by Al Porotesano

I spent 15 years working with Retirement Planners, Financial Advisors, Registered Investment Advisors, and other Fiduciary Agents as a content manager, software developer, data analyst, and web developer/designer with LiveOffice, Symantec eCloud, and Smarsh. Maybe I could be jaded to think “What would the internet do for them if their clients are, or were, still technically inclined?” I’ve met advisors who are savvy about social media marketing, search engine optimizations, and user experience enhancements for their internet presence from their websites to a mini-mobile application. But… Does all this internet marketing hashtag mumbo jumbo really work?

Maybe I’ve disappeared from the scene for more than two years to see nothing changed. Andectotally, one out of five advisors i’ve worked with made their internet presence work before I left to decompress in early 2014. This concentration for financial advisors to make their website into a concierge is sugarcoated with reactive websites and widgets that don’t complete the tools for their clients.

If i’m one of your clients, I’d like to see the following:

  • Events for Workshops if they’re in my town or neighborhood,
  • Weekly Newsletters about financial trends,
  • Visual Picturegraphs of Retirement Planning (or any Planning),
  • Useful Calculators that are simple and not fully evasive of privacy,
  • Information Security protecting my portfolio from being hacked (I’m an infosec consultant to know this can also sell),
  • and an easy way to contact you.

There should be an easy way to contact you. I’m not a fan of the templated “contact us” or “refer a friend” pages (if you were with AdvisorSquare to have this, i’m sorry). I understand there’s a percentage of your clients where if you seperate them into age demographics, there’s one who are used to filling up those pages and the other is a group of millenials who think your agency should respond immediately to their pings and tweets bypassing the contact us page.

There’s a lot of “experts” who think you, the fiduciary advisor, should have the latest in technology to make your website shiny and SOX 404 compliant and all that archiving stuff. I disagree. I digress those are necessary though.

I think you should have a service portal acting as a support consultant for your client. I remember socialware did something like this, but not a lot of companies have this form of support for fiduciary advisors who don’t have a lot of time dedicated to replying facebook posts and tweets. They’re also the serving marketing arm for your fiduciary’s broker or agency office.

I’m proposing an idea where instant connectivity and giving your firm an ePersona that won’t necessarily give your broker/dealer’s compliance department a heartattack and it’s a decent start to grab some views, but the thing is maintaining them. I’ve already described the instant connectivity; Giving your firm an ePersona, whether it be a website, twitter/facebook/instagram profile, a tinder profile (trust me, i’ve seen job proposals on tinder), and visual picturegraphs can be a start. Building ePersonas are fun, but not easy to create.

If your agent, Joe the Fiduciary guy, has a twitter profile and it reflects his views on retirement planning based on a conservative portfolio, that’s an ePersona. If Joe takes his retirement planning viewpoint as a conservative planner with some ease for aggressive portfolios for emerging markets, he still retains his ePersona as a conservative retirement planner. He takes his ePersona point to his youtube channel and wordpress blog and stuff with some buffer room of portfolio perspectives but still reserves his stance as a conservative retirement planner, he’s expanded his ePersona. ePersonas can be marketable if done right. Take the ePersona to match your agency’s marketing strategy and you’ll create some synergy of brand extension.

One good example of a marketable ePersona is Charles Schwab’s “ask chuck” marketing campaign. They may have ditched the ask chuck part but the text bubble box still remains of a successful ePersona.

Maybe you should have an ePersona. Just make sure you make your ePersona an honorary Certified or Registered Plannner.

I should be posting more blogs about financial advisors and stuff soon.

  • Al Porotesano