Today’s edition of the Times newspaper includes VouchedFor’s guide to financial advisers in the UK, featuring over 1,100 who have accumulated 21,664 reviews.
We’ve always admired VouchedFor for their work in connecting consumers with advice. We regularly recommend advisers and planners build profiles, as much for the reputational tools as to attract new enquiries.
So, if you’ve been included in the guide…congratulations. But, what next? How can you capitalise on your inclusion? Here are 10 things you should do.
1. Tell your clients
In our experience, your clients will be invested in you and your business. They want you to do well and will be interested in your inclusion.
A carefully worded email is also a great opportunity to thank those who have rated you, remind all clients of the value you add and gently suggest that those who haven’t reviewed you yet might like to do so. Remember to make it easy for them by including a link.
Finally, a little nudge that you welcome being referred to others (and that anyone they recommend to you will receive advice from a highly rated adviser) won’t do any harm either!
2. Add a blog or video to your website
If your website has a blog or news section add an update explaining your inclusion. Alternatively, you could record a short video (thanks to technology most of us have a recording studio in our pockets now) and post that on your website. Either way, we recommend including:
- A brief explanation of what VouchedFor is
- Confirmation that ratings and reviews are based on feedback from genuine clients, which makes the ratings extremely powerful
- The criteria for inclusion
- Your rating (using the handy widget provided by VouchedFor, see point five, below)
- A selection of the best reviews
3. Update your social media profiles
If social media is part of your marketing strategy, update your banners and profile to reflect your inclusion in the guide and your VouchedFor rating.
4. Use social media to publicise the blog
Once you’ve ticked #2 and #3 off the list, now’s the time to publicise the blog on social media.
Write different messages for each channel (identical messages look lazy), add an image of the certificate provided by VouchedFor (posts with images get more engagement) and publicise your inclusion in the guide to your followers and connections.
Consider posting more than once too, especially on Twitter, where posts move quickly down the timeline.
5. Add the VouchedFor widgets to your website
VouchedFor’s reputational tools are excellent. Top of the list (in our opinion anyway) are the widgets, which allow you to display your current rating and latest reviews on your website.
These are available for each adviser and your firm, which are handy for businesses with more than one adviser or planner on VouchedFor.
Our recent blog explains more about how the widgets should be used. You can read it by clicking here and scrolling down to mistake four.
6. Update your stationery
Your business card and letterhead should both be updated with your VouchedFor rating and inclusion in the guide.
7. Update your email signature
Your email footer will probably be seen by dozens of people each day. It’s the perfect place to publicise your rating and inclusion in the guide.
VouchedFor helps here too, giving you rating buttons to include in your signature. These will be updated to include: ‘Top Rated 2019’.
8. Tell professional connections
If accountants and solicitors are a valuable source of new enquiries your inclusion in the guide will provide further evidence that clients who they refer to you are in safe hands.
If you’re emailing clients, why not include professional connections too?
9. Impress potential clients with the Top Rated Report and other assets provided by VouchedFor
You will soon get access to a report to use with prospective clients. Downloadable from the ‘Reputation Tools’ section of your VouchedFor account, it will be an extremely valuable tool for those who use it wisely. It’ll include all the checks you’ve passed, as well as your rating and client reviews.
Why not cement a prospective clients’ decision to choose you, and continue to build confidence, by sending the report before your first meeting? It could also be passed to professional connections for them to use with clients they are thinking of introducing to you. And left with your own clients for them to pass to friends and family.
10. Add the certificate to your reception wall
The receptions areas and meeting rooms of too many firms’ offices aren’t well thought through.
All too often we see copies of ‘trade’ magazines left for clients to read. We’ve never understood why. Far better to explain more about you, your business and how you benefit clients. There are many ways to do this, from case studies and press coverage to testimonials.
The VouchedFor Certificate of Excellence should be displayed on the wall, with the report mentioned above and downloads of your reviews available to read.
Develop a plan and move quickly
There are over 1,100 advisers and planners included in the list.
Only those who make the effort will truly capitalise on their inclusion.
Your hard work, the reviews left by your clients and this great initiative from VouchedFor has given you some great ammunition, now’s the time to use it.
