FMG Suite, a digital marketing technology company for financial advisors, has rebranded as FMG and announced a number of new services.
Chief Marketing and Experience Officer Susan Theder, who joined FMG last August after five years as the chief marketing officer of Advisor Group, said the company is putting a greater emphasis on highlighting the marketing practices FMG has found to be most effective for financial advisors.
The company will now offer its marketing and website products separately, she said. For the website service, one change will be to give advisors in-line, real-time editing functions. But broader rollouts are coming for the firm's marketing platform.
“More often than not, FMG was thought of as first a website company, yet from my perspective as a prior customer, I private-labeled the marketing platform,” Theder said. “And really the marketing platform is, I think, the best in the industry. It’s the most comprehensive. And right now, advisors, especially with the market volatility, know communications is absolutely critical.”
This week the company introduced a program called “Do It For Me Marketing,” where FMG's Chief Evangelist Samantha Russell and Theder will develop monthly marketing plans for advisors and introduced a reputational management tool for advisors to better monitor the quality of their presence online.
“We’ve just taken a look at the platform and looked for ways to drive the strategy of the company from a place of marketing best practices and taking to heart and prioritizing being marketing thought leaders and letting that drive our technology and product platform,” Theder said, in an interview with WealthManagement.com.
Theder says the rebrand was also triggered by the firm’s desire to reflect its portfolio of acquisitions over the past few years, including MarketingPro, Platinum Advisor Strategies and, most recently, Twenty Over Ten.
Through the new “Do It For Me Marketing” service, Theder and Russell are writing monthly emails and social media posts on behalf of advisors. Every advisor who signs up will have a dedicated marketing specialist who will share the materials and the marketing calendar, and will make adjustments to the program based on an individual advisor's feedback.
If something noteworthy happens in the middle of the month that might prompt an advisor to reach out to clients, Russell and Theder will write posts on the event and have the marketing specialists reach back out to their advisors.
FMG’s new reputational management tool is currently in a beta test with a handful of advisors. It’s aimed at helping them bring testimonials and reviews into their marketing materials in response to new SEC rules that relax restrictions on that type of marketing.
“Advisors are going to be able to get reviews and testimonials and utilize them in their marketing,” Theder said. “That’s scary as well, because as soon as you’re open to reviews, they can be positive or negative.”
The new tool helps advisors capture client satisfaction data, she said.
“One thing I think advisors have really, from my perspective, always struggled with is client satisfaction—a consistent method of collecting client feedback and utilizing it to drive their strategy and identify opportunities for improvement.”
The reputation management tool automatically triggers a "Net Promoter Score" survey on whatever frequency the advisor determines. The score essentially calculates the difference between so-called "promoters," or clients who have a favorable opinion of an advisor, and "detractors," or those who don't have a favorable opinion. The tool aggregates all the feedback, scores and comments into FMG’s dashboard, where advisors manage their email, social media and website. Advisors can sort the data by rating or recency, and respond to client comments within the tool.
“Most importantly, it really gives them sort of a constant feedback mechanism so they’re able to address any particular areas of opportunity in their business right away,” Theder said. “That’s going to be important as they’re getting more and more reviews.”
Advisors can also set an NPS threshold that would trigger an email requesting clients create a Google review.
“This is how they can compliantly build testimonials and reviews, without lifting a finger and doing so in a way that ensures that they’re sending it only when they are getting a high average NPS,” Theder said.
The reputational management tool will be a "game changer" for advisors, said Debra Brennan Tagg, president of BFS Advisory Group, an RIA in Dallas.
“There are so many different types of advisors and practices that it must be difficult for people to find an advisor that they can trust," she said. "People rely on Google reviews for everything these days, so combining that element with Net Promoter Scores and testimonials should help clients find advisors more easily and have confidence in the advisor they choose to work with.”
