Digital Strategist – by Silu Modi

I was recently a guest along with Mike Newton on BNN’s “The Close” with Michael Hainsworth. We were interviewed for a 7 minute segment on social media in financial services. Though I was quite nervous (first time doing LIVE tv), Michael Hainsworth was a great host and put me at ease immediately. Happy to say that I didn’t embarrass myself. Actually, I’m quite happy with how it went. Now I have the media bug in me!

Click on the images below to watch the clip on BNN’s website

Silu Modi on BNN – Taking stock in social media

Silu Modi on BNN – Taking stock in social media

It’s easy to forget the second word when talking about Digital Marketing. The word ‘digital’ just describes the channel being used. It’s actually all about ‘marketing’. Without a thorough understanding of the basics of marketing, the next new shiny toy won’t help reap any rewards.

My clients often ask me what the next new technology or channel is for their digital marketing efforts. I can often sense the frustration when I tell them to first work on their website, write some compelling thought-leadership pieces and send excerpts out to their audience using an email campaign tool. Then measure, adjust, refocus, lather, rinse and repeat. Only when you’ve exhausted the basics should we consider adding a new channel to your marketing.

Learning the basics of marketing is easy. Executing the basics of marketing is hard. Not difficult, but it takes time, labour and consistent persistence. It takes some time (months, usually) to see measurable results from basic marketing. But once you have the basics right and firing on all cylinders, adding a new technology or channel into the mix is much easier.

As my old boss used to say… “Don’t worry about the tricks of the trade until you’ve actually learned the trade!”

It seems more and more of my blog posts have the obligatory Seth Godin reference. It didn’t take long to find a post from Seth that (again) summed this up better than I could:

Fledgling sushi chefs spend months (sometimes years) doing nothing but making the rice for the head chef.

If the rice isn’t right, it really doesn’t matter what else you do, you’re not going to be able to serve great sushi.

Most of the blogging and writing that goes on about marketing assumes that you already know how to make the rice. It assumes you understand copywriting and graphic design, that you’ve got experience in measuring direct response rates, that you’ve made hundreds of sales calls, have an innate empathy for what your customers want and think and that you know how to make a compelling case for what you believe.

Too often, we quickly jump ahead to the new thing, failing to get good enough at the important thing.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been fortunate enough to receive some press for the digital marketing my firm has been doing.

At the end of August this year, Investment Executive released their 2012 Advisor Scorecard. Within the scorecard was a story titled “Apprehension over social media” by Clare O’Hara talking about how some financial firms are still having difficulty understanding how to use social media effectively while staying within regulatory guidelines. I was quoted in the article:

Even before IIROC set its guidelines, Macquarie was one step ahead, having created a social media committee and an advisor pilot project in early 2011. “We never wanted to block social media,” says Silu Modi, Macquarie’s vice president, digital marketing, banking and financial services group. “We always wanted to figure out how we can use it.”

In July, I was quoted in the Wall St. Journal in an article about how advisors are using social media and what role a financial advisor should play on Twitter: