- How to scale use of social media by advisors across regions that adheres to compliance requirements
- How to activate company and third-party content for use by advisors
- Guidelines on how to measure success of social media initiatives
Justin Mack (00:07):
All right. Good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon. And thank you so much for joining us for this special case study presented by Seismic on how UBS Wealth Management empowers advisors with social media. I am doing introductions today. My name is Justin Mack. I am Wealth Tech Reporter for Financial Planning magazine, as well as host and lead Editorial Producer of the Financial Planning podcast. One person in the audience likes me. I appreciate that. I've not alienated everyone yet. Four people look at that trending upwards. I like it's all about trajectory and social media is hard. We know that not everyone's good at it. Having a good Twitter game is not something you can just stumble into, but as we know, it's often the first point of touch for so many investors. They're using it for their own personal research, but they're also using it to research the financial institutions and advisors that they want to help them figure out what the heck they're doing wrong. But on the firm side, it's not as easy as just being good on social media. How do you be good at social media, but do it in a way that's compliant so you won't have Gary Ginsler sliding into your DMs. So it's not an easy thing to do. And thankfully we have two wonderful people to break down that topic for us today. It is my honor to introduce our special guest for this case study. Jennifer Milton, Customer Success Director for seismic. And Jeff Spencer, Executive Director, Head of Digital Advisor Marketing for UBS. Please make some noise for Jennifer and Jeff.
Jeff Spencer (01:38):
Hi. Thank you. Welcome and it's a pleasure to be here today. Thank you, Justin for that amazing introduction. We're excited to be here and discuss social media and utilizing it for your financial advisors. For the most part, UBS Wealth Management has done a fabulous job putting together their social media program. So excited to have Jeff here to share the story that they have. I wanted to share a couple of statistics with everyone about social media because as we know from the World Forum Global Investing 2022 study 25% or more retail investments, investors say that social media is an extremely important tool that they use to identify what investments that they're looking for. And investors are utilizing social media to do that type of research. They're also utilizing social media for their, just educating themselves from a financial perspective. And advisors are looking to engage and they really want to grow their network. So LinkedIn is the social media network of choice. There's over 900 million users on LinkedIn right now. They're in 200 different countries with 26 different languages, and there's 137 million US users that log on every single day. So this is an amazing platform and we have some definitely knowledge share to provide to you. So I'll go ahead and let Jeff kind of introduce himself.
Jeff Spencer (03:42):
Yeah, Jeff Spencer. I've been at UBS a little over 12 years, mostly in the digital marketing space. So now I currently run all of our digital marketing platforms for advisors. So obviously relevant to this conversation, our social media solution as well as advisor websites, email campaigns, and some side projects like some video and podcast projects we have going.
Jennifer Milton (04:03):
So the landscape has changed so much in the last few years with all of the different tools that you have to manage and manage with your advisor network. I guess, can you share with the audience UBS, their program and provide some kind of initiatives that you have?
Jeff Spencer (04:22):
Yeah, so I think how we came to Seismic, which at the time was Grapevine six, was we had a social program probably going back at least a decade. And the program we had prior as social media has evolved a lot, and our content as a firm has evolved a lot. It just wasn't really meeting our needs. So number one was the volume of content we had to support had gone up significantly. So prior to our current platform, we had maybe three, four, maybe five flagship reports that would've merited a social post in the past. So we would put those in a library, let our advisors subscribe to them and call it a day. And so number one was really post 2016, just the volume of content our content pro providers were producing had shot up to the point where we had 5, 6, 7 articles a day coming out of just our first party content. Now there's a lot of podcasts and video in addition to that. Second was the differentiation. So because we allowed our advisors to subscribe to these content streams, everybody was posting the exact same piece at the same time with the same comment. And we just found that was not an effective strategy. So if you log into LinkedIn and you follow multiple UBS, advisors and they all have the exact same thing, it looks kind of stupid. And then last was of course compliance. So we actually have one of the more liberal, I'll say, advisor friendly policies in the industry, but we found that advisors were still really gun shy. If it wasn't in that library, they didn't want to touch it. So I'd get emails saying, can I post this? Can I post this? And I'm like, yeah, it's from our content source, but they didn't want to do it unless it was blessed. So I think the platform we got kind of gave us all that. The content aggregation, obviously the compliance integration with Proofpoint really helped pull that together.
Jennifer Milton (06:05):
Yeah, no, and I think it's interesting that you mentioned your journey started with one platform and then you realized that this isn't going to meet your needs and you had a vision and an expectation for the next round. So thanks for sharing that. I guess, can you share with audience the footprint currently that UBS has?
Jeff Spencer (06:24):
Yeah, So we have somewhere between 6000, 6500 advisors. And so across the US we have about 10,000 sales staff, so advisors, client service associates, et cetera. Of those, about half. So 5,000 are on our platform and compliant, meaning they've linked their profile in, they're free to post, they can keep it compliant with UBS regulations. And then of those, about a thousand. So 20% of participants, 10% overall are active, meaning they post at least once a month. That's for us wealth management. Since then, the seismic platform has gone more global. So we have about seven instances of it around the world, mostly in the Americas and Europe managed by different teams, but we're by far the biggest.
Jennifer Milton (07:10):
Yeah, no, that's exciting. And to hear the growth and the success across the globe for the organization. So you guys must be really proud of that. I guess my next question is what are your advisors posting? Can you share the use case that they are posting?
Jeff Spencer (07:29):
Yeah, so a lot are posting just first party u b s content from the app. So we have a couple flagship reports. We do an investor watch survey. We have a Washington Weekly that talks about what's going on in Washington. We have our videos and podcasts out of a brand new studio that actually opened over COVID at our building right here at 1285. And then we have advisors, we actually permit them to post a lot of their own stuff, whether that's photos at client events, photos of just what they're doing out with their families. And I find that advisors, the advisors who are doing it well are really kind of tailoring that to their audience. So we can talk a little bit later about what the seismic platform does, but it's interesting because when I talk to advisors, they all want that silver bullet of what should I be doing? And I've talked to advisors who say, you tell me to post the personal stuff, I post it, nobody cares. They only care about the markets. And then I was talking to an advisor in Philly who said, the only thing people click on is my post about the 76. So it's really figuring out, I think advisors are really using it to their advantage though.
Jennifer Milton (08:29):
Yeah, I guess that leads me to my next question. Are there any best practices that you share with the field?
Jeff Spencer (08:36):
Yeah. So I mentioned that there really isn't that golden rule about what people should be doing. I always say if was, you wouldn't need me to come in and talk to you about social media, we just give you the bullet points. So I think number one is I see social media sort of a ladder in terms of what advisors do. So number one is having your profile compliant. To me, that's like your website. That's table stakes. If you don't have that, you're wasting money because you're paying for this program and you're not using it. And I think advisors, some of ours especially have the sense that high net worth all Try Net worth, people aren't looking at their LinkedIn, they're wrong, but they sometimes think that. So to me that's like, I want to get that number to 10,000. That's everyone. And then second is the posting of content. That's going to be, if somebody chooses to, they can engage, maybe they feel like it's not really for them. Again, if it's not going to be authentic and it's not going to feel like something they want to do, it's really a waste of their time. And then that third one to the ladder is that more active prospecting, using it for data mining, using it for building a business. So I think I tell advisors, start at step one, see how it goes, see how it goes, see how it goes. But I tell them most important is not post three times a week, five times a week post at 10:00 AM post at 3:00 PM It's be consistent. So if you're going to post content, then just say you're going to do one a week, see how it goes. Try one route as far as content, if that doesn't work, try another. You just got to build the habit. And that's really, I think, the best practice.
Jennifer Milton (10:01):
Yeah. Would you say we're in your particular group, and it doesn't have to be exact, but where are most of them? Are they in that advocacy or the profile, or do you have?
Jeff Spencer (10:15):
Yeah, I mentioned we have about a thousand who post at least once a month of that. I think we trend about eight to 10% are that super active. I mean, we have an advisor post like 300 or I don't know how he does it down to probably more about half or more are the one to two times a month. So obviously it kind of goes down as the numbers go up. But I feel like we have a pretty good distribution. We want to increase the overall number.
Jennifer Milton (10:42):
They're actively engaged and post in the content. And I guess there's different activity as well. It can like or comment.
Jeff Spencer (10:49):
Yeah, Exactly. And that's what I always say is we look at what people are posting via seismic, but they could be just out there on LinkedIn posting their own stuff. They could be just liking commenting. They could just be all in private messages doing business and reaching out. And we would never know. Well, we know from the compliance side, but we don't get it in the reporting. So it's not necessarily to me how many people are actively posting isn't necessarily the metric of success, but it's one measure.
Jennifer Milton (11:13):
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. Now, here's a question I think that comes up a lot and that's really championing the change management and the drive for advocacy. I was actually having a side conversation earlier with someone else about this. Can you share how you were able to do that?
Jeff Spencer (11:33):
Yeah, so I think that number one is what we find really effective. What I always try to tie into anything I do is a peer share for advisors. So if I think anybody who works with advisors know, the one question you get is what's everyone else doing? What am I not asking? What am I missing? Yes. So getting some of that FOMO going, bringing an advisor to say, I scored this client because of an outreach, or this was a really important part of this journey, kind of gets them thinking about it. So I think that that peer share is a really key piece. Yeah. Second is my thing about advisors is there are dozens of centers of influence they could have. So for some of them it's their direct team, maybe a mentor or even a younger advisor on their team who's more savvy, who has their ear. For some, it's their field leaders, so their branch managers, their market heads. We have digital specialists who are deployed in the field, kind of evangelizing foreign training on technology. For some of them it's people back at the home office. So it might be our national sales team. We have people who run our strategic client segments. It might be the guys who do our podcasts. Then. So for some, it's me and our marketing team who are their centers of influence. So I think it's really important to build advocacy in that layer around advisors, because for each of them, they have their own combination of those that's like their brain trust, who they're going to listen to. So I think the more people in that circle you have, the more they're going to hear that message. And I think we always tell advisors, social media's important because somebody has, I think they say it's like 30 touchpoints before with a brand, before making a purchasing decision, right? And it's the same for telling our advisors about social media. They need to hear it multiple times before it's finally like, oh, I should really do that. And then I guess lastly is some of the events we run for our advisors. So as you know, we kicked off last week, our digital marketing academy for summer, so that we're doing four Tuesdays over the summer at Market Close. That's actually been really nice. Those are things we used to do branch by branch or even going to the field and road showing. And over the past few years, just doing webinars and online seminars has become much easier. And I think our advisors are much more used to it. So that's something we try to do regularly. This one is designed to be much more broad, very high level, very, here's what marketing is wholly. Here's how the brand's evolving. Here's the stuff you need to be thinking about. We've done ones that are much more tactical. So when covid hit, it was suddenly digital marketing became much more important. So we did literally from day one step one, to getting your profile compliant much more in the weeds. So we do all of that, and I find that's a lot more effective than training videos. I think we all know if the video's not 30 seconds, people aren't going to watch it, whereas for some reason they'll go 45 minutes if there's a live person talking versus on video. So we do those a lot and we find those to be pretty effective.
Jennifer Milton (14:21):
Yeah, no, I've spaced out on a couple training videos as well, so I completely understand that. And I know there was a conversation that we had recently, and you mentioned about focusing your efforts on the movable middle.
Jeff Spencer (14:37):
Yeah. So Jason who spoke this morning put up the graph of the adoption, the tech adoption curve, and the same goes for our advisors, which is, if you think about it, you have your third that's split between the top, the front and the back. So you have your third in the front who get really excited whenever I have something new. They're like, call me first when you have something. And then I have that 16, 17% at the back who are just never going to care. And no matter how many times you tell them, they're just like, whatever. And those are the sections you just kind of don't worry about. Okay. So then you have that middle and you have the two kind of thirds that are maybe the fast followers. So you just need to get them to make the leap. Or you have the ones who are maybe a little bit of your laggers and you just need to get them over the hump. And so I find that going back to those kind of influence, 30, 30 touch points, that circle of influence, it's really just hearing that message again and again. And it's funny, we do these seminars and I mean, I have my standard deck that I presented hundreds of times, and I feel like every time I'm like, this has to be boring to them. And every time I get, that was so great, I learned something new. So I don't know if it's you just get a different audience or maybe it finally clicks for them. But I find that all of these things are really key because for that kind of fast follower third, it just kind of gets them to maybe finally say, okay, June, 2023 things are finally settling down. Knock on wood, hope I'm going to go do this. Or you get that kind of lagger who finally gets over the hump and says, okay, I'll dig in a little bit more. So it's that kind of consistent pushing of it.
Jennifer Milton (16:09):
.I think there's a power in procrastination as well, just some people want it, but they're not ready yet.
Jeff Spencer (16:14):
For sure. And it's interesting because we have the resources, we have training. I have a small support desk. I'm happy to do a one-on-one with an advisor or a team, but a lot of them either don't know where to come or they just haven't taken the time or whatever it is. So doing these seminars is nice because it might give them the impetus to finally reach out or they were interested and we give them that number to call or that smart schedule or link to go do to actually schedule that consultation with their team and get the ball rolling.
Jennifer Milton (16:43):
No, I love that. And I love what you mentioned about as well, the different influences that are around that are uniting that message to the advisor to do those and use those tools. Can't finish this off without asking, how did you engage compliance and how do you manage compliance when you're building out a social media program?
Jeff Spencer (17:04):
So I think that it's sort of a little bit of a cliche to say partner early and partner often, but I really find that being in kind of constant contact with my compliance people is really, really helpful. Luckily, we're on the smaller side as far as kind of large firms go. So I know my compliance person, I can call them, I can chat with them any time. And then when I say partner early, if anybody's ever asked a legal or compliance person to make a decision under the gun, they don't like that. And you're going to get a very conservative answer if you do that. So I think it's good to start laying the seeds and thinking about that stuff early on. And then I think it's really important to challenge because sometimes there's just a disconnect in the way you're both thinking about something. So one of them is to ask why a five-year-old ask it again and again and again, and really try to dig into what's the actual problem here? Because we were having an impasse over QR codes on business cards, and the reason that I was getting the no was totally not why I thought, and once it clicked for me, I'm like, oh, that's not really a problem. We can solve for that. And then building on that is really dig into the semantics. I think that a lot of regulation is written a long time ago, long time, long time ago, written by people who apparently have never been on the internet and is written very vaguely on purpose. I'll leave it to anyone else to figure out why it's written vaguely on purpose, but it's just very broad and it's very vague. And I think digging into semantics is important. So thinking about a LinkedIn use case is, I get asked by compliance a lot, well, does that appear on their page? And I'm like, well, it's an algorithmic feed. So if somebody sees my name associated with a like, is that really on my page? My page is my profile. So you just get into these weird little semantic byways, and I think it's really important to be really clear about exactly what it means, which has been coming up a lot lately, or everyone's been talking about AI and chat GPT today, and I kind of started a conversation with my compliance officer about, could you consider AI tech scripted? Does that count in terms of needing it's scripted? We're going to have to figure that out eventually, right? Yeah. So I think it's important to just really dig into those kinds of questions. And then I think the other is, again, maybe because of our size, I can do a lot more one-to-ones, but is being the conduit between advisors and compliance. So it can be a really adversarial relationship. And some of our advisors know and love their local supervisors, and some think their local supervisors are just there to tell them they can't do things. And sometimes again, there's just a semantic misunderstanding or the advisor's hearing, no, but when you talk to them, it's really not that or not that way, but let's talk about what you're trying to achieve and see if we can figure out another way to do it. Sometimes they're just, they're nitpicking over one word that they're not supposed to use, and we just have to tell them, look, just do it this way and it'll sail through. So I think it's just communication and conversation, but also not taking no, but trying to understand the why behind it.
Jennifer Milton (20:07):
And I like that you're explaining, I guess, that your team is kind of a buffer too, to helping achieve that coaching also.
Jeff Spencer (20:15):
Yeah, I think the willingness to step in and just have the conversation with either the advisor or the compliance people, because I mean, it's natural that a supervisory officer in the field, there's the ones whose license is at stake if something goes wrong, they don't want to say yes when they shouldn't. So to have you go in and talk through it with them and let them know, no, this is the policy, this is how we do things, this is totally okay, let's all get on the same page, can be really helpful.
Jennifer Milton (20:39):
Great. No, Thank you for that. Yeah. If you need help with your compliance team, call Jeff. Now. One of the things that we've talked about with a lot of, and it's actually coming up more and more as belts are tightening, restructures might be happening in your organization. How do you really measure the impact of your social media program?
Jeff Spencer (21:04):
Yeah. So it's interesting. I feel like it's so key at this point to have one that you're never going to get the rug pulled out from under you, but you've got to justify that additional investment to say we need X, Y, or Z. Yeah. So I think with some stuff coming in the future that I'll talk about, it's always going to be a combination of anecdotes and data. So those anecdotes are really important. If you have your advisors who are really in your corner and really care, they will go and bang the drum for you and make sure people know they're not shrinking violets. So that's really helpful and really pulling out those stories In terms of data, I think that the seismic tool can give us a lot around what's resonating with clients and advisors. It can show us that content is performing that does help our program in terms of showing the kind of brand halo we're getting. It also helps our content creators prove out that the stuff they're writing and producing is resonating. I think beyond that, it's, it's going to be a lot more as we kind of evolve. So I know one thing we're doing with Seismic is connecting the leads generation to our CRM, so we can track that it came from the app. Another one is the earned media value report. We're getting to try to show some return on investment there, and then I know eventually we're going to look to see if we can figure out the other number one question I get from advisors is, who's clicking on my posts? Yes. Not just the number of clicks. So we can start seeing that and really see that through, because our challenge always with marketing is we mentioned those 30 touch points is we know some of those were linked, and we know some of those were the website. We know some of those were X, Y, Z, but when the advisor then goes to put that client in the CRM, they're just going to say it was a referral, and then we lose all of that work. So we want to be able to track that a little bit more. So hopefully we'll be able to see that value chain end to end. I think that's really the next step in terms of approving up the value.
Jennifer Milton (23:01):
Awesome. No, I mean that sounds amazing. I'm very excited about being able to look at those engager numbers and I know that is the number one question we get from every program who's liking the content and who's commenting. So that always helps to have that in your back pocket as well. I think we just have a few more minutes left before we kind of move to the next thing. I guess, do you have any closing remarks that you wanted to share or any advice for the person out there who's trying to get their social media program up?
Jeff Spencer (23:37):
Yeah, I mean, I don't have any advice other than just be relentless in terms of having the conversation. I think I mentioned earlier kind of the adversarial nature things can have. And I think that trying to see everyone as people just trying to do their jobs and hopefully people work at firms where everyone comes to the table in good faith and that, I feel like that's definitely the way things are at UBS and we like to tout our culture. So maybe it's that, but I think that I never assume somebody's trying to give me a no just to because having a bad day and don't feel like having the meeting. But it's really just having those conversations, taking some time to think and try to again, unravel that thread and not just take a no, but try to figure out where's that coming from and what is the actually say and can we find some common ground on this? So just kind of be relentless.
Jeff Spencer (24:26):
Yeah, no, I mean it's never giving up, but I mean it's been a pleasure to work with the program. I'm excited to see what happens for the remainder of 2023 and into 2024 and it's getting that content to the right people at the right place during the right channels at the right time. So I think we have about five minutes. Are you open to doing maybe some question and answer? Yeah, if anyone has any questions, we're happy to maybe take a couple.
Jeff Spencer (24:59):
I think she's bringing the mic right now. Right here.
Audience Member 1 (25:08):
Thank you. So I follow advisors that are on LinkedIn from UBS and Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. And to be honest, everything is kind of similar, right? It seems like table stakes now. What are you looking at as the future of social media and for advisors? Is it metaverse? Like what are you thinking about? And then also when you think about that, when you look at what the regulators are going to be okay, especially with what's going on with crypto and what happened there, where do you see the future of this all going?
Jeff Spencer (25:42):
Yeah, So I don't see us in the foreseeable future. I don't even really know what the metaverse is, and I don't think our advisors will. I mean, look, as an industry, we're always a decade behind in terms of something kind of coming up. Now, I really think it's going to be more about advisors telling their story. And I think what I've really been pushing with advisors, we've been talking all day about the generational wealth transfer and just being in front. Again, it's back to the 30 touch points. If your client's child doesn't know who you are and doesn't have a relationship with you, that money's going to leave. So I think that's really important is to start connecting with the next generation. I think you're right. I think all advisors kind of look the same, and that's something that I struggle with as well. I find a constant sort of battle I have with our field is they want to be able to subscribe to content and just have it put every time this report comes out, I just want it out. And I say, that's fine, but that's just going to start becoming noise. And probably the LinkedIn algorithm's going to get it out of people's feeds if they don't engage with it. So I think it's really going to be going to require effort from our advisors and whether we get there or it continues to look the same, I can't say, but it's just having that consistent conversation for me.
(27:03)
On the point that you made last about the generational wealth transfer and understanding that advisors really do need to start engaging the children of their existing clients, how do you see that happening on social media?
Jeff Spencer (27:17):
So I think number one is obviously just being connected with them and hopefully pushing out content. The other best practice I push is use if they have something like Sales Navigator, obviously they can see a lot more data about what's going on, but otherwise use those notifications. And if you see your client's child got a job, got married, had a job change, whatever it is, that's a time to reach out and say, would this be a good time to sit down and have a conversation? I think somebody mentioned earlier who was speaking from one of the companies out there this morning about her daughter going in and Oh, there you are. And wanting to talk to her advisor, right? Because she had a question about crypto. That's the kind of thing if your kid gets their first job and doesn't know what to do with open enrollment or doesn't know what to do with that first bonus check, that can be the start of a conversation and you can see those insights from LinkedIn. So I think that's that third rung of using the if for data mining. That's something that we're really under utilizing right now. I think people think of it as this, I'm pushing out content and it's all about me and branding and whatever, and there's so much else you can get from the reciprocal. I mean, there's social networks, right? There's a reciprocal nature to it.
Jeff Spencer (28:24):
Great. Well, I want to invite everyone to stop at the seismic booth right outside. Jeff will be there to answer any additional questions that you might have. I thank all of you for your presence here and your feedback and have a wonderful rest of your Invest conference. Thank you so much, Jeff.