'Connected Consumers' Have Serious Headstart Over Financial Services Marketing

It’s about the highest compliment I can give to:

print…
a highly designed document…
in color.

But I printed every page of the 18-page Meet the Connected Consumer and I’d urge you to, too. And then together let’s figure out how we’re going to bridge the gap between what financial services marketing is working on and what consumers are doing online.

Seriously.

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Why We Advocate Adding Analytics To A Website Due For A Redesign

“Why do we need analytics? We already know that the Web site is bad!”

That’s a question we’ve heard a few times in response to a recommendation that Google Analytics be added pronto to a Web site due for a redesign. A design of any Web site—no matter how dated or clunky—is going to be disruptive to your loyal visitors. Here’s what reknowned content guru Gerry McGovern wrote last year about redesigns:

A website redesign approach is usually embraced by organizations who are reacting to the fact that their websites have fallen into disrepair...[A website redesign] approach is papering over the cracks. The cracks are a lack of resources to professionally manage the website on a day-to-day basis. The cracks are a lack of genuine customer focus, and a lack of continuous testing and evolution.

But if you’re committed to a redesign and don’t yet have analytics in place, adding analytics is a step toward focusing on the customer. No doubt the goal of the redesign is to deliver a more valuable experience for your site visitor. What’s valued now? What do you know to be of value on your site but isn’t being found? These are two of countless questions that analytics can answer as a basis for organizing the information on the new, improved site.

While in search for something else the other day, I came across Data Driven Design: Using Web Analytics to Improve Information Architectures, a 10-page document written by Andrea Wiggins, a Ph.D. student. Wiggins presents the scholarly argument for why we need analytics when approaching a redesign.

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The CEO's Influence On Digital Marketing Strategy

The CEO ranks second only to Marketing as an influencer on digital marketing strategy in financial services. That's according to the recently released Digital Marketing in Financial Services study produced by MarketBridge, a global professional services firm focused on sales and marketing effectiveness, and Source Media, which provides authoritative information, analysis and insight for the financial services, investment, insurance, accounting and related technology industries.

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Digital Marketing Strategies Are Key to Communicating in the Changed World

SwanDog Strategic Marketing today published “The World Has Changed (Part 1),” a 12-page whitepaper available to be downloaded from www.swandog.com. Written by Dave Swanson, SwanDog’s founder and managing principal, the paper includes recommendations on how mutual fund companies, other investment managers and broker-dealers can reposition themselves in the wake of the financial markets crisis.

We have a close alliance (including maintaining office space where SwanDog does) so would have called your attention to the whitepaper regardless but as it happens every one of the recommendations implies a digital capability.

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Financial Services Marketing: What You Say Now Matters

As our nation’s elected leaders debate the financial bailout and investors anxiously reset their expectations of their investments and plans, financial services marketing and communications will face heightened scrutiny. It’s unknown how the current situation will be resolved or when. But, it’s a safe bet that there will be a hue and cry for greater transparency and disclosure from all money-taking organizations.

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