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If you are attending this week’s at Schwab’s Impact, be sure to learn more about the RiA Stands For You Program.

Use Digital to Do What You Do Best!

The proliferation of web access anytime, on demand, using personal computers and smart mobile devices, is introducing new opportunities for Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) to do what they do best – deepen and enhance relationships.

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Since the private equity business is dependent on relationships with a finite number of LPs, executives and entrepreneurs, you need to be sure you can identify every potential opportunity to engage with your target audience.  With 3 out of 4 Americans using social media, various platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have become an extremely cost-effective way for a firm to broaden its reach and strengthen its corporate relationships.  Surprisingly, however, when BackBay Communications surveyed the private equity market for its Private Equity Brand Equity II report, published last fall, only 7 percent of responding professionals said their firms were using social media regularly.

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We were fortunate to escape the confines of the office in order to attend a NEDMA (New England Digital Media Association) Conference at the Boston Common Hotel and Conference Center.  From the moment we walked up to the second floor, we were immediately submerged in innovative ideas and new data that will help shape future marketing campaigns.

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It is great to be kicking off the Revenue Grader development project working with our partners Icicle Technologies.

Revenue Grader will be an entertaining yet informative way for business leaders to quickly and easily measure their potential for revenue performance. By self-scoring maturity levels across three main domains of a revenue architecture (Revenue Strategy, Revenue Systems and Revenue Programs), leaders  can rate maturity levels, identify gaps and map priorities for a marketing plan.

We decided to test drive the Revenue Grader with a set of B2B mid-market companies working with the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce (SACC).

About the SACC:

“The Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce plays a vital and active role in assisting Swiss companies in the United States and U.S. companies in Switzerland to expand their business. The Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce is a not-for-profit organization.”

About the Workshop

The workshop for the SACC will explore the opportunities and challenges for small and medium sized B2B companies seeking to develop strategies to leverage social media and digital marketing to expand their businesses. This will be an interactive 6-hour workshop and will be limited to 8 companies and will include:

• An overview and key principles of social media and digital marketing
• Group discussion of lessons learned, best practices, and challenges
• Working sessions to develop specific strategies for each participating company

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Today was another great day working with Charles Schwab Advisor Services and their advisor clients. We presented in Philiadelphia this time – my old home town during former IBM days. About 40 advisors participated in this program and the discussion was active and engaging. I am sharing this presentation in slideshare format here before jumping on a plane to Basel Switzerland to work with a client on building a global digital marketing strategy. If you attended the session, please reach out with your feedback.

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I have been invited to speak as a guest lecturer at the MIT Sloan Sales Club on February 23 and when considering the right focus for the session, an important sales transformation issue came top of mind.

Call it sales 2.0 perhaps, but the real transformation has come from the intense competitive challenge and the need for a differentiated relationship process.

Today’s sales teams clearly can no longer work through the phone book or the local business journal lists to find the target buyer. Today, sales managers must put together a far more integrated demand generation program and team up with marketing to make it happen.

In the session, I will explore the new dynamics of sales in today’s digital context. I will explore selling from the lens of the sales manager who must now orchestrate an integrated sales engine from demand generation and lead nurture to sales excellence and account management. In today’s environment, a fully aligned sales and marketing capability and integrated multi-touch campaigns are critical and sales must embrace new technology, content marketing and persuasive communications to meet targets.

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Revenue Architects had the pleasure of presenting a workshop entitled “Designing the New Revenue Engine in the Age of Digital Marketing” to members of TiE Boston. Unfortunately, A/V malfunction, room reshuffling, and a little “musical chairs” delayed the presentation. We had to cut the workshop portion examining the revenue engine in greater detail (my personal sweet spot). Rats.

The workshop participants were engaged and raised many good questions. Several questions were centered around the metrics and cost/benefit benchmarks of social networking and digital marketing. Is it worth investing the time, energy, and expenses in building a web presence strategy, or is this all just a fad? I’m pretty sure we agreed that social media and digital marketing are here to stay.

Why? The explosive growth of social networking – with tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, BlogTalkRadio, and YouTube – has fundamentally changed the way customers learn, evaluate and ultimately make their decisions. Anyone trying to grow their business and generate revenue knows that they need to have web presence, beyond just a website.

What role does social networking and digital marketing play in the revenue engine?

First, fundamentally, a revenue engine is comprised of:

• A well thought out market strategy, at any level (enterprise or campaign specific)
• A customer-centric process for finding, attracting, nurturing, acquiring and caring for customers
• A set of tools/technologies that enable the process
• The people who are skilled and organized to follow and execute the process
• GOOD CONTENT (not just quantity, but quality and different from the competition)

Next, you need to determine what kind of social networking / digital marketing makes the most sense for your business. For example, would your target customer…

• Use LinkedIN?
• Follow you on Twitter?
• Subscribe to other sites/groups to get more information?
• Are members of special interest groups?

Then, examine if your sales and marketing teams have the process, tools, and skills to deploy social networking /digital marketing to:

• Attract leads
• Nurture leads who are “on the fence”
• Convince leads to buy
• Create advocates / best customers

Finally, but most importantly, determine if you have or need to create valuable content.  Also, it helps to determine the right mix:

• Written (papers, briefs, emails, blog posts, new website content)
• Audio
• Video
• Web or live events
• Direct mail
• Email drip campaigns

Let’s face it. We’re in a social/digital world. There are massive amounts of information out there. If you’re going to include social networking / digital marketing in your revenue engine, at the very least, be sure your content doesn’t get lost in the crowd. Make sure it is searchable and relevant. Also, don’t forget the “long tail.” If you’re very focused in a certain niche or in a specific target industry, you’ll have a better chance of standing out and increasing your conversion rates with “a long tail” approach.

Anyways, these were some of the key points we hoped to discuss in the workshop.

Maybe we’ll just have to record a webisode and post it on our youtube channel.

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Tuesday, Aug 10, 2010
06:30 PM – 09:00 PM Eastern

This session was facilitated by John Stone and Nan Hill.

Today’s businesses can achieve a smarter relationship management strategy by embracing new media and effective web presence. However, without a well-defined blueprint, these strategies may fail to deliver the impact envisioned. In this workshop, we explore the rationale for a strong web presence including social media, content and inbound marketing and also discuss practical steps businesses can take to build a Revenue Architecture Blueprint in digital media. Topics that will be covered are:

• How is social media and web presence changing the sales and marketing model?
• How should businesses use social media and content marketing to build relationships?
• What are the critical dimensions of the new revenue architecture?
• How can you design a revenue architecture that is tailored to your business?

Here is the Slideshare from the event:

Link to the event

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John Stone will be a panelist at the PLANADVISER National Conference scheduled September 21, 2010.

More information can be found here: http://www.planadviser.com/PANC2010/

Topic: Technology and the Modern Adviser

How to use social media, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs to better promote yourself and your practice.

Moderator:

• Jaime Benedetti, Owner/Financial Advisor, Benedetti, Gucer & Associates (Ameriprise)

Panelists:

• Jim Stueve, President, Ridgeworth Investments
• John C. Stone, III, Founder and President, Revenue Architects
• T Henry Yoshida, Retirement Plan Advisor, The Maresh Yoshida 401k Group

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John Stone spoke at the Charles Schwab Impact2010 for a second year. At this event, John led two sessions on digital presence and social media as well as hosted guests for informal presentations at the cyber lounge on the main floor:

• One session was focused on emerging digital trends and social media explore ways an RIA firm can use social media and web presence effectively for growth and relationship development. John presented a “Day-in-the-life” of an advisor engaging social media naturally to drive and extend relationships.

• A second session focused on the emerging trends in web digital media and explored ways that an RIA can plan and build a Revenue Architecture to deepen and expand relationships with existing clients.

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