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My Unfair Advantage
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Many financial professionals start their media campaigns thinking that the ideal article is one that they can use as a sales tool, an article that gives a client all the reasons to purchase something. Very rarely will media exposure be usable as a direct sales tool, but if done properly, it is always useful to boost your credibility and to establish you as an expert.
Media Relations in Your Practice
Media relations fall under marketing, the goal of which is to make your target audience more receptive to your message. If you expect marketing will replace the sales process, you will be disappointed. Marketing does not replace sales. Also, if your message is too “sales-y,” it will fail as a marketing campaign and as a sales tool. The same is also true for the marketing subsets-public relations and media relations. It’s important to understand this because it shapes how you approach the media relations process.
Good Financial Professionals Are Naturally Good at Media Relations
You may not realize it, but the skills that make you good at your financial services job will also make you successful at media relations. Those skills include being an attentive listener, a effective teacher, articulate, concise and quick with follow-up; arriving on time for meetings; providing balanced and accurate information; and perhaps most importantly, being prepared.
Best Media Outlets
Numerous media outlets are available, but for the purposes of this article I will focus on our industry magazines. Although it is nice to be quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times or Kiplinger, you do not need to be in these media outlets to be perceived as an expert or as credible. This is a very good thing because those media outlets are REALLY hard to get into.
By writing for our trade magazines, everybody wins. You increase the professionalism of our industry by helping your colleagues, you are clearly branded as an expert when you are published and when you support the magazines that support our profession, you create the ultimate win-win You may be thinking that being published in a trade magazine won’t help, because your clients will never see it. However, a number of things mitigate that. The first is that you are going to tell them that you were published! We tell our clients every time we are quoted or write an article. We have an “in the news” section on our website, and we will put a reference to a recent publication in our e-mail signature. Additionally, we put the articles on display in our office waiting room and we send a postcard three or four times per year telling people where we are published. The postcards are something we publish ourselves on card stock with our color laser printer.
Google Me!
As much as I am in favor of being proactive about telling my clients that I have been published, today there is an interesting media phenomenon that did not exist when I first started writing for the trade magazines. The Internet and Google act as a huge file cabinet for my media exposure, and Google does not really differentiate between The New York Times and an industry publication.
Further, people think that if they Google it, it is the same as having done exhaustive, unbiased research. If you are showing up in a Google search as a published expert, then it worked! People will Google you before they meet you to check out your credentials, and they will Google you to get your address and phone number. Either way, they will see where you are published. To clarify, this isn’t about the ever-popular “search engine optimization” and it isn’t about strangers searching for a financial professional and your name popping up on their Google search. This is about someone deliberately looking for information about you and what they find when they get there.
Be an Expert, Don’t Pretend
Our society seems to be obsessed with celebrity. Many people want fame without doing anything of value to get it. As far as I am concerned, people should be on the cover of a magazine or on TV because they have done something of value, not because they live in Beverly Hills or at the Jersey shore. Please be aware that your participation in a story-either as a source or as an author-requires that you actually be an expert (not just want to be one, hoping that the article will brand you as such).
Editors of magazines will recognize when you are not a legitimate expert. However, even if you “fool the editor” by writing an article with a topic on which you are not an expert, the actual experts will write to the editor expressing their suspicion and it will be embarrassing for everybody. The bottom line is to start small; write about things that you are already an expert on and you will have a better experience.
Benefit the Readers
It is important to realize that your article needs to be for the benefit of the readers. If you write something solely to benefit yourself or you give a self-serving response to a reporter, they will know it and you will not be included in a story. Further, you will not likely get a second chance if you are not sincere when working with a reporter or editor.
Know Your Audience
The No.1 tenet in compliance is “know your customer.” The same is true when writing for an industry magazine. Different publications have different audiences, and none of them are consumer-facing, so do not write an article that talks about the importance of life or disability insurance if your audience is insurance agents. Additionally, don’t waste your time writing before you have found someone who is interested in your article. Query an editor with your subject, to gauge the publication’s interest before you get started. Follow up once; don’t pester editors. If they are interested, they will get back to you. A query describes what you would like to write about and why you are qualified to write on the subject. Below is an example of a query I used prior to writing an article on insurance for families with special-needs loved ones.
The Query:
Dear Editor,
My life insurance practice focuses on helping families with special-needs children purchase the appropriate amount and type of life insurance. Most articles on this subject address the need for a specific type of trust called a “special needs trust,” but I have not read an article that compares the alternatives for funding the trust. In most cases, life insurance is the lowest-cost and most effective way to fund the trust. I am a CLU, an eight-time Court of the Table member and an active volunteer in the special-needs community, and I have a developmentally disabled child. I have done this planning for my clients, and I have also done it for my own family. Would you be interested in a 600- to 1,500-word article on the subject, and would you prefer I follow up by phone or by e-mail?
Best, Brad Elman, CLU
Compliance
Last, please keep in mind that every time you appear in the media it is potentially a subject to compliance approval-by both insurance and investment departments. There is an additional component as well, and that is the public relations departments of the companies you represent. Even a “compliant” message may not track with a carrier’s marketing campaign or branding message. So engage the PR department, along with your brokerdealer and insurance compliance. Take the time to do this properly and you will be glad you did!
