Advisor Communications

“The One Time” Lesson Learned

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© Can Stock Photo / photography33

A Wendy’s Wednesday Whimsy

Always proofread your blog posts and e-newsletters, and preview a test version before you really hit “send.”

Always.

That’s what I advise others. It’s also what I always do myself.

Well, almost always. Herein lies a lesson re-learned a few weeks ago.

I’d just added some new material to the Content-Sharing Library, coincidentally about how to avoid identity theft and financial fraud. Announcing availability on a Friday, I watched the downloads rolling in over the weekend from interested subscribers. Yay.

Then … remember the WannaCry ransomware scare? That very weekend, reports broke of this new, seemingly major threat. I certainly hadn’t planned my release to coincide with the breach, but had I been psychic, I couldn’t have timed it any better.

So, carpe diem, I decided it would be a great time to release a quick follow-up e-blast and post, with an additional cover letter advisors could use to share the newly released and incredibly timely materials.

That’s when I made a beginner’s mistake. Continue reading ““The One Time” Lesson Learned” →

Financial Security and Modern-Day Pirates

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© Can Stock Photo / AlienCat

Pirates may be jolly when they’re Johnny Depp in a costume, but the real renditions aren’t amusing at all … as the world is being reminded of recently in the form of a global Microsoft ransomware outbreak. If you’ve not yet seen the news, all you have to do is Google “ransomware attack 2017” and you’ll get caught up pretty quickly. You might want to have a paper bag handy, to breathe into.

Bottom line, to help shore up the security of your virtual ship, there’s one important step you and your clients should be taking if you’ve not yet done so: Make sure all updates and patches to your Windows operating system have been completed – like, yesterday. (As in, stop whatever else you’re doing, and do that now.)

By the way, I’ve just added a short email to the Content-Sharing Library, which you can use to reach out to your clients about this simple but important step. And, as incredibly excellent timing would have it, just last Friday, I also happened to load a quick-reference guide and a longer report on the subject of protecting against financial fraud and identity theft (U.S. and Canadian versions of the same).

If my timing were always this impeccable, I’d become an active investor! It’s not, and I won’t.

As they used to say on Hill Street Blues, let’s be careful out there.

“They” Said It Was Okay: New Use of Gender-Neutral Pronouns

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A Wendy’s Wednesday Whimsy

March 24, 2017 may have seemed like an ordinary day to you. But for U.S. journalists and the rest of us word-nerds who mostly use the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook as our guide, it was the day the organization finally threw in the towel on a long-standing gender identification debate.

The AP has stopped insisting we match singular subjects with singular pronouns, even when the gender could be either/or (or these days, “neither,” or “all of the above”).

At least with respect to the grammar of things, I was singularly delighted to hear the news. On the one hand, perpetuating stereotypes by defaulting to male or female pronouns has long left me cold. Who’s to determine whether that indeterminate doctor, nurse, advisor or architect is a “he” or a “she” on second reference? Continue reading ““They” Said It Was Okay: New Use of Gender-Neutral Pronouns” →

Corporate Communications Can Be a Super Pain

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A Wendy’s Wednesday Whimsy

With the torrent of political news we’re awash in at the moment, I’ve had a hard time finding my whimsy of late. We could all use something especially whimsical this week, don’t you think?

Exhibit A: No matter how carefully your marketing pros plan your company’s consistent branding, one worker-bee with a misplaced label can cause it all to come crashing down. What a super pain.

 

Then again, that front-line worker-bee better captured my actual sentiment about house painting. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned from that.

Enough said.

Wise Wording: More Accurate or More Approachable?

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A Wendy’s Wednesday Whimsy

Continuing to explore some of the questions I raised in my post-EBI Conference post, Questioning … Processing … Evidence-Based Investing, today I’ll touch on another question I posed, but left unanswered:

When describing investing to the general public, is it better to go with terminology that is more accurate or more familiar?

To be honest, I’m still not sure I have an easy answer.

More Accurate?

Clearly, the term evidence-based investing is more accurate. It’s closer to the essence of how most advisors with whom I collaborate are serving their investor clients.

After all, if the best available evidence suggested that stock-picking skills and market-timing reflexes generated true alpha over time and after costs … that’s what we’d be doing. Some might call that “active,” but the justification would still be evidence-based. Continue reading “Wise Wording: More Accurate or More Approachable?” →

Just So Dimensional

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dimensional-screen-grab

A Wendy’s Wednesday Whimsy

If you haven’t been paying close attention, you may not have noticed that Dimensional Fund Advisors has just released a powerful new, massively overhauled public-facing website, www.dimensional.com.

It’s just so Dimensional, isn’t it, to do something fabulous and virtually whisper about the news?

Now, whenever you’re struggling to explain to current or would-be clients why they shouldn’t be loading up on gold, chasing the latest red-hot ETF, dumping everything into an S&P 500 index fund, avoiding all things international, or otherwise pursuing the most popular possibilities of the day … you’ve got a great first stop on the tour. Just point your visitor to Dimensional’s new site in his or her chosen language, and your work may very nearly be done.

Using the U.S. site as my reference point, here are a few of my favorite things:

Being Seen – I wouldn’t swear by it, but I think their “find an advisor” function has gotten a lot more functional. That’s good news for those of you who would like to be found.

Being Heard – You and I have known all along that Dimensional’s returns are a thing of beauty, and that its track record for inflows is often second to none … especially during the ugliest times when everybody else is heading for the hills. Now, these sorts of critical stats are almost the first thing a visitor sees, in stunningly simple glory. They’ve even managed to keep the disclosures from cluttering up the scenery. (Hopefully no compliance attorneys were harmed in the making of this site.)

Being Quietly Compliant – Sure, you may run aground on the shoals of compliance if you start showcasing outperforming returns. Dimensional’s disclosure requirements are not the same as yours. You should be able to point visitors to their site and let them do the talking for you.

Being True to Form – For those of us already familiar with Dimensional, the site is a fun and fresh reminder of everything we already know and appreciate about them – the history, the science, the academic underpinnings.

It’s just so Dimensional.

Motivating Marketing Ideas: If It’s Good Enough for Tara …

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www-web_optimizedA few months ago, I was privileged to be introduced to Tara Hunt of Truly Social, while collaborating on a Canadian evidence-based advisor firm’s marketing and communications (or “marcomm,” as we in the biz call it, because it sounds so much snazzier).

While you may or may not be in the market for a full-on engagement with a marketer of Tara’s stature, she shares a ton of excellent stuff for free on her YouTube channel. I encourage you to visit her channel and click on the “subscribe” button toward the upper-right corner of her page. You’ll then be notified whenever she adds new material.

Her most recent video, “Marketing is NOT an afterthought” was as insightful as usual.

In particular, as someone who generally prefers books over video (Shhh, don’t tell Tara!), I perked up at her recommendation of the fast-reading “Talking to Humans” by Giff Constable.

How fast? I watched Tara’s video earlier this afternoon, downloaded the $0.99 Kindle copy of Constable’s book immediately thereafter (or there’s a free PDF version), and am writing this post about an hour later.

Don’t let the attractive price or brevity fool you. If “Talking to Humans” is good enough for Tara, that’s certainly good enough for me … and you.

From my perspective, the book isn’t really about marketing as much as it is about understanding who your existing and would-be clients are, what they really want out of life, and how you may be able to best help them with that.

Client discovery, in other words.

“Here’s what customer discovery is not,” writes Constable. “It is not asking people to design your product for you. It is not about abdicating your vision. It is also not about pitching. A natural tendency is to try to sell other people on your idea, but your job in customer discovery is to learn.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Constable’s book should provide you with some worthwhile new ideas to spice up your practice development. It’s divided into two parts: A fictional case study to introduce the essential ingredients to client discovery, and a second part that is packed with practical tips on how to proceed.

All that, and Tara’s video will also treat you to a classic video clip of The Odd Couple’s Felix Unger parsing the word “assume.” Do you remember that one? Don’t assume you’ve got nothing to learn from “Talking to Humans.” Give it a read today.

Have You Met My Good Friend, TESS?

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Love it or hate it, every firm needs it. I’m talking about branding. Whether you’re building a fresh website, adding signage in your office or streaming out reams of corporate communications, the branding that accompanies it is to your firm what that “canstockphoto11443547-branding-cow-webresCircle-K” is on a steer’s butt. Your colors and fonts, your artwork, style guides, logo, firm name and more come together as your branding. “This is us and ours!” it says, loud and clear.
Your choicest words are also integral to your firm’s branding, otherwise known as your tagline. This is where I typically come into the mix. I love to corral the hours of conversation I hold and pages of notes I take when discovering a firm, into the select handful of words that magically embody the essence of who you are and what you stand for.

Given the labor of love an excellent tagline entails, it’s well worth taking two important steps as you prepare your precious words: Continue reading “Have You Met My Good Friend, TESS?” →

Good News, Bad News, Client News

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www-web_optimizedIn a past post, “Client Communications and Current Crises,” I explored when to reach out to your clients during scary market news. My advice was that “right away” was the best way, despite any misgivings you might have about what to say when the trouble may still be brewing.

Another important way to make your crisis communications more effective is to sustain a regular stream of good-news reach-outs in between. In so doing, the crisis-driven ones won’t seem out of context when they arrive. They’ll just be one more exchange in your ongoing conversation.

Continue reading “Good News, Bad News, Client News” →

Is It Okay To Cuss in Your Client Communications?

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This week’s whimsy is inspired by a recent thread in the Evidence-Based Advisors LinkedIn group about John Oliver’s outrageously entertaining attack on many retirement plans’ high fees and opaque arrangements. It’s watchable, worthwhile, and free to share as a link or an embed … You’d think we’d be taking this piece viral faster than you can say “teacup pig.” (If you’re not catching the reference, watch the video.)

But there’s a catch. The language is so salty, the video could serve double duty as a cow lick. It makes McDonald’s fries seem like health food. You get my drift. While most agreed that the piece is “stunningly good” (said one commentator), “the language is just a bit too much” to share (said another). See for yourself, if you’ve not yet.

Should you or shouldn’t you use cuss words in your communications?

Some of the advisers with whom I work regularly pepper their pieces with their own special blend of the famed words from George Carlin’s, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” Oliver’s popularity puts all of ours to shame, and those seven-plus words aren’t slowing him down. Like us, our clients are adults; if we like the video, why wouldn’t they? And what’s Oliver got that we haven’t?

Continue reading “Is It Okay To Cuss in Your Client Communications?” →