FMG Suite rebrands, unbundles marketing and website products

FMG Suite, a digital marketing technology company for financial advisors, rebranded as FMG and announced a number of new services.

Susan Theder, director of marketing and experience, who joined FMG last August after five years as chief marketing officer of Advisor Group, said the company is placing more emphasis on highlighting best practices. marketing strategies that 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 offer real-time, online editing capabilities to advisors. But wider rollouts are coming for the company’s marketing platform.

“Most often, FMG was seen as a website company first, but from my perspective as a former client, I labeled the marketing platform,” Theder said. “And really, the marketing platform is, I think, the best in the business. It’s the most comprehensive. And right now, advisors, especially with the volatility of the market, know communications are absolutely essential.”

This week, the company launched a program called “Do It For Me Marketing,” where FMG Chief Evangelist Samantha Russell and Theder will develop monthly marketing plans for advisors and introduce a reputation for advisors to better monitor the quality of their online presence.

“We just took a look at the platform and looked at ways to drive the business strategy from a place of marketing best practices and take to heart and prioritize the fact of be marketing thought leaders and let that drive our technology and product platform,” Theder said, in an interview with WealthManagement.com.

Theder says the rebranding was also triggered by the company’s desire to mirror 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 write monthly emails and social media posts on behalf of advisors. Each Consultant who signs up will have a dedicated Marketing Specialist who will share marketing materials and calendar, and make adjustments to the program based on feedback from an individual Consultant.

If something remarkable happens in the middle of the month that might cause an advisor to contact clients, Russell and Theder will write articles about the event and ask marketers to contact their advisors.

FMG’s new reputation management tool is currently in beta testing with a handful of advisors. It aims to help them incorporate testimonials and reviews into their marketing materials in response to new SEC rules that loosen restrictions on this type of marketing.

“Advisors are going to be able to get reviews and testimonials and use them in their marketing,” Theder said. “It’s scary too, because as soon as you’re open to criticism, it can be positive or negative.”

The new tool helps advisors capture customer satisfaction data, she said.

“One thing that I think advisors have really, from my perspective, always struggled with is customer satisfaction – a consistent method of collecting customer feedback and using it to drive their strategy and identify opportunities for improvement. .”

The reputation management tool automatically triggers a “Net Promoter Score” survey regardless of the frequency determined by the advisor. The score essentially calculates the difference between so-called “promoters,” or customers who have a favorable opinion of an advisor, and “detractors,” or those who don’t have a favorable opinion. The tool consolidates all comments, ratings and comments into the FMG dashboard, where advisors manage their email, social media and website. Advisors can sort data by rating or recency, and respond to customer feedback within the tool.

“More importantly, it really gives them a kind of constant feedback mechanism so that they’re able to immediately address any particular area of ​​opportunity in their business,” Theder said. “It’s going to be important as they get more and more criticism.”

Advisors can also set an NPS threshold that would trigger an email asking customers to create a Google review.

“That’s how they can create testimonials and reviews in a compliant way, without lifting a finger and doing it in a way that ensures they only send it when they get a high average NPS” , said Theder.

The reputation 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 advisers and practices that it must be difficult for people to find an adviser they can trust,” she said. and testimonials should help clients find advisors more easily and build trust in the advisor they choose to work with.