Start it off Right

Start with a compelling statement that lets the reader know from the get-go who you are and what you stand for. Your role as principal of your company should be clear right away, as well as your passion for what you do.

Experience

Once you let the reader know who you are and what your position entails, explain how you got there. This should include things such as work history, professional memberships, degrees and designations.

Work History

Your entire work history is not relevant. For example, if you are a former restaurant manager, most people wouldn’t see that as an important detail in your bio as a financial advisor. Unless you are going after other people in the restaurant industry as potential clients, something like that isn’t really essential. Stick to the positions that specifically prove your knowledge in your current industry or are rather prestigious.

Degrees and Designations

There is nothing wrong with getting a bachelor’s degree in art. However, if it is not relevant to your position, do not mention the subject specifically. Having varying interests and knowledge is great, but disclosing everything can make you seem a little wishy-washy in your bio. If you are a financial advisor, demonstrating your expertise by listing designations and describing what they mean can certainly put someone at ease that is on the fence about doing business with you.

Professional Memberships

Whether it is something local, like a chamber of commerce membership, or national, like NAIFA®, memberships prove your commitment to professional growth and credibility.

Be Personal

Lifting the veil and showing who you are, as much as you are comfortable, is always a good thing. Are you involved with a local charity that benefits the homeless? Do you watch your kids play soccer every weekend? Do you spend all your free time studying martial arts? Not only do these things make you more human to those who don’t know you, but they increase the chances of someone identifying with you based on shared similarities. If nothing else, they can be talking points that open the door to becoming more personal with your clients.

Know Your Audience

All marketing decisions start with the same question: “Who are you talking to?” Many of the details of your bio will be the same, but how you present them in different industries and for different clients will vary. There are different facts you may need to make known if the goal of your bio is having more opportunities to speak at events, to earn new clients or to prove your expertise in an interview with the media.

Credibility Boosts

Sometimes we hear from clients that are particularly accomplished that they don’t want to take the time to list out every industry award. We think this is a big mistake. Your clients are outside of your industry. If we show them two bios and the only difference between you and your competition down the street is that your competitor lists his awards, who do you think the potential clients will choose? Even the simplest, most easy to achieve of these accomplishments are important to someone that isn’t educated in the industry. Don’t sell yourself short by not taking the time to give someone the full picture of your achievements.

Consistency

We look at countless websites, and there are always a few things that pain us to see. First of all, it can be off-putting when your team’s bios do not match in style. It seems haphazardly thrown together, and of course that is not the kind of message you want to send to prospective clients. Also, as principal of your company, ALWAYS make sure you have a bio and that it is longer and more thorough than the other members of your team. Nothing is worse than having no bio at all, or having an executive assistant that appears more accomplished than his or her boss. Decide what voice everyone’s bios will be written in as well. For most businesses, third person makes more sense, but for your business, maybe a more casual first person approach is better.

Current

We write our bios in a way where they will age well. If you tell us you have been married for 24 years, we will write “more than 20.” Your nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter are your “young children.” Although it is ideal to review your bio every year and make necessary changes, make it easy to edit year after year.

A Final Tip

Designating one person on your team to write your bios is a great way to start if you have someone particularly skilled in writing. This keeps a certain style and consistency throughout all your team members’ bios.

1. Be genuine

You may have to change your company culture to attract millennials. Sales pitches simply don’t work as well as lifting the veil and letting them see inside who you really are and what you stand for.

2. Educate

Since sales pitches are not as popular, focus on educating and doing so in an effective way. Creating e-books, podcasts and videos are more likely to get you noticed over traditional materials like brochures and sales sheets.

3. Keep it short

Millennials are always on the go, and they are used to technology and a world that moves at a faster pace than the generations before them. Shorter attention spans mean you have less time to effectively get your message across. Don’t use paragraphs to explain what you can with a few sentences.

4. Make use of technology

Technology is a powerful tool to keep your audience interested in what you have to say. Use a variety of tools such as webinars, podcasts, infographics and videos whenever possible.

5. Visuals are a must

Use images, interactive graphics and videos to make your message interesting and prove your point over just using back-to-back paragraphs of text.

Tier Services and Segment Your Clients

Don’t exhaust yourself by trying to be all things to all people. After all, are you really trying to make just anyone your client? Of course not, because one ‘A’ level client is worth 10 ‘C’ level clients. Be a few things to a few people. Twenty percent of Starbucks’ customers visit the store sixteen times per month! You’ll notice they do not do many specials to attract new customers, but instead target specials towards people who are already loyal to them. Segmenting allows you to do two things: make the most of time spent with your best clients and focus on your niche market.

Be Consistent

Deliver what you promised. In my many trips to Starbucks, I cannot recall ever seeing a customer return their order unsatisfied. The extensive training of their baristas means when a product is ordered, the barista knows exactly what to deliver. The only real way to do this is to sit down and create protocol for every typical scenario your employees encounter. Don’t leave your employees to wonder and flounder on how to handle certain situations. When a client calls the office and is concerned about how the investments in their portfolio are performing, there should be a protocol. When a client calls, eager to open a new investment account right away but you are booked solid with meetings for three weeks, there should be a protocol. Being seen as reliable, trustworthy and dependable is built on consistency. You can achieve this by making your protocol thorough, empowering your employees through training and ensuring clients receive the same great service over and over again.

Offer a Superior Product

If Starbucks coffee wasn’t any good, it simply would not sell. So while customer experience is incredibly important, you must first have a quality product. I know what you may be thinking. How is my product as a financial advisor any different from other advisor’s? The secret is that it is personalized to each client. There may be no worse product than cookie cutter financial services. If you are not remembering the important details of your clients’ lives – their hopes, dreams and goals – you are failing to provide them with a superior product designed to meet their needs.

Give Clients an Experience They Want to Share

Starbucks creates a pleasant atmosphere by carefully selecting things like music, seating arrangements and decorations. When someone enjoys this experience, they return with a friend.

Do something memorable for your clients that they would not expect. It may be something unique about your waiting area, like having entertainment not typically found in an office setting, fresh cookies or their favorite drink on hand. Your office should have a unique atmosphere so that clients look forward to their time with you and in turn, refer you to their friends.

1. Your building quality matters

Your website is like a building and just as people don’t want to be inside a building that is poorly built, they don’t want to be on a website that is poorly built either. Just like buildings too, you tend to get what you pay for. There is a reason you can pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a website. They aren’t all created equally. Your site speed, a safe connection, ease of navigation, and how fast your pages load are all factors that influence bounce rate or how quickly someone leaves your site. The faster users bounce, the less Google trusts your site and the further down the search results list you’ll end up.

2. Content

The content of your website is of extreme importance. If your content is outdated, incorrect, or a cookie-cutter of another website, your website will be bumped down the list of search results displayed by a search engine. How clearly your content is written also matters. If you’re a nutritionist and you write the question “How many carbs should I eat?” and give a clear answer to this question in a blog post, Google could display your website directly under the search bar when users google that question.

3. Mobile Responsiveness

If your website is not optimized for mobile viewing, you have a big problem, because the majority of web searches today are conducted from a mobile device. If your website is not optimized for mobile, it will not even be displayed in the search results when a mobile user tries to search for your website. One can see if a site is mobile responsive simply by trying to view the website from a mobile device. When you view a non-mobile responsive site on a mobile device, it is very difficult to navigate. You will have to use your fingers to pan around the pages instead of experiencing them automatically resized to fit your device’s screen.

4. Age isn’t just a number

You may have a beautiful, wonderfully functioning site with all the right content but you aren’t getting the ranking you deserve in the search results list. Give it time. We would trust that a 40-year-old was an expert on a subject over a 4-year-old, right? Google works the same way. The more often people click on your site after their keyword search and the lower your bounce rate, the higher you will rise on the search results list. Good SEO is not something that happens overnight. It usually takes about one year for a brand new business with a new website to achieve good ranking results.

5. Internal linking

Something you may have noticed is that bloggers tend to link back to other blogs on a similar topic that they mention in their other blog posts. This is not just done for your convenience or for organization. When you link back to a topic, that gives Google one more reason to put your site on the search results list.

6. Keyword phrases

You may be wondering what key phrases are going to help someone to land on your site. Begin by making a list of relevant words that are important in your industry that need to be mentioned in your content. Do a Google search and see what other key phrases you see appearing often in your search. And lastly, check to see if your competitors are high ranking when you search specific key phrases. This is an indication that you for sure want to include key phrases in your content.

7. Off-site directories

How your website ranks is also important in off-site directories. Off-site directories are like the yellow pages of the internet. When you go to Google for example and type in the name of a business, a list of the closest businesses to you with a map marking their locations appears. This is Google’s directory. Other popular directories include Bing and Yahoo. You want to ensure your business is listed in these top directories as well as other directories which are commonly searched in your industry. It is also important to make sure your business is listed only once in each directory and that the way it is listed is exactly the same in each directory down to abbreviations or complete spellings in the address. If you are a locally owned gym in your city and you are not even showing up when people search for a gym in your city or worse, gyms in a neighboring city are ranking above you, you know you need to reach out to be listed in the directory or discover what the problem is.

1. Messenger apps are on the rise.

Per a recent Business Insider survey, more than half of customers surveyed said they were more likely to make purchases from a company that can be reached out to via a chat app. 63% of those polled use message apps with businesses more than they did in years past and 67% plan to use more message apps to communicate with businesses in the future.^{^}

So how do you take advantage of this trend? Many businesses are using these apps to offer general customer service, to answer product questions, make recommendations and reservations. With this trend has come the rise in chatbots. Chatbots are computer programs that simulate human conversation. Chatbots can help companies lower their team’s customer service issues load by answering many basic questions customers may have. Facebook has designed their messenger app to help customers feel heard, even when you’re not online, and they offer the opportunity to send a business a message as soon as someone lands on your page.

2. Video content is taking over.

Hubspot reports 75% of internet traffic this year will focus on video content due to the rise in popularity of live video content from platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.^* Live video features provide a unique way to launch products and services as well as host live Q&A sessions to connect with your audience. Many mobile users will watch videos without sound as they scroll through their social media feed. Be sure to include captions to your videos to grab the attention of mobile users.

3. ECommerce on social media is increasing.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest have all made the purchasing of products available via their platforms. Snapchat began testing eCommerce in the spring of 2016. Instagram has also been in the testing phase of an ecommerce option since late last year with clickable posts that have a “buy now” option that is expected to take off with its 600 million users. You should never feel like you must make purchasing available across all popular social media platforms though. Consider your audience. The majority of users on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter are between the ages of 18 and 34, but most Snapchat users are younger, with the majority of users being 24 or under. Pinterest users also tend to be female.

4. “Stories” features are taking center stage.

Some experts are predicting that Instagram will surpass Snapchat in popularity because of the addition of a “stories” feature which allows users to make content permanent or only available for a set period. Instagram also offers more analytics than Snapchat, allowing you to better determine the effectiveness of content.

5. More options for social media ads.

Until now, Facebook had the monopoly on social media advertisements and the data they provide to you is hard to beat. Although, Twitter is now seeing an increase in advertising, especially in the mobile format. Snapchat and Instagram of course, are not letting themselves get left behind. Snapchat recently made it easier to purchase ad space and added a variety to video ad options and sponsored filters although ad space on Snapchat is not as affordable as advertising on Facebook or Instagram. Instagram’s advertising options now include photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, and stories ads. Over one million companies advertise monthly on Instagram and since the company is owned by Facebook, ads are managed on Facebook manager, making it easy for those already running ads on Facebook to start with Instagram as well.

6. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

In 2014, Google Cardboard, a foldable cardboard virtual reality viewer designed to hold a smartphone, was purchased by 5 million consumers in the first 19 months. Since then, more expensive VR viewers have emerged, but at $15 each, Google cardboard offers an easy way to reach the masses. Many big-name companies are using VR to provide users an inside look at their brand and their products unseen before.

Augmented Reality is the superimposing of a computer-generated image upon the real world. Pokémon Go made AR a hit with the world last year. Pokémon Go is a gaming app which allows users to search for and collect fictitious characters hidden all over the world using a smartphone. We launched our own Pokémon Go marketing campaign for a local client last year which was a huge success. Facebook is currently working fast and furious to add AR to all its apps to allow users to leave virtual notes or images for friends. This technology is sure to open new marketing possibilities like never seen before for corporate users.

1. Be willing to let go.

You cannot effectively lead if you are trying to manage every little detail. You need to properly train your employees so that they are confident that they know how to handle sticky situations. Don’t continue to do a job you are paying someone else to do. If you feel like your employees are coming to you to make every tiny decision in the office after being with you for months or years, something is wrong. Either you have not properly trained these employees, you have not instilled confidence in them that they know their job well, or you have not effectively communicated your goals to them. If you have hired the right people, the right people don’t need to be managed. For tips on hiring the right people, read my blog on Employment Retention Strategies.

2. Be willing to learn.

If you have the attitude that you have nothing to learn from your employees, you are managing and not leading. Everyone you hire has a different skill set and something to teach you. Most of the members of my team at LMG did something else before they got into marketing, graphic design, or web development. They have a wide variety of past experiences as different as the military, education, and banking. From these experiences, they bring a wide variety of skill sets to the table. Everyone knows something you don’t. If you think being a leader means you’re the only one that has solutions to problems that arise within your company, you’re wrong. Take the weight off your shoulders and let your team suggest how they would solve problems that arise.

3. Communicate.

When you mess up, admit it. When your team does something awesome, brag on them. When you’re not sure how to improve your leadership, ask them. Some may be intimidated to tell the boss what to do better. Simply asking employees about past employers can teach you a lot about what type of qualities your team values in a leader.

4. Allow employees to grow in the direction they chose.

I’m going to assume for a minute that most of your employees are not students working in their first job. That means by the time they get to you, your employees have a good idea of what their strengths and weaknesses are. In our office, I make it a priority to not set a new employee’s job duties in stone right away. Let your employees show you what their strengths are. Don’t focus on weaknesses. Let your employees grow into a role that fits their interests. Make it a point to ask employees what parts of their role they enjoy and which ones they don’t. No one enjoys 100% of the tasks they have to do in their position 100% of the time, but if you have someone completing a task they dislike that someone else is capable of doing and wants to do, let them do it. If you have a task that needs to be completed, before assigning it to someone specifically, ask your team who would like to take on the task.