How social media marketing grows assets

 A case study

 D. Bruce Johnston, Zach Hedges

and John Drachman
 2

The marketing challenge for advisors

1. Establish thought leadership

2. Expand presence
3. Measure results
 3

Establish thought leadership

 RIA wished to become the recognized authority or subject matter

expert
 Needed to define problem in terms RIA could resolved
 Showed how RIA’s expertise led to client solutions

1 RIA + 1 estate attorney = 1 thought leadership effort
 Charles “Chuck” Steege, CFP®
Executive Financial Coach,
President SFG Wealth Planning
Services, Inc.
 Enlisted the nearby support of a
leading tax attorney to develop
a team presentation
4
 The effort: Conduct three timely
executive compensation topics
as webinars during the dog days
of summer.
 Save on taxes (especially with
the AMT refundable credit)
 Sound planning and stock
options
 Passing on your legacy. Plus: An
advanced look at the 2010 IRA
to Roth conversion opportunity
 5

The goals

 Engage HNW only Seek select 10-15 clients with a minimum

of $1 million in investable assets
 Business development Most importantly, attract new clients
and fees
 Center of influence Employ a COI strategy to leverage
expertise in new ways
 Experiment with social media We showed them how to
combine webcasts, e-mail, public relations and blogging in
one low-cost, legally compliant package to:
 Establish thought leadership
 Expand presence
 Measure results
 6

Expand presence

1.
 Three webinars on subject of executive
compensation.
 Webcast service links with press release,
emails and blog
 Webcast analytics provide attendance
numbers, capture key contact information

2.
 One interactive press release
 Press release reaches 1000s of
interactive business publications and
blogs
 Drive readers to contact capture in 1.
above
 7

Expand presence

3.
 Two sets of three e-mails linked to webinars, interview,
select blog postings
 Emails link to urls, webcast service
 Drive to contact capture
4.
 Interview with blogger sets keywords and concepts to be
aggregated by other blogs, media outlets
 Targeted blogging plays to aggregators, helps catalyze
messaging
 Drive to contact capture

5.
 Google page 1 dominance for keywords
 Aggregators absorb content, key words from
press release, blogging activity
 Result: Firm engages and attracts new AUM
 8

Google page1 dominance for key words

I must find out more

about the refundable
AMT credit buried in
last year’s stimulus
bill.
 9

Smart Money, Dow Jones, Reuters, BusinessWeek

 10
10

Here come the aggregators: Goliath, Financial Content

 11
11

ADN, Germany’s TradingHouse, India’s Newstin

Also: AlphaTrade Finance, Web 2.0 Journal and more

 12
12

Measure the results

Webinar 1 Webinar 2 Webinar 3 Total

Attendees 12 3 9 24
Registered 16 17 11 44
Prospects 12 12 9 33
Existing 4 3 2 9
clients
Replay 1 1 3 6
viewed
Replay 1 0 1 2
downloaded
 13
13

Measure the results

 Engage HNW only  Center of influence The

 Gained new clients collaboration between Chuck
and Phil resulted in new
 Expanded relationship with
exposure and new business
some existing
 Experiment with social media
 Business development
An investment of less than
 Netted approximately $40,000 in $10,000 in a social media-
new and ongoing fees driven thought leadership effort
 Some $4.0 million in new AUM provided an outstanding short-
 Timeframe: Eight weeks term return
 “Overall we are very pleased
with the results of the Webinar
Series and expect 21 of the new
prospects to eventually contact
SFG for services” Charles “Chuck”
Steege, CFP® SFG Wealth Planning
Services, Inc.