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15th October, 2025 - Webinar replay

The 10 types of social proof you’ll need in 2026 to impress humans and robots

Phil Bray 

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our second webinar in 24 hours. Yesterday, we were joined by the fantastic Marcus Sheridan to talk about fees pages on websites, and today, we’re going to talk about social proof. Why you need social proof to impress both humans and robots, and why you’ve got a window now I think, for the next three months to the end of the year, two and a half months to the end of the year, start planning for next year. So it felt like a good topic to be talking about today. Specifically what we’re going to cover. And we’ve been banging on about social proof for years. I remember in 2018 someone said to us at Yardstick, “bang on about social proof a lot”. And you know what? He’s right. We do. And there’s a bloody good reason for it. In fact, there’s two reasons for it now. It impresses humans and impresses robots, AI robots. And we’re going to talk a little bit about why, a couple of slides on theory, and then we’re going to dive deep into the 10 types of social proof you’re going to need in 2026. We’re going to talk about why you need it. We’ll have a little bit about maybe how you can, how we can help, and things you should be doing yourself. And then, because 10 is quite a big number, I’m going to put myself in your shoes and prioritise what you should be doing based on what I think you must do, should do and could do, always like that framework. So let’s give that a go. So we’ll do a bit of theory, we’ll do the 10 types, and we’ll send you away with a plan. Hopefully that sounds good. Dan will explain a couple of other things about how we’re going to do it.

Dan Campbell

Sure thing, yeah, 10 is a big number, isn’t it? I mean, two webinars in two days feels like a big number. Let’s do 10 webinars in 10 days. Actually, let’s not. So what do we all need to know for today’s session? Well, first things first, we are recording the webinar today, so don’t worry too much about making any notes. Focus instead on getting stuck in and of course, it’s a nice safe space we have here on the webinars, isn’t it? Which means we encourage plenty of questions and comments. Agree with us, disagree with us. Tell us we’re talking nonsense, or tell us that we’re speaking complete sense. And you’ve learned a lot. I think I prefer that one. I think Phil would too. So you can do that by using the Q&A box or the chat. I’ll be monitoring both, and I’ll read some out at regular intervals, and depending on where we end up, in 60 minutes time, we’ll sweep as many up as we can before we say goodbye. Now, as I mentioned earlier, we’re recording the webinar. Well, you’ll receive a neatly packaged follow up email with a video link to all the important notes and resources we mentioned later today. Of course, as always, we have Abi to thank for that, who’ll be working furiously behind the scenes to make that happen. So let me pass you over to Phil, who’s going to give us 10 ways to impress humans and robots with social proof. Phil over to you.

Phil Bray 

Cheers mate, thanks. So let’s start with why, Simon Sinek always talked about that, let’s talk about starting with why and social proof has been essential to impressing humans for years, decades now. And there’s a few reasons for that. First is showing beats telling, so you will say that you’re great. You will talk about the outcomes you achieve for clients. You’ll talk about the peace of mind you give them, the reassurance you give them, whatever it might be, the benefits of the service. But you’ll talk about that, that’s fine, but showing them those benefits using the thoughts and words of other people is so much more powerful, and it’s incredibly powerful on their digital journey to your door. So everybody, whether it’s a new client, a potential team member if you’re recruiting, a potential seller if you’re looking to buy IFA businesses, they all go on a digital journey to your door. So in times gone by when I started in financial services, if a potential client was referred to a couple of different financial advisers, the accountant recommended them to somebody, their best mate recommended them to somebody. And they’ve got two names. Maybe the adviser or the name of the firm, but they’ve got a couple. They would have probably just picked up the phone to one of them, whoever answered the phone first, they would have booked a meeting with. The level of due diligence was really quite low. Now, though, fast forward to 2025 that same person has got Google on their phone, their laptop, their iPad, and now they’ve got ChatGPT, or similar. I’ll use ChatGPT as a shorthand for every other AI application of that nature. And what they’re going to do, they’re going to search for that person online. That’s why Marcus, who was on the webinar yesterday, talked about 70 to 80% of the buying decision made before somebody meets you, and that’s because people search for you online. They first meet you on the Google search results page and get to know you on your website. And in that example, where I was recommended to an adviser that my best friend uses and one that my accountant uses, I’m kind of scoring up points on that digital journey and working out who I’m going to get in touch with. So social proof is vital for impressing prospects on that digital journey to the door. And then for those of you who want clients in a relatively tight local area, and also, if you work in niches, there’s a few people on this call I can see who work in niches helps to boost your search engine optimisation as well. So for humans, showing beats telling it impresses people on that digital journey to your door, and it boosts your search engine optimisation. And that has been true since whenever Google became omnipresent in our lives. Since then, though, what? Maybe two years ago, we have had robots come on ChatGPT and similar, and for these machines, whatever you want to call them, your social proof is an expertise indicator. So one of the things we need to remember is that we as consumers use ChatGPT and other similar LLM’s very differently to the way we use Google. So the average search on Google is something like six words. It’s really quite short. The average prompt, and it is really important that we differentiate between searches on Google and prompts and questions in AI. The average question or the average prompt in AI is 24 words long. Big difference, and we use it differently. And one of the ways we use ChatGPT, etc, differently is to ask it for “who is the best? Which is better? Compare”. Yeah, we’re using it almost as a human, a counterparty, asking it questions. And if you ask ChatGPT or an AI application, “who is the best, compare these two financial advisers given my circumstance”, it’s going to look for expertise indicators, so your social proof helps to tick that bond. Your social proof we talked about earlier also boosts your search engine optimisation where you rank on Google, and that’s at the intersection between SEO ranking on Google and AIO, AI optimisation, because ChatGPT, etc, when it is looking to answer, “who are the three financial advisers in Nottingham”, “who are the best three financial advisers in Norwich?” You know what? It does a Google search. It uses the information out on Google, and therefore, to a degree, the higher you rank on SEO, there’s a logic more likely you are to be ranked by AI, not guaranteed, but there is a link, and then it helps humans find you. This stuff helps humans find you and it helps AI impress those humans who are looking for you. And some of those humans are looking because they’ve been referred to you. Some of those humans are looking because they’re doing a service based search. So social proof, to sum up this section, it’s always, always, always been important. It’s why we’ve banged on about it, to use those words, for the last however, many years now, Yardstick has been going, what’s it now? Eight years, six months, eight years, 10 months, something like that.

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, it’s coming up to a decade. It’s scary.

Phil Bray 

That’s gonna be a big party. So it’s always been important. It’s doubly important now. So as we head into 2026 what are the 10 types of social proof that we should be having? And I have not ranked these deliberately. So there are 10. Believe me when I say that there are 10, but I’ve not ranked them, and that’s because I’m going to do the prioritisation at the end. So where do we start? Client testimonial videos. For me, these are absolutely essential forms of social proof. The vast, vast, vast majority of financial planning and advice practices do not have these. There’s all sorts of reasons why they don’t have them. They might not allocate the time, the money, etc. There’s all sorts of reasons why they don’t have them. They are, for me, probably the gold standard of social proof. And what we’re looking for is clients to tell their stories. Why they came to you, broadly what you’ve done, but most importantly, what’s changed in their lives. How do they feel about their financial future because they’re working with you? Could they have done it themselves? Would they recommend you on to other people? We’re looking to tell their story in two to three minutes. Those videos can be recorded face to face or remotely. We’ve got a video team here who can help you, if you don’t want to do this yourselves, and can record videos face to face on location. We’ve even recorded videos in clients’ houses. Always good. It was good fun, or we can do them remotely. We’ve been doing that for about five years, since covid stopped us doing face to face videos back in 2020. And then once you’ve got the videos, you would use them on your website, in your social media, in your nurturing of prospects, there’s so many places that you can use them. It’s really important when they go on your website, each individual video has its own individual page, and we put the transcript on as well, because humans will watch the video, they’ll probably select a client who looks most like them. Robots won’t watch the video. They will, however, read the transcript. So we put the video on a website for the human, and we put the transcript on for the robot. But client testimonial videos, for me, we do get quite a bit of pushback. In fact, I think Dan’s got a question in a minute that came in before the webinar about pushback on client testimonial video, so we’ll deal with that. And if anybody’s got any concerns about client testimonial videos or questions about how you do them, pop that in the chat. But we do get quite a bit of pushback. But for me, they are incredibly important. Dan, what’s the question we had?

Dan Campbell 

So there’s a question from James who sent it through beforehand, and James says, “how do you approach clients about taking part in video shoots? Because I don’t think many of my clients will want to do it”.

Phil Bray 

Okay, James, so providing your clients don’t work in a niche of MI6 operatives or SAS team members, and if you did work in that niche, I could absolutely see why your clients won’t want to do it, but probably you’re not. Then, in my experience, if you ask the right clients in the right way, you will get enough people to do it. Their motivation is interesting. So whenever I went on to video shoots, face to face shoots, I would always ask the client, “why have you done this?” Because you get to know the client beforehand. You have a bit of a chat. And I would always ask, “why have you chosen to do this?” And the answer was always very simple. “I want to say, thank you”, or “it’s my way of saying thank you”. So clients will pay your fees gladly. But that’s kind of table stakes. It’s a hygiene factor. The video is an opportunity for them to go above and beyond and say thank you, so the first thing I would do is just reframe it a little bit and think about the person’s motivation for doing it. Then just accept our evidence that clients, if you ask the right ones in the right way, they are prepared to do it, you generally need to assume a 50% hit rate. So if you want to do three client videos, you’d have to ask six clients. And to make life easier, we’ve got an email template that you can use. It starts off with something along the lines of, “got a favour to ask, if you don’t want to do it just click delete, and we’ll never talk about it again”. And once you’ve done that, you can ask, you’ve got permission for that, and if you don’t want to ask by email, you can ask, use that as a script to ask on the phone. But in my experience, we’ve never had to stop a client video testimonial project because the adviser couldn’t find clients to get involved. I think there are a few people on this call today who have asked clients to take part in testimonial videos, and might be worth GP, I can see you’re here, if you want to put a comment in, that will be great, because I can see a few people on here who have got client testimonial videos and have approached them. So maybe some people on this call can give a bit of value and a bit of reassurance to other people who might be concerned. That’s a long winded answer to a Dan short question. Sorry. What do we got in the chat? I can just see something come in the chat.

Dan Campbell 

So GP’s expanded, so “I think there was hesitancy at the beginning, but several clients were happy to participate, and overall, it’s been great”.

Phil Bray 

Abi, perhaps you can have a quick look at the Broom’s website and just put the link into Broom’s videos while we’re here as well.

Abi Robinson

I can’t message everyone. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to throw you under the bus, but if you want to give me access, I can absolutely do that.

Phil Bray 

No, maybe Dan could do that instead.

Dan Campbell 

No, I’ve got the same restriction.

Phil Bray 

What’s going on here? Never mind. Never mind. We’ll put that in the follow up notes, shall we okay? We’ll put that in the follow up note. Right next, number two, Google reviews. Google reviews are incredibly important. First reason, your Google reviews appear top right hand corner in the Google business profile of a brand based search. So if I’m recommended to a financial advice firm, let’s take GP’s firm Broom IFA down in Brentwood, I’m recommended to Broom, I’m probably going to check them out. Might be because I just want some basic information, their telephone number, their email address. I want to check the postcode for their parking, just basic information. But I might also be recommended to another firm, so I am comparing and contrasting the two. So when I search online for in this case, Broom IFA, Google business profile comes up with a load of Google reviews. So it impresses prospects who are doing a company brand search. Clearly, we can use those Google reviews elsewhere in your marketing. We can embed them in your website. Every time you get a new Google review in, they can be put on social media, if the Google review is from a client who was previously recommended to you, a new client has previously recommended to you, go and paste it, send it to the original person who introduced you to just show them the outcome. Thank them again for the referral. So there’s loads of ways you can use Google reviews in your marketing. It’s also a local SEO ranking factor. So if someone does a service based search, “financial adviser Nottingham”, once you get past the ads, you get to a section that says business that shows three firms. Google’s algorithm to dictate whether you’re in those first three firms or not, is based on a variety of different things, including number of Google reviews, recency of Google reviews, and quality of Google reviews. So Google reviews are incredibly important, and for me, those Google reviews need to be a partner platform with VouchedFor. So I would be strongly recommending that every firm on here has reviews on both Google and VouchedFor. Anybody disagrees, feel free to put it in the chat. If anybody’s got any questions about that, put it in the chat. But I strongly recommend having both. The first reason is because I’m recommended to GP, I might not Google Broom, I might Google GP’s name, and therefore your VouchedFor reviews appear when I search for the advisers name. So Google reviews on a brand search the business, VouchedFor views on a brand search for the adviser. So ticking two boxes. Second reason Google reviews are hard to get. You’ve got to have a Gmail account to leave a Google review, doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile getting they absolutely are, but it’s just harder to get because you’ve got a Google account. Plus, when someone needs a Google review, there is two questions, “how many stars out of five?” And then a blank box. When people are met with a blank box, they panic and don’t know what’s type in. So there’s a couple of reasons why Google reviews are harder to get. And for every one Google review you get, you get between five and 10 on VouchedFor. But for me, the key reason here is they’re a partner platform, because they cover another base. Clearly, you can use the VouchedFor reviews in your marketing. You can embed them on the website with all the rep tools that VouchedFor offer. You can use them in your prospect nurturing as the top rated guide every year, Top Rated Adviser, Top Rated Firm in The Times and elsewhere. And this year, they introduced the awards as well, which were lovely, and were the first awards that I know of that are based on client reviews rather than what the judges think. So I would be using two platforms, Google and VouchedFor. Dan something in the chat?

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, comment from Rachel that says “Google reviews have been an incredible referral generator for them, and they’ve only got 25”.

Phil Bray 

Nice thank you Rachel, promise everybody else that was not set up before this webinar, Rachel, maybe tell us a bit more about how you collect those reviews and how that’s worked for you. But thank you for the comment. Now there is a third platform that some firms may wish to consider, and this is Glassdoor. So Glassdoor, and if anybody on here has got a Glassdoor profile that runs a business, owns a business, or manages a business, and the business’ have got a Glassdoor profile just put a note in the chat. But Glassdoor is a platform where current and former employees can leave reviews for their current or former employer, and I would say it’s appropriate for larger firms. If you’re a sole trader with no staff, then you’re hardly going to go and produce a Glassdoor profile and review yourself, no matter how tempting it might be. But if you’ve got a team, and the larger the team, the more likely you are to have Glassdoor. Now, the page shows a variety of different things about the business, but primarily it’s there to surface and showcase reviews. Now, one thing that’s really interesting with Glassdoor or two things actually, the first is the page, the Glassdoor page, if your business has got one, appears, often appears, quite high up on a Google brand search. So recently, when I’ve been googling The Yardstick Agency, because I do from time to time, you’ve got The Yardstick website at the top, second link down, Glassdoor reviews. We’re working with a firm at the moment. Their Glassdoor profile is the third link down, and this takes me on to the second point. The reviews that they have on Glassdoor are negative. They’re not great. Now, they’re quite historical, but they’re still not great, and they didn’t know they had them until I pointed it out. And that’s the second issue with Glassdoor, current and former employees can go on there and leave reviews positively or negatively, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them, assuming those reviews are within the guidelines of Glassdoor. So what I would be suggesting to firms is get ahead of the game. Control the narrative. Build your Glassdoor profile. Reach out to team members, as we do at Yardstick, and get them to leave reviews. Control the narrative, try and control what goes on there as much as you can. And therefore, if someone does go on and starts ranting on a keyboard, as sometimes people do, then there’s already a load of positivity on there anyway. So if anybody does have a Glassdoor profile, then come back to us on here, because I’m interested to know how it works. I would, if you do employ people, after this call, I would go and do a quick search on Glassdoor, so go to Google, type your business name in, and then Glassdoor and see what comes up, and see if there’s any any reviews on there, because I’ve seen it twice, really recently where the firm has got negative reviews, and that could damage their recruitment. It could certainly damage client recruitment as well if there’s negativity there, so Glassdoor reviews. And we’ll come back in a bit to talk about where that links in the shoulda, coulda, woulda profile. If anybody wants some help with Glassdoor, we can help with building profiles. Right next, client surveys. So client surveys are a really important form of social proof. Personally, I would suggest that you run client surveys at fixed points in time. So we run our client survey, for example if I run a financial service business, in October every two years, and the reason I suggest doing fixed points in time is three reasons. First, you get a higher response rate. Second, you can more easily compare and contrast change from one fixed point to another. And third, if you’re not sending client surveys after an annual review meeting or after you’ve onboarded a new client, it frees up that time to be collecting Google and VouchedFor reviews, which are incredibly important. So for me, client surveys are fixed points in time, and Google and VouchedFor reviews after you’ve onboarded a new client or you’ve done an annual review. So what are the five reasons to run a client survey? Number one, shows you care. If you ask your clients what they think and then do something with that information, it shows you care. Shows you trying to improve things. Shows you want their opinion. Second, it helps you to improve your business. So a client survey will tell you. Your clients will tell you what they like that you’re doing right now, which is nice to hear. You can carry on doing it, but it doesn’t improve the business. They will tell you what they dislike that you’re doing right now. And therefore you can just want to improve the business. And they might tell you the things that they would like you to do that you’re not already doing again to help you improve the business if you use the client server in the right way. Hint, do not ask an NPS score question, because NPS don’t use NPS. Anybody want to know why? Ask me, and I’ll tell you. But, if you ask the right questions, for example, “has working with us helped achieve your financial goals?” And 99.35% of people say “yes, it has”. That’s a stat that should get on your marketing. It’s not 100%, 99.35 which means it’s more authentic, it’s accurate. So it should give data to use in your marketing, your client service should support the referral and recommendation strategy by showing you which clients would recommend you on. They’re your advocates. By showing you which clients have recommended you on in the past 12 months, they are your active advocates, and then explaining any barriers to recommending you. And then lastly, and this came in from John Netting who told me this from BareRock. And he’s really positive about client surveys, because his view is that they hope to identify problems when they’re small and relatively easy and inexpensive to fix, and when they’re big, really difficult to fix and really expensive to fix. So five reasons to run a client survey. I don’t know if we’ve got any questions so far, Dan, but we do get a bit of pushback, sometimes from often networks and PR insurers about client surveys, but generally speaking, providing you take them on the journey with you, you can overcome that, and if anybody wants any help running client surveys, we’ve got a package that does that, agrees the question, sends it out, does the analysis, does the follow up, etc. But Dan, have we got anything that we need to do with right now?

Dan Campbell

No, we’ve got one Glassdoor question from a little bit earlier, but we’ll sweep that up at the end. Okay, no worries.

Phil Bray

Right next awards. So awards, there’s three types of awards you could consider local business awards. So “Business of the Year Nottingham”, “Professional Service Award Nottingham”, for example, trade awards. So that might be, Money Marketing, Professional Adviser, New Model Adviser Top 100, Money Age, Money Marketing, that sort of stuff. And then niche awards, if you niche down into a sector, doctors, dentists, vets, that sort of stuff. There might be awards that you can go and you can enter. And what I’d say here is, do research. Not all awards are equal. Some are the type of awards where you get an email through saying, “we’ve won this award” and you never entered it, part with £2000, and you will get the trophy. Just ignore those. Others, where the judging process is clean, they’re the ones you should focus on. So choose carefully, when the window opens for entries, because they all have a window. Look at the categories and think, “yeah, that one might work, that one might work”. And occasionally look at some slightly left field categories, because they might be easier to win. They might get fewer entrants. Look at the questions and the criteria and ask yourself, honestly, “can we give good answers for this?” Look at previous winners, and if you like the categories, you’ve got a good set of answers, you can meet the criteria, and the previous year’s winners are broadly in your peer group. Then go for it. Take your time with the entry. Take your time with the entry. I spoke to an adviser last year who told me he’d written his chartered adviser entry in 20 minutes. That ain’t going to cut it with the judges. You’ve got to work really hard with these and then promote your successes. You’ve got to PR, the PR. So if you are shortlisted, shout about it on your social media with your clients, etc. If you win, shout about it. If you don’t win, shout about it because you were shortlisted. Hey, have another bite of the cherry. But awards are an incredibly important form of social proof for robots and for humans. And again at Yardstick, we’ve got a good track record of writing award entries on behalf of our clients. So if anybody ever wants to have a conversation about which awards to consider, when they should do it, and how to write really good entries and then how to promote them, let us know. Dan, we got something in the Q&A.

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, we got two questions, one about awards, which I’ll get to in a second. But first of all, let’s just go back to client surveys, where Rachel asks, “would you recommend client surveys to be anonymous to help clients feel able to be more honest?”

Phil Bray 

It’s a really good point. So we give them the option in the surveys that we do. Because on one hand, we might have a situation where somebody is more honest, if it’s anonymous, but then the information becomes less actionable. You can’t follow it up quite so easily with the individual. So it is a balance, and the way we’ve struck it is, at the start of the survey, we give people the opportunity when we run these on behalf of clients, we give people the opportunity to leave their name or answer anonymously. And then the last question, or almost last question I can’t quite remember, is, “do you want to change your mind?” Do you want to move? If you previously selected anonymous, do you now want to answer it and give your name? So we try to give people the choice there, Rachel, because in an ideal world, you want honesty, and you want those comments, those honest comments to be attributable to a person, so that you can then go and do something about it. Hope that helps Rachel.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant, thanks, Phil. And then on the award. So Matt asks a good question. “The cynic in me needs to ask, don’t you have to buy a seat or a table to win?”

Phil Bray 

In all those awards that I’ve talked about that are clean, the answer is no. The genuine answer is no. And some evidence to support that, I have judged entries, I was a judge at The Money Marketing Awards this year and judged the Best Small Firm category. I read 18 entries, 2000 word entries, 18 of them, and didn’t get told at that point who bought a table, who’d sponsored it. I did the interviews, didn’t at that point say who’d get to know who sponsored it, who bought a table. In fact, I never got to find out who sponsored it and bought a table, it’s just not the way these things work at this adviser level. Second thing I would say again, to support this, because I went to The Money Marketing Awards. Yardstick were nominated. We bought a table, and then we passed those tickets on to other people so we could decide who we would sit with and have a good night. And guess what? Yardstick didn’t win, but I did make it up onto the stage. I made it part of the stage because I was picking up an award for Lottie Kent, who won a fantastic category. Lottie didn’t go, so Lottie won without buying a seat. We bought a table, and we didn’t win. So for me, in my experience, there’s just no correlation. But I’m going to step off my soapbox tank, because I could carry on with that one for a while.

Dan Campbell 

I’m pleased that you gave us the context of why you were on stage, because otherwise people might think you just crawled on and wouldn’t get off.

Phil Bray

Storm the stage because we didn’t win. So we’ve done awards, talked about awards. If anybody’s got more questions on those, come back to us. Accreditations, so some humans will find accreditations such as chartered, certified, accredited, etc, whether it’s through the CII, the CISI, LIBF, so many acronyms, isn’t it? Resolution, solar, etc, they will find them reassuring. And there’s various reasons why they might find them reassuring. And once you’ve got them, you absolutely can use them in your marketing to set you apart from your peers and competitors. And from the robot perspective someone might type in, “I would like a chartered financial planner” and what you then need to do is to have explained on your website that you were chartered firm, you were chartered financial planner, try and educate those consumers, but also so that educational information that’s on your website is matched by ChatGPT and the AI. So what I would say here is from a marketing perspective, and I’m not sure I would be using marketing as a reason to go and get yourself chartered, get yourself certified, etc, think there’s other forms of social proof that are potentially more powerful, and certainly when it comes to Yardstick, we can help you, in no way, shape or form, to get chartered or certified, but if you have got it, then I would absolutely use it in your marketing to set yourself apart from your peers and competitors, but make sure you’re educating both the consumers and robots on your website and elsewhere about why you are chartered, how you became chartered, certified or credited, or whichever one is, how it sets you apart, etc. Marcus talked a lot yesterday about education, educational marketing. And again, I think that’s really, really important. So chartered, certified, accredited, if you’ve got them, use them. Next press coverage. So last month, we did a webinar with Greg Simpson of Press For Attention. Abi will put a copy of the link in the follow up and press coverage is the humans. It is a massive trust indicator, if you are quoted in The Times, The Telegraph, The Mail, the BBC, wherever it is. That is seen by consumers, clients, existing clients, prospects, and also professional connections as an expertise indicator and a trust indicator. And that’s simply because, if the BBC is trusting of you, why shouldn’t I trust you? Or insert other media outlets instead of the BBC, so they’re a trust indicator and a marker of expertise for humans. They’re the same for robots, and I’m convinced over time, those robots, the AI, will start to rank individual advisers higher when they give off trust indicators and marks of expertise. Thought in press coverage is a good example, and we’re going to get to another couple in a minute. Getting in the press is easier than it’s ever been. Social media, to a degree, has democratised PR. It’s very, very easy now, as Greg talked about on the webinar, to go and find out which journalists cover your beat, as Greg put it, write about the things that you want to talk about. You can find their email addresses really, quite straightforwardly now, you can follow them on social media. They’ve never been more contactable. That’s a double edged sword, because someone’s never been more contactable, that means their inbox is full. So you have got to really select the journalist carefully that you want to nurture. You’ve got to give them good stuff, tell them things they don’t know, make yourself useful with case studies, and then, as Greg talked about in that webinar, plan your strategy, so if they don’t reply, and your follow up. And if you do all that, it is relatively straightforward to get press coverage. I would also be thinking about press coverage in both the personal finance press, so on the Saturdays and Sundays in the weekend Times, Telegraph, Mail, etc. But I’d also be thinking about the trade press, which can be a stepping stone to the personal finance press, and again, is seen by clients, prospects, professional connections and robots as a trust indicator and definitely a marker of expertise and the trade press, relatively straightforward to get coverage in the trade press. Again, if you’re useful to the journalists, and you tell them something they don’t already know. Of course, when you have got the press coverage, it needs to be promoted. So what would you have your website and the logos of the organisations clustered by or quoted in, in a section in a press page. Go and look on The Yardstick website. We’ve got a press page of all our coverage. You might then promote the coverage on social media. You would put it into your newsletters. You would tell your clients about it. You tell your prospects, your professional connections about it. Press coverage, as I say, is relatively straightforward to get, more straightforward than most people think, and these days it doesn’t have to cost the earth. You could do it yourself, doing that research process that I’ve talked about. You could also go and look at services such as Newspage which is run by Dominic Hyatt and everybody else at Newspage. And again, I’ve seen a lot of firms having some really good success with Newspage. So press coverage, massive type of social proof that we should be looking for in 2026 for both robots and humans. Speaking opportunities. Again, this shows, if you’re invited to speak whether it’s in an event, somebody’s webinar on a podcast, again, it’s a massive trust and expertise indicator. If you are trusted by somebody that’s well known in a sector or on a popular podcast, and even if it’s a local, podcast, might be popular locally with a relatively small audience, but actually really engaged audience locally,if you are trusted by that host to speak on their podcast, their webinar, their face to face event, gives you an opportunity to show up your expertise and show other people that you’re trusted as well. It also gives you opportunities to repurpose that content. So the webinar we did with Marcus yesterday will become, we already talked about putting some of his quotes into it as a carousel, it’s going to turn into a blog. We turned Greg Simpson’s webinar last month into a blog the following week. There’s just so many opportunities to repurpose that content. And it also means you’re piggybacking other people’s audiences, so they will have their audience that they’re promoting their event, webinar or podcast to, and you might help them by promoting it to yours, but actually by appearing there as a guest, you are putting yourself in front of their audience. You’re on their stage, and that means you’re going to reach a new group of people. From an AI perspective, again, it’s similar to the press coverage. It’s a trust indicator. And you can reverse engineer this, by the way, go and type some questions, some prompts into ChatGPT or whatever you use to do it in the equivalent of a private browsing or private question. So it doesn’t we’re not training it as the question to go, look at what the results are. “Give me the top three financial advisers in Nottingham for a 65 year old, thinking about retirement in a face to face meeting, and I want a female adviser”. And then click sources, and it will tell you what it’s used and you can reverse engineer it. But I do believe the more your name appears online in press or in speaking opportunities, the more you will impress the robots next year. Then the last one couldn’t have done this webinar after yesterday’s webinar, without talking about disclosing fees online. So I’ll tell you in a minute where we put this on the must do, could do and should do list, but disclosing fees online, as Marcus talked about like yesterday, builds trust. If firms say they are transparent, then why not disclose fees online, shows transparency. And just to be clear, I think there’s pros and cons for doing it. I think the pros are building, and I think AI is one of the reasons the pro’s are building, because if people type in “ I want a financial adviser on how much they cost”, clearly, the universe of websites that AI can use will shrink from 100% to actually 14%, it’s only 14% of advisers websites disclose fees online, and if you’re disclosing fees online, you’re going to be in that 14% so it builds trust. You start to educate clients and prospects about how financial advisers charge, it helps to educate them about how financial advisers charge, about what’s fair, about what points they charge, etc, what’s features and benefits of the service. And as we talked about yesterday, it can help generate leads directly. So they are the 10 forms of social proof that you might like to consider in 2025 to impress humans and robots in 2026 and what I’m going to do in a minute, is prioritise those. I need some water, and I can see something’s coming on the chat.

Dan Campbell 

Right so we got a couple of questions. So we got one in from Jessica regarding speaking opportunities. So Jessica says “the idea of speaking opportunities fills me with dread, other than just doing it and hoping for the best, what tips do you have?”

Phil Bray 

I think doing and hoping for the best is probably quite a good tip, to be fair. So I think that there’s a few here. I would start with where you feel most comfortable. So some people might feel more comfortable talking on a podcast, for example, because if you’re talking to a podcast, there’s maybe one or two podcast hosts, and it becomes more of a conversation just between you and them, much more normal. So you could do that. I think if it’s face to face events, getting invited to panels is actually quite useful. So I absolutely get why, if you’ve not done it before, standing up on a stage in front of a room of 100 people and giving a keynote speech is really quite tricky. But it’s much less tricky, if you were to appear on a panel, there’s three other people, the Chairperson asking the questions. The questions are generally prepared beforehand, and it becomes a conversation. The spotlight isn’t only on you. There’s four of you up there, and it becomes a conversation. So you could do that in terms of appearing on a panel. You could start with podcasts. Webinars are pretty straightforward. I’m just talking to you, Dan and talking to you Abi. Obviously, they’re quite straightforward and nice and relaxed, isn’t it? The other thing you could do is go and get some coaching. I have a speaking coach, chap called Ed Darling. We’ll put Ed’s details in the follow up. And Ed did a webinar for us earlier on in the year, and Ed’s great speaking coach, and he will help you overcome whatever makes you nervous, and also will train you for the environment where you’re speaking, because it’s very different speaking like this to an event with a room full of people. It’s very different doing a keynote to some training. So again, long winded answer. But hopefully that’s helpful.

Dan Campbell

And it’s notable. I mean, because I mentioned a comment to the host and panelists saying, “Phil, the Darling effect is coming on nicely I see”, so question from Lance. A really interesting one. So Lance says “I’m interested to know why Trustpilot hasn’t been mentioned”.

Phil Bray

Okay, so why has Trustpilot not been mentioned? Personal opinion only. I think that Google and VouchedFor are better platforms, and I think there’s a logical decision tree here. Google has to be the first platform, because it impresses prospects when they do that brand search for you, there’s an immediate hit of positivity. So if Google is the first, we then need to think about the second because Google reviews are hard to get, and we don’t want to send people down a dead end. So therefore we need to give them another option. And you’re right Lance, it then becomes a conversation about Trustpilot and some others, or VouchedFor. The reason I much prefer VouchedFor is because the reviews appear when someone searches for the adviser. So we’re ticking another box. You’ve got all the rep tools. It’s set to specific in financial services, you’ve got the Top Rated you’ve got the awards VouchedFor will generate, occasionally, the odd lead directly as well. I’m not particularly bothered about that’s why I’ve not mentioned it. So for me, it’s just a decision tree Lance. Google and we need another because it’s hard to get Google reviews, and we don’t want to send people down a dead end. Therefore, spokes off. And I just think VouchedFor is a better proposition. I’m happy to be challenged on it, but I think VouchedFor is a better proposition.

Dan Campbell 

Thanks, Phil. So final question, this was from a while ago when we were talking about Glassdoor reviews. So a question from Claire that says, “I don’t want my business to have a Glassdoor profile, as I feel people might just use it to rant. Is this what you often see?”

Phil Bray 

From time to time, yes, two examples this week. Can’t actually stop your business having a Glassdoor profile if somebody goes and leaves a review for you. It’s one of those strange platforms where there’s nothing, somebody then goes and leaves a review, positively or negatively, or, I guess, neutrally. And that means that there is now a Glassdoor profile for your business. There’s no information on there. You’ve not claimed it yet, but you do then have to go and claim it, fill it in etc. And so it’s one of those things where you don’t know, you might not have any choice. Therefore, let’s get ahead of the game and own the narrative by building the profile, making sure it’s fully completed, and going to your team members and saying “would you mind?” And that’s to be fair, exactly what Abi’s done at Yardstick. And we’ve got a bunch of Glassdoor reviews on there, 53 I think now, 51 positive, two negative. Go and have a look at the negatives. Go and look at the positives. So we came up with these 10 ideas of things you could do at the back end of this year, start impressing humans and robots next year. How should we prioritise these? Because 10 is a big number, and if you have 10 priorities, you have no priorities. So where to start? And I’ve always liked this framework, must do, could do, should do. So I thought I’d use it here. Now, if I was running an advice practice, advice planning, mortgage brokerage, and let’s just say it was a complete blank sheet of paper, this is where I would start. So my must do’s, I would have on my must do’s, client testimonial videos, whether they’re recorded face to face in the adviser’s office or in the client’s homes. I would be doing Google and VouchedFor reviews, and I would be doing client surveys. For me, those are three incredibly important forms of what I call client driven social proof. So all of those are clients saying positive things about their adviser or planner, whether they’re saying it on video, on the reviews or on client surveys. And then you can use all that information in so many different ways. It will be picked up by Google. It will be picked up by the AI if you use it in the right way. So for me, I would have on the must do list client testimonial videos, minimum of three, generally VouchedFor and Google reviews and client surveys. Then on the should do list. I had awards here, whether it’s local awards, niche awards or trade awards. And again, pick carefully. There’s probably a dozen options, but I’d pick carefully, and we can help you choose. And here as well, if your business is of a size, where it’s sensible. I would also be doing Glassdoor reviews, because I think it’s partly a risk prevention exercise, but also helps you for a positive aspect of impressing any potential recruits in the future. And I also think it impresses clients, because if those positive Glassdoor reviews come up on the Google search results page, and you never know where someone’s going to click. You absolutely never know where someone’s going to click. I chatted with a client of an adviser a few years ago, and we’re just talking about that digital journey. And the client of the adviser told me that he went on to Companies House to look at whether the adviser filed his accounts on time, because if he was late filing his accounts gives a negative impression and be a red flag. So you never know what people are going to click. You can’t control what people click. You can control what they see, and you can’t control whether they click Glassdoor reviews, but you can control whether they see positive Glassdoor reviews based on how you treat your team members and what you get them to do on Glassdoor. So for me, I’ll get ahead of the game there. So awards and Glassdoor reviews I would put on the should do list. On the could do list, I would have accreditations, and that’s really because, from a marketing perspective, and impressing AI and impressing humans, I wouldn’t start going to sit my chartered exams. There’s better reasons to go and be chartered other than that. You could do press coverage. I think if you’re going to do press coverage and going to try and get in the press, it has to be a project for a year, and it has to be something that you do give a bit of time to. Almost every day, you have to be on it, whether it’s responding to alerts on Newspage, whether it’s looking at what journalists are doing, whether it’s trying to place stories, it’s quite a big commitment. If you get it right, and I said earlier, it is easier to get right than a lot of people think. If you get it right, the payoff can be huge, but that’s why I put that on the could do list. Disclosing fees online. Why is that on the could do list? Because I think there is pros and cons to doing it. I’m becoming much more persuaded that firms should be doing it. Still see some issues. And the reason I’m becoming more pro doing it is because of AI and the effect that’s going to have on that digital journey to people’s door. And then lastly, speaking opportunities. I think I put this on the could do list, because again it takes some planning. You’ve got to get good at speaking in whatever medium you prefer, whether it’s online, like this, on podcasts, or what events. You then have to look out for opportunities, maybe reaching out to people who run events, run podcasts, run webinars, and offer yourself as a speaker. That takes time. Then you’ve got to work through all the nitty gritty and ultimately get it filmed, get it presented, and then get it pushed out in public. So it can take some time. So for me, speaking opportunities, very much like press coverage, it’s got to be something you’re giving a lot of attention to, both in the prep, your abilities and the promotion of it. But again, you start becoming known as a, speak on a certain topic. A, you’ll get invited back to speak again, or by other people to speak on that topic. And B, it genuinely leads to inquiries. I can point to inquiries of the various things I’ve spoken on this year. It’s with a firm yesterday who came to us after seeing me speak on Abraham’s podcast, Adviser 3.0 so genuinely does work. So for me, on the must do list, client testimonial videos, VouchedFor reviews, Google reviews and client survey results on the should do awards and Glassdoor reviews. And on the could do accreditations, press coverage, disclosing fees online and speaking opportunities,

Dan Campbell

And of course, filing your accounts on time for that’s the must do as well.

Phil Bray 

That would work, that helped me – brand management. Yeah, I would go along with that.

Dan Campbell

Yeah, peculiar, isn’t it, where people end up, but you’ve got to watch all angles, I guess.

Phil Bray 

Can’t control what you click. You can control what they see. So three questions to take away today, guys, what will you do? When will you do it? And what help do you need? Can’t go and sit your chartered exams for you. Can’t go and see G10, G60, if that’s still a thing, shows how old I am. But we can help you with everything else. So if you need some help with everything else, whether it’s producing a plan, must do, could do, should do, list, or it’s actually implementing the plan, pick up the phone to Abi, drop Abi an email, and we’ll be very happy to help. Talking of Abi, next month what’re we doing?

Abi Robinson 

Yes, thanks, Phil. You’ve only got us once next month, so obviously we had to make it a good one. And Phil doesn’t rant very often. But I think if you have ever been on the receiving end of one of Phil’s rants, it will probably have been about newsletters. So considering that newsletters have November as alliteration, and Phil also has alliteration, and it’s his birthday next month, we’re going to let him have a bit of a run on the 19th of November and have a chat about a lot of mistakes that we’ve been seeing recently, annoyingly basic and easily avoidable mistakes that you might be making with your newsletter and how to fix them in advance of the new year to make sure that your audience want to receive them. So you can scan the QR code, or I’ll be putting the link in the follow up email that I’ll send later on today. So yeah, be cool if you could join us on the 19th of November for that.

Phil Bray 

Awesome, you want to ask a favour, Abi.

Abi Robinson

I do well, it feels a bit crass, doesn’t it? Coming after we’ve just been telling you how important Google reviews are, but it also means that we practice what we preach. So since it’s on the must do list, it would be wrong of me not to say, could you please, if you have taken something away from the session today, leave us a Google review. The link will be in the follow up email. I can’t put it in the chat, as we said earlier, but yeah, I’ll put it in the follow up email. And just a few words, I know it’s a big blank box and it’s a bit scary, but just saying that whatever your feedback is would be much appreciated because it helps us improve our sessions in the future.

Phil Bray 

Thank you. Abi, right. A couple of minutes, just in case, we’ve got any final questions. Dan, we’ve done plenty on the way through, have we got anything left?

Dan Campbell

We’ve got one from Kusal that asks if we could email over some remote online video testimonial examples. So why don’t we put that on the follow up? Abi, so everyone can benefit from those. So yes, to that, Kusal, we can sort that other than that, we don’t have any more comments or questions.

Phil Bray

No problem. If anybody wants to go and have a quick look at some videos, because this is what you want to do in the two minutes that you’ve got spare before 11 o’clock, go and Google a website called Druthers Financial Planning, D, R, U, T, H, E, R, S. There’s some good examples on their website. Go have a look at Cheltenham IFA, there’s some good examples there as well of videos that we’ve recorded remotely. Everybody, thank you for your time. Thanks for questions, Dan, thank you. Thank you, Abi, and we should be back next month to talk about newsletters, Cheers, guys, bye, bye.

Dan Campbell 

Take care guys, bye.