HNW Marketing News and discussion - 5, sample marketing approach to market your HNW services to your target segments

This is a popular finanical & eduction services marketing model in Hong Kong at this moment.

The approach is trying to create an impulse selling chance by introducing customers to join some professional or interest sharing seminars and then apply impulse selling or softselling to attract your potential clients. In shorts, the marketing processes include:

1) create your potential customer awareness

• To identify your potential customers by introducing people to join the free seminars to share some public interested issue and tips like: to share the future market trend, to teach technical analysis skills, or invite some famous people to have a talk etc.
• how to do so?
• it can be easily done by using the traditional marketing means like posting different Ads via mass media including daily newspapers, magazines and TV Ads or in the MTR depending on your targetted NHW segments

2) re-affirm your customer's enquiry and interest of your service

• In the seminars, we shall try to use some soft selling approach to introduce a number of marketing messages like: what is the most unique selling proposition of your organization, if it doesn't have then it has to create some at least.
• how to do so?
• by inviting them to join your trial and promotion education seminars
• by setting membership web forum and webblog to share and chat your potential and current clients' questions and answers

3) conduct selling at the right timeprovide incentive / sales campaign at the right time

• e.g. during in the free seminars
• apply direct marketing by sending mail or email
• ask your sales agent or channel partner to do so

HNW Marketing News and discussion - 5, business Objectives

Let's sharing what is the business objectives of Mr. Frank Slevin, the Head of HSBC global banking in Asia Pac. (extracted from The Standard, today)

• increasing marketing share
• improving busiensss volume
• building customer penetrations of the businesses

How he do so to achieve thos objectives?

1) It is a crucial to understand the imperative factor of your team and the way to measure it.
"you have to establish a working platform where people enjoy what they do." , Slevin suggests it is required to identify the turnover rate within a certain period of time to understand how is your managing activities converting to your team satisfaction.

2) Redefine and position the Leadership of yourself

"Leadershiop is not about telling people what to do , but working with them and shwoing them what can be achieved. By doing so, I see myself more as a relationship manager than just a manager.", continued suggested by Slevin.

3) Taking Proactive positive approach and avoids becoming bogged down in problems and drama.

" I can't recall an obstacle that could not be soved. if you present your arguements in a sensible cogent fashion, you should get to the right answer", Slevin said.

4) recognizing the team to join the charity events

"It is crucial for staff to have consistent values with the bank, which includes giving back to the community through charity", Slevin said.

HNW Marketing News and discussion - 4, let your potential customer tell you what to do

First, you need to fully understand where are you? but how?

To echo with the discussion of the HNW Marketing News and discussion - 3, indeed CRM is a marketing term to define a collective behavior of a particular organization toward their customers.

It sounds a bit scary to be too academic over here. Indeed, if you have the figures about the average amount of revenue of your current customers, then you can properly get the most fair assessement of how well of your organization behavior toward your HNW customers in current market situation.

If you don't have the figures, it implies your org. requires some Analytical CRM capabilities before you can be able to understand how should the org to go to go. (what is Analytical CRM ability?.. let discuss about it in another posting articles)

In contrast, if you have got the figures, then you can base on the figure to assess where is your current business growing points for your NHW segment and why it grows or declines. We would suggest you proper require a SWAT analysis to undertand all the internal and external factors.

Usually different people works out different SWAT analysis chart. Thus, it would be a good exercise to ask each of your department head to draft one for you. On the other hand, you may require to ask somebody outside to a draft one for you especially your current and potential HNW customers. How to do so?

How to let your potential and current HNW customers tell you what to do?

HNW Marketing News and discussion - 3, how to get new customers

From the customer points of view to think.....
If you are very rich, and looking for some ways to manage your money, you will find a lot of service providers available from different banks, MPF companies, financial institutions or Insurance companies.

How do you pick the best one for your wealth management activities?
To look into this issue, it can be reflected by your personal preferences.

• You may count on peer experiences and ask for their opinions
• You may find your current bank is providing this kind of service so you use it
• You properly may have some friends who are the private banker, so you ask for their helps
• You may read some TV Ad or Newspaper to promote new products so you have interested to have a trial and ask for the details
• You would like to use the wealth management company which has the best performance consistently
• any other possible reasons?

For the HNW service providers, how to manage this kind of customers' expectations?

For the service providers, how to gain market share can be translated to how to get the new customers.

Based on the discussions above, how can it can be changing business opportunities? Apparently, you can find a lot of different reason which could have different approach to address in order to meet the result of getting new customers. In term of marketing wordings, it is so called Niche Marketing. Or we should say, we needs to have a dynamic and flexible niche marketing skills to catch up with the various and changing HNW customers's preference and needs.

It can be do it for HNW customers as it is costly to design and do so. However, in the dynamic markets filling with expected and unexpected market competition, customers become the KING. Thus, the profitibility of a company is reflected by how the company take care of its customers and market your customers.

A Dynamic Niche Marketing capability is a must for HNW service providers..

How we can able to do so? If we apply the theory discussed in the previous articles, we need to have some ways to

• identify the current organization position and capabilities
• think what is the desire capability (what is the degree of Dynamic and Flexibility Market capability)
• execute this market strategy
• measure how successful or failure of this strategy

Indeed, we can understand that this is the daily activities for many NHW service company already. However, you my find you need a more effective way to do so ... but how?

One of the way to enable your organization to do so is trying to co-operate into a CRM model

That's why we have CRM.

By EC-Couincil, CRM is comprehensive set of processes and technologies for managing the relationships with potential and current customers and business partners across marketing, sales and service regardless of the communication channel.

The goal of CRM is to optimze customer and partner satisfaction, revenue, and business efficiency by building the strongest possible relationships at the organization level.

We will try to continue this discussion in "HNW Marketing News and discussion - 4"

Any company which only distribute there product via Internet?

Europe's first online insurer

http://www.ineas.com/

http://hk.insurance.yahoo.com/article/11.html

HNW Marketing News and discussion - 2, how to get new customers

Nowadays, many business are struggling to look for new customers to fill up their extra business capacities?

For instance, the private tutorials are look for more student to fully utilize their premises for maximizing the profit marigin.

The usual marketing practice is trying to:

1. distribute some leaflet
2. newspaper and magazine Ads placement
3. TV Ads
4. deliver by Agents

Those marketing approaches are very effectively when the market competition is not intensive. Once more and more Ads receieved by your potential customers, your Ad effort is being diluted and the effectiveness is reduced. Gradually, you may find it is not useful for getting new customers.

You have to use some new ways

Incentive marketing is the one of the popular means to market your products and services.

To attract customer by providing some instant incentive to them is more effective than spending your marketing resource to somewhere else.

The core issues are what kind of incentive is effective and affordable for us?
Let continue tomorrow.

The most popular marketing model in Hong Kong

The most popular model in Hong Kong for any professional teaching classes are:

1) create tangible features to your teaching classes:
by setting up a web and forum for class facilitors and members to exchange their questions and answer regularly

2) Marketing your course:
by integrating free seminors and Internet technology

a) organize free seminors to introduce your course to potential applicants and ask for instanting applications to your classes

b) attract people to join this free seminors by
1) free membership of your web:
a) to your web and forum to read your teaching material
b) to post questions
2) free printing booklet to provide your class info
3) provide early-bird promotion to audience in your free seminors

c) using traditional approach to tell people to join your free seminors
1) by news paper Ad
2) direct email marketing

3) distribution :
1) use your web to collect the applicants registration automatically
2) distribute your course info to your applicants

What we can do for you?
1) we can build the web and forum for you
2) we can arrange the free seminors for you including venue arrangement seminor registration seminor marketing post seminor marketing and management

HNW Business Discussion - to serve your VIP with the robust organization

In years ago, the CEO of the Lee and Fung's Co. said that "Think in a BIG company way, ACT in a small company way"

Later on HSBC translated this idea into their worldwide marketing slogan to express it as "World Brand, local wisdom". HSBC then has broadcasted this marketing statement to every country they have reached in the recent years.

It seems like that different industry leaders has recognized the beauty of agile operation. To be more dynamic to adopt the marketing changes and seize the latest market opportunities are the key to win.

Many companies translate it into a very generic term so called we shall improve the "Operational Efficiency (OE)". Millions of papers and marketing articles has addressing how to enhance your organiation OE. (like http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns339/ns640/networking_solutions_products_genericcontent0900aecd8043573b.html
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns339/ns640/networking_solutions_products_genericcontent0900aecd803e865f.html)

To act fast in the market and fast to the customer implies the organization requires to react fast and aniticipate proactive to the market change. The true situation is that some time you may have your qualified staffs to deliver the agile service for your organization (org.) already but it couldn't last for long time because:

staff turnover, the competition of talent

increasing competition, once you achieve something, then it is copied by your rivals

But how to do so?
Can it be done by investing to training staffs to be agile or recruiting Management Consultants (MC) to access your org. and write a lot of papers to you to follow?

Those approach may be addresing the point from a very fundamental points of view. Whether it can be successfull or not, it is very depending on the execution of the staffs who are being trained or the staffs who follow the advice of the (MC). From the editor points of view, it is helpful but tie ROE is very long and the result is uncertain as at the end of the day it all counts on the staffs herself/himself to execute.

Does it really help them to do so in order to serve your HNW customer better? No one can even tell until the day comes... It sounds the investment on those intengible items are risky and no fast results can be obtained. To be realistic, it is not an agile solution as the nature of the solution itself is not.

Of course, we are not here to criticize some org. growth strategies. Indeed, editor would like to introduce to another way to evolve your org. to be an agile and sustainable agile org. This strategy can:
help to let your staff work faster
let your staff enjoy their works
retain and growth your valuable staff knowledge even they have left the org

If your org canrealize those 3 points, your org. shall become a truely agile org. and to be able to dominant the HNW customer which requires a promising long-termed, consistent, qualitied and responsive services.

Then, how can it be done?... as time is limited, we shall continue about it tmr...

HNW Marketing News and discussion - 1

Latest HK Market news 1
According to the latest figures provided by the Inland Revenue Dept. HKSAR, around 75% of total income tax is contributed by 100,000 people in HK. As we know that HK's population is nearly approach to 7 millions, it cannot be denied that HK is transforming to a "M" society. How can it be related to HNW marketing?

Latest HK Market news 2
At the same time, HSBC released their MPF research figures yesterday. About 75% of people has no ideas about whether their MPF is enough or not for them to cover their expenses after their retirement and less than 20% of people believe their MPF is only be able to over less than 10 years of expense after retirement.

What's your HNW marketing strategy?
The 1st first is convincing for people to anticipate that the MASS marketing strategy (non-differentiated marketing) may not be effective to market to the 100s thousands of people in the HNW segment.

One of the example, the recent 5 elements Fund from JF which is using the MASS marketing strategy may not be able to capture the HNW segement. (for details for discussion for this fund, please refer to the WSM article by editor posted in last month) However, it can create a good enough public awareness and an atmosphere, which may be able to capture the attention from some of the hidden potential HNW segment of people. So for marketer who spending to use this resourceful marketing strategy should be:
carefully identity what positive effect can be brought out by the MASS marketing
follow up to approach to the customer following the positive effective (it is usually missing by the service providers).

On the other hand, from the economic point of view, MASS Marketing is not worth to do so. But from the other MPF providers, it is not bad to take the follower strategy (at this moment). See below...

Suggest to all Smart HNW Marketers....
Being a Smart service providers shall make full good use of this "awared and educated" moment to deploy the related service or try to link your existing deliverables to those 2 news and remarket your finance services and products to the HNW customers. The KEY issues.

SPEED:

• It is a matter of time. The public awareness cannot be last for long time (as HKer is very busy and easy to get diverted to other businessed). Hence, your marketing activites should be "VERY FAST"

Make use of your "Warm" List:

• it is a high time to recompile your existing customer list to provide direct and cross selling to them by making a warm call/ invitation to your existing NHW customer.

Incentive Offerings:

• an ad hoc and short term incentive scheme to attract the NHW customer at this moment may induce a better result than spending the money to the MASS media.
• As editor discussed in the previous WSM article posted before, nowadays in HK, incentive and compagin marketing is most effective way for inche marketing.
• being customer centric to consider what kind of incentive is attractive and then package to to tell your customer

How can I market the finanical service in a fast phase?

If I have a big team of agents

• If you have a big team of agents and IFA, you should reinforcement their selling activities by provide instant direction and guideline to them about how does those news can be related to your products and service and to show them where are the sales opportunities.
• offer tempoarey incentive program is required.

What should I do for the next step?
if you found you may not be fast enough to take the agile marketing activities to capture this instance chance, then you may consider to how to get your organization to have this kind of capabilities. To win in this competitive and dynamic marketing, how to being agile is the key. But to archieve this? Many people has different ideas and simple conclustion like using outsouring consultants etc.

For the Editor points of view, it is not just an simple conclustion to do so or to follow. We should discuss about it subsequently.

WSM Case 4 - Branding Strategy Discussion

Branding is not necessary for most of the organization. Many organizations has tried to rebrand and revital their brand after some years or getting some momentum for new changes.

From the editor points of view, it can be an edge and risk to the organization. Over here, let's have a discussion of how does it may be possibly linking to WSM strategy

WSM Branding Strategy 1 - Create branding plan to customer's customers

The rationale behind:
developing brand awareness among their customers' customers can capture a larger share of channel margins and build loyalty that can protect them against lower-priced competitors

For details, please refer to the discussion from the Harvard Business School
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5819.html

What should a CEO do?

• CEO shall be able to understand that building brand reputation reduces commercial risk, insulates the company in a crisis, and provides the common purpose that can bond all the company's stakeholders.
• CEO is a willing brand cheerleader
• CEO helps to bring and improve the customer's customer relation by increasing the exposure and touch between the customers and their customers

How to do so?

We can leverage the theory discussed in WSM Case 3

• Join or sponsor the charity event/compagin is an useful mean to achieve this result to create publicity
• hold some public interested seminers
• hold some competitions

WSM Branding Strategy 2 - Consolidate your branding image from every customer touch

• Most B2B marketers cannot economically address thousands of small businesses using the traditional direct sales force.
• If left unattended, individual managers will each do their own ad hoc marketing. Then brand dilution and pollution is introduce to harm your branding strategy

It can be resolved by starting from internal marketing:
Coordination of company websites worldwide to present a consistent face to stakeholders is the best way to get control of marketing communications that may have become too decentralized.
It is not only for your customers but also fory our employee as well.


For details, please refer to the discussion from the Harvard Business School
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5819.html



WSM Branding Strategy 3 - Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors

how does your customer think of your branding? what can it be linked with from their point of view? If the answers from the customer is not ourdesired one, then perhaps we shall:

1. rethink our brand positioning and objective
2. strengthen this objective to everybody in our organziation
3. critical access our current branding position in the marketing
4. design a branding position strategy and branding buidling action plan

For details, please refer to the discussion from the Harvard Business Schoolhttp://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5871.html

Customer Process Management Drives Profitability in Financial Services

(Extracting from Customer Process Management Drives Profitability in Financial Services sponsored by Onyx Software Corporation)

As competition in the financial sector continues to increase, banks, insurance companies and other financial services providers are actively seeking ways to improve customer service and profitability via process efficiency. This approach, know as customer process management (CPM), represents a merger between customer relationship management (CRM) and business process management (BPM).

Profitability = (New Customer Acquisition + Expanding Existing Customers – Attrition)
x (Expense Ratio)

What is your organization operating mix to get to "PROFITABILITY"?

If you agree to the formula of the profitability stated in above, let see how to have a health check to the ability of your organization's profitability.

where are your organzation position now?

check to the ability of your organization's profitability.

where are your organzation wants to go?



how to get there?

In HK, which free news paper is the most effective marketing communication channel?

At this moment, there are a number free newspapers and magazines distributing in HK. This article is trying to share what is editor's observation for those freely distributing newspaper and how can it be used for finanical marketing effectively.

What is the situtation in the current freely distributing newspaper market?
Distributing in most of the HK propulated lcoations
1) am730,
2) Headline Daily by (SingTao News Group)
3) Hong Kong Standard (SingTao News Group)
4) Metro Daily

Distributed in specific location
1) SingTao District Weekly
2) Economic Times District Weekly

If you would like to place Ad onto those newspapers, which one should you take? or we should take them all?

Should you have any enquiries, please feel free to contact editor by email to wwlliu@gmail.com