We’re here to make good things happen for other people. Do that… and you’ll make good things happen for yourself
Sam Parker (Founder of Give More”)
That was the brief I was given by IFA Online, when they asked me (and some of my peers) for our top tips for anyone thinking about setting up their own IFA practice today. Click here to see what I, and everyone else had to say. Many of these tips apply equally to running an established practice too!
E mail is still one of the most effective marketing strategies. Yes, even despite all the hype about twitter, facebook and other social media platforms. But what are the key things you need to get right in order to be successful in reaching and attracting your target market.
Start building your email list. It never ceases to amaze me how many advisers say they don’t necessarily have the email addresses of their clients and prospects. Start collecting them and adding them to your database. Make sure that you find a way of capturing the email address of anyone that comes to your website by offering a valuable report or guide in return for their email address.
Don’t send your marketing emails through your normal email account. You can quickly become blacklisted by ISPs which will compromise your everyday email account. With a professional supplier (we use clients-first who are brilliant) that manages opt ins unsubscribes effectively, you get an easy to use interface and valuable reports about opened your email and who’s clicked on what . This tells you what content works and what doesn’t and helps you to target future content more accurately.
Quality content is more important than frequency. It needs to be relevant, interesting and informative and focused on addressing a client need. Offer solutions to their problems. “How to’s”, case studies and success stories work well.
To connect with clients and start to build a relationship and reputation with your audience you have to send them valuable, high quality content on a regular basis. Many of the most successful email marketers are communicating with their audience over 100 times per year. The retail sector (Tesco, M&S, Gap and the like) are great examples of businesses that email their audience, with great results, almost daily. They’re also brilliant at targeting the content because they know so much about our spending habits. However, that needs careful planning and a laser like focus on maintaining the frequency and quality of each communication. The simple rule is the more “touches” the better (within reason). I am sure you have all unsubscribed from businesses that over do it in this area.
Many advisers worry about running out of things to say. A content plan removes that worry. Create a programme of content well ahead of schedule so that you’re never struggling to find relevant material. And don’t worry about saving things up to use in next months newsletter or email. If you’ve got something interesting and relevant to say, get it out there.
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
Gen George S Patten, Jr
In this video I outline the 5 factors required to transform clients into “raving fans”… loyal, engaged clients who are a pleasure to work with, don’t challenge you about the fees you charge and who act as ambassadors for your business. Hope it gives you food for thought.
When you stop taking chances, you’ll stay where you sit. You won’t live any longer but it’ll feel like it.
Bono
Throughout my career, particularly when I was responsible for hiring new staff, the single most important characteristic I always looked for in potential employees was passion. Passionate people don’t just go through the motions. They care too much. When people are passionate about their “purpose”, they feel compelled and driven to deliver. In my experience, passionate people are…
Passionate people don’t watch the clock. They love what they do and so they just want to do as much of it as they can. They get in early, work through lunch and stay late… because they want to, not because they have to.
Passionate people tend to be more emotionally engaged. Emotional engagement is when an individual does what they do because they truly believe in their product/service/employer/value/boss. They don’t see it as a means to a pay cheque. They see it as their “purpose”.
You don’t need to throw huge amounts of money or other perks at passionate people to keep them happy. They are more than happy with verbal recognition for a job well done. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t pay these people what they are worth. You absolutely must! Because they are hard to find and worth their weight in gold. But they aren’t motivated by money per se.
And here’s the rub. Passionate people don’t need close management because they are self motivated and self engaged. However, they will demand a lot of you and those around them. They expect excellence. They expect timeliness. They are intolerant of people who “just go through the motions”. They will fight on a point of principle.
But what a small price to pay. Give me passion and purpose every time. Please!
If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run walk. If you can’t walk crawl. But by all means keep moving.
Martin Luther King Jr
A successful and sustainable business is usually built on two fundamental principles
1. Exceed client expectations
2. Give them reasons to come back
A compelling proposition has, at it’s centre, a promise to deliver value far in excess of the amount you charge for doing so. Meeting client expectations doesn’t differentiate you. Why? Well, frankly, anybody can do that. You have to delight and maybe even surprise them. And it’s trust that causes people to come back again and again.
The best way to win trust is to keep your promises and ensure that your “client experience” demonstrates that you and your staff really care. That will requires the following characteristics
Consistency is also crucial. Having a world class “customer experience” on one occasion and a mediocre experience the next time, won’t do. Clients expectations must be met/exceeded time and time again with the same level of quality, passion, enthusiasm and excellence. Doing that is the quickest way to establishing and maintaining trust. It’s not easy… but it is necessary.
5 reasons clients don’t refer you
For today’s blog post, I’m grateful to Kevin Ferriby of Informed Financial planning for highlighting this article by Dan Allison about why your clients might not be referring you to their network. It follows, very closely, a similar post of mine some time ago which you can revisit here