. Each of us knows what we bought from iTunes, but Apple aggregated all of those 99-cent (mostly) purchases and told us the rank order of what we all bought.

Example 2: Earlier in the week we were intrigued by the basis of an InvestmentNews.com article. “The ETFs financial advisers can't get enough of” wasn’t based on sales, performance or even survey data.

USAA App, Mint.com Cross-Selling, TradeKing Rate As Forrester Best Practices

Pat — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

We sat in on a Forrester Research Top 10 Financial Services Web Site Best Practices of 2009 Webinar this afternoon and thought we’d pass on a few highlights.

App Turns Phone Into An ATM

USAA’s mobile phone app (released first for the iPhone and in January for the Droid) enables registered accountholders to deposit checks simply by photographing the check and submitting the image via the phone.

We covered remote deposit capture (RDC) seven years ago when the payments industry introduced it as a solution for commercial customers that met volume requirements. It's exciting to see the capability downstreamed to consumers for one-off use.

Brad Strothkamp, Forrester principal analyst, singled the app out for two reasons.

First, it’s a best practice of offering content differentiated from what Internet banking applications offer. If you're working on a mobile strategy for an asset management company, be sure to consider the medum—offering just a miniature version of your mutual fund or ETF site won't cut it.

How Much Traffic Is Facebook Driving To Your Site?

Pat — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:29:50 -0600

“That wouldn’t apply to us because… [wait for it] we’re in a regulated industry.”

There’s an underlying current in asset management marketing that trends that affect other industries don’t apply here. It’s an illusion that is almost never true online—what’s affecting other Web sites is probably affecting your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) site, too.

We’ve written about how Facebook and other social networking sites are gaining at the expense of asset manager and other destination Web sites.

But there was a report this week about Facebook’s influence in driving Web site traffic that merits attention. Compete.com data cited by the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday suggests that Facebook is now a more important traffic driver than Google.

“Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites,” the Chronicle reported.

Other types of sites even including investment manager sites? Yes, according to Compete.

Mobile Next Year May Be One Year Too Late

Pat — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:32:47 -0600

I like to experiment with Google AdWords, and today I received a report on the performance of an AdvisorTweets.com campaign that’s been running for a few weeks. I was shocked: Out of the 237 clicks on my ads, 188 were on mobile devices with full browsers. Almost 80% of those searching for “RIAs and twitter” (my Google AdWords keywords) were using phones?

This report is just another tiny piece to throw onto the pile of data about mounting mobile phone usage. Also in the Inbox today was an email about ComScore’s "The 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review" including an analysis of the drivers that accelerate mobile phone use. Note that 3G phone ownership is now at 43%, according to ComScore.

Oh and in its latest research, kasina reported that four out of five advisors use some type of mobile device and that the phone is how many access the Web.

Is Social Media "Worth It" For Asset Managers?

Pat — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:00:49 -0600

FINRA held its long-anticipated Webinar on social media guidance today. (A replay will be available in a few weeks, social media vendor Socialware has posted a summary and we wrote a brief AdvisorTweets blog post.)

When we commented on the release of the guidance last week, we characterized it as FINRA kicking the ball into Compliance’s court. Well…not so fast—there’s somewhere else the ball has to go first and that’s to management. Management needs to be on board that “social media” is an appropriate use of what will be significant resources. (Read the Socialware document for a sobering look at what compliance with FINRA’s recordkeeping and supervision requirements entails.)

What is the Return on Investment (ROI) of social media? It’s a question being asked across all industries, but it’s especially germane to the highly regulated investment industry. At companies in other industries, maybe, a skunk works can be formed for experimenting on the cheap. Or the work might be outsourced at first. But that wouldn't work in this industry. Before the first tweet can take flight, expensive resources have to be consumed, ideally developing strategy and certainly focusing on risk mitigation.

And, for what? What are the stated expectations of social media? Or are managements being asked to take a flier? (Good luck with that.)

Slow Site? Optimize—Or Forfeit Search Traffic

Pat — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:13:47 -0600

Have your repeated requests to speed up your Web site been falling on deaf ears? There’s a change in the works that might give you the argument you need for IT to move site optimization up to the top of the priority list.

Watch this video from Google on the global benefits of a faster Web and then let’s consider how their advocacy on this could affect the success of your firm’s digital marketing strategy.

Compliance: FINRA Bounces Social Media Ball To Your Court

Pat — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:31:39 -0600

The following was also posted at our AdvisorTweets.com/blog.

At about mid-day today, FINRA released its 10-page Guidance on Blogs and Social Networking Web Sites. (A tip of the hat to @BillWinterberg who was first among our tweeps to spot the regulatory notice.)

Others might disagree or read something in between the lines, but to us the guidance seems reasonable. Of course, FINRA will insist on record-keeping and supervision. And specific investment product recommendations are obviously trouble--in fact, FINRA says a prohibition would be a best practice unless the content posted was previously approved by a registered principal.

But we think that the door to the marketing potential of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for financial advisors and firms swings open with FINRA's distinction between "static content" requiring the prior approval of a registered principal and "non-static content," which does not require prior approval.

FINRA acknowledges that Twitter and Facebook provide for non-static, real-time communications, such as interactive posts. "The portion of a social networking site that provides for these interactive communications constitutes an interactive electronic forum, and firms are not required to have a registered principal approve these communications prior to use," FINRA says.