3 Tips to Develop Connections through Digital Marketing

Earlier this week, our founder and president Jorge Villar shared his thoughts on the value in adding digital marketing to your prospecting strategy, specifically in the boomer market. He noted that it is just as important for advisors to understand how boomers respond to today's digital marketing as it is to understand their various - and diverse - financial concerns. 

As you begin to connect with your target audience more effectively through digital means, here are some tips to follow up with Jorge's:

Use data. 

The growing volume and range of information that come with data will help you make critical decisions about how to improve client engagement with social and web content, how to increase website and landing page visits, how to convert more sales and how you measure up with your competition. (Hint: Monitoring your competitors on social media can provide you with data on how their content resonates with clients and prospects.) 



Know your audience.  

Clearly identify the audience you want to serve. The needs, problems, challenges and goals as well as how that audience uses digital avenues will shape your messaging. Having just one marketing message and hoping everyone hears it doesn’t work, but diversifying your messaging and how it is delivered according your audience will allow you more opportunity to earn a greater ROI.



Personalize your marketing. 

Communication across all digital avenues should be personalized and relevant to your target audience. You are competing for people’s time; yours is one of hundreds of messages that are being delivered every single day all day long via social media, websites, emails, landing pages, display ads, etc. Clients are likely to pay attention only to those that create impact and establish a personal connection.









              Which digital avenue has had the greatest impact on your brand?

Tell us below or tweet us:

@RME360

             By: Susan Gail Taylor, Social Media Manager and Copywriter at RME360

3 Tips for Fostering Connections to Your Target Audience Using Data

So you want to connect more effectively with your target audience? Great! 

And to do so you want to create more content? Wonderful! 

But is that goal supported by data? 

Content marketing is a tough game; ever-evolving, it requires marketers to always be one step ahead in order to foster a strong connection with their target audiences.

What do you know about your prospects and your customers that will guide your content strategy? To decide what value you bring to your messaging, you must first understand who your audience members are and what they value.


Here are some ways you can rely on data to foster that connection through content: 

1. Social media insights: 

At the very least, you have a Twitter page, a Facebook page and a LinkedIn page, right? Each of those platforms offer analytics and insights on the demographics of your audience, what types of content your followers interacted with the most and how many impressions and clicks your content earned, among other things. Put these built-in analytics to good use to help you determine such things as what messaging your followers most enjoy, what time they are most likely to interact with it and what types of content earn you the most new followers. 

2. Client personas: 

When we want to better understand our audience, we naturally think of its members in terms of demographics. Age, zip code, income and net worth are common data points that advisors should consider when planning content. But a client persona goes beyond demographics; it includes the concerns, needs, values, challenges, frustrations and content consumption pattern, among other things. By determining the personas of your clients (and your prospects!), you can strategically develop content that will earn their attention. 

3. Brand reputation and loyalty: 

Every brand strives to earn advocates, especially those who are active on social media. Those advocates build brands' reputations; those who actively share complaints devastate them. Today's marketers not only have access to data from both sides of the fence but they also have the ability to use it in their favor and to track it. Use such comments in your favor by interacting with the good, the bad and the ugly. For instance:

A. Retweet, thank and interact with those who share a positive word about you

B. Resolve problems for those who share a negative word (in a timely and personalized manner of course)

C. Go the extra mile (or miles when the case calls for it) to not only resolve problems brought to your attention but also to retain the client who shared the experience

Social media monitoring and analytics tools can help you keep track of online comments and reviews as can dedicating time each day toward social media interaction. In the world of brand building, timeliness and consistency in communication are key. 

Have something to add to this list? Tell us below or tweet us!

@rme360

             By: Susan Gail Taylor, Social Media Manager and Copywriter at RME360

Jorge's Thoughts: How to Build Connections through Data

We volunteer a lot of information about ourselves to the digital world, and marketers know that. Good marketers make effective and appropriate use of data that will allow them to:

1) create messaging for products, services and solutions to target interested audiences

2) begin building relationships with prospects and clients 

With the vast array of marketing that arrives in the inboxes and mailboxes of our target audiences, it's crucial to the success of our campaigns to break through the noise. How do we do that? 

Build your connection based on data. 

For prospects: 

1. Use critical data points when prospecting. These include age, income, zip codes, IPA and net worth. This is the core set of information you need to ensure you market to those who will be best served by you. 

2. Obtain data on an audience 15-25 miles within your office. Those within this range are more likely to attend your seminars and visit your office. 

3. Identify 7,000-15,000 households that meet your criteria for a target audience. 

4. Use your selected data points to craft your message. Your messaging should speak directly and effectively to the audience profiled by the data. 

5. Stay top of mind. This requires you to send messages frequently and over a long period of time. Develop a strategy that includes messages delivered in a variety of ways for the next 8-10 months. 

Remember: Competition can be fierce. You may have 300-500 advisors within the 15-25 miles who market to audiences similar to yours. 

For clients: 

1. Dig deep within your data on existing clients. In building relationships with your clients, you learn more about them. Use that data when crafting your messaging. This includes data points such as hobbies, habits and affiliations. 

2. Create personal and individualized messages that do more than sell your products and solutions. Acknowledge your clients' birthdays or ask them about their children's softball teams. 

3. Use social media to complement data you've obtained from lists, but use data gathered there responsibly. Craft messages based on social media information in a respectful tone and with content that provides value to your clients. 

Remember: Clients often rely on emotions when making decision. Establish a solid emotional connection with them as you build your relationship. 

Tweet me and let's chat about using data to connect with your target audience:

 @JorgeVillarRME

By: Jorge Villar, President and Founder 

#connectdata

Jorge's Thoughts: Great Marketers Use Smart Data

Great marketers rely on accurate data to make smart marketing decisions 

and unlock their relationships with clients. 

It's critical to the success of our marketing to focus on what our clients want and what the the metrics show. In the real estate game, investors are taught to select properties to which the buyers will be drawn. The same goes for marketers. When it comes to strategy, product design and messaging, data guides me to what consumers want and what prompts their response. 

Consider this: a Miami Subway franchise owner noticed his sales lagged on the weekends and spent several months testing different phrases and pricing models to change this. He finally come up with a catchy phrase that made sense to consumers and increased traffic: "Five Dollar Footlong." A movement was quickly born because this franchise owner was tuned in to his sales data. Those three words created attention, generated more sales and drove more visits; a look at this data prompted Subway to adopt the motto for a game-changing national advertising campaign. 

Listen to the data. Pay attention to what makes your clients respond. Give them what they want, how they want it and when they want it. In turn, you're likely to get what you want. 

Tweet me and let's chat about how to use data:

 @JorgeVillarRME

By: Jorge Villar, President and Founder 

#smartdata

5 Tips to Optimize Your Next Email Campaign

Our inboxes may be full of offers and news, but email marketing is still serving its purpose.

A recent survey notes that 68% of marketers believe email marketing is a very effective strategy, one of the highest among social media advertising and social media listening. Those marketers must be on to something: the Direct Marketing Association notes that email marketing has an ROI of 4300%. 

Earlier this week, our founder and president Jorge Villar shared 3 practical tips to increase response on your next email campaign. To piggy back off his post, we've decided to continue his list with 5 more strategies you can put in place TODAY.


1. Edit. 

While this seems like a no-brainer, I bet you can look in your inbox right now and find several reasons that it needs to be restated. Have someone who isn't working directly with the campaign read over the subject line as well as the message. It's easy to grow so attached to our ideas and our work that we overlook typos, misspellings and improper punctuation. A fresh set of eyes can help you zero in on areas to be improved.

2. Include video content. 

There's no doubt that consumers love to watch and engage with videos. Long form and short form videos alike, consumers enjoy an interactive experience with content that is entertaining, informative and shareable. Effective marketers know this and use it to their advantage. Recent research shows that when a video is used in an email, the CTR increases by 200%-300%.

3. Make your landing page one click away. 

Consumers engage with content that is not only entertaining but that is also conveniently accessible. Two clicks to reach a landing page and/or watch a video may take too much time and effort, especially depending on internet connection and considering your audience's busy schedule.

4. Use one CTA per email campaign. 

You may want your target audience to call you, email you, download a white paper, visit your website and follow you on social media, but your email campaign needs to focus on only one of those at a time. This will help you hone your message as well, providing prospects and clients with a clear idea of what you're offering as well as how they can follow up with you.

5. Send your email at the right time. 

Scott Stratten, marketing expert and president of UnMarketing, has a great quote on this concept: "The best time to never send email is when someone else told you to. Do your homework. The only important data out there is what your own list does." You have analytics on your target audience; use that data to determine the right time for your brand to send emails and to optimize your campaigns.

What would you add to this list? Tell us below or tweet us!

@rme360

             By: Susan Gail Taylor, Social Media Manager and Copywriter at RME360

Jorge's Thoughts: 3 Simple Ways to Get More Response from Your Emails

Email marketing should be a critical component of your 

overall marketing strategy. 

According to Salesforce/Marketing Cloud, 73% of marketers agree it's core to their business and 74% of them believe email produces marketing ROI.

But email marketing only works when you know how to make it work. How can your next campaign be more effective and get more response?







Check out these 3 simple tips:

1. Include clear, engaging subject lines. 

Newspapers provide us with headlines that not only share succinct details but that also seek to entice us to read further. Your email subject lines should provide that as well. Don't add to the noise and clutter of your prospects' and clients' inboxes; be specific and distinguish yourself.

2. Personalize your message.

I'd venture to guess that 95% of the emails I receive are not personalized beyond my name in the email address. Take the time to acknowledge your recipients, the businesses for which they work, the cities in which they live or even recent news about the cities.

For instance, when I get an email that uses my first name or that mentions RME360, it's likely to grab my attention. Referencing my city (Tampa) or recent sports news such the Tampa Bay Lightning's run at the Stanley Cup further increase that likelihood.

3. Be conversational.

Formal scripted emails are not likely to evoke response from prospects and clients. They simply appear as words on the screen. Your emails should jump off the screen, spark a connection with you targeted audience members and engage with them on relevant topics. It may be difficult to personalize an email blast to several prospects, but using a more informal and less sales-y tone will increase your chances that they read it and then respond to it.

My challenge to you:

Look at each of the emails you receive this week. Count how many of them get your attention in 2-3 seconds. Count how many of them you can tell are mass emails in 4-5 words. How can you use your impressions of those emails to impact your next email campaign?

Tweet me and let's chat about tips to improve email marketing:

 @JorgeVillarRME

By: Jorge Villar, President and Founder 

#smartdataemail

Big Ideas About Big Data: How Do You Use it?

Seems simple enough? I mean how can two little words mean much more than, right? Wrong. 

Gil Press contributed this piece on 12 different definitions of big data only a few short months ago, and I'm certain more definitions than I can count have developed since then and floated around the offices of IT departments, marketing departments and CEOs. I like the simple and practical perspective provided by Hilary Mason, founder of Fast Forward Labs, on this complex concept: "Big data is just the ability to gather information and query it in such a way that we are able to learn things about the world that were previously inaccessible to us." 

Let's accept Mason's definition and look toward what other thought leaders think about using big data: 

1. "Data really powers everything that we do." – Jeff Weiner, chief executive of LinkedIn

2. "The goal is to turn data into information and information into insight." – Carly Fiorina, former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard 

3. “I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians, and I’m not kidding.” – Hal Varian, chief economist at Google

4. “Hiding within those mounds of data is knowledge that could change the life of a patient or change the world.” – Atul Butte, Stanford

5. “Without big data, you are blind and deaf in the middle of a freeway.” – Geoffrey Moore, management consultant and theorist

6. “I’ve come across several people that are collecting data just to collect because at some point in the future they might be able to get some valuable information out of it. The question is: is it worth doing that? Is it worth keeping that data and for how long? … You can’t just store data forever. It’s not free to do, and it’s a compounding problem.” – Dave McCrory, SVP at Warner Music Group

7. “Data is the new science. Big Data holds the answers.” – Pat Gelsinger, COO of EMC

8. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – William Bruce Cameron, American humor columnist

9. “If we have data, let’s take a look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” – Jim Barksdale, former CEO for Netscape 

So what's your definition of big data and how do you use it? Tell us in the comments! 

By: Susan Gail Taylor, Social Media Manager and Copywriter at RME360