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Staying onside of the FCA - Financial promotions on social media

“Financial promotions, whether on social media or traditional media, must give customers the right information and meet our requirements to be fair, clear and

not misleading,” FCA director of supervision and authorisations, Tracey McDermott.

The FCA has recently released guidance on the appropriate use of social media for financial promotions. The clear and continuously hammered home message from the regulator was that a financial promotion must be ‘fair, clear and not misleading’.

So what exactly does ‘fair, clear and not misleading’ entail when it comes to promoting your financial products on social media?

Here are the main take-outs from the 20-page document:

Financial promotions for certain products or services must come with a risk warning or be made clear that it is a promotion in the message, regardless of character limits. Therefore, tweets, which have a character limit of 140, still need to carry the adequate information to remain compliant. The FCA is aware of the limitations faced by the character restrictions, and has recommended the use of images, which carry the risk warning.

However, it is possible that users can turn off images from being permanently visible. In this case, the FCA has said that the tweet still needs to carry the risk warning.

Don’t over emphasise your offering - The FCA made it clear last year that ‘invitation or inducement in financial activity’ is prohibited without a risk warning. For example: “To see our current P2P loans, click here:” is compliant. However, ““To see our great P2P investment opportunities, click here:” is non-compliant.

The use of the word ‘great’ introduces an element of inducement that creates a promotion.

Early guidance last year allowed for the use of ‘#ad’ to acknowledge a financial promotion. The FCA has now said, “Hashtags are not an appropriate way to identify promotional content. “ Firstly, paid ads are already bundled with the ‘spon-sored’ or ‘promotion’ label, and secondly, ‘#ad’ doesn’t adequately cover the risk warnings needed.

Retweets are your tweets - By retweeting a message that carries a financial promo-tion it in turn becomes your responsibility and falls into the same requirements as above. Also, tweets or messages on other social networks from employees of the firm carrying a financial promotion, may also be judged as yours!

Sign-off and record-keeping - The FCA reminds firms of their obligations to have an adequate system in place to sign off digital media communications and to keep records of all digital communications. This may be required later on!

The main consideration when promoting on social media is to stay factual. If you keep to the facts and make sure potential customers are aware of any risks, then you cannot go too wrong.

It is important to note that the above is not a full list and we would recommend that anyone affected by the above reads the full guidance documentation on social media promotions before promoting a financial product or service on social media.

Could bitcoin become the ultimate in Alternative Finance?

If he has heard of ‘Bitcoin’ at all, the average man in the street could be forgiven for dismissing the very idea of an electronic, or ‘virtual’, currency as unnecessary or as a concept too difficult for most ordinary folk to grasp. What’s wrong with

the pound? Isn’t Bitcoin just the latest speculative toy for the money traders in the City to play with?

Not quite. It is perfectly possible that so-called ‘cryptocurrencies’, like Bitcoin, have a usefulness and significance far beyond their apparent face value. In much the same way as the internet has revolutionised the way the world now accesses information, it is no exaggeration to say that digital currencies have the potential to revolutionise the way we pay for goods and services. The enthusiasts believe they could very easily and quickly become the new norm.

Certainly the Bank of England (BoE) is taking that possibility very seriously indeed. A recent study by the BoE concluded: “Cashless forms of payment, like the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, when combined with mobile technology, may reshape the mechanisms for making secure payments.”

The main attraction is that, unlike traditional currencies, alternatives like Bitcoin allow a direct exchange of payment for goods or services without the need for third party (e.g. central bank) involvement. Taken to its logical conclusion, our domestic banks could even create their own electronic currencies which, in time, could replace the use of bank notes.

The debate is not confined to the UK, of course – the subject of ‘digital currencies’ is attracting interest worldwide. However, there are concerns that such new systems, popular and efficient as they might prove be, must not be allowed to compromise the ability of Central Banks to control underlying national currencies. Furthermore, the systems must also be able to withstand any attempts to breach security. The BoE’s ‘One Bank Research Agenda’ is tackling just those issues.

However, let’s assume for a moment that all the obstacles and objections can be satisfactorily overcome. It would not take a huge leap of imagination to link the revolution taking place in ‘Alternative Finance’ with that about to take place in ‘Alternative Currencies’ – arguably, a marriage made in Heaven. Might we see an established Alternative Finance platform forge a Bitcoin union in the not-too-distant future and join some of the early adopters like BTCjam and First Global Credit?

As the Finance Minister recently said: “It is only by harnessing innovations in finance, alongside our existing world class knowledge and skills in financial services, that we’ll ensure Britain’s financial sector continues to meet the diverse needs of businesses and consumers, here and around the globe, and create the jobs and growth we all want to see in the future”.

Well said, that man.

How to make the most of events on social media

You’ve found an event to attend, booked your ticket and ordered your stand – I guess all that’s left to do is wait for event day. Not quite...

Events can be costly to attend, be it the cost of a ticket, travel, stand and/or promotional materials. Therefore, it’s important to get the most out of your attendance.

One thing you can do to make the most of an event, is through the use of social media. This includes pre-event, during and post-event.

Here is a quick checklist of the things you should be doing around your event:

Connect with attendees before the event – many well run events will have a website that outlines the event structure and gives details of those attending. Here you can ‘pre-network’ by following and including attendees in your social media updates. Some events have famous faces attending; this gives you the opportunity to piggyback off them. For instance, you can include a message on Twitter such as: “Looking forward to this week’s #SMEBiz2015 event with @DeborahMeaden! Make sure you come and pay us a visit on Stand 14.” Your tweet will now appear in searches for ‘Deborah Meaden’ and there is a strong likelihood your message will be retweeted to all of their followers. This increases the reach of your tweet beyond your immediate followers and helps promote your stand.

Talk to the event organiser to help them spread your message – the event organiser wants to promote their event just as much as you want to promote your attendance. Include them in messages and they will be happy to promote you in theirs.Identify event hashtags – again, all well-run events will now include an event hashtag, helping to bring together all event attendees into one conversation. Use the hashtag in all your messages.

Promote why you are there – using the tools above, promote your products and services and tell people why they should come and see you at the event. Maybe you’re giving away a gift or revealing something new. This is a perfect opportunity to drum up interest and get people flocking to your stand on event day.

Continue to promote and share pictures at the event – you should continue to promote on social, even when you’re at the event. This is when the event is at its apex, go figure! With people constantly connected through mobile devices and the like, it’s a great way to network and also help support your social media with colourful content.

Connect with leads you’ve met at the event on LinkedIn – if you only do one thing on this list, this is it. Your personal profile on LinkedIn is a powerful tool, allowing you to connect with business professionals and potential customers interested in your product. Therefore, this is where you should follow up on leads made at the event. If your LinkedIn is setup correctly, you will have a company page linked to your personal profile page. Your company page should be regularly updated with the latest articles, news and products from your business. By sharing these updates on your personal profile, the leads you made at the event will see them and in time, you will turn those leads into customers.

Your Tweets in Google searches - what does this mean for your brand?

Twitter recently struck a deal with Google that will see tweets show up in Google’s search results. The partnership will have a big impact on the way users find and consume information, and more importantly, the way businesses use Twitter.

Below I’ve outlined five things that you should know about the partnership and the impact it could have on your brand.

Tweets now last forever - Tweets (updates) you post to Twitter usually have a very limited shelf life as the more tweets are posted, the further your tweet gets pushed down the news feed and eventually it gets forgotten. In a Google + Twitter universe, these tweets are likely to show up in Google searches long after they are posted. Therefore, it is important that what you are posting is relevant long after it was timely.

Impact of real-time marketing increases - Real-time marketing becomes even more important to your brand. A large quantity of Google searches are based on what’s happening now. For example, content about the Budget or a major industry announcement, would be at its most potent as the event is happening. The value of real-time marketing is big, it shows your brand as ‘on the pulse’ of the industry, an authoritative voice, which all serves to increase your reputation. Real-time tweets are going to get a lot more focus and attention in future. For more information on the impact of real-time marketing, look at our infographic.

Content of tweets needs to be EVEN more considered - It has long been known that when you write a piece of content for your website, one thing that must be at the top of your list is SEO. In other words, you want to be seen in Google searches. One way of doing this is with keywords. For tweets, it’s no different. You want to make sure the words you use in your tweets will be found in Google searches. For example, if your tweet says ‘Our latest P2P company transaction is now live’, it will not show for searches such as ‘business loans’ or ‘Unsecured SME loans’.

Engaging with users comments is even more important - Now, it is more important than ever that you engage with your audience on Twitter, even if the comment posted is negative. Actually, it is even more important if the comment is negative. As mentioned above, tweets now live forever, that includes the negative ones. If other users come across a negative tweet via Google, they will also see that you engaged and that you cared enough to try and solve the problem.

Increases Twitter users - It is safe to say that the integration of Twitter with Google will increase the amount of Twitter users. In turn, this will increase the amount of users following your business on Twitter. This will help you to nurture new leads as you continue to feed and engage your followers with interesting and insightful content.

Most of what’s mentioned above you should be doing anyway, but with Google now coming into the mix, it’s not only important, but imperative that you have a Twitter account that is focused on quality engagement. With the majority of website traffic for small and medium-sized businesses coming from Google, the Google + Twitter engagement gives you the potential to increase engagement and lead generation.

Conversely, not participating has the ability to lose you leads!

Three marketing metrics that will make you a hero to your CEO

All marketers want their organisation, or their clients, to see value in what they do – which makes it critical to be able to quantify their contribution in terms that

matter the most to decision-makers at the top of the tree. Measurement builds respect and accountability.

However, as marketers, we know this can be easier said than done. According to a recent study of 478 senior marketers worldwide by The Economist Intelligence Unit, only 21 per cent said they could measure marketing in terms of revenue.

The same study also asked marketers to list the biggest challenges they faced. Result: budget (45 per cent), the shift to digital and engagement (26 per cent) and measurement of marketing (21 per cent).

The advent of online and social media – and the resulting transformation in the way customers now buy their goods through a proliferation of channels – has meant that marketing is now responsible for much more of the revenue cycle than ever before (up to 70 per cent, according to Marketo). In theory, this should represent a golden opportunity for marketing to reinvent itself as an essential part of a company’s revenue generating capability.

However, in order to provide proof that it is central to a company’s success, marketing still has to be able to quantify its impact in terms of revenue – the only yardstick that will impress the CEO and the rest of the Board. But, as we have seen, this is not always easy to demonstrate.

In the past, marketing has been quite good at generating metrics that major on activity and, in some cases, efficiency. Metrics for brand awareness and cost metrics – which measure things like cost per sale, cost per acquisition etc. – are relatively commonplace. The same can be said of measuring the number of leads, followers and ‘likes’. The trouble is, they all measure quantity not quality, and not the revenue that contributes directly to the bottom line.

In fact, cost metrics have the disadvantage that they can actually show marketing as a cost centre rather than one that generates income. To the cost-conscious Finance Director, this is often all the evidence he or she needs to justify trimming back the marketing budget rather than increasing it.

So, what are the metrics that marketers should be showing to the CEO and his boardroom colleagues? The answer, of course, is financial metrics; i.e. anything that

talks in the language of revenue, margins, profits, cash flow, ROI (Return on Investment) and shareholder value. Ultimately, they want to see statistics that show

how to improve company performance and profitability.

These may be summarised as:

Revenue metrics – marketing’s impact on revenue.

Marketing programme performance metrics – incremental contribution of each individual programme.

Profit per customer – LTV of an incremental customer.

The argument over justifying marketing budgets is not new, but is arguably more important than ever in today’s competitive market place. The measures are there

for the marketers who are prepared to adapt and, if it requires a new take on statistics and marketing analytics tools, so be it.

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