Financial adviser marketing services: how to increase the credibility of your IFA

Gaining the trust of your clients is a must when it comes to running your own financial advisory firm. Often advising on sensitive and confidential information, gaining authority in your field and ensuring that you’re offering credible services is a vital step to the success of your business. But how do you make sure your presence in the financial services industry is credible, trustworthy, and authoritative? In this post, we identify our top four financial adviser marketing services tips to get you and your business at the top of your game.

1. Drop traditional methods of lead generation

Finding new clients is always tricky. However, it’s important to understand that some of the more traditional financial adviser marketing services are not as powerful anymore. “Outbound” marketing methods, such as cold-calling, direct mail and print advertising aren’t as effective as they used to be because people no longer want to be ‘sold’ to. Rather, they prefer to go out and find answers for themselves, searching the web and reading valuable content. So, what’s the solution? Well, put simply, you need to be online – after all, that’s where your potential clients are! Adopting “inbound” marketing techniques, where you attract people to you by producing helpful, relevant and interesting content, will help to build your online presence. Write relevant blog posts, produce videos or create infographics – whatever works for you.

2. Produce an effective and professional-looking website 

A website is normally the first port of call when someone is deciding to hire an IFA and, if your website is clunky, amateur and lacking a bit of love, then you could be losing out on potential clients. Your website needs to be efficient, full of helpful content and easily navigable. Adopting SEO techniques is also a must in today’s day and age – getting your website ‘out there’ is all about getting it to rank high on page one of Google’s search engine results page. To do this, you need to implement a keyword strategy, ensuring that each page is allocated its own relevant term.

3. Stay active on social media

Social media is a biggie. It’s a great opportunity to get to know people in the industry, engage in conversation, and find new clients. Sharing the content you produce on your website (such as blog posts) across social media will help to increase the credibility of your IFA as you actively engage in the subject. You don’t just have to share your own content – sharing others’ posts and commenting will help to get your name out there. Plus, they might return the favour! LinkedIn is particularly useful for financial advisers; you can grow your connections and engage with people in a more professional manner.

4. Publish client testimonials on your website

Don’t be afraid to ask your clients for testimonials and feedback. It’s always worth publishing any positive responses on your website and sharing them across social media to prove the success of your IFA. It gives others confidence in you while helping to build credibility around your business. It’s not boastful – be proud!

5. Promote what it’s like to work for your company

With the latest news suggesting that 15,000 advisers will be looking to leave the industry in the next 10 years and the rising costs of recruitment fees it’s going to be even more competitive to hire quality advisers in the future. you can be ahead of your competitors by building a “work for us” page on your website, perhaps a behind, the scenes Instagram and Facebook profile to showcase your culture. Bringing video, pictures and content into your own hiring strategy will improve your chances of attracting quality advisers and support staff to your business and will also help you capitalize on the exiting financial adviser client books. be clear in what you are offering a new or retiring adviser, if you don’t have the time to do this then working with a niche recruiter like Recruit UK on a branded recruitment strategy is the perfect way to kick things off.

Conclusion

50% of IFAs don’t actively market their business, missing out on attracting a lot of new clients. This fact alone is enough to want to get out there and get ahead of the competition. However, adopting the right financial adviser marketing services and techniques to increase the credibility of your IFA can take some time, especially when implementing inbound SEO methods. By starting to produce great content and getting your website up-and-running efficiently however, you can start to make a real difference to how people approach your business.

Here at Recruit UK, we work with financial advice practices across the UK that embrace up-to-date financial adviser marketing services. So, if you feel that your current firm isn’t investing, we can help you find a company that is. We also work with national financial advice firms and networks that take away the stress of running your own branding and marketing, reducing your costs and increasing your online presence. Sound good? Visit our vacancies page or get in touch to find out more.