Five Little Things for Your Monday: May 28, 2018

On this special Monday, we hope you all take a moment to recognize the importance of Memorial Day and those who have died serving our country.

Today’s marketing news round up will catch you up on the top articles from the week you’ll be glad you didn’t miss. Take a closer look at great sources on adapting your website to mobile devices, understanding the details of GDPR and mastering keywords on social media.

1. What You Need to Know About Optimising for Mobile in 2018 via The Hallam Blog

Mobile SEO is more important than ever. With Google’s move to a mobile-first index and the ever-growing use of mobile devices, mobile-focused SEO needs to be a key focus of your digital strategy. Why Is Mobile So Significant in 2018? Google announced in March 2018 that they were starting to migrate sites that follow best practices over to the mobile-first index. Google has been pushing companies to focus on mobile for several years now, and this is the latest incarnation of that focus. Mobile usage is growing and mobile searches have long since overtaken desktop. We can see Google constantly trying to future-proof.

2. GDPR Compliance Rules For Financial Advisors Engaged In Digital Marketing via Nerd’s Eye View

In recent weeks, you may have noticed a wave of “Privacy Policy updates” coming through your email inbox. What financial advisors, and particularly those of us in the US, may be less knowledgeable of, is what’s driving these updates. The answer is the “General Data Protection Regulation” (GDPR), which is a new set of laws that govern internet privacy in the EU, and will go into effect this week on May 25, 2018. And while it may seem that privacy regulation in the EU is irrelevant to US advisors – who are not based in the EU – the reality is that if you have any clients in the EU, you market your services to clients in the EU, or you have clients who will be moving to the EU, then you are subject to GDPR as well! And there is some debate that even merely having EU web traffic that you’re tracking on your website could trigger GDPR rules for US financial advisors!

In this guest post, Zach McDonald of Mineral Interactive shares his thoughts on how US financial advisors can remain compliant with EU laws as GDPR goes into effect, including understanding the rights of consumers guaranteed under GDPR (e.g., the right to be forgotten, right to have access to personal data, right to grant or deny services consent, and the right to grant or deny placement of cookies), the advisors potentially impacted under GDPR (including any advisors who work with or solicit clients in the EU, and potentially even those who may merely have EU web traffic), the steps advisors can take to become GDPR compliant (from getting permission to track cookies, to verifying that vendors are compliant, and more), and the tools advisors commonly use that could also create GDPR issues (such as appointment schedulers, landing pagers, and many others)!

Ultimately, though, the key point is to acknowledge that advisors in the US cannot simply ignore GDPR as something that only applies to those in Europe. Many advisors in the US could fall under GDPR, due to something as minor as a single existing client who moves to Europe. And until we see how the EU will enforce the regulations, there is a risk that even just getting EU web traffic (whether the advisor wants it or not!) could trigger GDPR issues. As a result, advisors overlook GDPR compliance at their own risk, as failure to comply with GDPR can lead to substantial EU fines! And given the recent scandals and large-scale breaches of consumer data in the US – such as those at Facebook and Equifax – there’s also the possibility that GDPR could simply serve as a bellwether of changes to come here in the US as well! (Which means we may all be subject to GDPR-like rules soon enough!)

3. How to Research Keywords for Social Media Marketing via Social Media Today

Creating an effective social media strategy is much more than scheduling social media updates and monitoring your engagement. You also need to meet your audience needs, answer their questions and offer them what they want to know.

In other words, social media marketing should be well integrated into your overall digital marketing approach. Your social media strategy should rely on your fundamental marketing knowledge base you’ve accumulated over time.

4. 4 Ways to Crack the Confidence Code via FPA

The media-borrowing app Hoopla recently recommended renting an audiobook titled: The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know. So Ana Limón did and listened to it over the course of a week during her daily runs.

The book boiled down to this: women perform just as well as men in the workplace, but their workplace confidence lags that of men. “Confidence is very simple. It is the stuff that turns thoughts into action,” one of the book’s authors Katty Kay, a news anchor for BBC World News America, told Forbes.

Women, she said, generally underplay their value and contributions. The book chronicles several studies, and the authors interview numerous high-powered, successful women. Each interviewee—ranging from a power forward in the WNBA to the chair of a prominent Chicago law firm—credited her success to “being at the right place at the right time.” According to the authors, men interviewed during prior research never credited their success in that way.

The research reported in the book included one study in which college students with the same majors were asked what they thought their salaries would be five years after graduation. Male students said $80,000 per year; female students said $64,000.

“Our perception of our abilities is skewed low,” Kay told Forbes. “If we can bring our perception of our ability in line with our actual ability, then we have the capacity to be authentic. Then we can accept we are as good as we really are.”

Female planners are just as capable as their male counterparts, but if the doubt facing the women interviewed in the book ever creeps in, Kay recommends the following.

5. Research Shows Client Feedback Can Make or Break Your Business via The Client Driven Practice

All financial advisors strive to have highly satisfied clients. You may even measure the success of your business by this metric. But have you ever considered customer satisfaction as a factor in investment performance?

This is where they start in a conversation with Kevin Quigg, Chief Strategist at Exponential ETFs, on the Becoming Referable podcast. Kevin is, as you’ll hear, obsessed with customer satisfaction. In his current role, he helps clients to leverage this factor in investments, and helps advisors reap the benefits by way of business growth.

Along with his 25 years of experience in financial services, Kevin comes armed with fascinating new research that helps advisors internalize the trends in satisfaction. You’ll hear about how a disruption in satisfaction can affect entire organizations in ways never seen before, and how financial advisors can use their unique client relationships to overcome these challenges. Kevin explains key concepts driving satisfaction, like expectations, experience, perceived value, and elasticity. He provides clarity around what aspects of satisfaction are table stakes, vs. those that truly differentiate you. He also stresses client feedback as something that can ‘make or break you’, and how you can build consistency around that process.

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