Owen James Meeting of Minds Winning advisers South

Owen James: Meeting of Minds Winning Advisers

Thanks for visiting the TOMD website. We’ve developed this page for members of firms attending the Owen James Meeting of Minds Winning advisers South in October 2023. It’s based on the topic that one of our team, Mike Johnstone, was asked to discuss during a Roundtable at the event:

Communicating to stay ahead

Mike Johnstone, TOMD
  • The growing need for adviser marketing support
  • The balance of firm brand vs adviser brand
  • How old and new tech are being used to obtain referrals.  

The latest trend

At TOMD we work with about 1,500 advisory firms every year, so we witness marketing trends. One of the most recent is the increase in the need to provide personalised marketing support for individual advisers. The drivers for this are manifold. Some are linked to the difficulty in recruiting advisers: it’s difficult to recruit therefore any competitive advantage is welcome; it’s difficult to recruit therefore firms must retain their advisers.

Of course, there’s another benefit, one we always highlight, and it is best demonstrated by a statistic. In our experience, HTML email campaigns, such as newsletters, sent to clients in the name of the adviser (as opposed to info@, or in the name of the marketing manager or a director) can benefit from open rates up to 20% higher. Of course, there are lots of other factors at play but in simple terms, marketing communications in the name of the adviser deliver better results – for the firm and the adviser. This also applies to literature, guides, videos, social media posts etc. Advisers feel better because the materials are personalised to them, clients are more likely to read them.

Who is your IFA?

For some firms we speak to, this trend presents a dilemma. This dilemma can also be demonstrated by an example – if you ask your clients who their IFA is, will most quote the name of the adviser or the name of the firm? Should you be worried if the majority quote their adviser?

Old and new

Referrals are perhaps the oldest form of lead generation. For most mid-size advisory firms, referrals remain the primary source of new clients. Surprisingly, the ability of firms to maximise the number of referrals they obtain varies dramatically, in some cases from adviser to adviser.

While the oldest method of obtaining referrals, i.e. ‘just ask’, is still the obvious one, we are increasingly working with firms to develop new methods, in some cases using new tech.

And finally, the future of client communication

Another subject we have been talking a lot about to firms recently, but not scheduled for discussion at the Meeting of Minds, is the development of content strategies so that firms can map out their next 12 months of client communication using pillars (such as End of Tax Year, Autumn Statement) supplemented by targeted campaigns – sometimes personalised in the name of the adviser.     

Allied to this is the need to view clients as individuals (segments of one) rather than as one homogenous mass. This means they would all receive different content and they’d receive it when it’s relevant and when they want it, in their preferred method or platform, not when and how it’s convenient for firms to send it.

On this site…

We’d love to hear from you

you can find information about our bespoke marketing services, our content (bespoke and ready-to-use) and the TOMD team.

Our clients range from some of the largest financial services businesses to small, one-person firms. If you’d like to discuss your marketing and content strategy, or to ask about any of our services, please call Mike Johnstone on 07958 975203, or email mike.johnstone@tomd.co.uk.

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