Columns: Sales & Marketing

Time to update your business in 2021

Advisers need to conduct a thorough review of their digital and social media offering each year, writes Paul Watkins.

BY PAUL WATKINS

It’s time to reflect on a strange year and get 2021 right. Things have changed. Not only the obvious, like lower interest rates, house prices screaming up and lots of clients wanting to refix at lower rates, but electronically too.

So here is your 2021 checklist. These are items to check on or update as the year gets underway.

Regulation

First the obligatory regulatory stuff. Is your handling of client data in line with the Privacy Act? Is this a page on your website? A link in your emails? Is it appropriate to show it anywhere else?

Terms of Trade

Next is your written Terms of Trade. I hope you have one.

Have you had it legally checked recently, in the last year, to make sure it stacks up in the event of disagreements with clients?

A badly worded Terms of Trade agreement can have consequences, as was demonstrated recently by one broker who had to repay a client.

Your website

Now move on to your online presence. First your website. No matter what platform it is written in, it is likely to need regular code updates. This is particularly the case if it is written in WordPress.

If an outside agency manages your website for you, it is likely to be fine. But if it is managed internally, the code, plugins, and links need to be checked constantly.

As websites get bigger and more complex, links and plugins can stop working. Get a team member to click every link on the site and see if it is working okay.

‘A badly worded Terms of Trade agreement can have consequences, as was demonstrated recently by one broker who had to repay a client’

Once the technical components and coding are checked, next check the correctness and relevance of the content.

Start on the home page, and see if you pass this test: within five seconds, can I identify my main offer, any speciality area, or a clear “why me?”. If not, rethink the layout, wording and images.

Try to avoid smiley, American, perfect happy-family images – which abound on NZ broker websites. Make it more real.

Before moving to the other pages of your website, think about what clients want to see. The simplest way to do this is to note the questions clients ask you.

Write down the last 20 opening questions you received. Clients may ask about accessing KiwiSaver for a first home, or how to break a higher rate mortgage to refix at a lower rate.

Maybe clients are asking about being declined by a lender or asking how much they can borrow before house hunting. Some questions may be about the process of borrowing for investment properties.

It will be different for each of you, but patterns will quickly emerge.

Why is this important? Because it’s your clue to organic Google search traffic and how to word your website.

If seven of the 20 opening questions are about re-fixing a higher rate loan, then you should have this as a prominent item on your website. Use the same language that clients use.

If clients say, “How do I change my mortgage to a lower rate?”, then that is how your headline should read.

That is how clients type their search queries into Google. So you want your page to show up in the results.

Each page of your website is, in effect, a “home page”.

For example, if your most common questions from clients are about first home buying, investment properties and re-fixing, then each of these topics deserve their own dedicated page.

Your search results will improve, and traffic will increase, and all at a zero cost – just your time in reconsidering the text and images on your website.

A notable point on this review is to avoid jargon. “LVR” is meaningless to most clients, use “required deposit” or similar.

This also applies to your newsletters if you do one (I hope you do).

Articles about “OCR” mean nothing to clients. They want to know about interest rates and trends and more specifically, what they should do based on any changes.

When it comes to paid Google ads, use a keyword research tool (some are free) to see what people are searching for, as this is likely to have changed over the past year.

Google My Business is the free listing you get about your operation. Check it for the right images, address, phone contacts, hours of operating, and what reviews you have been getting. This is an increasingly important aspect of all brokerages now.

Social media

Now look at your social media. Start with LinkedIn. Is it up to date, both your personal page and your business page? Are the images enticing and information correct? Is the picture of you a professionally taken one? Do you describe yourself well?

Next is your Facebook page. The same applies. Is all of the info correct? Do both your Facebook and LinkedIn pages have good regularly posted video content? If not, put educational style video into your marketing plan.

This leads to the next item, the rolling three-month marketing activity calendar. Do you have one? If you don’t, then create a simple chart in Word or Excel. The columns are the months or weeks.

The rows should be respectively called “Website”; “Facebook”; “LinkedIn”; “Newsletter”; then any additional mediums you use. If you don’t have any additional items, these are the four most important.

Now fill in the activity in each cell and allocate someone to do each of them. An important point here is that if business is good right now, do not become complacent and let up on these activities, as good times rarely last. And if things fall off, you still want to be in the front of their minds.

In summary

Last year was not a typical year, and while you go through this checklist every year, it’s more important than ever in 2021.

Make sure:

• your Privacy Act and Terms of Trade is checked, preferably by external legal advisers

• your website is checked so that coding, plugins and other technical aspects are up to date

• the content of your website is relevant to the questions clients are asking you. This will help with organic (unpaid) search traffic and assist in determining paid Google ad keywords

• you check how up to date your Google My Business listing is

• your LinkedIn and Facebook pages are up to date and you have programmed new video content to be added regularly

• your three-month rolling marketing activity has been created, filled in and responsibilities allocated.

Get help if you need it

A final point is to get help with the above. If you do not currently use an outside agency, then get someone in for half a day to facilitate this process. All the best for 2021. ✚

Paul Watkins is a marketing adviser to the financial services industry.