Radio saw the biggest increase.  The article quoted VP-global media, sponsorship and mobile communications at American Express Lou Paskalis saying that radio is the number one consumed media by small business owners.

As would be expected, newspapers saw a decline in ad spending.  Unexpectedly, online advertising saw a drop in the first quarter.  But most are labeling that an anomaly with forecasts of financial services advertising to become a leader in the online space in the years to come.

Financial services companies leading the way have recognized that now is the time to act.  You don’t have to look any further than the recent trends to find an explanation:

• The recession has created a heightened awareness around saving and investing
• People are more open to the idea of seeking financial advice
• The Baby Boomers continue to move closer to retirement creating urgency around a whole raft of issues – from IRA rollovers to retirement income to long term care
• Small businesses are hungry for help with innovative ways to spark their growth
• People are seeking out products and services that provide simplicity, access and control to make better decisions with their money

These are just a few of the trends that are creating opportunities for marketers across the financial services industry.  The question is, are you in or are you going to sit on the sidelines?

Many of these underserved may very well be in the mass-market segment, with the majority of their assets in a retirement plan but other monies scattered among different institutions.  Many times, these folks believe that they don’t have enough for a financial advisor to be interested in them.  Nevertheless, they have retirement worries and need help.

On top of that, advisor ranks are shrinking.  Bank Investment Consultant points to a study by Cerulli Associates in Boston and reports that, “The total universe of advisors keeps slowly shrinking over time, down about 1.4% from 2004 to 2008, from 313,705 to 309,693.”

So who can help bridge this gap between fewer financial advisors and a large underserved market?  For starters, insurance companies and banks.

Insurance companies have the opportunity to help advisors more efficiently reach out to this large audience with education and planning tools surrounding their annuity products.  Then support the effort with marketing programs that drive business to the advisor by addressing a major worry for many – the fear of running out of money in retirement.  This can go a long way to helping the advisor  serve this unmet need in the market in a way that makes sense for his or her business.

Banks also have an opportunity to serve this market.  They already have customers that are part of those 50 million Americans that Mr. Shiller has estimated.  They just haven’t identified them as such.  Banks have a unique advantage because they have already overcome the biggest hurdle – establishing trust. Now it becomes a matter of digging into customer data, reaching out to customers, and offering them engaging planning and education tools.

50 million represents a huge opportunity.  With some smart tools and the right marketing, insurance companies and banks can help bridge that gap and capture their share of underserved millions.

It’s difficult for regular folks to make sense of it all by wading through paragraph after dense paragraph of financial-speak.  Research reveals that today’s financial consumers crave simplicity and clarity.  But even the most seasoned financial services marketer knows how difficult it is to keep things simple while delivering valuable insight.  In fact, sometimes words get in the way.

Fortunately, we’re starting to see the adoption of information visualization to help bring that simplicity and clarity to financial topics.  Make no mistake, we’re not talking about charts created in your spreadsheet software.  These are insightful and compelling infographics that give you a powerful way to help clients and prospects understand what a complicated financial topic means to their lives.  When they understand that, they understand why they should do business with you.

Here is a starter list of smart information visualization:

• A visual guide to inflation
• Are we over the worst? – how to present a lot of information in a way that makes people want to explore rather than ignore
• Who is the modern media consumer? – great use of icons to make it easy to quickly navigate a multitude of statistics
• The surprising truth about what motivates us – graphics come to life in a mesmerizing video
• Customer service statistics
• The future of infographics – data visualization in real time

According to this article in Bank Investment Consultant, a recent study by TD Ameritrade shows that there may be a trend among boomers to define success as eliminating debt and saving for long-term goals.

This could be good news for us financial services marketers if we understand what this large (and valuable) group prospects really needs.  In other words, it’s going to take a change of attitude on our part as well.  That’s not easy.  Because we tend to focus on products and not necessarily solutions.  After all, it’s easy to push the tools of accumulation, but remember, this is a group that is used to spending – not saving.

So how do we together change our ways?  For starters, let’s help this group understand all the issues surrounding the life stage they are entering.  Take for example the boomer who is entering pre-retirement.  He or she is inundated with IRA rollover messages.  You don’t see messaging around things like reevaluating changing insurance needs (which could save them money), or ways to leverage home equity to pay college costs while getting a tax break.  Sure the information is out there for them to go find.  But if all you are focusing on is getting them to invest more or rollover an IRA, then a savvier financial professional is going to come along and help them solve those problems that are really weighing heavy on them.  And after they do, guess who is going to get the IRA rollover?

The good news is that this is a group that has immediate needs.  And as the TD Ameritrade study indicates, they may be truly having a change of heart about what’s really important to their future.  We just need to make sure we’re ready to change the way we think about their needs.  And to approach them with real help and not just a sales pitch.

Some of this shift in thinking is driven by a desire for a more active and productive lifestyle during these years.  But there will also be a significant number of boomers who simply will not have enough saved and will have to work.  Whatever the reason, this shift in behavior during retirement years will drive new needs for insurance and annuity products.

This change in retirement thinking provides a unique opportunity for marketers.  Here are a few ways to capitalize on this emerging trend.

Talk about the new retirement reality
Help your clients understand the options they may want to consider as they transition to retirement years.  How can they use insurance and annuities to complement their plans?

Deliver the message through seminars
Boomers continue to show a propensity to respond to seminars to gain understanding of the issues and opportunities ahead of them. A seminar creates a low-pressure setting for information sharing.  Look to develop a presentation that helps them view you as a resource for helping them find the right solution.

Extend it online
Boomers may have been slower adopters of the online channels, but now the group represents one of the fastest growing segments.  Take your education online.  Develop interactive tools to help them evaluate the options.  And then help them connect to you to take action.

By acting now to help retiring boomers, you have the opportunity to position yourself to serve a segment that will be controlling the largest share of wealth in the country for a number of years to come.

Today, clients and prospects have unprecedented access to resources to learn about and compare offerings, and even discuss the pro’s and con’s with their peers.  The companies that will win are those that will not only share knowledge with clients, but also help them understand what they should be evaluating depending on their situation.

The fact is that people are most likely to make decisions about financial services and products when they experience a life event.  This can include everything from the birth of a child to becoming an empty-nester to retirement.  At these milestones, clients are in need of help.  Life event marketing targets clients at these key points.  It then helps them understand what the changes in their lives mean from a financial standpoint and directs them to solutions to address the needs.

Tapping into the power of life event marketing can help you expand existing client business.  Better yet, it can bring focus to your new business effort as well.  Here are a few suggestions for getting started:

• Understand the needs – identify what needs clients have at the milestones throughout their lives.  To begin, use your experience and any data you have on existing clients.
• Find your sweet spot – narrow your focus to those life events that you can serve very well, matching up your resources and expertise.
• Bring the target client to life – consider creating personas of the key life-event segments that you are focusing on.  If it is people who are preparing to retire, find a picture of what someone like this looks like.  Write down a profile of their financial situation.  Document how they live and what they think.  This will help you maintain a clear and vivid focus on who you are addressing with your marketing.
• Concentrate marketing efforts on your select life event segments – since you have identified them and their needs, you should be able to focus on the channels and tools that are most likely to reach them.  Most importantly, stay focused on these segments.

By identifying and focusing on the high-value life events for your firm, you can create a rich dialogue with clients and prospects that are eagerly looking for your help.

However, SEO continues to be misunderstood, misapplied and mismanaged by many financial service companies. With that in mind, we have created the following SEO Fact or Fiction quick guide to better understand what can and cannot be accomplished through a properly executed SEO strategy.

SEO just deals with key words, right?
FICTION. SEO includes anything that can be done on a site to organically increase rankings. That can be anything from creating more pages to ensuring copy headlines are maximized.

If I optimize my site I’ll jump in the rankings tomorrow.
FICTION. Rankings take time. A company shouldn’t reasonably expect to see any results for at least six months. These strategies take patience. If a company is looking for quick results, there are other more effective strategies. For example, paid search is a great way to fill the gap while waiting for a rise in organic rankings.

I should focus my company’s SEO efforts on a limited number of keywords/phrases.
FACT. Though it may be enticing to optimize for every word under the sun, in reality a focused approach is key. Trying to rank for everything will dilute efforts, resulting in ranking on nothing.

The more traffic my site gets, the higher it will appear in search rankings.
FICTION. Traffic does not equal rankings. Relevancy is the key factor in search engine rankings.  While increased inbound links do improve rankings (1 link = 1 vote), traffic to a site alone is irrelevant and unidentifiable to the search engines.

If my competitors’ sites are already optimized, I should just give up
FICTION. The Internet is a big place and there is room for everyone. If competitors are wining on certain phrases, research can be done to identify relevant keywords with high volume and less competition. And those keywords should become a company’s target.

Why is transparency so attractive?
More than ever, people feel leery of what they’re being told. After years of “too good to be true” actually being too good to be true, they want trust. They want transparency. Being completely up front about fees is part of that formula. It tells your client that you have nothing to hide and that you’re confident in the value your product provides.

Shouldn’t it be the client’s responsibility to figure it out?
Taking an approach that puts the impetus on your client could backfire. As more and more financial institutions begin to embrace transparency, clinging to such a clandestine approach could ultimately lead to your client’s walking looking to do business with a place they feel will shoot them straight.

So, how do I make my financial institution more transparent?
There are any number of ways to do it – from online tools to office signage and more – but as you explore your options, keep a few things in mind:

• Either commit all the way or don’t bother. Anything less that full commitment and people may think it’s a gimmick and not a legitimate attempt to build trust.
• Transparency is a good thing and merits mention in your sales copy. It’s a benefit that people appreciate.
• Keep it simple. Here’s what we’re offering. Here are the fees. And here’s why we charge what we do. The simpler the message, the more effective it is.
• Look to the future. If transparency in your pricing has you concerned about the value you’re delivering relative to the competition – fix the value problem. Price is one thing. Value is another. Make your value clear (and follow through in delivery) and customers will come back again and again.

This article from Bobsguide explains the importance of embracing the balance between innovation and risk in IT and technology.  The article quotes Richard De Lotto, a research analyst for Gartner, saying “Banking and investment service providers need to make the critical shift to a more outward-facing set of objectives for IT that are risk-aware but still innovative and bold.”

Salva O’Renick’s experience working with leading financial services companies in advancing IT marketing solutions mirrors the importance of this critical need.  In many situations, marketing and IT departments have very divergent points of view. We believe real progress can be made by following some simple steps:

Communicate.
Getting the support of IT is critical to advancing innovation in your on-line marketing efforts.  In approaching strategy for technology initiatives, inviting IT to the table for scenario planning is a great way to build buy-in.  Looking at initiatives early on as ‘possibilities’ rather than plans set in stone, will help IT focus on how they can structure solutions to meet security requirements.

Integrate.
Creating great customer experiences starts by mapping the ideal engagement.  Looking at integration – of marketing, sales and customer service – provides opportunities to leverage touch points in the delivery of more targeted communications with customers.  At the core of this process is data – which requires in most cases integrating systems used to drive activities across functions.  Engaging IT in this process, and identifying clearly the benefits to the organization, will help move these efforts forward.

Iterate.
The process of advancing your organization’s efforts to optimize customer engagements through digital channels is complex and ever changing.  Especially in a world where changes in technology, regulation and competition create an industry that is constantly evolving.  Embracing ‘agile’ and ‘iterative’ strategy and development methodologies will help you not only make progress today, but also sets the stage for a constantly improving online experience for your customers.  An iterative approach also makes better use of resources by tackling initiatives that provide the greatest value to the organization from a standpoint of feasibility and importance.

In spite of the overriding challenges in balancing innovation and risk, banks and other financial services companies can make headway.  All it takes is a little communication, integration and iteration.

Focus On Consistency
You may decide to change your email template, but keep in mind how that may impact your other collateral – letterhead, business cards, brochure, etc. Your brand should stay consistent throughout, done well and it has a multiplying-effect that builds on the equity of each piece and creates a sense of professionalism, expertise and confidence with the client.

Provide Value
Wilke has some great points about finding reasons to communicate – newsletters, reminder emails – add in other high-value connections like a seminar to present information on a lesser-known product that’s gaining steam, like ETFs . Or maybe it’s a Tax-Day party for your clients on April 15. Give your clients a reason to look forward to what you have to say.

Maximize the Entire Experience
Make sure your practice takes every chance to reinforce your brand. From the way your office looks to something as simple as what they hear when they call and are put on hold. It’s the details that really separate your practice from your competitors.