Tag Archive for: digital marketing

Your webinar-day checklist

/in /by

If you’ve ever delivered a webinar, you know that things can go wrong—especially at the last minute. I created a webinar checklist when I delivered an investment commentary webinar via Zoom to a CFA Society last year. My goal was to minimize opportunities for problems to disrupt me. Unfortunately, I‘ve learned from experience about some of the things that can go wrong during a webinar.

I’m sharing a generic version of my webinar-day checklist in case you’ll benefit from adapting it for your needs.

☐ Check today’s newspapers for news relevant to my topic.

☐ Reboot PC and close down as many programs as possible to minimize the load on my PC. Kill anything that might put pop-ups—like Microsoft Outlook task reminders—on my screen.

☐ Have a travel clock handy—and a list of my target time to start each of five sections—to help me keep track of time.

☐ Wear non-distracting clothes—for example, no tiny prints that’ll shimmer or wildly swinging earrings.

☐ Make tea with honey and do my vocal warm-up exercises to make my voice more resonant.

☐ Put phones on “Do not disturb.”

☐ Adjust the lighting to optimize it for the webinar (I discovered that opening my blinds for sunlight made me too washed out).

☐ Remind introducer or facilitator of things I’d like them to do during the program and make sure they have my bio (have it ready to email if necessary).

☐ Remind myself to look at the webcam, not my keyboard or my screen.

☐ Have fun!

 

I hope you find this checklist helpful. A webinar can be a great way to connect with people. It works even better when you’re not rattled during your webinar by problems that a webinar-day checklist could have prevented.

 

 

Social media and digital marketing for investment managers

/1 Comment/in /by

Darien Gould did a great job hosting my webinar on investment blogging for the Third Party Marketing Association last summer. I was intrigued by the statistics she found on social media marketing by investment management firms, so I asked her to blog about the topic. The guest post below is the result.

I’m particularly taken with Darien’s point that social media and digital marketing can help small firms compete against larger firms. In the world of financial blogging, I’ve noticed how smaller firms can show more personality than their larger peers. Smaller firms are also often nimbler in dealing with compliance.

Darien and I would love to hear if these statistics and suggestions match up with your experience in this arena.

Can social media and digital marketing be effective for investment manager marketing?

By Darien Gould

 

Digital marketing and social media were hot topics at the eWomen Network entrepreneur conference I attended last summer. But as a marketing consultant I have heard investment managers express a lot of resistance to social media. They typically use digital media only as an electronic substitute for paper marketing materials, and web pages are often only brochures about the firm. This made me wonder, can social media and digital marketing be effective for investment manager marketing?

After the conference, I did a quick survey of information online. I found that the answer is yes! Social media and digital marketing can really benefit investment managers—and give smaller firms an edge over their competitors.

Reports from Peregrine Communications and Greenwich Associates show that institutional investors and consultants increasingly use digital and social content to research and track managers. If you’re not active in these arenas, you’re hurting your visibility.

Statistics from Peregrine Communications

Here are highlights from Peregrine’s 2018 Connected Content, as reported in Peregrine’s BEST PRACTICE: Hidden Habits of the Best Asset Management Communicators:

  • Seasonality: Traffic from institutional investors to investment manager websites was seasonal. Compared with the average number of visits, manager websites enjoyed more than 26% more visits between August and October, and 29% more visits between December and February. Digital content on a website increases prospects’ interest in the company, and can lead to repeat visits. This makes it important to refresh your content more frequently during these five months.
  • Effectiveness: Thought leadership and demonstrations of firm strengths can differentiate firms in the increasingly competitive fight for investor interest. The firms getting the most attention from prospect searches use client-centric terms like “solutions,” “services,” or “clients.” If you’re an investment manager, does your content focus on solving your clients’ problems?
  • Social media: More than two thirds of institutional investors use LinkedIn for research. However, one in five asset managers has no presence on social media at all. This reinforces my suggestion that you can use social media and digital marketing to differentiate your firm from your competitors’ firms.

Statistics from Greenwich Associates

Greenwich Associates’ study, Investing in the Digital Age, yielded insights into the use of social media in the investment process and its impact on investment decisions:

  • 63% of institutional investors now consume social media while less than half consume finance-specific publications.
  • 58% of respondents use social media to seek support or service from their asset manager.
  • LinkedIn is the most thought-of provider of personalized market information.

Step up to digital and social media marketing!

My conclusions? Compliance and legal concerns don’t have to exclude all social media marketing. Reinforcing your firm’s brand and demonstrating your firm’s strengths through thought leadership don’t require discussion of performance or specific stock selections. And the same digital marketing that can interest prospects in your firm are also effective for highlighting your value to current clients.

These new marketing techniques level the playing field and allow even the smallest manager to compete for the attention of prospects against even the biggest investment firms.

I am curious, is your firm using digital marketing? What social media platforms do you use?

Learn more

You can follow my postings about investment marketing on Twitter at @DG_Analytics and on LinkedIn at  linkedin.com/in/dganalytics. While you’re on Twitter, also check out postings from @PeregrineComms and @GreenwichAssociates.