After years of comparing how practices use newsletters and articles to help develop the potential in their client base the results are more than interesting. Time and again newsletters do no more than transfer information to clients but in recent years clients have changed quite a lot. Newsletters may have been OK when they were printed and sent but that ‘habit’ has severely hampered the use and benefits of new technologies.
Newsletters make the practice feel happy because they’ve done something but results from the e-mail campaigns (clicks for example) that distribute newsletters show a total lack of marketing expertise in how to develop the potential in a client base – what all accounting and financial planning practices actually want to do. A transfer of information may have been OK 10 years ago but now when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars lying undeveloped in client databases then a change is needed. This is discussed more here.
We have always said that 6-8% of clients actually read, readers are a personality type, and have recently proven this to be 9%. Some of our clients who still send a newsletter claim this figure is more like 2%. This is appalling if you want to develop client potential you have to do a lot more.
In short, though, some of our findings and results are as follows:
- Articles generate many more times the traffic to a website than a newsletter does
- Articles are a ‘selection’ rather than a ‘collection’. A selection is easier and less time consuming for clients
- 6-9 articles every month compared to only 3-4 articles in a Newsletter
- Practices can add their own articles/blogs, this is all but impossible in a newsletter
- Articles cover a broader range of issues
- Google likes articles better, more to index
- Google likes the extra website traffic articles generate
- Articles allow work to be done on what content generates responses and from what demographic – everyone is after the next generation
- Articles allow a practice to start the marketing needed to properly develop their client potential whereas newsletters don’t
- In just 3 months one practice has generated over 2,500 website page hits from actual clients: that’s over 2,500 chances to educate, communicate, promote a brand, build relationships, promote services, and generate turnover, plus it is a good start to making clients the practice’s best sales people. Prior to this, using newsletters, this figure was almost zero
- Articles have generated a 176% increase in new sessions (client visits) and a 44% increase in new Users (first time client visits)
- Articles coupled with other marketing ideas have generated 40 website queries and feedback in a month compared to 3-4 previously
- As well as articles professionals need to think of their website as a ‘digital office’, doing so changes the whole way this resource is seen and used.
- Actual turnover and leads are being generated as a result of implementing article based marketing campaigns
Peter Graham