Create Your Internet Presence With Online Guide Book

The book is divided into two main parts. The first section, "basic strategies," lays outsome successful methods and recommended resources you can incorporate in your marketing. The second area, "advanced cybermarketing," is designed as a reference tool to allow you to develop your own unique strategies.

It includes a wealth of resources that may be useful in your online approach. Before you decide to take your practice online, however, you must have a marketing plan - and a clear idea of how the technology fits into that plan.

Durrie says each piece of the the advisor's online marketing plan should be built with a specific result in mind, such as winning the business of a new client or building registration for a seminar. The online plan should also be fully integrated with a single overall marketing approach - of which online technology is just one part.

Durrie says many advisors assume that communicating via the Internet is somehow different from the other ways they communicate with clients and prospects. The result is a relatively costly, disjointed effort, usually a site that is either dictated by the Web developer or by the constraints of a template.

As well, e-mail or other Internet communication tools are rarely considered, let alone exploited. E-mail can be a very effective way to communicate with clients, educate them and solve problems or respond to requests. The tool also gives the advisor a printable record of all communication. Telephone calls can be followed up with an e-mail confirming the highlights of the conversation.

One effective approach is to provide a way on your Web site for clients or prospects to sign up for an e-mail newsletter. This allows you to provide low-cost regular communication to clients as well as keep them updated. Many third-party vendors provide online newsletters with already approved content that an advisor can supplement with his or her personal comments.

Of course, you must take the time to figure out who your online audience is, and which segment of visitors you want to target, such as existing high net-worth clients, doctors or other professionals.

You need to determine what action you want the target audience to take as a result of visiting your site or receiving your e-mail newsletters. Once you have gone through this exercise, you'll be armed with enough information to evaluate various Web communication methods available from various vendors outlined in the book.

Although many dealerships have their own Web sites and many advisors already have an online presence, Durrie isn't a great fan of most of what's up and running. Companies usually offer advisors template sites because the spaces are normally subsidized or discounted from the retail price. The sites have ready-made content and have compliance engines that allow updates to the site to have an automatic compliance review.

However, the sites suffer from the same limitations of all templates - they are restrictive in content and design, and they tend to be pretty generic. Also, advisors who change firms instantly lose access to the site and all the content they've contributed.

Advisors with complex or niche practices or those who plan to use the Internet extensively in their marketing will find themselves limited using template sites, and should have their own. But there is rarely a reason for having both. If you choose to develop your own site, look for specialist developers who are familiar with the industry.

Durrie, however, does not recommend building your own site. A designer will save you time, but only if he or she is familiar with the industry and its regulations; otherwise, you will be spending a great deal of time with your compliance department.

More important, the time you spend building the site, even with a designer, is time spent not dealing with clients. And, if you do develop your own site, you'll have to maintain it.

Yet, Durrie says, advisors who don't integrate the Internet into their businesses will eventually find themselves at a disadvantage.