Let’s start with…
The Ugly Truth
Put your big boy pants on. It’s time for a heart to heart. I’m not one for sugar coating the truth, so here goes…You might be really great at closing the sale when you’re face to face with a prospect, but I can tell you when it comes to online marketing… Let’s just say, there’s a LOT of room for improvement.Last month I created a training workshop on how to position your business for growth , and here’s what I noticed when I reviewed the profiles of twenty 401k advisors…With an average score of 30 out of 100 points on the online profile assessment, it became quite clear that advisors should NOT be trying to do social marketing.You are good at sales and building relationships and helping participants. Social media is just not your thing.You probably hate having to deal with compliance regarding what you can and can’t put on your website and you may even think of social media as a waste of time. To this I say – For the love of all things creative, responsive and effective… outsource already!When I was writing last week’s blog post trying to find a few examples of 401k advisors that had a complete, fully integrated online and social media presence, I was left scratching my head in frustration.I looked up websites of advisors who are subscribed to my blog updates, I scanned the profiles of the 401k Wire’s Most Influential DC Advisors and even looked up the PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Advisor of the Year award recipients and still had a hard time finding 401k advisors that had a consistent and professional presence across all online profiles.It’s not your fault. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, websites – these are not things you should be spending your valuable time on. As I said before, your talent lies in selling, servicing, and helping 401k plan sponsors and participants.But with almost 1000 views on last week’s post, I received over a dozen emails. Some folks questioned the benefit of having anything more than your contact information online. Still others wanted to know if, instead of reviewing your social media presence and telling you what you should do to fix the gaps, I could just offer a Done-4-You service to lay the foundation and set up your social media profiles for you.Let me first address the importance of having a strong presence online. This is what I call…The Bad News
It is absolutely important that you have a strong online presence if you want to grow your practice. Like it or not, technology is here to stay and is quickly becoming a more essential part of our daily lives and how our prospects find and engage with us. In fact, you’re reading this post right now from my LinkedIn profile and chances are, we’ve never even met.There is no more yellow pages. Well, there is, but I shred it and use it as nesting box material in my chicken coop :-).
Even business cards are becoming pointless, according to Gary Vaynerchuk— New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best-Selling author and serial entrepreneur. (Ckick the photo for a YouTube video with Gary and his typical colorful language - you've been warned.)Your website is your brochure and your opportunity to deliver value and build credibility.Your LinkedIn profile is your business card and offers real-time networking.Your twitter account is the new after-hours mixer.Your prospects will look you up online and you will be compared to the incumbent and the competition.Five years ago when I went out on a first prospect meeting with a lead from Acceleration Retirement , the CFO knew all about my background in the military and even asked me about my time as President of the Oakmont Rotary Club because he had googled my name ahead of our meeting. And that was five years ago when we were even less plugged in then we are today. (The average household only had 15 electronic gadgets 5 years go – now it’s up to 24 including laptops, televisions, Kindles, cellphones, IPads, etc.)¹ How your profiles look and the messages you convey can most certainly help you or hurt you.