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5 zero cost marketing activities to complete this summer

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With the explosive growth of digital marketing in the last decade, one important dynamic has changed. Marketing has shifted from being a bottomless pit in relation to your financial resources to offering many low cost or even zero cost opportunities. However the flip side of this coin is that marketing now draws on another scarce resource…your time.

With business possibly being a bit quieter over the summer months, you now should have a bit of time to dedicate to some marketing activities that will set you in good stead for a strong finish to the year. So here are 5 marketing tasks to complete over the next 5 weeks that won’t actually cost you a cent.

Update your Website

As part of my work with financial advisers across the country, I too often see great work going into the development of new and exciting marketing activities while ignoring one of the business’s main marketing assets, the company website. Yes I know that updating your website is certainly not the most exciting work that you can be doing, but it is very important. Perceptions of your business will be built, based on your website and there is nothing worse than out of date and poorly written content. So go through your website page by page, make sure there is no out of date content and look for opportunities to make the content more engaging for the reader. This is your key online shop window.

 

Review your LinkedIn presence

In a similar vein to the above, your LinkedIn profile is your most important personal digital asset from a business perspective. To my mind, a presence on LinkedIn is not optional for financial advisers any more, it is too important a marketing opportunity to miss. And it doesn’t cost a red cent.

Starting in next month’s newsletter, I’m going to do a series of 3 in-depth articles in relation to LinkedIn, covering the following;

  • Building a winning profile on LinkedIn
  • Using LinkedIn to build a valuable network
  • Using LinkedIn to add value and build your business.

So for now, get to work on improving your LinkedIn presence and then hopefully over the rest of the year, you’ll pick up a few more tips from the 3 in-depth articles.

 

Tidy up your data

There are 2 specific areas in relation to data that can add significantly to your marketing efforts. The first is to simply (but religiously) record where every lead comes from, is it from a referral, from a specific marketing activity or from whatever source. The importance of this is that when you look back a year later at where your leads came from, this data can hugely influence where you put your marketing euros and hours in the future.

The second area is in relation to email addresses. Spend some time over the summer ringing clients to ensure you have their current email address. Email is still an extremely powerful marketing tool, but can’t be carried out without email addresses. Lack of this valuable data is the single biggest blockage I come across, preventing advisers from carrying out effective email campaigns. I might be stretching it a bit but the cost of these calls is covered under your phone package!

 

Develop an introducer’s presentation

So many advisers recognise the enormous opportunity that strong links with potential introducers such as accountants or tax advisers can offer them. However many don’t give themselves the best chance of building strong relationships with these introducers.

This starts at the very first meeting with the potential partner. This should never just be a chat. This is one of your most important business meetings, where you are trying to convince the potential partner to entrust you with their most valuable asset, their clients. At the end of the day, the main reason many accountants don’t enter into partnerships with financial advisers is because they are afraid that as a result of having recommended you to their clients, that this will reflect back badly on them if something goes wrong between you and the client.

So you must be able to clearly articulate why you are the only adviser that they should consider working with and how you are going to actually enhance the partner’s relationship with their client, rather than potentially damaging it. The starting point for this is a professional, engaging presentation that clearly articulates your value proposition to both the introducer and to their clients. Work on this over the summer.

 

Hone your referral approach

Referrals sit at the heart of many advisers’ client acquisition strategies. Many “just do it”, without any thought to method or process. While this is fine if it works, there are ways to support your natural talent to improve your success rate. One way is to use the likes of LinkedIn to research your client’s network. Now rather than asking your client to refer “someone” to you, and pushing the work on to them to think of who and how you might help, instead you can suggest actual contacts that you would like to meet. This keeps you in the driving seat.

Also develop a series of case studies of innovative solutions you have designed for clients, portraying your value. Make your clients aware of these, with the aim of helping to trigger in their mind some contacts that your solutions / approaches might suit.

 

And one more…

Finally, if you want help with these or any other activities, I’d be delighted to talk through your challenges with you. And I’ll buy the coffee!

 

I hope these ideas help. Put a bit of time into your marketing activities over the summer, and reap the rewards over the remainder of the year.

Double your impact through co-marketing your financial advice business

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You may be putting a lot of effort into a number of marketing activities but still wishing that you could reach out to a wider audience than that currently available to you. So how do you do this? Well one of the ways may be through co-marketing.

Co-marketing is where you find a business that provides a complimentary service to your own, one that is aimed at a similar target market. For financial advisers, this more than likely will be an accountant, a tax consultant, a legal firm or some other form of business consultancy. You then agree a programme of shared marketing activities that will be aimed at both of your client bases, promoting both of your brands. The ultimate aim is to increase each partner’s sales opportunities with the other’s clients.

How is this different to how many advisers currently work with, let’s say accountants? Well from my experience, most existing relationships currently operate in a one-way direction. The accountant refers a client; the financial adviser sells a product and may compensate the accountant. Co-marketing is different. It is shared activities.

So why would you do it? As stated in the title of this article, you can first of all significantly increase the reach of your marketing efforts by opening up your marketing activities to your co-marketing partner’s clients. This shared activity also gets both you and your partner onto the radar of a whole new group of clients. Also by partnering with another strong brand, this will reflect positively on your business and give you added credibility. So obviously it is important to find the right co-marketing partner!

Once you find the right partner, what sort of activities can you roll out together? There is a wide range of potential activities and here are some that might be the easiest and quickest for you to implement together.

Shared content

The first area to collaborate on is sharing content. We all know the effort that goes into writing newsletters, blog articles or other expert pieces. Co-marketing is a great way to get this content to a wider audience. Post each other’s content on your website & in your blogs as guest posts. Give each other a “guest corner” on your newsletters, increasing your exposure. This will make each of your website blogs or newsletters more engaging, will reduce the struggle for new content for both of you and will hopefully also result in some new client enquiries from your partner’s clients.

Videos

If you use video on your website, co-marketing offers a great opportunity to move away from the monologues that so often feature on sites. Pick a topic that is relevant to both organisations’ propositions and have a discussion about it. Apart from being a different and more engaging format, this approach will also increase the breadth in which a topic can be covered, hopefully resulting in some enquiries from clients.

Seminars

Client seminars are a great form of co-marketing as they offer a whole range of benefits. First of all, you can examine a topic from different angles. For example, an accountant might talk about pensions as one important strand of tax planning while you might discuss different pension investment strategies. One topic can very seamlessly segue into another.

Seminars also offer the opportunity to actually meet your partner’s clients, as you will both invite clients to the event. Both of you get exposure to new potential clients with the opportunity to present to them…and impress them.

Of course another benefit is that you’ll share the cost of the seminar!

A joint brochure

A number of advisers that I’ve worked with have developed corporate brochures and then try and encourage any accountants who refer business to them to hand out the brochures to their clients. While this makes sense of course, unfortunately the brochures are unlikely to stay right at hand in the accountant’s office…. However if the brochures have a shared message and feature your co-marketing partner equally prominently, they have a good chance of gaining pride of place in their office too.

Co-branded sales propositions

While this one will definitively take a little bit more work, the potential rewards are very significant. This is where you develop an actual sales / advice proposition, delivered by both parties and demonstrably packaged as a single proposition. For example, it might be a wealth transfer proposition in which the partner would bring their tax / legal expertise and combine this with your advice in relation to life cover for inheritance tax purposes, ARFs etc. This offers a very clear demonstration of your partnership in actual practise and can directly result in actual revenue for both parties.

These are a few ways in which you can co-market successfully. Are there other activities that you’ve carried out that have worked well for you, maybe an event or a particular campaign? Please share your thoughts below!

How mobile is your financial advice business?

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This article was prompted by a trend in the very readership of this newsletter that on average is now read on a phone or tablet by one third of the readers. That figure in turn is divided almost 50/50 in terms of readership on a tablet as opposed to on a phone.
Should this be any surprise? Well not really as screens get bigger on phones and the functionality improves all the time on tablets, which are now becoming a genuine alternative to laptops. While the day of replacing your PC with a tablet is probably still a bit away, it’s getting ever closer. This move towards mobile devices creates both challenges and opportunities for your financial advice business.

Getting found
According to Search Engine Land in January 2013, 26% of searches on Google are now carried out on mobile devices. Research has also shown that in general, people searching the web on a phone are seeking out specific information; a phone number, other contact details, product information or maybe a price. They are not usually idly surfing the web. So what?

Well, this creates a real challenge for you. If a potential client searches for a financial adviser on their phone and clicks on a link to your site, let’s say looking for your contact details, what will they find? Will they find a web page where it’s not that easy to find what they are looking for, as it is your normal website “in miniature”? Are they likely to scroll around, resizing the page in order to be able to read it, to eventually find what they are looking for? Or are they likely to go to a more mobile friendly site?

To demonstrate the point, I’ve included screen grabs below taken from a phone, first of all of my own full website and then my mobile equivalent of it, that you actually see when searching on a phone. While the mobile site is not as attractive, the aim of it is to provide an easy route to the likely information being sought; an overview of services provided, my phone number etc.

Screen Shot 2013-04-03 at 16.13.15


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you landed on the full website, are you likely to bother resizing the page and searching for what you want? A growing number of advisers have recognised the need for a mobile friendly version of their website, or at a minimum a very large and clear phone number on the homepage of their website that make it easier for clients to contact you.


Present yourself professionally!
Tablets are great for presenting to clients in 1:1 meetings. They are so much better than laptops as they they can be put on the table between you and the client, and a presentation can then be flicked through. This is so much better than both of you huddling around a laptop screen! I strongly suggest that you prepare a short, visual presentation demonstrating how you add value to your clients and load it onto a tablet. This is a great way to introduce yourself to prospective clients at that all-important first meeting and gives you the opportunity to demonstrate how you are different to other advisers.

The process of doing this is very straightforward. Most people prepare the presentation on their desktop and then transfer it to their tablet, which is very easy to do.


Apps to engage your clients
A growing number of financial advisers have recognised how a well-thought out app can help you to engage your clients and establish yourself as a fixture on their phone or tablet. Some have developed great calculators to show for example pension shortfalls or amounts of protection benefits needed. These can be delivered with news feeds of relevant personal finance news. Others are using apps that provide policy information for clients. There are a range of ways in which apps can be used to support a financial adviser’s proposition.

One of the challenges to consider here is how you distribute your app with over 700,000 apps available now for both Apple and Android devices. It’s very easy to get lost. As a result, there is a growing trend in the development of web apps, which are apps for your mobile device that can be downloaded from your website.


Apps to help you work better
There are hundreds of apps that fit this category. Obviously a good place to start is with the the Apps developed by a number of the product providers and fund managers. These offer you useful calculators & good information at the touch of a button. I know advisers who swear by the Bloomberg app too. Other apps that are worth checking out are Retirement Dashboard Plus or the whole range of apps developed as loan calculators or present value of money calculators. Also check out goalGetter. It’s a bit raw but a very simple concept of working out how much you need to save to cover future expenses. Could you use this to help get clients thinking about future expenses?

In terms of more general apps specifically for business, there are probably 6 apps that make life a lot easier for me. These are,

  • Dropbox: I use this to sync all my files across all devices and store them in the cloud. This makes life so much easier. However you need to be very security conscious using this, to ensure you keep your data safe.
  • Pages: the iPad equivalent of MS Word. This article was created in Pages.
  • iBooks: I use this for all my presentations which I save in iBooks as .pdf files
  • iMindMap: I use this a lot, particularly when brainstorming and planning with clients.
  • Reeder: I use this to quickly flick through all the content feeds that I monitor on the web.
  • Pocket: I use this to store all the articles I want to keep for later to read – or to include in the “Around the Web” section of my newsletter.

I hope this article gets you thinking about the impacts mobile devices might have on your business. If you’ve any thoughts in this area or indeed have found any great apps for business, please leave your comments below.

How can you secure your ongoing revenue stream?

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Many of the advisers that I talk to regularly speak of the dual challenges of earning enough revenue today from new business to pay the bills (while hopefully having a bit left over), and also moving their business model towards building up a growing, recurring revenue stream. While there is a plethora of articles written that look at the new business challenges, this post is focused on the latter challenge, moving towards building up a stable and secure ongoing revenue stream.

The products…
Indeed, when it comes to protection products, a number of the product providers are helping advisers in this regard with the emergence and growing acceptance of new commission models that offer attractive spread commission options without the dreaded commission clawback in the event of policy lapses. This allows advisers to build up their ongoing revenue stream. Once the client continues to require (and can afford) the cover, and the adviser ensures that the cover in place continues to be the best available, the adviser stands every chance of this revenue continuing.

The situation in relation to pensions and investment is a bit more complex. Historically ongoing income only came from regular premium products in the form of renewal commission. However this situation has changed significantly in recent years with many advisers moving away from large upfront commission payments on both regular and single premium business, towards lower upfront payments (by commission or fee) and a share of the ongoing annual management charge (AMC) by a trail commission.

While building up revenue through trail is challenging in the early years while asset amounts are lower, this basis is obviously more attractive in the long run as the adviser’s funds under management grow. Trail also removes the dependence on future premiums for future remuneration. Trail is also easier to explain to a client as it aligns the interest of the adviser with that of the client. Both gain from growth in the funds.

Observations from abroad
While the UK market certainly doesn’t dictate what happens in Ireland, there are often changes in this market that are worth observing. It’s interesting to note that trail commission is outlawed on business written since the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) came into effect on 1st January this year. While this was done as part of breaking the link between products and adviser remuneration, time will tell over the next few years whether this was taking a hammer to crack a nut.

However a lesson that I believe we can certainly take from the UK is that to justify ongoing remuneration, be it by adviser charging in the UK or by trail or fees in Ireland, the client will rightly expect something back in return. In short, trail commission will have to be earned. In fact (with my final reference to the UK, I promise!), there was a case taken by a client against a wealth manager who had been paid £10K in trail, but who the client claimed had provided no value. Could this happen in Ireland? The answer is, why not. So you need to ensure this doesn’t happen to you by delivering and showing your ongoing value to the client.

A clear ongoing advice proposition
To do this, you need to have a clear ongoing value proposition for your clients. Ongoing work needs to be a core part of your proposition, not a “by the way” 10 second conversation at the end of the initial product implementation. Clients do not want to feel “sold to”. This is exactly how they will feel if you don’t have a strong ongoing advice proposition to offer them. Delivering this is a natural move for those advisers who are shifting their focus from a product sale approach to an advice based offering.

Apart from obviously reviewing a client’s financial plan and product portfolio to ensure they are still on track to achieve their objectives, a structured and well thought out review approach offers you a great opportunity to remind your clients where you’ve added value to them over the year. This is where you can remind them of the growth they’ve achieved in their investment portfolio that you put together for them, the tax they saved as a result of the retirement plan you designed for them, the money they saved by you restructuring their protection portfolio and health insurance etc. Indeed one of the great benefits for those advisers who provide future cash flow modelling for their clients is it creates a natural and very valuable engagement with the client every year.

Benefits for you!
You as an adviser also benefit as a structured and well thought out review will surface any cross-selling opportunities that may exist. However the critical benefit to you is the strengthening of your relationship with your client, increasing your chances of retaining the client as their assets under management, and in turn your trail commission, increase. Surely this is a better approach than just hoping the client won’t be tempted away by another adviser who simply undercuts your trail commission amount?

And of course one of the main aims of many advisers is to build up value in your business. This is best achieved by being able to demonstrate a strong, stable revenue stream. Now is the time to develop your ongoing advice proposition to help you build up this valuable revenue stream.

What do you believe are the critical factors to help you build up your ongoing revenue stream? All your comments are very welcome below.

How’s your sales presentation?

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Successful brokers use great sales presentations. Always in my experience. How good is yours?

As part of my work with brokers, I ask them to show me their sales presentations. Some look blankly at me, some fish out a hodgepodge of PowerPoint slides that have obviously been cut and pasted from different presentation over the years. However some really blow me away with the quality of their presentations, both in terms of the preparation of really impressive material and then also in the delivery method. They are obviously very well practiced. What’s the impact? Well, it leaves me thinking every time, “this is the sort of adviser I want!”

Sales presentations with prospective clients, particularly at the first meeting are critical to get right. The client will very quickly begin to form an opinion of you so it is very important that you open impressively with them. Lack of preparation and “winging it” will very quickly become apparent.

If you’ve spent hours making dozens of lead generation calls and developing potential relationships with clients, then the last thing you want to do is blow it through lack of preparation of your sales presentations!

Here are some easy steps to creating more effective sales presentations;

Don’t just have a chat!
Don’t have the first meeting with an empty page. While you obviously can’t pre-prepare for every part of the meeting, I firmly believe you need to set the agenda and drive the meeting. This can best be achieved by having a roadmap for the meeting; at a minimum a written agenda, preferably a visual map of how you advise clients or walking through a corporate brochure that shows how you are different from the rest.

Better still, use technology. Prepare a short, visual presentation demonstrating how you add value to your clients and load it onto a tablet. These are great for 1:1 meetings.

The other benefit of this approach is that it stops you diving immediately into problem-solving mode. It gives you the opportunity to get breathing space to demonstrate how you are different to other advisers.

Have a take-away
In addition to the presentation (or brochure), have a copy for the client to take away from the meeting. They may want to mull over some of the points again. At a minimum, they’ll favourably compare your preparation to that of less active advisers. Best case? They may come back looking for further clarification of your approach! This will allow you the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise again.

Know the logistics
It might sound obvious but be really clear who you’re meeting and their position in the company. Research them beforehand, check them out if possible on the company website and their LinkedIn profile if they have one. It’s amazing what this might reveal – common interests, maybe you went to the same school or have common LinkedIn connections. All of these are opportunities to build sociability.

Also know how many people you’re meeting and if more than one, try to find out about where you’re meeting. If you’re meeting a group of people, there’s no point turning up with one paper copy of a presentation! You might need a projector etc.

Finally, have enough business cards for everyone and your take-away document for “everyone in the audience!” Preparing properly will help you to take control of the meeting and direct it as you require.

Get ready for the speed-bumps
Now the best laid presentations rarely go without some sort of a curve ball thrown at you. Spend time beforehand thinking of potential awkward questions and how you’re going to deal with them. As new difficult questions are asked, deal with them as best you can but also take note of them mentally. Spend time afterwards reviewing how you dealt with them and capture this. It’ll help you in future presentations.

Also take note of areas that clients just weren’t “getting”. Is there a better way to get your point across? Seek help if need be from a colleague or peer who might show you a better way.

Practice and then practice again
Winging it just doesn’t work, you’re going to make mistakes. There’s nothing worse than someone stumbling aimlessly along, unsure of what they’re going to say next. Now you might get away with it, but sometimes, the mistakes come through with the important clients. Road test your approach on a colleague, family member, anyone who won’t cost you a lost sale!

I’ve been dealing with one brilliant adviser in recent months. He has asked to road test his full introductory meeting and advice process on me. A great idea as he can make all the mistakes he likes and hopefully I can give some constructive opinion of the meeting. In any event, this guy is always very well prepared so I’m looking forward to being wowed by his approach!

At the end of the day, you can’t be too well prepared for a sales presentation. Don’t worry about sounding scripted, in fact you’ll sound far more natural as you’ll have confidence as a result of your preparation.

I hope these points help you deliver more effective sales presentations. I welcome any comments you might leave below.

Do your clients know the value that you bring?

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Are you very clear about the value that you add for your clients? Yes, I think most advisers are clear of the value that your advice offers to clients. How good are you at proactively discussing this with potential clients? Hmmm, I think there are a lot of advisers who are much happier talking about products rather than their advice process. How many of you have your advice process written down and actually walk through this with your clients? From my experience, not too many.

I’ve had the privilege over the last year of working with a number of advisers, helping them develop really compelling value propositions. The reason I was asked to work with them was because these advisers felt that they just weren’t turning enough leads and prospects into clients. They were meeting lots of people but weren’t successfully bridging the gap from that pre-sales point to actually engaging the clients in the advice process.

We identified that this was because they weren’t clearly articulating the value that they offer to these potential clients through the advice that they give. From my experience, advisers are often more comfortable getting straight to the solutions (products) rather than spending time talking about the advice process, which is where you add your value!

So with these advisers, we mapped out their advice processes, articulated the value gained by the client at each step, wrote these down and turned them into presentations of their advice propositions. So now the initial discussions focus on where the adviser adds value to the client. The result is prospects now understanding the value of the adviser, more of them turning into clients and much easier justification of fees and charges as the client now has a clear sense of the value added by the adviser.

So what are the steps to winning more clients with a strong value proposition?

Clarify your advice process and the value of this
First of all, think through all the stages of your advice process. Think about how you start your advice meeting, how you move through your fact finding stage and build your client profile. Then think about how you go about making recommendations to identifying and implementing product solutions. Finally think about the value at each step for your client, what they gain by having you involved.

Make it visual
The next step is to develop this advice process into a visual diagram. Many clients don’t want to read long documents but you really want them to see this one……so capture it in a simple graphic that you can walk through with them.

Also capture your advice process and the value to clients longhand in a printed document to be given to every client that you have an introductory meeting with. This will ensure that it remains with them after the meeting.

Make it a critical new step of your process
So now before you start giving advice to a client, you should now explain the journey you are going to undertake with the client, rather than just diving in.

I suggest that you build an introductory presentation about you, your business and what you offer to clients with this being the nub of that presentation. This presentation in my mind should be delivered using technology rather than paper, and an iPad or other tablet being far preferable to a laptop as it removes the screen as a barrier between you and the client.

Is this worth doing?
Well first of all I agree that it’s going to take a bit of effort to actually map out your process and identify the added value, turn it into a presentation and a takeaway document for clients. Indeed it also will mean that your initial meeting will take longer than before as you walk through the presentation.

However the benefits will significantly outweigh these negatives. First of all, I believe that showing this value will help get more prospects “across the line” and to the factfind stage. Secondly taking the time to set out your advice process and the value to clients will help you win that all-important trust of the client. They will take comfort in you demonstrating a robust process behind the advice that you give, that your advice is well structured and well thought out. This is likely to increase their willingness to commit with you.

Finally the client will “get” what you do. They will see the expertise that you bring and the value this offers to them. And the benefit of this? A greater understanding and acceptance of the fees and/or commission that you receive to provide advice to them and help them to achieve their financial objectives.

How do you portray your value to clients? Do you use a particular approach? Please feel free to leave your comments.