Our clients almost always have a similar aim; to produce a steady stream of new client enquiries from the right type of people and improve your returns.

Meeting this objective always starts with identifying your target market and understanding everything you possibly can about them.

Next, calculate the number of new clients you need each year. And as you know your conversion rates (you do know these don’t you?) you can easily understand the number of new enquiries you need to generate.

Once you know these numbers you can start building a strategy to produce the enquiries you need and improve your returns.

I’d suggest an effective Unbiased.co.uk profile should almost always be a part of that strategy.

Reasons to like Unbiased

Despite the criticism it gets from some quarters (including yours truly in the past) there are several reasons to like Unbiased:

1. The average cost of each enquiry is low at £36 (including VAT)
2. The adviser can decline an enquiry if the quality looks poor or they are too busy
3. It produces a steady stream of new enquiries

Our latest research (produced by analysing the Dashboard of adviser Unbiased profiles) shows that including accepted Concierge enquiries (and excluding those you receive, but don’t ‘win’), direct contacts and call back requests, advisers can expect to receive 3 – 3.5 enquiries per month.

So, how can you increase your share of the enquiries Unbiased creates?

Part of the answer lies in improving your Click-Through Rate or CTR for short.

Click Through Rate: The basics

Consumers can reach you in three ways:

1. Be matched by Unbiased to an adviser; these are known as Concierge enquiries
2. Searching the directory and making contact with the adviser
3. Calling Unbiased

We don’t know the split between consumers using each option. We asked Unbiased, but they declined to tell us. However, we suspect most consumers select one of the first two.

It must surely be preferable for advisers to be selected by a consumer than matched by Unbiased’s algorithm. Therefore, you need to make your profile stand out on the search results page to hoover up as many of the consumers who choose to search the directory. By doing this you will also reduce the “fastest finger first” frustration felt by many advisers about Concierge enquiries.

Our research shows that the average CTR (from the search results page to an adviser’s profile) is 3.48%; the highest we’ve seen is 8.55% and the lowest 2.02%.

Only three or four people clicking your profile for every 100 views might sound low, but it actually compares very well.

For example, research shows the average CTR for finance related Facebook ads is just 0.56%. Interestingly, we are seeing a much higher CTR from Facebook ads than this, but that’s an article for another day.

The comparable figure for search related adverts on Google is 2.65%.

Improving your CTR

The aim is to improve the number of people selecting your profile following a search of the directory.

There are only four things you can control:

1. The image used; most advisers use their logo
2. The 20-word description
3. The Response Rating
4. The free offers you include

So, what influences Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

Image: All but one of the firms with an above average CTR used a picture of people (themselves or their advisers) rather than their logo.

Some profiles got the best of both worlds by creatively including pictures of people and their logo. Drop us an email and we’ll show you some examples.

Description: We’ve always believed that the ideal 20-word description should explain who you work with, your independent status, potentially the geographical area and certainly your Chartered or Certified status.

Every single profile which had an above average CTR followed this best practice, making their 20 available words work as hard as possible for them.

Response Rating: There seems to be little correlation between a high Response Rating and a high CTR; of the 10 firms with the highest Response Rating 50% had an above average CTR, with 50% below average.

However, the firms with the lowest possible Response Rating, 7 out of 10, all had below average CTRs.

Special offers: Every profile without a special offer had a lower than average CTR.

Actions to take to improve your returns

Improve your returns and your CTR will lead to a larger number of enquiries from Unbiased.

Your key action points:

1. Understand your target market
2. Replace your logo with images of you or your advisory team
3. Review your 20-word description to ensure it is as effective as possible
4. Keep your Response Rating as high as possible by dealing with enquiries within the allotted time
5. Add Special Offers to your profile

Dealing with each won’t take long and could improve your returns from Unbiased significantly.

PS. (Shameless plug alert!) Eight out of the top 10 profiles with the highest CTR on our research were built by us; if you would like our help to get more from Unbiased feel free to get in touch by replying to this email or calling us on 0115 815 7770.