Barron's Advisor Marketing Program
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The More Things Change...

8/4/2020

 
A lot has changed in the past few months for Barron's. Our team has pivoted hard into the digital world. We've created a new weekly newsletter and podcast called The Way Forward and launched a series of virtual events. One consistent theme we're hearing from advisors is that the change and innovation we've been talking about for years is here... and how.  

As monotonous as endless zoom calls have become, this expedited embraced of all things "virtual" is a huge windfall for elite advisors. As virtual engagement becomes normalized, geography will be less relevant (if not totally irrelevant) in the search for quality wealth management. Advisors with an experienced and digital-first team will be able to prospect nationally. This is especially important for advisors with excellent client referral strategies. See below:
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If you were to map out your clients, it might look like the diagram above. Traditionally, the majority of your business might have been represented by the centralmost node of dots — where a client refers colleagues and associates. That could be employees at the same company, members of the same church, or friends of friends. In a digital environment, advisors have the ability to engage clients outside their existing network. These new centers of influence then become the focal point of an entirely new network, where additional clients are added through traditional referrals. This gives larger teams with more savvy marketing strategies a huge advantage. But you don't necessarily have to be Jack Dorsey to tap into this shift in client expectation.

There are a handful of things you can do with little or no extra effort that will give you a boost. For example, having a LinkedIn page and being occasionally active on LinkedIn. Google yourself and your team occasionally to see your digital footprint. Always keep your site and your team information (including professional headshots) current. Despite the fact that everything has changed, they stay the same. Presenting yourself professionally will win you business; and serving your clients well will win you even more. 

Filters are here

4/1/2020

 
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The new advisor finder tool is now live on Barron's. The new interface shows all paying advisors first by proximity to the user's zip code. Non-paying advisors will always be listed last. This is a more fair interface than the map format, which gave equal visibility to paying and non-paying advisors. 

In addition we've added some filters so users can pare down the list and find their perfect "match." The filters we currently have are:
  • ranking
  • SEC vs FINRA regulated
  • state
  • account min
  • upgraded profiles only
These filters are built on confirmed data we have on hand. We're currently discussing how we can use more ranking data to further filter our lists. If you have suggestions, please let us know. Keep in mind that we have to be impartial in our approach.

Flight to Quality

3/24/2020

 
Hope everyone is safe and healthy.

Although the market is down, advisors — particularly top advisors — see an opportunity to differen
tiate themselves. “This is what I have trained for.” says top advisors Geri Pell. “This is when we really get to excel.” Advisors to high net worth investors also see a financial upside to disruption. "I think this may be one of the great buying opportunities for us for the next 10 years," says Hall of Fame advisor Christiane Olsen. 

This bullishness is echoed by the staff at Barron's. In a time of uncertainty like this, we have seen extraordinary interest in our content as investors seek out quality analysis.
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  • Barrons.com subscriptions have set new records, and are 668% over our annual target..
  • Barrons.com had 24.5 million unique users in March 
  • MarketWatch is at a stunning 66m unique users in March
  • And the WSJ saw a 30% bump in traffic in March

Across our digital network and in print, you have access to millions of high net worth individuals seeking advice. They could be self-guided investors who had until now thought they could manage without professional guidance. They could be younger professionals who have never experienced market shocks like this. Or, they could be investors with sub par advisors whose shortcomings have been covered up by a decade of gains. All of this spells opportunity open only to ranked advisors. 

Big ticket items

3/6/2020

 
We've been asking advisors who participate the Guide to Wealth if they've won any new business because of it. Here are some big wins advisors have passed on to us:

  • A top ranked advisor in Connecticut won TWO $30m accounts from appearing in the WSJ
  • A top ranked advisor in California says he won an account from the CEO of a helicopter leasing company from his online profile. (Catalina Wine Mixer invite pending)
  • A top ranked advisor in NYC won the business of two MBAs whose start-up was sold at a hefty valuation. They took the time to read through dozens of profile looking for an advisor who dealt specifically in ETFs. 

Despite the uncertainty ahead, there is an opportunity for top advisors to scoop up dissatisfied clients, and Barron's and WSJ are one of the best places to find them. In fact, we've seen subscriptions and online traffic skyrocket in the past month as readers turn to us for quality insight. 

Your own ad campaign

2/19/2020

 
Department store pioneer John Wanamaker famously said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." A century later advertising is a massive enterprise with creatives, planners, buyers, analysts, demographers, etc, all trying to reach the right "eyeballs" at the right time. Fortunately, we've cut all of that out and delivered you a turnkey, multi-million dollar ad campaign.

We haven't sat on our hands waiting for readers to come to you, we've pushed Barron's advisors out to our readers through the equivalent of $3.1m in advertising in Barron's, WSJ and Marketwatch.*

Here are the topline ways we've promoted the Barron's advisors since last June (from $$$ to $):
  • 8 months of digital banner ads on WSJ, Barron's, Marketwatch 
  • 28 print ads in WSJ and Barron's (including ads in the rankings)
  • Paid google search
  • Paid social media (LinkedIn + Facebook)

In short, we can't guarantee our readers will connect with you, but we've given you the absolute best chance that they will through continuous promotion of the directory and the rankings. 
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ABOVE: An ad in the Markets section of WSJ on March 20. Is your advisor battle-tested?
* advertising priced at ratecard

Advertising on the cheap

2/3/2020

 
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Advisors often ask us how readers will find their profile pages. We answer that we're advertising across the Dow Jones network (among other things). Since ad banners are served at irregular intervals its often hard to prove their impact.

This is why we've done an audit of the ads we've run on WSJ and Barrons in the past sixth months. To our delight, we've delivered an astounding $2.1m in digital ads banners for directory participants.* Our ads were shown on 71.5m pages and drove just under 40k visitors from WSJ and Barron's – confirmed subscribers. 

This of course is just ad banners. We are also generating tens of thousands of visitors to your pages in other ways:
  • Ads in print issues of Barron's + WSJ,
  • Links on the Barron's homepage
  • Paid and organic Google search
  • Paid and free social media (facebook, linkedin)

In short, the directory is one of the easiest and most cost efficient ways to tap into your rankings success. 
*Ads priced at $30 cost per thousand (CPM)

December Guide + Paid Search

12/19/2019

 
The As you probably know, our December issue on Kids + Money published earlier this month. Obviously we had a good amount of traffic to our sites, but as usual with the Guides, we are promoting the content outside our walls. 

Each article contains a link to the directory where an interested client can connect with you. 
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Tie-in #1
​The editorial inset that has all of the guide content AND a link to the directory
Tie-in #2
Articles have a rotating ad unit that includes a link to the directory.
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One added bonus for participants in the directory is the inclusion of your firm name in our paid search. Google allows us to enter search terms that may be relevant to someone looking for an advisor. Adding the participants to this keyword list ups the chance that the rankings and/or directory links appear in the paid ad spot. 
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Lastly, now that the indie rankings is in the books, we're starting to promote it internally on  WSJ, MarketWatch, and Barron's. For added visibility, we're doing some paid promotion on Facebook. 

Our belief is that our sites provide the best quality audience for your spend, but we include additional external marketing for promotional purposes and to raise awareness of the rankings overall. 

The new advisor finder

12/9/2019

 
Starting this week, we will be building out a new, improved advisor finder tool. While the FA map was great, the next iteration will allow visitors to delve deeper and create more accurate lists of advisors. The matching tool will show a list of all advisors sorted by geography and minimum account size. Visitors can whittle down this list by selecting from a set of filters. 

We will be testing this and gathering feedback in the next two months. Our goal is to launch it by March. 

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Visitors to the directory will enter their zip, age and AUM. They click "find an advisor" and a sorted list is presented.

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The list of all advisors is sorted by geography and account size. All premium advisors are shown at the top of the list. The "cards" feature a larger headshot and contact information. 

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If visitors want to create a more curated list, they have the option to filter out bad matches. The filters include: ranking, FINRA/SEC registration, State(s), certifications, specialities and planning (y/n). 

Our ultimate goal is to create a tool that matches investors to their perfect advisor. We think this is a step in that direction.  

Kids and money

10/30/2019

 
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The next issue of the directory will run Dec 2 in Barron's and the following week in WSJ. The theme is talking to your children about money. We'd like your input into topics for the upcoming February and May issues. If you have suggestions for what theme(s) we should focus on, email advisor.editors@barrons.com

Above the fold

10/29/2019

 
Barron's is making a few tweaks the homepage to make the rankings and advisor directory more visible to Barron's readers. In two weeks the "advisor" module will now be "above the fold" – the term for content that doesn't require any scrolling. It is your direct input that helped sell this change to the development team, so keep the feedback flowing. 
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