Regenerate Ventures is an EIS fund offering retail clients the opportunity to invest in sustainable and impact investments that are having real effects on food security, carbon emissions and climate change through the use of novel AgriTech. Why Regenerate Ventures? Team has a strong impact investment background, with over 200+ years combined experience in the agricultural sector. Team has previously launched 2 Tech VCs ( Fuel Ventures & BlackFinch Ventures) & 4 PE funds (Impax) The only EIS AgriTech fund in the UK. Fund Structure & Fees: Investor Fees: 3% (one off management fee) + 20% performance fee. Tax relief: EIS Min Subscription: £25,000 To get the full overview, watch this video. Or even better reach out to Addy Windsor-Clive at: Addy@regenerate.ventures

Google Ads is often overlooked by IFAs. There seems to be a tendency for financial advisers and IFAs to lean more towards Facebook Ads when it comes to lead generation. However, it may be time you considered looking at Google Ads in order to improve your return on investment. Of course, there are many reasons why Facebook Ads should be a part of your well-rounded marketing strategy, but Google Ads should definitely be in the mix too in order for you to gain warmer prospects and better leads as a financial adviser. Google Ads and Facebook Ads – What's the Difference? You may be thinking to yourself: I have heard of both Google Ads and Facebook Ads, but what exactly is the difference? Let’s start by breaking it down to show how Google Ads can be a game changer to you as an IFA. Facebook Ads, along with many other forms of digital marketing, is a type of outbound marketing. Facebook Ads can be thought of a little bit like a radio advert. You submit your advert to the radio station and it may be played a number of times during the day. Great! This means it is reaching loads of listeners in a potentially large area. However, how many of those listeners are going to be looking to work with an IFA at that precise moment in time? How many are actively listening to the advert and digesting the information properly in order to take action? This number is likely to be very small. And this is the issue with outbound marketing methods such as Facebook Ads. You are pushing your message out to huge numbers of people, but it’s a stab in the dark actually finding somebody within that audience who is looking for your exact service at that exact moment in time. Although Facebook Ads does offer some control over your target audience, the adverts you place are still being viewed by that audience whilst they are in the middle of something else – looking at photos of a recent birthday party or watching cat videos for example. They will not be giving your adverts their full attention, and they are probably even less likely to take any action on them. Reel Them In With Google Ads So, let’s now take a look at Google Ads, which is a form of inbound marketing. Much more subtle in its approach, inbound marketing allows you to lurk quietly in the background, waiting to pounce at just the right time when your audience indicates an interest in your services. At this point, you can have your perfectly formed message pop up - in the form of an ad at the top of Google - to catch their eye at the time when it's most likely to achieve results. With careful planning, and some research into the most effective keywords, your advertising message will appear only to people who have expressed an interest in your financial advice services and are looking for your expertise. So Google Ads is about enabling your audience to come to you rather than you constantly trying to find them. Perfect! Hopefully you can now see the advantages of using Google Ads to generate more meaningful leads for your IFA business. Let’s take a look at a few tips to help you set up Google Ads correctly and get ahead of your competition. Top 10 Google Ad Tips for IFAs 1. Wow your audience You need to be aware that your advert is going to appear alongside a number of other IFA's adverts - as many as six in fact. So, it’s very important to make sure that your advert has the wow factor to encourage your audience to select your ad rather than any of the others. Creating something eye-catching with a difference will greatly increase the odds that the person searching on Google will notice your message and be keen to find out more. Make sure that in your ad you point out differences between you and your competitors, highlight your unique offering, and explain how you can add value as an IFA. Try experimenting with different adverts for each ad group. Tweaking small things here and there can make a huge difference in how much traffic comes through to your website. 2. Target specific niches Rather than just pushing out ads to anyone and everyone who is looking for an IFA, you should really try to get very specific. Just targeting everybody who's looking for financial advice means you will have a lot of other IFAs to compete with. Targeting a particular niche will will be much more fruitful. When it comes to choosing keywords, think along the lines of “financial adviser for doctors”, or “IFA for pensions”. The cost per click for these terms is probably much less than a generic term like “financial adviser”. It tends to be that the more granular the search term, the more likely you are to drive quality traffic through to your site. So do spend some time thinking about what niche(s) you want to focus on. 3. Plan your spending As with any business outlay, you need to think carefully about your budget and the limits you want to set in order to make your campaign cost effective. Every business will have a different budget, and it’s important not to get caught up in bidding against your competition for keywords that are out of your reach. As mentioned in tip number 2, there are lots of more targeted keywords out there that won’t break the bank and, in fact, can generate much more positive leads than you'll get from the more expensive general keywords. You may think it’s great being perched at the top of the Google results page, but that’s no good at all if it’s costing you too much for each new client that you gain. 4. Get those match types correct Google Ads allows you to set a keyword match type for each keyword that you bid on. This is a big deal when it comes to getting your targeting right and showing your ads to the correct people. Pay good attention to your match types, as matching incorrectly will lead to your ads potentially popping up in front of the wrong type of audience. And if that happens, you'll be wasting time, money and, more importantly, lowering your chances of landing those all-important quality leads. 5. Use lead magnets As mentioned earlier, the use of Google Ads is a great way to catch those who have expressed an interest in your IFA services. A high number of your audience will be ready to take action and contact you for a consultation. However, there will also be those who may still be unsure and need a little extra persuasion. This is where a lead magnet comes in. Lead magnets can come in several forms - most commonly a downloadable guide containing some really useful information or tips. You offer your lead magnet to your audience in return for their email address. This gives you the ability to follow up with them, rather than them just leaving your website and you having no chance of contact. Lead magnets create trust and are a really good way of proving to your audience that you are an expert in your field and they should get in contact with you and take some action. 6. Review and adjust In order to achieve optimal performance, it is really important that you get into the habit of setting time aside to review and adjust your Google Ads campaigns. Just doing an initial set up and then forgetting about your bids and keywords will be sure to lead to a decrease in results over time. You need to remain one step ahead of the game, so take the time to regularly review and adjust your ad content, research up and coming keywords, and be sure to blow your competitors out of the water with your optimisation. 7. Have a variety of landing pages You should direct traffic from your Google Ads campaigns to a variety of landing pages, which will be relevant to whichever keyword the person triggered with their Google search. Creating different pages for different keywords means that you can direct each visitor to a page based on the exact thing that they searched for. This will promote trust amongst your audience and will really make them feel as though you understand their exact needs. They will then be much more likely to feel comfortable making contact with you. 8. Maximise your conversion rate Conversions are what it's all about at the end of the day. A conversion is when a visitor to your website actually turns into a lead. Making some simple additions or changes to your landing pages can have a huge impact on this important factor. Be sure to: Highlight your unique offering Include quality media content of some form Make your contact information and call to action easy to spot Keep your text clear and concise 9. Give Google Ads a helping hand with Facebook retargeting Whether you use Facebook Ads as a key part of your online marketing, or whether just for this purpose, the retargeting facility within Facebook Ads is very useful. When using Google Ads to push traffic through to your website, you can add the Facebook pixel to your site to enable the creation of an audience list in Facebook. Visitors to your site are added to the Facebook audience list even if they do not submit an enquiry. The beauty of all of this is that those in your Facebook audience list can then have your adverts pushed out to them within Facebook. The idea of this is that they will then reconsider getting in contact with you, or be reminded of why they went looking for your services in the first place. 10. Remarket with Google Ads Google also offers the option of running retargeting adverts (except that they call it remarketing instead of retargeting). In the case of Google remarketing, the ads can contain video, images or text, and can appear all over the internet, rather than only on Facebook. By pushing these ads out all over the web, Google increases the chances that potential clients will return to websites such as yours that they have looked at before. And if they didn’t make contact during their initial visit, they may very well do so on a second or third visit. Sometimes we all need a second chance, so why not set up remarketing in your Google Ads account and try for that conversion next time around? Have you tried using Google Ads to generate leads for your IFA firm? How did it go? Please use the comments box below to let us know. You can also submit any questions you’ve got about the best ways for financial advisers to use Google Ads

By Dr Brian Moretta, Head of Tax Enhanced Services at Hardman & Co Why investors are underweight EIS and VCT's Executive summary Investigating asset allocation In this white paper, we investigate the effect of adding venture capital to equity/bond portfolios for retail investors. We show that it makes a compelling addition, significantly improving investors’ risk/return profiles. Methodology We adopt the widely used mean/variance optimisation developed in the 1950s by Markowitz. We introduce assumptions using a mixture of market data and established research for equities, bonds and two categories of venture capital: scale-up and seed. By introducing either of these, we can push up the efficient frontier, suggesting that venture capital can improve returns by 0.5% to 1.0% p.a. without changing portfolio risk for investors with normal risk appetites Holistic portfolio approach We also show that a holistic approach to asset allocation is required. If venture capital is introduced, then we need to adjust the weights of the other assets to keep the overall risk constant. This means reducing equity weights and increasing bond exposure. We also discuss product areas, list the few exceptions and discuss the fallacy of filling up pension allocation before looking at venture capital. Effect of tax reliefs The UK is lucky to have venture capital schemes that offer significant tax reliefs to investors: Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs), the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS). We show that that these tax reliefs hugely improve expected IRRs: almost doubling them in the case of SEIS. Unsurprisingly, these make venture capital even more attractive in our analysis. While there are nuances to applying these adjusted figures in practice, it shows that the original analysis is somewhat conservative. The net result is that clients with an average risk profile should have venture capital exposure of mid-teen percentages or more, depending on which area of venture they have exposure to.” Brian Moretta, Head of Tax Enhanced Services at Hardman & Co said “the paper makes a compelling case for venture capital to be a normal part of most investors’ portfolios. Perhaps the VCT & EIS industry can move from ‘tax-efficient’ to venture capital with benefits!” Download report

Despite the fact that social media is now such a huge part of our lives, the majority of financial advisers I speak to have failed to harness the power of social media marketing to grow their businesses. In most cases, it's not that they don't believe in social media or don't want to use it - it's just that they don't know how to. So in this article I'm going to explain how IFAs and other financial advisers can use LinkedIn to generate leads from individuals and businesses that are looking for financial advice. What is LinkedIn? Just like Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest, LinkedIn is a social network. The thing that makes LinkedIn different from the other social media channels is that it has positioned itself as a professional networking platform and has a strong business-to-business (B2B) focus. Because LinkedIn is known as a B2B social network, some IFAs steer clear of using it due to the fact that they want to work with individuals rather than corporate clients. But remember, most individuals that you want to have as clients will either own a business or will have a job. And that means they are very likely to be users of LinkedIn. Therefore LinkedIn still offers lots of opportunities to generate leads, even if you're a financial adviser whose client bank is made up of individuals rather than businesses. LinkedIn currently boasts 675 million members worldwide, with over 28 million of these being based in the UK. These numbers are still growing, with two new people signing up to LinkedIn every second. How Does LinkedIn Work for IFAs? Much like other social media platforms, LinkedIn allows you to make connections with other users of your choice, be it other professionals in your area or with potential clients. And, as noted above, theses two groups are likely to have a big overlap. You can then keep in touch with these connections by posting engaging content on LinkedIn for others to see, sending direct messages to them, or commenting on posts they have made themselves. I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. John Guare LinkedIn refers to the people you are directly connected to as your 1st degree connections. If someone is not connected to you but is connected to one of your connections (think friend-of-a-friend) then they are a 2nd degree connection. And if someone is not connected to you, but is connected to one of your 2nd degree connections, then they are a 3rd degree connection. This model is based on the famous six degrees of separation principle. Because LinkedIn was built as a business networking site, it has more information about its members' professions, employers, and skills than the other social networks. This means that LinkedIn is great for when you want to market to people based on their profession or where they work. For example, suppose you are an IFA specialising in financial planning for doctors. LinkedIn's powerful search facilities will make it easy for you to find all the doctors in your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree network and begin a conversation with them. Or maybe you want to find local mortgage brokers to partner with. Either way, LinkedIn's ability to find people based on what they do for a living or what sector they work in means you can concentrate your marketing and networking efforts on a specific niche audience, which enables better results. LinkedIn Profiles for Financial Advisers Your LinkedIn profile can be thought of as the online version of a traditional CV. It is your chance to make an impact, show off your skills and detail your experience. This is your opportunity to wow those potential new clients and connections. Here are some helpful tips for making the most of each section of your LinkedIn profile: Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile Headline Your headline is what will draw potential clients in when they come across you on LinkedIn, whether they've stumbled across you by accident or actively searched for a financial adviser. It will also give people a first impression of you when you send them a connection request. Get your headline right and people will be inclined to read on. Make sure you offer more than just your job title here. The last thing you want is a headline such as Director at The Advice Centre or, worse still, something as uninformative as Head of Sales. Just because your LinkedIn profile can be thought of as an online CV, that doesn't mean you have to use a headline that's based on your current job title. Instead you should make sure your headline conveys a powerful marketing message - where the product being marketed is you. Say what you do to help people, not what you do for a living. Point out the benefits your clients get from working with you as opposed to another financial adviser. Get creative and maybe detail specifics on how you have helped clients overcome a particular problem in the past. Here are some randomly chosen examples of the type of headlines that most IFAs end up using: Not really very exciting, are they? And here are two examples of financial whose headlines are much better because they highlight the benefits that their service delivers: And, finally, here are a couple of headlines from financial advisers who are differentiating themselves by focusing on a specific niche, rather than trying to appeal to all of the UK's 28 million LinkedIn members: Include a Good Profile Photo Remember that LinkedIn is a site for professionals, not a place for checking out your friends' latest holiday snaps. With that in mind, aim for a really good quality head shot. Make sure there are no distractions in the background and that you are close enough to the camera and well lit. If you have the budget, hire a professional to take some photos of you at work in smart dress. Definitely steer clear of photos with other people present, or a drunken shot of you down the pub on Friday night with your mates. Examples of Good Photos Examples of Bad Photos Make the Most of Your About Section This section of your LinkedIn profile is where you can really get to shine. It is your chance to summarise the most important points about you and the services you offer. Be sure to start off with a strong opening sentence. This will encourage potential clients to read on. Think carefully about what keywords to include in order to increase your chances of showing up in search results to help people find you. Stick to Relevant Experience Although similar to a CV, the experience section of your LinkedIn profile doesn't have to include everything that you would put on your classic CV. When it comes to the experience section, it is wise to only include relevant experience. There is no need to include the weekend job you had as a 16 year-old. And if you had a different career outside financial services before becoming a financial adviser, you can omit that from your LinkedIn profile too. Recommendations In order to build trust, you should be sure to include testimonials (or recommendations as LinkedIn calls them) on your profile. Those looking for financial advice will be able to look back over your recommendations to see how you have helped clients in the past. This will increase their confidence in you and help them see that you will be able to offer them an excellent service. To gain a testimonial on LinkedIn you could sit back and wait for them to come. But, however great you are, that's unlikely to happen. So instead you will need to send a request a previous client, colleague or boss to submit one. You can do this using the "Ask for a recommendation" at the top of the recommendations section of your profile: In your request message you could simply invite the person to provide you with a testimonial. Or you could send them some choice words and ask them to review and edit. By suggesting a testimonial to them, this reduces the effort required by your connection, and it enables you to keep the text in focus and in line with what you would like new clients to know about you. Skills The skills section of your LinkedIn profile allows you to add up to 50 skills in order to impress. You can simply browse LinkedIn's list of suggested skills and add the ones you possess to your profile. But the really useful part comes when your connections then get the opportunity to validate these skills on your behalf. For example, you can select ‘Financial Planning’ as a skill, and then your connections will be invited to endorse you for this skill, putting more weight behind it. A good set of relevant skills, with multiple endorsements, is key to a good profile. LinkedIn Profile Strength LinkedIn gives each member a profile rating. The highest rating is called All-Star. By the time you have completed all the sections of your LinkedIn profile in full, you will be well on your way to achieving an All-Star rating. According to LinkedIn, profiles with an All-Star rating are are 40 times more likely to get contacted through the platform compared to users who are yet to attain that status. Making Connections on LinkedIn Now that you have an awesome profile, it’s time to start searching for good quality prospects. As with any social media platform, LinkedIn offers a search facility to help you find potential connections. Let’s go back to our example of a financial adviser who is offering financial advice for doctors. Using a keyword search, you can easily find doctors who are present on LinkedIn. You can ask to connect with them to enable you to start your marketing efforts in that niche area. A useful search tip to bear in mind is that LinkedIn supports Boolean search. By combining your keywords with terms such as ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ you can construct some really specific searches. For example, you could carry out a search for “finance AND doctors”. Give it a try and see for yourself how useful it can be to really target your searches. When you ask to make a connection with somebody, it is good practice to personalise your invite. Instead of just simply sending a blank connection request, let that person know why you want to connect and how you can help them. You could say something like - “I see that you are a GP, I often post financial planning tips for doctors which I think you may find really useful. It would be great to connect.” There are some great tools out there that can help with automating the LinkedIn connection process. The one I use quite often myself is called Dux Soup. Tools like Dux Soup run in the background, sending out connection requests to people who match your search criteria. This saves you a lot of time compared to sending each invitation manually. As well as helping to automate invitation messages, Dux Soup can also send a message to your new connection once they have accepted your invitation. You can use a follow up message to highlight a key article to your new connection, or offer them one of your latest lead magnets. A word of warning though. Don't overdo it with your use of these types of automation tools. If LinkedIn catches you using them it can lead to temporary or permanent suspensions of your LinkedIn account. What Can IFAs Post on LinkedIn? As with any social media marketing, you need to keep a consistent presence on LinkedIn so your potential clients don't forget about you. Be sure to post something on LinkedIn at least once a week. And be creative. Don’t just stick to simple text. Your posts can also include images, infographics, videos, and links to articles on other websites (yours or other people's). LinkedIn Posts v LinkedIn Articles LinkedIn offers two ways for you to publish content as a financial adviser: posts and articles. Posts are the most commonly used option. A post will show up in the news feeds of your connections but will have a fairly short lifespan. And the maximum length for a post is 1,300 characters. LinkedIn also offers you the ability to create articles, to do this you need to click on the ‘write an article’ link underneath the box where you would normally start a post: Articles differ from standard posts in a number of ways, and have more in common with blog posts. They feature a large image above your main text. And they give you more control over the formatting of your content. For example, you can add headlines and in-line images. Articles are good if you want to publish a longer piece of content, as they are not subject to the 1,300 character limit that posts have. They also have more longevity than posts because they stay permanently in your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn Video for IFAs Video seems to be king across most of the social networks at the moment and LinkedIn is no different. Creating and posting video content is widely known to increase engagement amongst your connections. Although appearing on camera can be a bit scary at first, if you plan and prepare your message, it soon gets easier the more videos you create. To take the hard work out of creating your video, why not consider using a video creation and editing tool such as Pictory. This is the perfect option if you have limited experience of making videos or if you want to remain off camera. Pictory lets you take an existing blog post or article and turn it into a video at the click of a button. It automatically finds appropriate stock video footage and overlays each frame with a piece of the text from your original article. You can add an automated voiceover or record your own if you prefer. How to Link to Your Website from LinkedIn LinkedIn has an algorithm which decides which of your connections will see your posts. The algorithm favours posts which do not try to send people away from LinkedIn to other sites. So if you want to include a link to your website or blog in a LinkedIn post, then it's recommended to put the link in a comment rather than in the main body of your post. The First Hour is Crucial In order for your posts and other content such as articles to gain momentum and appear in as many people’s feeds as possible, it’s really important that people engage with them within the first hour of you posting. The more likes and shares that you get within that first hour, the more likely it is that LinkedIn's algorithm will decide to give your post a wide distribution. One way to boost the engagement your posts get in that vital first hour is to join a LinkedIn Engagement Pod. Pods are small groups of people who collaborate to help each other by liking and commenting on each other's posts as soon as they are published. Curating Financial Advice Content for LinkedIn Sharing the latest industry news and trends, and commenting on posts from others in your field is another great way to help your connections whilst at the same time demonstrating that you are an IFA who keeps up to date with what's going on in the financial services industry. If you come across a new article from another financial adviser or from a product provider, you can increase your own exposure by commenting on it to let them know your thoughts on the piece. You can also share it with your own connections. Share Your Successes Potential new clients will love knowing that you have been able to help and support previous clients with the same issues that they are experiencing. With this in mind, why not share a success story once a month. Or you could create a post with text from a recent client testimonial to boost your trust rating. Have you had some exciting news? Perhaps you are featuring on a radio show or have been shortlisted for an award? Let people know so that they can see how well you are doing, and feel more confident taking that next step towards working with you themselves. Let's Get Personal It always good to remain professional on LinkedIn, but that doesn’t mean that you have to talk about work all the time. People buy people, especially when it comes to choosing a financial adviser. So don't be afraid to reveal a little of your personal side on LinkedIn so as current and potential clients can get to know the real you a bit better. There are tasteful ways to keep connections posted about what’s going on with you and how things are day to day behind the scenes. Check out this episode of the LinkedInformed podcast to find out more about why it’s a good idea to share a little of your personal side. Be Interactive As well as creating your own engaging content, you should really spend time commenting and liking posts of your clients and potential new prospects too. What better way to build rapport with potential clients than by showing support for their videos, articles and posts? They will soon notice your positive engagement which should help push you to the forefront of their minds. A Few Final LinkedIn Tips for Financial Advisers LinkedIn has a great direct messaging facility. The messaging facility is similar to platforms such as Facebook Messenger and is quick and easy to use. People may be more likely to respond to a LinkedIn message than a traditional email, so it can be a good way to chase up a client who is taking a while to get back to you with a decision. If you are looking to work with strategic partners, such as solicitors or accountants, LinkedIn is a great platform for enabling this. As mentioned previously, you can make connections and engage with people across any industry, so consider how this might be useful for you in your overall business plan. Just like other social media channels, LinkedIn has its own advertising platform - called LinkedIn Ads. This enables you to show an advert or one of your existing posts to the people you want to target, even if you are not already connected to them. If this sounds like something that you would like to integrate into your marketing strategy, then book a free strategy call with me and I'll be happy to give you some pointers on how to get started. In Summary LinkedIn has a huge amount of potential as a source of leads for financial advisers and financial planners. You can connect with people who fit your ideal customer persona and then publish content which will help them to get to know, like and trust you. And you can do all this for free. It just requires some time and effort on your part and a willingness to post and engage with people on a consistent basis. If you've got a question about using LinkedIn to generate financial adviser leads or if you have a LinkedIn success story you'd like to share, then I'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment in the box below and I promise to get back to you.

Financial adviser marketing doesn't stop once you've got people to visit your website or pick up the phone to you. You should consider how to get more of your website visitors to convert into leads and more of your leads to convert into new clients. Here are a few ways to do that: 1. Make it easy for people to book an appointment with you One of the effects of living in the digital age and in the era of Amazon Prime is that people now expect everything to happen instantly. So if it's late at night and someone wants to arrange a meeting with you for later in the week, they don't necessarily want to have to send you an email or fill in a form and wait for you to get back to them the next day. By using an online booking system such as 10to8 (which is free, by the way), you can give people the ability to see when you are available and book themselves in for a meeting or a phone conversation. 2. Chatbots Chatbots have been shown to greatly increase the number of enquiries you can generate from your website. If you're not sure what a chatbot is, click here to see a demo. If you use a service such as ConversioBot, it is very simple to add a chatbot to your site and configure it to ask whatever questions you like. 3. Offer multiple communication channels The more ways you can offer for people to get in touch with you, the more chance there is that they will do so. As well as the traditional channels such as phone and email, think about offering options for people to get in touch with you by text message, WhatsApp, chatbot (see above), social media messaging, etc. Also, make sure that you choose the right communication channel when following up on enquiries you receive. 4. Create a sense of urgency People are notorious for putting off making decisions about their finances, especially when it comes to things like planning for a retirement which seems like it's still a very long way off. A successful financial adviser will try to create a sense of urgency in prospective clients - both when talking to them but also through the content of their online adverts, website content, and other marketing materials. The exact way you do this will vary depending on the products you are promoting and the time of year. For example, in February/March you could highlight the upcoming end of the tax year as a reason for prospects to take action so as not to miss out on using this year's ISA allowance. 5. Use a CRM To get the best conversion rates, it's important to follow up with prospects in a timely fashion and to not forget where you are up to in your conversations with them. By putting a customer relationship management (CRM) system in place you can easily keep track of all your enquiries and set automatic reminders to make sure you get back to people when you say you will and to ensure you keep following up with prospects who haven't yet got back to you with a decision. There are loads of cloud based CRM systems available for a low monthly subscription. My personal favourite is Pipedrive. Getting More Repeat Business as an IFA And finally, once you've followed all the above advice and got yourself a load of new clients, it's important to retain them and encourage them to do more business with you in the future. These final tips cover some of the ways you can do this: - Be proactive Don't sit back and wait for existing clients to get back in touch with you. Give them a call once or twice a year, or send them some info by email every so often, just to see how they're getting on and to make sure they don't forget about you. - Send thank you letters It may sound old-fashioned, but a simple thank you letter sent to a client after they have done business with you for the first time will go a long way towards cementing that client-adviser relationship. Ideally the letter or, at the very least, the envelope, should be handwritten to give that extra personal touch. - Send birthday cards It's almost certain that you will know the date of birth of each of your clients. So why not send them birthday cards? As well as being a nice gesture that will help make you stand out from other companies and professionals that they deal with, birthday cards are a great way of reminding your clients that you exist! Your Financial Adviser Marketing Plan Now that we've reached the end of this list of financial adviser marketing ideas, I'd love to know what you think and what you plan to do next. Are there any marketing strategies from this list that you're already using successfully? Which new ideas are you keen to try out next? Have you got a great marketing tip to share with us that's not in my list? Do leave a comment below or ask any questions you might have and I promise to reply with an answer.

Before you begin any marketing campaigns there are certain things you need to get sorted out. If you overlook these then you're not going to get the best return on investment from whatever marketing you do. 1. Create a marketing plan You know what they say: proper preparation prevents #%@$-poor performance. And this applies just as much to marketing as it does to anything else. Unless you have a clear idea of what your marketing goals are, plus a way to accurately measure the success of your campaigns, your marketing efforts are doomed to fail. Pick a few marketing ideas from this list (not so many that you risk getting overwhelmed) and decide how and when you will implement them, what sort of marketing budget you need for each one, and what results you expect to get. At the very least you should set targets for your results in terms of the number of new clients generated and the cost per acquisition - i.e. how much it costs to get each new client on board. Review your progress regularly against the plan and your objectives and don't be afraid to ditch a particular marketing strategy if you reach the point where it clearly isn't working. 2. Identify your target audience As a financial adviser it's very easy to say that everyone could benefit from your services and that therefore everyone should be part of your target audience when it comes to marketing your business. Wrong! There are all sorts of people who you should not be trying to get as clients. Those who don't have enough money to pay your fees would be just one example. You will get much better results from your marketing and build a much more stable and enjoyable business if you get clarity on what your ideal customer looks like. If you haven't done that exercise yet, I’ll be talking about Customer Personas and Avatars in a later comment. 3. Find your niche This goes hand-in-hand with knowing who your ideal customer is. There are many benefits that come from niching your financial advice business to focus on particular types of clients or specific areas of financial planning. 4. Develop your value proposition One of the challenges faced by financial advisers is that you're all selling the same products from the same providers. And if you're not an IFA or a whole-of-market adviser then you're actually going to be offering less products than many of your competitors. So, trying to differentiate your business based on the products you offer is likely to be a non-starter. Instead, you need to find other ways to separate yourself from the competition and give potential clients a reason to choose you over any other financial adviser. The best way to do this to develop a strong value proposition and then make sure you use it on your website and all your other marketing materials. 5. Identify your prospects' pain points Whatever kind of business you're in, there are only really two reasons why people buy your products or services: either to experience pleasure or to avoid pain. Here's an example. Suppose I go to see the dentist and he tells me about an amazing new toothpaste that will make my teeth whiter, my gums healthier, and will even make all my food taste better. Sounds great. Who wouldn't want all those things? And then the dentist tells me that this toothpaste costs £20 per tube. Suddenly, no matter how great it sounds and however much pleasure I might get from having whiter teeth and better tasting food, I'm not so keen on buying this fancy new toothpaste. Now imagine I've gone to that same dentist for an emergency appointment because I've had terrible toothache for the past 48 hours and have barely been able to sleep due to the pain. The dentist tells me that I need to have the tooth removed and it will cost £500. I pay him without a second thought. Generally speaking, people are more likely to buy your services to avoid a pain than they are to enjoy a gain. So why do people need financial advisers? And what motivates them to seek out the services of an adviser right now rather than at some unspecified time in the future? You're more likely to find the answer if you focus on the pain(s) you solve for people. For example, suppose you're trying to sell me a pension. You could try telling me about the wonderful retirement I might end up enjoying many years from now. Or you could tell me that paying into a pension will mean I get to reduce this year's tax bill. Which do think is most likely to grab my attention? 6. Understand the theory of know, like and trust I'm sure you've heard it said before that people buy people. In other words, it's often how we feel about the person who's trying to sell us a product or service which determines whether we buy it or not. This is especially true when it comes to important things like our health or our wealth. Or, as Google calls them, the YMYL subjects (your money or your life). This means that a successful marketing campaign for a financial adviser needs to be designed to take prospects through a three-stage process whereby they firstly come to know of you, then they get to like you, and finally come to trust you. Only after someone has completed all three phases of that marketing journey are you likely to land them as a new client.

Many of you reading this will now be quite used to working from home. As coronavirus continued and many of the lockdown restrictions remained in place, a large portion of the workforce has said goodbye to the commute and hello to home working. Of course, this isn’t a luxury — it's been a necessity for the last few months. But as time passes and working from home becomes the new normal, it begs the question: should we continue working from home in the post-lockdown world? Here we explore that issue and consider whether, once the lockdown is fully lifted, we should all ditch the office and embrace home working forever. Working from home may be a necessity The future of the world post-coronavirus is uncertain and fears of another spike persist. The fact is, no-one knows exactly what a post-lockdown world will look like. Consequently, working from home might well become an option for those who can do it. For those workers who are able to work from home, their employers might well request they do so for the long-term. As and when it comes, the return to the office could take a number of different forms. Some businesses are considering letting set numbers of staff work in their office on a rota, for instance Other businesses with larger premises are even dividing their workspaces into segments, with certain staff only permitted to work in certain areas. It may be more difficult for smaller businsses What’s your opinion. Do you see your business using more hybrid working practices and how do you feel about that? Let us know by replying to this post.