Creating social media accounts is just the beginning: Astute.

Social media marketing may be helping consumers find and research financial advisers but in the age of digital media, an online presence is just a ticket to the game, according to Hans Egger, director of Astute Wealth Advice, creators of the AstuteWheel.

“The good news is that if an adviser has executed the right social media strategies via Twitter and Google Adwords, for example, and has maximised SEO to improve rankings, then the adviser’s LinkedIn Profile, website, business and social Facebook pages, Twitter and blog should all appear on the first page of a consumer search,” Mr Egger says. “The bad news is that unless each of these touch points is engaging, consumers may simply move on – without the adviser ever even being aware they dropped on by.”

Each time consumers ‘touch’ the adviser, the adviser’s process or the advice business they make decisions about whether or not to proceed, according to Mr Egger. “If the adviser’s blog, tweets, website or social media accounts don’t resonate with people then they can very easily move on – and often do,” he says.

Mr Egger said that ideally, an adviser website should start a journey full of touch points that lead to moments of truth. “It should start as an education process that tells consumers not only what the financial adviser does but whether or not that particular adviser can help them,” he says. “If the answer is yes, the website should also contain a clear call to action that puts the consumer in contact with the adviser and starts the process.”

Consumers, he says, either consciously or sub-consciously, want answers to the following questions before actually making contact with an adviser:

• What is my experience with this financial planning practice going to be like?
• Will I like you?
• Will it be an easy process?
• How much value can you add to my financial situation initially, and ongoing?
• Can I find answers to all these questions before I make actual contact with you so that I can make a decision about whether or not to engage you?

“All adviser touch points present an opportunity for advisers to not only answer these questions but also to engage the potential client in the financial planning process and start preparing them for the first meeting,” Mr Egger said. “Websites, for example, can now include tools such as a welcome video, a five-minute health check and education about what financial planning actually is, to help them to start understanding their own specific financial advice needs.”

Websites can also be used to capture basic consumer data, according to Mr Egger. “Technology can now very efficiently help consumers provide answers to simple ‘fact find’ type questions like, age, date-of-birth, details of dependants, birth dates, financial position, etc., in preparation for the first adviser/client meeting,” he says. “That creates great efficiencies for the adviser – and the more efficient an advice business becomes, the better the outcomes are likely to be for clients.”

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Hans Egger

Many advisers may be living in fear of sending out a fee disclosure statement (FDS) to their client base over the next 12 months, as required by the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms, because they believe they will lose their currently disengaged, but valuable, clients.

“Disengaged clients probably represent between 10 and 30% of an adviser’s client base,” says financial planner and Astute Wealth Advice director, Hans Egger. “Many advisers believe that when these clients realise what they are being charged, they will fail to see value and advisers will run the real risk of losing them as clients.  And as most advice businesses only make 10-30% net profit, they simply can’t afford to lose them.”

Compounding this problem is the fact that many advice businesses have been necessarily distracted with implementing the changes required by the new FoFA regulation.

“It’s taken a huge amount of time and energy for the advice industry to get its head around the reforms,” Mr Egger says, “but no matter what changes the new Government makes, consumer-focussed regulation is here to stay. And as advisers, that means we absolutely have to deliver value, we have to do the work our clients are paying us for – whether they are engaged or not. So it’s time to stop FoFA’ing around and get ahead of the game.”

Mr Egger is therefore urging advisers to start re-engaging with disengaged clients as soon as possible. “In this environment, we have to be proactive in order to remain profitable,” he says. “We have to demonstrate the value of our services well before sending the FDS. Leave it too long and it will simply be too late.”

The challenge, however, is how to engage the disengaged. “There’s no denying that trying to win over these clients is going to be difficult. We therefore have to make sure our approach is direct, simple and all about the client.”

Last year Mr Egger developed the Astute Wealth – Client Engagement Platform, better known as the AstuteWheel (www.astutewheel.com.au) to overcome these kinds of client engagement problems. Launched with the support of industry marketing specialist and business partner, Michael Topper, the AstuteWheel includes a standardised suite of innovative marketing, pre-engagement and education tools, as well as over 20 strategy modelling calculators, video emails, five-minute financial health checks, mini fact finds and a plain English presentation What is financial planning?. Together these tools help advisers explain the value of advice to clients.

“The five-minute financial health check is a self-assessment questionnaire which reveals how financially healthy clients are across the six key areas of financial planning: income, investments, debt management, risk, retirement and estate planning,” Mr Egger says. “It helps clients recognise which areas need addressing and how urgently they need to be addressed.”

Information resulting from the completed questionnaire is delivered to the adviser electronically who can then appropriately prepare for the review interview.

Mr Egger recently put the health check to the test with disengaged clients in his own business. “I sent the video email to a group of disengaged clients I have in my practice. Despite the annual offer of a review I had not seen these clients for many years,” he says. “Since sending the video, 10 per cent of them contacted me. They all came in for a review and they have all since signed on to an ongoing service agreement.”

Clients can disengage for a number of reasons, according to Mr Egger. “It may be that they are part of a book of clients you bought but never met. They might have moved interstate or overseas and found it difficult to visit your office, or they might simply not understand all you can do for them. The AstuteWheel helps overcome these challenges because clients can interact with it in their own time and place.”

Mr Egger says with the AstuteWheel advisers can demonstrate greater value and make clients more willing to sign up to long-term ongoing service agreements, ultimately making the FDS irrelevant. “It simply helps create stickier, happier, long-term clients and therefore more profitable, long-term businesses,” he says.

Since launch on 1 June 2012, more than 270 financial advisers across 90 financial advice practices representing over 30 different dealer groups have subscribed to the AstuteWheel.

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