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23rd September, 2026 - Webinar replay

10 great habits that’ll turbocharge your marketing

Phil Bray  

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our September webinar. Summer is gone; all that’s out the way. We can now focus on the thing that really matters which is, of course, marketing your business. And we’re going to talk today about 10 great habits that will turbocharge your marketing for the rest of the year and into 2027. So, what are we going to talk about? So, we’re going to start with four essential habits for effective marketing, and then we’re going to go into the 10 habits that will turbocharge your marketing. And we’re going to get really practical and tactical there, explaining why, why that’s important because I think we all get into better habits if we understand why we’re doing something, and then the how to do it. So we’re going to explain for each of them what the habit is, the why and the how. We’re going to finish by talking about some top tips. I’m no expert in this, but some top tips that I’ve seen work with myself at Yardstick and with other clients to build those good habits. And then we’re not doing them on LinkedIn anywhere near as much as we used to, we’re going to start doing them on some webinars, and we’ve got a free book giveaway at the end for 10 lucky people who are quick off the mark, and it’s probably pretty obvious what book we’re going to give away, but we’ll save that. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Dan, just talk to everybody about how we do things for any newbies on here.

Dan Campbell 

Yes, of course. Let’s do a bit of quick housekeeping, shall we? So it’s good to be back after our summer hiatus. You seem very keen to be past summer, Phil. I mean, it still feels like it outside for me. It’s actually quite mild. So, what do we need to know for today’s session? I see plenty of familiar names in the crowd, so you all know the drill. But for those newbies that Phil alludes to, don’t worry. Our house rules are nice and simple. The first is that there’s no such thing as a silly question. If you’re thinking it, I promise somebody else is too. So get stuck in with your comments. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, challenge us, tell us you agree, tell us you disagree. Genuinely, the more interaction the session gets, the more we all learn, which sounds like a pretty good thing as far as I’m concerned. And you can do that by using the Q&A box or the chat function. So speaking of which, if anyone in the crowd can just give me a hello or a good morning in the chat box to test if it’s working, that would be brilliant. And as usual, we’re recording the webinar today, which means you’ll receive a neatly packaged follow-up email with the video link and all the important notes and resources we mention. Of course, we have the wonderful Abi Robinson to ask for that who’ll be furiously taking notes behind the scenes, and thanks to everyone who’s been adding those hello’s and good morning’s in there. So that seems like a good point to get stuck in, Phil. Over to you.

Phil Bray 

Thanks, mate. Okay, so let’s start by looking at what I think of four essential characteristics traits to have to be an effective marketer. So the first one is patience. There is no doubt that marketing requires patience. The old saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and in my experience, a lot of advisers, planners, and business owners just don’t have the patience to see things through, and they give up or move to a different tactic before they start seeing results. And there’s definitely a corollary here with investing. You will talk to your clients about the importance of patience, about the importance of time in the market, not timing the market, and the same is true with your marketing. We need to not get distracted by shiny new things, and we need to give things time to work, because just past that point where you feel like giving up is where success lies. Second thing, advisers, planners, and business owners need to have to be a good marketer is an open mind. We will quite often talk to firms about X, Y, or Z, whatever it is. Take client testimonial videos, for example. That only 13% of firms have got one, three, 13% and their arms will cross. They’ll frown, and they’ll basically say “no, there is no way our clients will appear in video”. I guarantee you, if your clients are not SAS or MI6 operatives, you will get enough to do a set of client testimonial videos, and that’s because, as we move on to the third point, the adviser, planner, or business owner is imposing their views, their opinions on their clients. So you’ve got an adviser, planner, or business owner saying, “no, my clients would never do that. I’d never ask them to do that. I’d never impose”. But when you talk to clients about why they do testimonial videos, the answer is always the same “my way of saying thank you to my adviser or planner”. “My way of saying thank you to my adviser or planner”, but if the adviser has an open mind and doesn’t impose his or her views on the clients, we will move forward with much more momentum and much more effectively with marketing. To put it slightly differently, I was watching a podcast recently with Mark Ritson, and he talks about how marketers, or to be an effective marketer, you need to have cold blood running through your veins, and I really quite like that. I think what he’s saying here is, it doesn’t matter what I think, doesn’t matter what you think. The only person whose opinion, whose matters, is your target client. And then the fourth essential for effective marketing is consistency. And consistency comes from good habits and good processes. There are a bunch of things, 10 in fact. That’s what we have to talk about today. That you need to do consistently, and if you do them consistently, you will turbocharge your marketing. So four essentials: patience, open mind, focus on your target audience’s preferences, and a razor-like focus on your target audience’s preferences, and then consistency from good habits and good processes. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So let’s dive in. The first habit that I would recommend you get into is recording every single new enquiry that comes into your business, zero exceptions. And this is important for several reasons. First, you’ve got all this marketing activity going on over here. The only way of understanding the output over here from that marketing activity is by recording every single new enquiry that comes into your business. You get your marketing input, your enquiry recording spreadsheet, or whether you do it, the record of those new enquiries shows the output from that marketing. And if you record every single new enquiry that comes into your business, it’s the only way of getting a complete picture of your marketing performance. A lot of firms we work with only record the good enquiries, quote unquote, and the problem with that is you under record the total number of enquiries and you over record the quality, so you’re not getting a true picture of what’s happening. So record every single new enquiry, even if it falls at the first hurdle. And if anybody’s got any questions on that, or I’ve not explained that well. Then just put something in the chat or the Q&A, and I’m happy to go back over it. Then the third reason is that it allows you to nurture prospects who don’t immediately become clients. Every prospect that comes to you goes into one of three boxes. Verts immediately will never convert. You’d like them to convert, but they don’t immediately sign up, and it’s that middle box that we need to nurture. And you can only nurture them if you have a record of their name, email address, and some further details about them. So three reasons why we should record every single new enquiry. How do we make it a habit? So I think the first thing to do is agree where every new enquiry will be recorded,where every new enquiry will be recorded, and you’ve got three options really there, you could use your adviser back office system. Not convinced that they’re set up for doing that. Probably get shouted at for that. But I’m not convinced they’re set up for it. You could use a sales-based CRM,HubSpot, Salesforce, that sort of stuff. You could use a good old-fashioned spreadsheet. We’ve got an enquiry recording spreadsheet template. Abi will pop it into the follow-up email afterwards. So, the first step is to agree where it will be recorded. Second, explain to your team why it matters, and what you need them to do. And at this point, you might get a little bit of pushback, “it takes too much time.” It literally takes 45 seconds to record a new enquiry on a spreadsheet. It does not take long at all. And then to get in the habit, I would recommend that you record enquiries as soon as they arrive. Don’t delay. Don’t put it off until after you’ve spoken to the prospect, because if the prospect wasn’t very good, or wasn’t the right fit, you might be less tempted to record it. You might go straight from that phone call onto another. So I would say to record enquiries as soon as they come in, wherever you have agreed to record them, and then make contact with the person who has made the enquiry. Dan, did I see somebody’s hand go up?

Dan Campbell 

It’s a good question. If they put their hand up. They’ve certainly put it down. So if you did have a question, pop it through on the chat, and we’ll read it out.

Phil Bray 

Yeah, no problem. Maybe someone was just waving and saying hello. 

Dan Campbell 

Maybe they were scratching their head. Who knows. 

Phil Bray 

Habit number one: record every single new enquiry that comes into your business. Then number two, build and update a KPI dashboard to show what’s happening with your marketing and what’s happening with the sales that result from your marketing, because marketing should lead to sales opportunities. Sales opportunities being to take on a mortgage client, take on financial planning, etc. So why do we want a marketing KPI dashboard? First, it monitors progress and again, Abi will put a link to a template that we’ve got in the follow-up. It monitors your progress. The top of the dashboard is all about marketing, so things such as website traffic, quality of people coming to your website, number of people coming to your website, the number of online reviews you’ve got, Google and VouchedFor, really, really important for reasons we will explain in a minute. What else is in there? Things such as newsletter engagement, and then as you work down the dashboard, there’s a kind of imaginary line in there, and that’s where it starts to pivot from marketing to sales. How many new enquiries have you had? What’s the source? How do those enquiry numbers stack up against your target? Number of clients taken on, AUM taken on, fixed fees taken on, etc. But your KPI dashboard helps you monitor progress, and will also show you areas for improvement. So we color code our dashboard, red, green, and every so often we’ll speak to a firm, and you’ll see for the last three months a series of red on Google and VouchedFor reviews. That tells us that there’s a problem with the process. We go back and have a look, try and improve the process. Come back, look 1, 2 or 3, months after that. It’s green, so you’ll be able to see the difference. And also, if you get it right, it will show the return on investment from your marketing. So, it is really important that we have a KPI dashboard. And I think to make it a habit, you need to first of all agree what you’re monitoring. The template we send over will give you a start of the 10. There might be some things that you want to take out. There might be some things that you want to add in. So for example, on Yardstick’s KPI dashboard, we have number of people who have signed up for a webinar, number of people who showed up for a webinar, number of new contacts from marketing the webinar, that sort of stuff. That’s important to us. So there’ll be things that are important to you that are not in the template, and then block out time each month. And diary blocking is so important when it comes to getting into habits. But block out time each month to update the dashboard, but then review the results. I think some people tend to get into the habit of updating a dashboard, but then doing nothing with it. Need to update the dashboard, and then review the results, and then look from there for opportunities to improve. Newsletters is a good example. I know August, I think it was, firms that took a syndicator content package. There was an article in there. The headline was “Two Important Changes You Need to Know About Your ISA”. It was the most popular article that month. Let’s do more of that and less of things that aren’t popular. So it gives you an opportunity to improve. So the second habit to get into is updating a KPI dashboard. Now Dan, someone’s definitely asked a question.

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, that was Michael who asks: “should there be a separation between when a dashboard is updated and when it’s then reviewed, or do you do both in the same session”

Phil Bray 

That’s a really good question. So I think this is probably personal preference, but when I am updating Yardstick’s KPI dashboard for Yardstick as a business, I will sit and update it, and then I will review it in the same session. I’ll sit an update and do it in the same session. When we’re working with Yardstick clients, the majority of the dashboard updating is done internally by Yardstick, and then we review it on calls with clients. So there is a gap between it. But I would say there’s no hard and fast rule there. I would do whatever works for you. Okay, so that’s habit number two. Habit number three: asking for Google and VouchedFor reviews. I’ve said quite a lot this year that I don’t think there is anything more important marketing-wise right now than building up a substantial, relative to the size of your business, portfolio of Google and VouchedFor reviews. 89%, according to Which, of consumers use online reviews when researching services and products. 9 out of 10 consumers will look at reviews. Now, if you’re the 1 out of the 10 who doesn’t read reviews, frankly it doesn’t matter. Go back to what Mark Ritson said about cold blood running through your veins. This isn’t about what you do; it’s about what your target audience does. And as we’ve said multiple times in the past, your Google and VouchedFor reviews, and it’s so important that you have both of them. This isn’t binary, one or the other. It’s important that you have both of them. Impress people on their digital journey to your door. Your Google reviews impress people who search for your business. Your VouchedFor reviews impress people who search for you. And not only do they help impress humans, they also help impress the robots because AI will certainly use VouchedFor and probably Google reviews when it’s making its recommendation. So if you go and run a dummy prompt on AI, and we’ll talk about that in a bit, and then look at the sources it goes to. Every time I’ve done it, VouchedFor is one of the sources, and it makes sense. There’s hundreds of thousands of reviews on VouchedFor. VouchedFor have done some research. Advisers who have got more than 20 reviews are four times more likely to be recommended by AI. So it’s really, really important to be doing this in 2026 and into 2027. So how do we make it a habit? And in my experience, when firms are not getting Google and VouchedFor reviews, assuming they want and they’re trying to get them, it’s always down, always, always, always down to a lack of process or poor habits. And this is what works. And we’ve seen firms try and reinvent this wheel, try and do things differently, and they always fail. So I would just say, trust us on this one, that this is how to do it. So after you’ve taken on a new client and every annual review meeting, send one email with two links: one to Google, one to VouchedFor. The frame is “we use two platforms to make your life easy”, and make that email wholly, solely, and exclusively about the review request. To put it a different way, don’t hide the review request at the end of a suitability report, meeting minutes, or investment updates. Chances are the client’s not going to get the end of any. And that’s what works: one email, two links, sent after an annual review or after onboarding a new client, and that email is wholly exclusively and solely about the review request. You could, if you want to get yourself off to a really good start, run a booster project, which is where this is your email out to all clients in one go, asking them to leave reviews. And that what tends to see is you get a big dump of reviews at one time, and then you can implement the process we talked about there. Dan, I can see a lot of questions or a few questions coming through.

Dan Campbell  

Yeah, we’ve got a lot of activity, so let me read a few of these out. 

Phil Bray 

I’m slightly scared.

Dan Campbell 

You should be. So Claire asks, “does it matter if we only do VouchedFor, and we have a lot of VouchedFor ones?” And I’ll just read Scott’s reply to that, so you can add to it. So Scott says  “Claire, we used to just ask for VouchedFor, but following Yardstick’s advice slash constant badgering, we simply added a Google review link to our standard “Please leave us a review email”, giving clients the choice. Most do VouchedFor, some do Google, a very few lovely folks do both”.

Phil Bray 

Okay, Scott. I’m glad my badgering has worked. So, Claire, your question: “does it matter if we only do VouchedFor and we have a lot of VouchedFor ones?” Honestly, yeah, I think it does. I’d be interested, Claire, if you could put something in the chat as to why you’ve taken that decision. But I think doing that leads to several problems. The first problem is that when somebody searches for your business, they’re going to see the Google Business Profile top right hand corner, and we’re missing an opportunity to impress them at that point with those lovely Google reviews staring back at them. Someone goes and Google. The Yardstick Agency, for example, you’ll see 286. I think it’s 286 Google reviews. 284 are five-star, and there’s 2 4-star reviews just to prove authenticity. So you miss that opportunity at that point to impress somebody. I think the second thing you miss out on is the boost Google reviews give you to your local search engine optimisation. There is a link between where you rank for local search, “financial planner near me”, “financial adviser Nottingham”, Liverpool, that sort of stuff, and the number quality and recency of Google reviews you’ve got. So yes, I do think you’re missing out there. Dan, back to you mate. 

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. Got some good questions today. Michael asks “does the recency of reviews impact the quality of appearing in search results?”

Phil Bray 

Yes, I think it does. I couldn’t give you a percentage because neither VouchedFor nor Google will understandably release their algorithm and tell everybody what and how it works. But as my understanding goes, both on Google and VouchedFor, where you rank for search on VouchedFor or search on Google will be linked to those three things: number of reviews, quality of reviews, and recency of reviews, and there’s also research. I’ve not got it on here, but there’s research from an organisation in the US that shows people are more likely to do business with firms that have got recent reviews.

Dan Campbell

Perfect. And Natasha asks “do you use a specific email template to send those emails for reviews?”

Phil Bray 

Yes, and we will put that in the follow-up.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. One more question, and then we’ll carry on. And Scott, I’ll leave your question till the end, that general question around the point of engagement. But Lucy asks “what’s your thought on Trustpilot as a platform for reviews?”

Phil Bray 

So, first thing, Lucy, I’d be interested in your thoughts. If you could put some in the chat, really appreciate that. I think secondly, I’m. I think VouchedFor is a better platform, and there’s a few reasons for that. First, with VouchedFor, the reviews appear when a potential client searches online for the adviser’s name rather than the business name. Whereas your Trustpilot reviews and your Google reviews will show up on the firm’s name. So you’re covering two bases there. Your Google reviews cover or appear when someone searches for the firm. Your VouchedFor reviews appear when someone searches for an individual adviser. I do like the widgets. I think they are great. I think the cost benefit, the value for money, is much better with VouchedFor. I think for a small firm, I don’t know how big your firm is Lucy, but for a small firm, the cost of Trustpilot I think the opening cost is about £250 a month to use the decent widgets to embed it onto your website. So that’s quite a hefty cost. Also, I’m not convinced about some of the scoring algorithms with Trustpilot. You can have 10 five-star reviews, but only be scoring 4.5 out of five or something similar. So I just think for me, and there’s a bunch of other reasons I like VouchedFor. For me, I think the right combination is Google and VouchedFor. I’d be interested in any of your thoughts there though, Lucy.

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, Lucy follows up, “we have both Google and Trustpilot in our email template, and most clients opt for Trustpilot. From a personal point of view, I search every company on Trustpilot before buying a product or service, so I’m a fan of it. But thanks for your insight, though. I’ll take it into consideration”.

Phil Bray 

Yeah, and I think so. There’s two points there. I think the first thing I’m talking about is the Google search and prospects who are thinking about using an individual adviser or the firm. Yes, some might do what you’ve done, Lucy, and go straight to Trustpilot. But I think most will head to Google first of all, and that’s where we want that division down of Google reviews impressing when they search the firm VouchedFor when they search for the individual adviser or planner. Thank you for the questions. That was good. Keep the questions coming, and I will keep going with what’re we up to number four now, aren’t we? So, reply to your reviews. Really, really important that you reply to your reviews. 89% of consumers expect businesses to reply. This research is from BrightLocal in the US. 42% are unlikely to use a business that never responds and 81%, eight out of 10, expect a response within a week. The other 19% expect a response the same day, which is quite a tall order that. So really, really important that you reply to every single review, and we’ve seen some firms who don’t reply at all. We’ve seen some firms who only reply to the good ones and ignore anything that’s negative. Great plan. We’ve seen some firms who only reply to the negative and not the good. Again, not a great plan. And then we’ve got some firms trained and badgered Scott by Yardstick, I love that, to reply to their reviews really, really quickly, and there’s a few reasons for doing this. First, it shows you’re grateful. There’s research that shows people are more likely to do business with people and organisations they like, and therefore you become more likable if you are seen to be appreciative and grateful for the reviews that you get, so shows you are grateful, shows you appreciate them. It also allows you to amplify some of the positive messages that somebody’s put in the initial review, so you get two bites at the positive cherry. And from a Google perspective, if you can work certain key phrases in “financial planner Nottingham”, for example, that’s going to have a little boost, a little marginal gain on your local SEO. So really important that you reply to all your reviews. How do you do it? So the first thing to do is to set up notifications. So just make sure that your notifications for receiving a review, whether it’s on VouchedFor, Google, Trustpilot, wherever you go, that the notifications are coming to the right inbox. In my experience, the notifications from Google sometimes go into old inboxes that people have forgotten about, and they’re not always the most reliable. So set up your notification so you get them, and then reply within a week. If you can do it the same day, great. You’ll satisfy the 19% of demanding people out there who want them the same day. But if you can reply within a week, I think that’s a fair target. And for me, a reply should probably be 100 to 125 words long. That’s quite a lot when you’ve got a blank sheet of paper. So a couple of years ago, we developed the Yardstick Review Responder tool. Yardstick Review Responder tool. It’s built in ChatGPT. Anybody can use it. Abi’s going to put a link into it. You answer a few simple questions. Is it a Google review or VouchedFor? What’s the name of the person, if you want to put the person’s name in, probably get a first name only if you’re going to do it. Is there anything that you want to add specifically, and then it will write the reply for you. The feedback I’ve been told is about 80% of the time you can simply cut and paste the answer across. About 20% of the time, it needs a bit of an edit, but that’s going to help you get into the habit of replying to these reviews really quickly within a week. So Abi’s put that link in there. Go and use it. Let me know how you get on with it. Okay, number five. Running client surveys. Why should we do this? I think there’s five reasons. The first reason to run a client survey is it shows you care, shows that you care what your clients think. It shows that you’re listening. The second reason helps you improve your business. If you ask the right questions in a client survey, clients will tell you what they like that you’re doing right now. It’s nice to hear, but not particularly useful. They’ll tell you what they dislike that you’re doing right now. That’s harder to hear, but more useful. And they might give you some ideas of things that you could do that you’re not already doing. It supports your marketing. So one of the questions we were asking the client survey is “would you recommend us on to other people?” Really dislike NPS for various reasons. Much simpler to ask “would you recommend us on to other people?” And let’s say you get 97.98% of clients would recommend you to other people. Then that’s a stat that should be used in your marketing. High enough to be impressive, not quite perfect, which demonstrates authenticity. As anybody who attended our referral workshop a few months ago will know, the client survey underpins the referral strategy, and from a compliance perspective, it helps to identify any issues early before they grow into something quite big. So, running client surveys is really really important. How do you do it? How do we make it a habit? I would agree as a business the intervals at which you’re going to run the client survey, and I would go every one or two years, depending on the pace of change in your business. The faster the pace of change in the business, the more likely I go to one year. The slower the pace of change, the steadier you are, the more likely I am to go two years. And I would choose a fixed point in time. So we do our client survey every two years, every September, or we do it every year in January. And few reasons to do it at fixed points in time. First, it makes it easier to compare results. So, if you’re running a client survey in September 2026 and you last did it September 2024. You can compare from two fixed points in time. If you’re running your client surveys after each engagement with a client, that’s much harder to see change. Second reason to run them at fixed points in time. In my experience, you get a much higher completion rate compared to running surveys after onboarding a new client or an annual review meeting, and then the third reason to run them at fixed points in time it opens up the playing field for you to be asking for Google and VouchedFor reviews after taking on a new client or doing an annual review meeting, and they’re Incredibly valuable, your client after coming on board with you or doing an annual review meeting is feeling very positive towards you and what they’re hopefully achieving because they’re working with you, and therefore that’s the time to be getting feedback in public. So, in my view, and this is something we’ve recommended for a long time, review request Google and VouchedFor after onboarding a new client for an annual review meeting, client survey at fixed points in time every year or two, and if we’re going to take it from an idea into a habit and getting it done, the firm needs to allocate enough time, money, and resources for doing it. It’s a big project if you’re going to do it properly, yeah. Which is why a lot of firms outsource it to us, but allocate the time, money, and resources. Dan, anything that’s come in?

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, we’ve had some comment from Amelia around the Yardstick Review Responder tool. So Amelia says “I’m a big fan of the Yardstick Review Responder tool, although we have stopped using ChatGPT for security purposes. So I’d love to see it built in Copilot too, if that would be possible for the Yardstick wizards”.

Phil Bray  

I can give you the instructions. I can give you the instructions, Amelia, and then you could maybe go and build it from there and copy and paste those instructions. If you just drop me an email, remind me to do it. I’ll copy and paste instructions over, and then you can build it in Copilot. Dan, what’s anything else?

Dan Campbell 

No, let’s let’s carry on.

Phil Bray 

Right, number six. Speaking with clients and prospects about referrals, getting into the habit of speaking with clients and prospects about referrals. Why is it important? Well, conversations, let’s go back a step. The referral strategy should be based on three things: client education, client communication, and client appreciation. Client education, communication, and appreciation. And the education element should educate them on who to recommend you to, how to do it and when to do it, and one of the most effective ways of doing that is the adviser planner having a conversation as part of a wider update about the business at the end of an annual review meeting. And just to demonstrate the effectiveness of that, some stats from a planner we work with, sole planner, sole practitioner firm. In 2024, he had conversations with about 31% of his clients in that year about referrals. 2025, it went up close to 53% and 2026 it’s 70%. He received in 2024, nine referrals, 22 in 2025, and this year is projected to have 29, sole practitioner, a relatively small number of clients. So that’s an increase in referral conversations of 127%, and an increase in referrals 222%. Massive increase, and it’s free. Having a conversation with your clients about referrals in the context of a business update is absolutely free. There is nothing to stop you doing it, apart from maybe the open mind, but certainly the habits. And the way I would do this is at the end of every annual review meeting, you have some dedicated time, five minutes. When you ask the client if you can just talk to them about the business, “can I update you about a few things in the business?” And at that point you will explain to them what’s going on in the business, explain where you want to take the business. Explain if they want to refer people to you and recommend people to you, who they should recommend you to, how to do it, and when to do it. We suggest advisers, planners do this at the end of the annual review meeting, not at the start. You have to put the client first, and also we suggest that you could do it as a conversation, but I think you’re much better to do it as a conversation, plus a few visual aids, half a dozen slides, a printed PDF, two slides, something like that. And that’s because some of us are auditory learners, some of us are visual learners. Most of us have a bit of both. I wouldn’t dream, for example, of doing this presentation today without the supporting slides because you’d remember less of it. So would I. We’d all remember less of them. So slides or the visual aid gives you a track to run on, and signpost at the start of the annual review meeting that at the end, you just want to spend five minutes talking about the business, and at the end give the business update, and it makes a massive difference to whether clients are fully equipped to be able to refer and recommend you on. And just looking at those stats, they speak for themselves. And I could have chosen many more examples of firms we work with where they’ve seen an increase like that. So, habit number six, speaking with clients about referrals. Still on referrals takes into habit number seven, and the habit that we’re going to talk about here is showing appreciation. Talked about the three prongs of a referral strategy: communication, appreciation, and education. And this is the appreciation element. Why is it important? Well, we all like to be appreciated. We all like it when people say thank you to us. It also taps into some of the benefits of effort bias, because what we’re going to talk about here is appreciation that’s over and above a simple email or a phone call. So it taps into effort bias, where people attribute more value to things that they think have taken more effort, and also it rewards the behavior we want to encourage people recommending you onto other people. So, what would we recommend you do? I think the first thing to do here is explain to your team and stakeholders why this matters, and the team needs to know why it matters because we need them to do certain things here. Stakeholders, and that might be the higher ups, it might be people in finance, people who write the checks. They need to understand why we’re doing it as well. And we’re doing it because we want to get more referrals and recommendations from existing clients. They’re the best type of new enquiry, got the highest conversion rate, lowest cost of acquisition. It’s obvious that we start marketing here. I would then appoint one person in your business as the referral rewarder. The referral rewarder, and clearly, if you’re a sole practitioner business, husband and wife team, then it’s going to be either you as an individual or husband or wife. If, however, you’re in a bigger business, you can appoint somebody in. Amelia, this could be you in your business, and that taps into a principle from Will Guidara’s unreasonable hospitality, and I’ve gone 39 minutes before I’ve mentioned that one. And when they talk about dream weavers, dream weavers, it’s quite American, and it doesn’t really fit here, so I’ve gone with referral rewarder, and this is the person that is going to have responsibility for making sure that the firm shows appreciation at these three points. So, point number one: when the referral is received, I would recommend you send a handwritten thank you card. Emails okay, phone calls okay, but a handwritten thank you card will really stand out. If you go down to the doormat today, and there’s three envelopes, a bill, a bit of junk, and a handwritten envelope, pretty much guarantee you will open the handwritten envelope first. Stands out and taps into effort bias. It takes more effort to buy a card, write a card, write the envelope, put a stamp on it, put in the post than sending an email. When the referral converts, I would send a personalised gift. It might be 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 months before the referral converts. So they sent the card 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months ago. Referral now converts. Time to just elevate the appreciation. And I’m not a big fan of generic gifts. I think we should ditch the hampers and champers and get more personal. Personalisation of the gift is more important than the value. Three ways to personalise it. You might know the client well enough, but social media stalking is quite handy. Good way of understanding what your clients are into. Or pick up the phone to the new client. “John introduced us. I’d like to send John something. You know him really well. What’d you think we should send?” So when the referral converts, personalised gift. For bonus points, you could consider a subscription-based gift. You can get lots of things on subscription these days: books, wine, coffee, whiskey, magazines, all sorts of things. Set it up for six months. Every month it lands for six months. It’s a touch point with your brand, and your client remembers why they’re getting it. Then the last point, and you can see why we need this referral rewarder in the team to make sure these things happen. Last point, when the person who was referred to you, who has now become a client, leaves you a Google or VouchedFor review, take a screenshot of it, send it to the client who made the original introduction. “Dear Dan, thanks for introducing me to Abi. Abi just left me this lovely Google review. Thought you’d like to see it”, and that closes the loop, shows Dan in this case that Abi had a good experience, and it validates Dan’s decision to recommend Abi to us. Dan’s disappeared, validates Dan’s decision to recommend Abi to us. So that’s what we do in terms of showing appreciation when referrals are received, Dan. I can see a few things triggering off. Have we got any questions?

Dan Campbell  

I’m still here. My microphone and webcam turned off, so maybe Abi’s referral wasn’t a positive one, and she’s taking me off air. Yeah, we’ve got some really nice anecdotes from Scott that I’ll read out actually, so this goes back to the referral thing, and Scott says ”the odd referral thing I found was lots of clients were happy to refer us. We just hadn’t told them they had permission to do so.” So now we have a full referral program in place to encourage referrals and let everyone know they have our permission to share our details. And then Amelia follows this up by saying “we found this too, and one of our clients said they didn’t realise we were looking to grow. The conversation led to the client referring his friend to us shortly after.”

Phil Bray 

Such an important point. So some clients, like Amelia said, don’t know that you want to grow, And some advisers have told me about clients ringing them up and saying “is it okay if I recommend you to my brother? And the advisers are thinking “of course it’s okay”, but actually, go back to cold hard blood running through your veins. We know it’s okay, but have we actually communicated to that client that it’s okay? And the other thing that I think some papers do, I’ve certainly done it. Some advisers sometimes do it. I think there is one thing that an adviser might say at the start of an annual review meeting or the start of a new client meeting that is actually preventing them from getting more referrals. I’m not going to tell you what it is. It’s in this Friday’s blog, so that’s going to be out this Friday. Dan, is there anything else we need to deal with right now?

Dan Campbell 

Just Chris asking “what book you were talking about?” Abi’s answered, it was Unreasonable Hospitality. So if anybody else missed that on point seven, it’s Phil’s new favorite book, and rightly so because it’s fantastic. It’s Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara.

Phil Bray 

Fabulous book. Okay, number eight, habit number eight. What is it? Walking in a prospect’s shoes, and as we’ve spoken about before, people will go on a digital journey to your door. They will Google you. They will look you up online before getting in touch. Our research shows that 75% of people will visit your website when they’re considering whether to use you or not, and that includes people who are referred to you. So people will take a digital journey to it all. If you impress them on that digital journey, they’re more likely to get in touch. If you do the opposite of impressing them, and you create doubt, maybe there’s a bit of friction there. They’re going to look elsewhere. People are fickle at this point. They have no loyalty to any brands, they have no loyalty to you. So we need to impress them on that digital journey to your door. So how do we do it? I think what you need to do is set up monthly reminders, and that reminder is to Google yourself and run some prompts on AI. So let’s deal with Google first. So when the time comes each month, search for your business and yourself in different ways, slightly different contextual text. “Dan Campbell financial planner”, “Dan Campbell financial adviser”, as well as your business, maybe some you know misspellings, that sort of stuff. And then, excuse me, on the first two or three pages of Google, click every link and make sure that it’s correct and up to date. And if it’s incorrect or not up to date, go and correct it and update it. And the reason you do this every month is because new platforms that you don’t know about will be including your information. I did this last weekend, two weekends ago, maybe for Yardstick, and I found two websites that have got incorrect information about Yardstick. Got our old address and old telephone number, so I just emailed them and updated it. And those two websites were not there last time I did it, back in July. So set yourself monthly reminders, search for yourself, click every single link on the first two or three pages, and look for inconsistencies, errors, things that aren’t completed. If you’re looking for somewhere to start with that, for those of you who get your accreditations through the PFS, the Personal Finance Society, this afternoon go and look at your listing on the PFS “Find an Advise” directory. I will bet you a few quid that it’s out of date. Most of them aren’t fully completed. Then, if we’re flipping this from Google traditional Google search to AI, go and run dummy prompts on the main AI platforms. We can give you some dummy prompts in the follow-up notes. Go and run them on the main platforms. Whenever you do this on Google or the main AI platforms, use incognito searches or temporary chats, so that it’s not remembering what you did before. Go and look at the sources the AI is using, and make sure that information is up to date, and make sure that any information it returns about your business is up to date as well. And if it’s not, correct it. Number nine, sending monthly newsletters. This is a hill we will die on at Yardstick. The right frequency to send newsletters is monthly. Quarterly is just not right. Why is monthly right? It increases your client touch points gives 12 touch points a year rather than four, and there’s plenty of research to show that there is a link between advocacy, the likelihood of someone referring you on, and the number of touch points each year. Second, it nurtures prospects more effectively. So remember, I talked about that middle box prospects that you want to work with but don’t immediately sign up. If you do nothing to nurture them, the time and money you’ve spent creating that prospect is wasted. Whereas if you nurture the prospect and a monthly newsletter is the foundation of that, they will hear from you on a regular basis. You will add value to them. They’ll have a touch point with your brand. They’ll get to know you. So when they are ready to engage, it’s more likely they’re going to come back to you and start their search elsewhere. It enables more timely communication. If there’s something that you want to say, ISA changes, for example, you can do it in the next monthly newsletter rather than waiting for three months. We’ve got research that shows, and we’ve done tests on this, that the engagement rates, the rate at which people open, the rate at which people read the articles, is higher on monthly than quarterly, and also it demonstrates consistency and reliability. I was talking to somebody a while ago about a trust equation, and one of the things that drives trust is reliability and another is consistency. So, if you can be seen as sending your newsletter the same day, same time every month. People will feel that you are consistent, and that breeds confidence. So, how do we get into a habit? The first thing is to do is remember why you’re sending them. I know firms who, in the past two months, “so and so was on holiday. We’re not sending a newsletter this month”. What? Just because somebody in the team is on holiday means that we hundreds of people are missing out on a communication. Come on, that doesn’t make sense. So remember why we’re sending it. Remember how important this is. Set a fixed monthly date. We tend to go on a Saturday morning, 8, 9, or 10 am, for all sorts of reasons. Then dedicate the resource internally to doing this and getting it done, and being realistic there. If you don’t think you can do it, what’s that saying Mark Manson talked about? “If it’s not a hell yeah, it’s a no.” So if “hell yeah, we have time to do this, we have the desire and the inclination to do this”, then it’s a no. Outsource it, and then using your KPI dashboard, review the notes. Sorry, review the results every month, make notes, and make changes to the next edition. Dan I see we’ve got a couple of questions. I’m going to finish off, and then we’ll do the questions if that’s alright. 

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, it sounds good.

Phil Bray 

Okay, number 10, saving content ideas when they spring to mind. So, why is this important? The first thing we need to think about is the process of writing content. That might be a blog, a guide, a webinar, a LinkedIn post, TikTok video, whatever, any form of content. The process of writing content is ideation, research, writing, editing, proofing, and then building. Six things. Most people find ideation as the first point and the hardest point. So when you sit down to write, stare at a blank sheet of paper, you can just feel all the inspiration leaving your body with that pressure to write. And that’s why inspiration doesn’t strike exactly when you need it, so we need to recognise that ideation and writing are two different tasks. Avoid writer’s block by getting into the habit of writing down and noting ideas when they come to you. Now typically ideas for content, LinkedIn post, video, webinar, blog, etc will come to you when you are doing other things that are not related to work, walking the dog, in the shower, in the gym, driving, wherever. So you need to find a way of recording those things. Personally, I use email. I email myself. It’s a bit sad, but it works. And comedians call this the comedian’s notepad. Pre digital age, comedians would have a little notepad, and when a joke, an idea for a joke or a sketch struck them, they’d write it down. Comedian’s notepad, and you need, if you want to produce content on a regular basis, you need your version of that. So that means you can record ideas immediately, and then review them maybe weekly or when it comes time to produce the content, and that means you have no more blank pages or missed deadlines. So basically, what we’re saying is they get into the habit of writing down ideas when they strike, so when it comes to time to write, you have all the ideas in the world, and all you’ve got to do is start writing. So those are the 10 habits. If you do these things, you will generate more leads. You will make content writing easier because you already know what you’re going to write about. You will get closer to maximising the referral opportunity because, as Scott said, clients have got permission to refer and recommend to you. They’re more likely to know who to recommend to, how to do it, and when to do it, and then they’re going to feel appreciated. We will also improve our communication consistency, and that communication consistency is linked to trust, and it’s equally linked to referrals because of the increased number of touchpoints. We’ll be tracking marketing results and looking for ways to improve with evidence-led decisions, and you’re going to be more impressive to humans and AI. So, what’s not to love? And there is nothing in there that I think is hopefully particularly difficult. If anybody’s got any questions about how to do those things, then just get in touch or ask the question now. And I am no expert when it comes to producing habits, but a few things that have worked for me. So one of the things is explain the why. I think people are going to be much more likely to get into good habits if they understand why they are doing something and why something is important. I think there are some examples in there where we can make people’s lives easy by reducing friction. For example, thank you cards. If you get a referral, there is a lot more friction if you have to go out to John Lewis, buy a card, come back, write the envelope, write the card, put a stamp on it. So buy a set of 10 cards and keep them in the office. So look for ways to reduce friction. Think you track progress. A lot of firms we work with, where they’ve got multiple advisers, will track progress on Google and VouchedFor reviews. Seeing some firms make that part of their KPIs now with advisers, certainly providing ways to incentivise and reward, which takes us on to recognising success. This one I really like. Use a formula, “after I do X, I will do Y.” So after I get a lead in, I will record it. After I get a referral in, I record it and send the thank you card. After I have an idea, I write it down. So I really like that connection. After, I will do. I think if we give people in the team specific responsibilities for producing the KPI dashboard, being your referral rewarder, they are specific responsibilities and ownership for jobs. And then, when we need other people to do other things, make it bloody obvious what we need to do when. Set prompts and reminders, and then make sure someone is checking what they’re doing. Yeah, so they’re just some of the things that I’ve seen work. But this is the guy who’s the expert on this, James Clear Atomic Habits. We’ve got 10 copies of the book to give away. We’ll give those away to the first 10 people who email me now phil@theyardstickagency.co.uk. In the subject line, put the words “atomic habits”. Don’t need to put anything else in the body. Don’t need to think you’re being rude. Just put the words “atomic habits” into an email to me right now. First 10 who are quick off the mark will get the copies of the book. Right, we’ll do some questions in a minute. Abi, do you want to talk about next month’s webinar?

Abi Robinson 

Oh yes, of course. So fees. We’ve produced a lot of content over the year about disclosing fees, and it’s never been binary for us whether you should do it or not. There are plenty of pros and cons and things to consider. But a bit of research in the US has found that just shy of 62% of consumers do want to see information about fees and about pricing before they will contact an adviser. So it did feel like a good time to offload our brains, everything we know about disclosing fees, things we’ve learned, what you need to consider, different ways of doing it, the objections that we often get, and how you can overcome them if you do want to disclose fees on your own website. So that’s what we’ll be doing next month, 21st October, and I will put the link to register in the follow up email if you’re not quick enough. But you can also scan that QR code if you’re too busy emailing Phil to get Atomic Habits. Then you can catch up later. If you’ve already emailed him, then get that QR code scanned, and look forward to seeing you there.

Phil Bray

Thank you, Abi. Let me put the QR code back on here so people can get there and register their place on the fees workshop. I think that’ll be a good one. We’ve never done that webinar before where we’re going to go into such detail. So yeah, ping back your ears, and that’ll be a good session. Dan, what have we got to finish off with?

Dan Campbell 

We’ve got quite a bit. So we’ve got a few questions about recording today’s session, so I can answer that. We will send an email to everybody present afterwards with the recording. A few people have asked for the actual slides as well, so we’ll put a link to those there too, and all the resources and bits we mentioned today will be in there too. So everything will be in one place. So don’t worry; you can absolutely return to this session if you found it useful. And then let’s ask Scott’s question from earlier. So Scott says, “how often is the point of engagement different from the point of inspiration, for one of a better word? What I mean is, how often does someone contact you via your website, but it was a LinkedIn post that actually made them reach out? It seems possible to overstate some sources of leads and understate others.”

Phil Bray 

Yeah, it’s a really good question, and I think this goes back to how we define the source of a lead. So the source for me is not email, website, telephone call, WhatsApp message, text message. Can’t think of any others. They’re methods of communication. Your website in and of itself will never generate a lead because there is always a method of finding your website. So the source is not the method of communication. The source is where they first heard about you. So if somebody searches on LinkedIn for a financial adviser, sees your post, Scott, follows you for six weeks, thinks you a good egg, goes and Google’s you, looks on your website, and then completes the website enquiry form. The source where they first heard about you was a LinkedIn search. The same thing happens. Google search for a financial adviser near me. They go onto your website, look at your voucher. Reviews and go and check you out on the FCA register. The source is a Google search, so I think the answer to your question, Scott, is source is where they first heard about you.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect, thanks, Phil. Let’s go to Michael’s question next. Michael asks “our clients are a big fan of the monthly Yardstick newsletter. I have recently discovered the newsletter management information statistics. I would love to know your thoughts on how to use these statistics to create sales.”

Phil Bray

Thank you very much. Checks in the post. Told you, certainly, to show appreciation. So I think it’s a really good question. We honestly could run a full webinar on that. What I’ll do is think about running a full webinar. Certainly, write a blog on it because we need to go into a lot more than the few minutes we’ve got left today. So, a really good question. Thanks for the prompt. Let me and Abi have a chat tomorrow, and we’ll have a think about what we do with that.

Dan Campbell

Thanks, Phil. David’s question next. David asks “is there a best time of the week or month to send a newsletter?”

Phil Bray 

So, if we’re talking about a B2C newsletter, where it’s a financial adviser, planner, or mortgage broker sending it to their clients, I would go Saturday morning, and I would go at 8, 9 or 10am. That’s because we are still some of us, some people are still in work mode a bit on a Saturday morning. Kids are at swimming practice, and you’re scrolling through your phone looking at a few emails. I know some people are still on their emails on a Saturday morning because they’re working. If they’re not, and they hit it on a Monday morning, you’re still going to be quite close to the top of the inbox. So if it’s B2C, I would go at 8, 9, or 10am Saturday morning. If it’s B2B, I would go on a weekday in the morning.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. I think that’s it for questions actually. I’ll just leave on a quote that Scott shared, “writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” Yeah, very true. Brilliant. Yeah, that’s all our questions and comments answered.

Phil Bray  

Okay, Dan. Thank you, Abi. Thank you. Thank you to everybody for attending today. Your questions and your interactions. It’s been a lot of fun. We’ll see you next month, Wednesday 21st October. Talk about everything you need to know about the fees page, building a fees page in an hour. See you soon, guys. Bye bye.