How Many IFA Resolutions Have You Kept?

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Late last year Unbiased.co.uk suggested that many IFAs were failing to attract the attention of potential consumers because their websites were often dull, lifeless and did little to communicate professionalism.  However they did go on to propose that 2010 would be the year when IFAs finally embraced the Internet as a mainstream marketing and client communication tool.  There were a number of drivers for this supposition, including the fact that for most consumers, the web is already the primary mechanism by which they search for service suppliers.

Unbiased therefore suggested eleven simple and proven New Year Resolutions for IFAs to enhance their Internet presence. As we are nearing the end of September, we thought now would be a good time for financial advisers and planners to revisit the resolutions and check just how many of them they have put in to practice:

1. Communicate much more with existing clients by email and through your website.  Start today by sending out a New Year newsletter giving ‘Ten Financial New Year Resolutions’ for clients and website visitors.

2. Commit to adding regular (weekly) new content such as articles to your website.  This keeps people coming back to your website and helps to improve your search engine results.

3. Give your website a ‘human touch’ by including professional photos of every IFA and member of staff.  Include hobbies and interests and avoid too much boring stuff.  Remember that ‘people buy people’ online just as much as they do face to face.

4. Encourage clients and site visitors to get their financial news from your website.  Write a three paragraph summary of the weekly financial news and put it on your website every Monday morning.

5. Start using video as a communication tool and to add value to clients.  Record your weekly news summary and post it on to your website.  This gives people an opportunity to see and experience you and also increases the amount of time they spend on your website.

6. Set up your own Channel on YouTube and upload your videos.  Don’t worry about the quality – it is the content that people are interested in.  YouTube is also a search engine and is second only to Google in terms of the number of searches performed.

7. Create new sections on your website which contain content which is exclusively for existing clients and professional connections.  Add to it regularly and build community by encouraging people to add their own thoughts and comments.

8. Add a Press and Media section to your website.  Get in the habit of writing regular press releases (monthly) and post them on your site.  This will add to your content, will help improve your search engine rankings and will prove to site visitors that your business is live, busy and active.

9. Set up profile pages on LinkedIn, IFA Life, Twitter and Ecademy.  Also set up a business page on Facebook.  These websites will broaden your reach on the Internet, help your search engine rankings and will attract new business to you.  Spend fifteen minutes every day adding content to your profiles on these sites.

10. Finally, brainstorm and develop ‘financial information products’ for people to purchase from your website.  This adds to the perception of your expertise and creates a valuable new income stream.

11. Write an Internet Marketing plan.  Whilst many IFAs have written marketing plans for 2010, very few have written a specific Internet marketing plan.  At the very least, IFAs should include a separate section within the marketing plan detailing how they will use the Internet and in particular social networking sites to both attract new clients and to add value to existing clients.

So how did you do?