M & A Rainmaker

London Wealth Management companies are starting to get serious about Digital Marketing and Social Media

Centripetal looks at how some of these Wealth Management companies score using industry standard benchmarks

This article in the F.T.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09fadc9c-8d75-11e2-a0fd-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2TSakGTNY

and the associated Cisco Wealth Management Study

http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1114148

came at a great time as we are working with a number of companies in the sector.

As part of our research I decided to do 2 things:

1. Run them through the HubSpot Internet Marketing Grader and see how they shaped up. If you are not familiar with Marketing Grader here is a quick description of what it does and why.

2. Check to see if and how well these companies ranked ( on Google ) for something you would expect them to.

Obviously these do not represent an exhaustive study. I just thought it would be interesting to see whether these two things backed up what was being said about Rathbones, Charles Stanley and Barclays Wealth and Investment.

1. HubSpot Marketing Grader Analysis

I couldn’t get HubSpot to analyse Rathbones Internet Presence ( see overview of Rathbones below ) but Barclays Wealth scored 86/100 ( great score !! ) and Chas. Stanley 70/100 which are respectible scores.

The top Wealth Management companies for a Google search on Wealth Management London are ( HubSpot scores alongside ):

www.spi.sanlam.co.uk 32/100

http://www.scmprivate.com/ 21/100

http://www.rbcwminternational.com/ 41/100

http://www.azure-wealth.com/‎  28/100

https://uk-wealthmanagement.bnpparibas.com/public/en/home 44/100

http://www.menzies.co.uk/en/services/menzies-wealth-management/ 73/100

http://www.moorestephens.co.uk/WMLon.aspx 53/100

http://www.londonwm.co.uk/ 24/100

http://wealthmanagementandtrust.rothschild.com/page.aspx?id=118 46/100

http://www.cernocapital.com/partners_n.php 19/100

Apart from Menzie’s and Moore Stephens these are pretty poorly performing websites. ( Although of course these are the TOP companies that are FOUND for this search phrase !! ).

N.B. Rathbones did not rank on Page 1 of Google. So we could not get a HubSpot analysis and they don’t rank. However Rathbones clearly has a Social Media presence ( Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. and has  blog which it links to ). It also has Google Analytics installed. It is likely that Rathbones Internet Marketing Grade would be around 70  – 90/100 although it does not seem to have been optimised for search.

2. Google search on ” Wealth Management London “

It is important that companies get ” FOUND ” for the right ( key ) words and phrases. Some Wealth Management companies have simply ” bought their way to the front page ” by paying for Google Pay per Click and/or Adwords advertisements. This is certainly one way of doing it but I am not going to talk about these companies. ( Anyone can buy their way to the front page of Google if they pay the going rate ). A few companies have used Google maps to get a listing below the top 3 P.P.C. adverts. – perfectly valid and a good idea. Interestingly neither Rathbones, Barclays or Chas. Stanley appear in the ” natural ” or ” organic ” not paid for listings. What companies do then and what sort of HubSpot scores do they have ???

( The search results are in 1. along with the HubSpot scores ).

3. Landing Pages

Who has the best Landing Pages ??

When you click on the Google search result for a particular company ( first click ) you will be directed to whatever page that the company wants you to see. Often this is the home page or sometimes the contact page. Apart from the text that you see on the Google search result the ” Landing page ” is the first real contact that you will have with that company and therefore it needs to have:

Impact 

and it also needs a way of

Converting

a visitor to this page to a ” lead “.

Typically this is done with a ” Call to Action ” such as ” Call us ” , ” Email us ” , ” Give us your email address ” or ” get this valuable piece of information ” ( the second click ).

Typically the Landing Pages are impersonal ( often the front page ) and you need to click again to get to the ” Contact ” page. ( e.g. Sanlam, SCM, RBC, BNP ) only a couple present ” real people ” ( Menzies, Cerno ). My favourites are probably – LWM, Moore Stephens and Menzie’s. Azure Wealth is probably the most striking and unusual.

4. The 10 Fastest Growing Wealth Management Companies ( 2010 )

http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/the-10-fastest-growing-wealth-management-companies/a442303

Spearpoint

Brooks MacDonald

Barclays Wealth

Towry

Cheviot

Heartwood

Partners Capital

Williams de Broe

Vestra Wealth

Standard Life Wealth

5. Correlation and Thoughts

There appears to be very little correlation here. Barclays Wealth is said to be active in Social Media , does not rank but does have a high HubSpot score. RBC appears to know how to get found using a variety of methods. ( Google maps and search results ).

Surprisingly this area appears to be ripe for someone to come in and do a good job. It would be relatively straight forward to create a high ranking website ( one that gets found ) , that also scored high with HubSpot ( which means that it has created an effective Internet Presence and Digital Marketing Ecosystem ) , has great Landing Pages and converts visitors to prospects using various appropriate Call to Actions.

See also related post: http://www.centripetalnetwork.com/2013/05/16/london-finance-and-wealth-management-firms-should-be-using-social-media-heres-why/

N.B. Centripetal is carrying out ongoing research in the Wealth Management sectors in the U.K. and shortly in the U.S. – please keep in touch for more blog posts and contact us tofind out how to be the top Wealth Management company on the Internet or talk about the area in more detail.

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but glad to hear that you made a physical and digital Will.

This blog was pointed out to me the other day by Thomas Power

http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=157243

It’s interesting to think that Thomas was having his ” Digital Will ” thoughts when I was starting to work with

http://www.mydigitalexecutor.co.uk/

It would seem that we have both had death on our minds.

I also came across this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT2O1zSfXVM

from Adele McAlear of http://www.deathanddigitallegacy.com/ which really covers a lot of the issues involved in Digital Death and talks about blogger Mac Tonnies death ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Tonnies ).

One of my friends – Gary ” Photography ” Morgan also died last year and there were quite a few issues over some of his digital legacy ( http://www.footprints.me.uk/index.php , https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=154988787849739 ).

I think Thomas is correct in highlighting that one of the main pieces of digital value that most ” Online ” people have is their email database. If you consider the successful internet marketers the cornerstone of their Internet Marketing efforts is their email database.

You will often find them emailing on behalf of a friend or business colleague.

If you are a Director or shareholder in an online business then probably this online business will become part of your ” Physical will ” but if you have, say, an eBay shop that you regularly sell things from and an associated PayPal account then these may need to be part of your ” Digital Will “.

As Thomas and Adele point out one of the keys to everything else is your primary email address and the password for this. It is is the key to your digital legacy.

Most people don’t get around to making a physical will, never mind a digital will so we are making it easy for people to get started.

It’s free and all you need to provide is your name, email and short address.

http://www.mydigitalexecutor.co.uk/join-us/

When you get £56 Million from the lottery you need the services of a very clever wealth manager

With the recent news that 2 sets of people got around £56 Million each from the lottery and my visit yesterday to the City of London meeting wealth managers my thoughts turned to who you would choose as your wealth managers and where you would put your money ?

A quick Google of ” where would you put £56 million if you won the lottery ” revealed this from LotteryBuddy.com :

More than 240 winners of at least $1 million responded to surveys (42% of all such winners) by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLGC) in 2003.
89% put money in the bank.
75% shared money with family or friends.
62% bought a new car.
58% paid off debts.
56% took a vacation.
47% donated to charity.
37% paid off mortgage.
34% bought a house.
28% paid for education for self/family.
15% changed their overall lifestyle.
6% bought a boat.

What was the experience like for the winners?
95% sought professional financial advice.
77% reported they had been contacted by the news media. 93% of those contacted said they received fair and courteous treatment.
47% of winners said they were solicited for donations. Among those solicited, 71% said it was “not a problem”.
42% of winners either retired, gave up their job, changed jobs, went to school or opened their own business.

I also quite liked these responses to the Linkedin question ” Why are 75% of all multi-million dollar lottery winners broke within 5 years? ”

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/personal-finance/wealth-management/PFI_WMG/226556-400169

It was good to see that 95% of the people who won the Ontario Lottery sought the advice of professional financial advisors. No doubt one of the first things that the lottery does is to offer financial advice ( although having never won the lottery I don’t know exactly what they do ).

A Google for ” do lottery winners get financial advice? ” revealed this:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/P43409.asp

which said, amongst other things

Find people you can trust.

“The most important financial decision to make initially is who’s going to be accountant, financial adviser and lawyer,” says Hartigan. “And I don’t think they should be the same person.” If you don’t have all of these people in your Rolodex currently — and how many of us do? — “talk to other people who use these kinds of services. Referral is the best way,” Hartigan suggests. If none of your friends or family can recommend a particular professional, Hartigan recommends going to a major accounting firm, a major brokerage and a large law firm. “Ask what they’ll do for you.” Garrison agrees with Hartigan’s advice and adds, “References are mandatory.”

The hardest part of this is the first sentence:

Find people you can trust.

because this will be your greatest challenge.

As I have said I think that the lottery would probably put forward a list of ( hopefully ) proven and trustworthy accountants, lawyers and financial advisers.

But can you imagine this situation ??

One day you don’t really know any lawyers, accountants or financial advisers – or if you do then they deal with relatively minor financial and legal issues – and the next day you have to choose ” trusted ” people that can handle £56 Million !!

Actually ordinary accountants, lawyers and financial advisers are probably not the right people – even if they are from big firms. What you actually need is a Wealth Manager. Now, again, I imagine that with it’s experience of handing out £millions to lottery winners the lottery would have evolved to the position where it had a recommended list of Wealth Managers who really knew how to manage £56 Million rather than accountants, lawyers and financial advisers.

I’ll be developing this theme further over the next few weeks.