Blog Articles
AIDA – understand your client’s buying cycle
First of all, this is not a review of AIDA, the opera by Verdi! Instead it’s a few thoughts on how an often-used marketing acronym that is usually used in relation to advertising to describe a buying cycle, can be applied to the services offered by a financial planner. [...]
10 tips for brilliant client seminars
Financial advice businesses are always seeking out different ways to keep your clients engaged throughout the year. Many of you send out regular updates and newsletters, you of course meet clients face to face and some of you use technology to deliver excellent webinars and conference calls. A popular [...]
Where you can add value in estate planning
Estate planning has become a routine and valued part of the advice offered by financial planners today. As you work with clients particularly on their post-retirement financial planning needs, the questions and attention inevitably turn to what happens with the balance of wealth at death. Of course the strategies [...]
Connecting content with target contacts
In a piece last month, we looked at going back to marketing first principles when the flow of new clients dries up. In this follow-on piece, we're going to look at reaching out and connecting with your target audience. One of the biggest marketing challenges facing financial advisers today [...]
What do you do when the flow of new clients dries up?
With fewer face to face meetings happening these days, the challenge of attracting new clients has been raised with me a number of times by advisers. Most advisers have adjusted quickly to servicing existing clients, however attracting new clients has been more challenging in this virtual world. The issue [...]
Why your clients leave you
A previous article that we wrote about when it’s time to fire a client drew a fair bit of comment... It proved to be a situation that many financial advisers have experienced. However, now it’s time to take a look at the flip side of the coin – when [...]
You’re fired
It’s hard enough to get clients in the first place, I hear you say… But sometimes relationships just don’t work out and it’s time to part ways. This arises relatively infrequently in personal relationships, and it also arises fairly rarely in adviser / client relationships. But just as it [...]
What’s the right niche for your business?
As someone who runs a niche business myself, concentrating solely on the financial advice sector, I'm a real believer in the potential to run a niche financial advice business. I'm also aware of lots of financial advice businesses that are pursuing niche strategies. I've written before about how niche [...]
The importance of structures in a family advice business
I became aware a while ago of a family business, thankfully not in the financial advice space, that had failed. Their products were excellent, their target market was big and while there were some competitors, they weren’t a huge threat in reality. This business should have succeeded but didn’t. [...]
A little spare time over the rest of the summer?
It’s that time of year again, even though you might not know it by the weather… Both your clients and yourself are likely looking to spend a bit of time out of the normal routine. As a result, business may be a little quieter for the next month. So here [...]
6 Apps I’m working with nearly every day
Every summer I give one of these articles over to the subject of apps that I use regularly. This year I’ve zoned in on 6 apps that I use very regularly, in some cases many times each day. I've ignored meeting apps such as Zoom or MS Teams as [...]
Are your charges in line with the value you provide?
We got a great reaction to our piece last month in which we explored the theme of providing enough value to justify your trail commission. Thank you for the feedback that we received. To follow up on that theme, we've set out a few thoughts on the whole area [...]