Publish or Perish!

Social media is undoubtedly a powerful tool for business-to-business (B2B) marketing, but businesses that aren’t using it strategically are missing out on opportunities to engage with their prospects and clients and to meet and exceed their business goals. One way to leverage the power of social media is to publish meaningful original content. The culture of search engine optimization (SEO) almost demands such content; thin content and unfocused lists of links once served as ways to boost your search rankings, but search algorithm changes now highlight quality content as the preferred method for improving users’ experiences with search results. To get your piece of the marketing pie—or the marketing cupcake in this metaphor—compose your own content and publish it in optimized digital spaces so you can earn the cherries on top: the clients.

Give your marketing a credible foundation. Content is king, and your content should provide substance to your business as a brand. Differentiate yourself from your competitors and establish your credibility by taking a stance on issues of interest among your target audience and by sharing your expert opinion. Think of the content you share now and why you do so. Is it because you trust the source of information and want to pass it along? Why not be the trusted source of information instead? Speaking of a trusted source of information, Ryan Roslansky, Head of Content Products at LinkedIn, notes that members should publish because the content “will become a part of their professional identity. So if someone looks up your profile, it’ll be there. It’s a great way to show your knowledge and expertise.” Be the expert. Be the cupcake.

Use multiple social media platforms that make sense for your business. Consider your objectives with social media and what others in your industry are doing with it before you select and strategically use your profiles. Do you want to use your content to engage with prospects, clients and industry leaders in real-time dialogue? Use Twitter to quickly interact with those audiences and to contribute meaningful information to industry-focused dialogue. Do you want to use your content to connect with decision makers? LinkedIn is the gold star standard when it comes to professional networking. Publish blog posts about trends, news and issues that may impact your prospects and clients. Identify companies you’d like to meet with and join LinkedIn groups to which decision makers belong.  Do you want to use your content to give your business a more human feel? Facebook provides a digital space to post videos and videos, allowing more personal and/or targeted interactions with your audiences. The platform’s Boosted Posts promote your business to more targeted audiences that you define. While these platforms can be used for a variety of reasons, these ideas serve as the icing on the cupcake when it comes to connecting with your audience.

Optimize your digital space.  Merely having online real estate as a place to house your content is not enough in today’s digital age. You want prospects and clients to actually find your content, not for it to be lost among your competition’s attempts to bake their own marketing cupcakes. Search engine optimization is crucial to promoting that space and connecting with your target audience. Your website should be accessible to not only that audience, but also search engine robots; those robots can’t see web pages like your audience can and SEO helps the engine discover what your site is about and what information will be most helpful to users. Your business’ name, address and phone number should be located on each page of your website and on your Google+ Local listing.  This information should be in text format, not in a picture file. Your city and state names should be included in the title tag, meta description and in the content pages as appropriate. Google uses a combination of positive reviews, proximity to the searcher, number of citations and other factors to order local results.  Improve these elements and your local rankings will improve, driving more prospects to your website and other digital real estates where they can view your content. If optimization is something you are unfamiliar with, a marketing expert specializing in digital strategy can help you implement these sprinkles on your marketing cupcake.

Stay current and relevant in your industry. The content you compose and publish can include information on your company’s mission, products and services as well as experience you bring to the industry table. Keep your content professional and targeted; don’t post content that is not focused on building an audience, relationships and a reputation as an expert in the field.   Earn your cherries on top of your cupcake and ask that your company support you in doing so.

Don’t let the dessert ruin the supper! Your online integrity is sacred. Your content should reflect your actual business philosophy and practices. Social media and content marketing are not like movies with building facades but no real substance. In the same way that videos can go viral on the web, your reputation can go viral as well – but that knife cuts both ways. So, put together a strategy for your social media and content marketing, and if you’re not sure how to get started, find a social media strategist to help you. It’s worth the investment and can make the difference between a strategy that drives new customers to your business or the loss of revenue and reputation – both online and off.

By: Susan Gail Taylor, Marketing Coordinator and Copywriter at RME360

Debunking the Myth about Summer Seminars

For as long as financial advisors have been using social dinner seminars to get in front of a consistent flow of qualified prospects, there has been a persistent myth: “People don’t go to seminars during the summer.” Good marketers listen to consumers and base their approach on data, behaviors and trends. 

HERE ARE THE FACTS: A comprehensive review of seminars marketed for the months of June, July and August in both 2012 and 2013 shows that over 90,000 reservations were taken!

Your target audience does not suspend their financial planning needs, concerns or issues during the summer - or at any other time of the year for that matter. They need your help, advice and solutions year round.

Makes total sense right?

When I recently asked a group of advisors their motivation to conduct summer seminars, the overwhelming response was, “Because they work.” The next most common reason was because so many other advisors take the summer off and that gives them a big advantage!Another theme that emerged in these discussions was the importance of maintaining production momentum. One advisor confessed the obvious, “I know from personal experience that it takes an average of 30 to 60 days to convert a seminar prospect to a client. If I was to take two or three months off during the summer I’d be hard pressed to meet my personal and business goals.” 

One advisor added, “Marketing and lead generation is all about being consistant. Starting and stopping my marketing based on months of the calendar is short-term thinking. I know that marketing is an investment. I need to be in front of prospects every month of the year. After all, if they (prospects) aren’t meeting with me, chances are, they are meeting with someone else.”

Bottom line, financial advisors who continue their marketing efforts throughout the year will see more prospects, increase their client-base and generate the highest revenues. Avoid the “summer seminars don’t work” myth. Listen to the consumer –all successful marketers do.

The New Reality: Financial Advisors MUST integrate social media in their marketing - or suffer the consequences!

According to Google, 74 percent of all affluent baby boomers will use their search engine to research a company or service provider before responding to an advertisement or promotion.

There is no question that technology has changed the way society communicates.  Social networking has unbelievably enriched our lives.  With every wonderful evolution we are able to access more people and more information faster, yet with each step towards getting answers faster, it takes longer to establish a true relationship.

How do you, as business professionals who are dependent on face-to-face meetings, establish credibility and trust in a society that develops first encounters online? What can advisors who haven’t embraced the digital era do to start making the web work for them?

You need to understand and embrace social marketing, develop a strategy and integrate it with your other marketing tactics.

Online social networking is a form of social media used for interacting with other individuals or groups with common interests.  These interests can be dating, sports, education, professional networking or entertainment. Today, word of mouth marketing takes place on social networks and is called social media marketing.  The object of social media marketing is to get people to recommend you to friends, family and co-workers.

That said, once you are ready to embrace social marketing, you need to develop a strategy and be engaged. You can’t simply set up Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter profiles and expect people to come to you. It’s crucial to be an active participant. In order to create awareness, you must reach out and ask people to connect with you. You also need to have a consistent voice.  Content is king. It’s important to post, comment and interact consistently. 

The more active you are on social media, the more you will establish that you are a credible person who has a personality, is a thought leader and a subject matter expert. 

As a financial advisors, having an active and up-to-date presence on the web is CRITICAL to generating new leads now and in the future.

The Evolution and Integration Of A Brand: The RME360 Story

Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” When deciding how to market your brand, one thing about Ford’s words is especially relevant: using multiple, integrated approaches will help you come together with a variety of audiences; keep together as you establish your brand and credibility; and work together with satisfied clients as you broaden your customer base – i.e. generate leads.

Branding is a concept you may overlook; it’s not just a logo, a business card, or a brochure. It’s you. It’s your reputation, your presence, your message. In today’s social media intense marketplace, branding demands your attention. Providing consistent brand messaging and engaging with prospective and existing clients are undoubtedly core goals of any brand. In this day and age, the focus of marketing has shifted from a compartmentalized approach to an integrated approach, an approach that adds value and to your clients’ experience and that allows you more opportunities to capture their attention and acquire their business. RME360’s recent rebranding strategy and our new website use integrated marketing strategies. We wanted our site to prove we have evolved by putting into practice what we think our clients should do to build a brand and to increase traffic to their sites.

We are telling the story of our new brand through integrated advertising, content, analytics and data.  Our website is optimized for search engines and a hub of information and tools; it showcases our services and offerings, it provides tools for our marketing consultants, it provides educational tools for our clients and it is integrated with all of our social profiles. Our site went from being a static online brochure to a living, dynamic hub with smartphone accessibility that has a prominent online voice complete with multimedia, data, tags for search engines, keywords and smartphone. Our brand's story is told through a perfect integration of inbound and outbound marketing.

Integrated marketing focuses on reinforcing your overall marketing message with multiple synchronized methods that reach people who respond differently to various approaches. Using integrated marketing allows your unified message to serve customers both digitally (inbound marketing) and more traditionally (outbound marketing). Inbound marketing allows others to find you online (i.e. social media, search engines, etc…). By establishing a digital voice, RME360 is acquiring new clients and creating awareness of our brand evolution. Outbound marketing (seminar marketing, direct mail, radio/TV, etc…) allows you to educate your audience about what you offer. Through the use traditional marketing solutions, RME360 is telling people that we’ve rebranded, that we’ve evolved – and it’s working.

All financial firms should use an integrated approach to monitor the ROI through data and then constantly test and evolve. RME360 practices what we preach, and now that we've put our own best practices into play, we are an established brand with credibility, fresh content and easily found online.  Now we can share and teach others how to do the same.

Bob Wilgus is the Director of Corporate Communications and Social Community Manager for RME360. You can reach him at: bob.wilgus@rme360.com

Blog Editor's Note: This post was co-authored by, Susan Gail Taylor, our new marketing coordinator and copywriter. Watch for future posts on our blog!

New Brand, New Services, New Website

On Tuesday, March 11, 2014, RME officially became RME360!

Our new name and logo reflects our new strategy – providing full-circle marketing solutions for business professionals – both big and small. RME360 reflects how we bring businesses full-circle with: 180 degrees of data-driven marketing solutions and 180 degrees of industry knowledge.

The addition of 360 to our name symbolizes our evolution to a company focused on completing the cycle of a business model that recognizes and embraces the importance of being a technology and data-driven partner. The RME reinforces our legacy and continued commitment to provide clients with the best customer service and to bring them face-to-face with motivated and qualified prospects.

RME360 is committed to delivering marketing and lead generation solutions that have evolved with changing landscape of the financial services industry and technological advances.  In addition to our legacy of providing seminar, direct mail and appointment setting solutions, our digital marketing services include SEO strategies for enhancing search results on the web, digital advertising campaign development and management, email marketing campaigns, and mail-to-web solutions including talking mail and customized microsites, as well as detailed web tracking and analytics.

For nearly 20 years RME has been helping financial professionals create new business opportunities in their local markets. During that time, the company has collected research an analyzed its data of campaign effectiveness and has identified media platforms, marketing strategies and event logistics that have proven most effective in various markets across the country.

Past performance does impact future results. We have made major strides in aggregating 20-years of market data and identifying trends and market-based characteristics.  We are using this data in a way not ever seen in the financial services industry.  We know what restaurant draws the most attendees at a workshop in Denver, or what radio station has created the most leads for an advisor in Dallas.  All of our company offerings are rooted in this data-driven research. This data-driven research is now available to financial professionals and integrated into all marketing recommendations delivered by RME360 in-house consultants. 

With RME360, financial professionals have multi-channel, data-driven options available to build their presence and generate leads in their communities.  They can use any or all of our lead generation solutions and can tap into the expertise our in-house consultants to build a plan based on their specific needs and budget. 

Please take a minute to visit our new website (RME360.com) – especially our new corporate video (it’s the first rotator on the site or watch it now by clicking here).

Bob Wilgus is the Director of Corporate Communications and Social Community Manager for RME360.