Advisers Assemble - Lead Generation For Financial Services (Alex Curtis)

Following our conversation with Roger Lane and Tony Nunn at Fort Advice Bureau about the company's business proposition, we hear from mortgage broker's Aston and Jake, who share the reason's why they joined the FAB team. 

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

Andy Storch is the author of Own Your Career, Own Your Life. We obviously chat about the book but we also dive into: Getting back into networking and live events CryptoCurrency & NFTS - Why did Andy spend $30k on a doodle of a lizard? Personal branding How to stop drifting through your career and start taking action!

Alex and Tessa are back with another led gen update, discussing the latest mortgage market data and trends for this month so far.

 

Talking points:

- Quotes from brokers about September affecting lead flow - taken from Newspage.

- Google trends data on interest from consumers in mortgages on Google - keep up to date on our website.

- The higher or lower search volume game - guess along with Tess!

This episode is brought to you by the team at The Lead Engine.

Do you have any cool gadgets? (Any software or something technical you can’t live without? Maybe something most people don’t know about why you could recommend?)

Flipboard https://flipboard.com/ the ultimate news and content curation website and mobile app

Quik by Go Pro https://gopro.com/en/us/shop/quik-app-video-photo-editor for fast and great looking video content

Audio Hijack https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/ for recording and producing good audio content from your computer

Squoosh https://squoosh.app/  for resizing and compressing visuals quickly

CCMixter http://dig.ccmixter.org/ the free music discovery website for your next YouTube video or podcast

Linguee https://www.linguee.com/ my go-to language dictionary and online translator when I am stuck!
 

Are you a reader? Do you have a book that’s helped change your life that you could recommend?

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alchemist-Fable-About-Following-Dream/dp/0722532938

Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Losing-My-Virginity/dp/B002SPZA5A/

How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime by Roger Corman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Made-Hundred-Movies-Hollywood-never/dp/0306808749

Pascal's Podcast & Video Series

Two Geeks And A Marketing Podcast

On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCChv7HnP_ZqGoFQbzqkeaKA

On Captivate https://two-geeks-marketing-podcast.captivate.fm/

 

The Content Marketing Studio Video Series

https://pascalfintoni.com/video-blog/

Bonus Episode! - Ready for another round of rants with The Lead Ladies?! This time we take you back to your childhood with the discontinued delights of certain sweet treats and cereals we used to know and love, followed by odd bod mugs that take up cupboard space and random bits of paper that drive us wild and cause those OCD driven into despair.

What would you put in Room 101?! Listen now and let us know!

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services. 

Do people go to YouTube for financial advice? How many searches are there on YouTube and what's the competition like? We chat to YouTube Guru Tom Martin and look at the numbers behind mortgage, protection and equity release advice on YouTube.

Nick Terry, Head of Marketing at Mortgage Intelligence joins Alex on the podcast as part of our, 'What Network Should I Join?' Series.

Follow Nick on LinkedIn.

Visit Mortgage Intelligence here.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

Here at The Lead Engine, we see a lot of data on a daily basis. The majority of that data and probably the most important is analysing the website visits that make and enquiry vs those that don't. With millions of pounds spent over a 20-year period, you start to build an excellent picture of what works and what doesn't. There are some key things that someone who wants financial advice wants to experience when looking for the right adviser (see ep 194). It's very unlikely that you've got all these factors built into your website and it's highly likely the code, content and layout needs changing. In this episode we discuss these factors and why we always build a new website for every client we work with.

New podcast series!

Alex attends his first network event of the year at The Peterborough Football ground and chats to some of the firms that are in The Money Group Network to find out why they joined, why they've stayed and what they like and dislike. 

From the team at The Lead Engine. 

Bonus Team Episode.  Andraya , Stephanie and Tessa return to the Advisers Assemble Podcast in a shiny, new segment for 2023 that follows the theme of the former BBC television series, Room 101 (no copyright intended). Find out the pet peeve they have each chosen to banish forever and see if you agree. 

Teaser alert - You won't want to miss Andraya's award-winning worthy speech. We can assure you will feel a whole lot lighter afterwards!

From the team at The Lead Engine.

Alex and Tessa tease ahead to the next episode, which features guest Ross McMillan, Founder of Blue Fish Mortgage Solutions. 

From the team at The Lead Engine. 

Tessa is joined by Katie Dennehy, Digital Account Manager at Underwrite Me to talk all about how they are transforming the protection industry through technology, helping Insurers and Advisers to write protection more efficiently. 

Talking points:

- Introducing Underwrite Me -  When was this founded? What is your role and how long have you been working for the company?

- What services do you offer? / Who do you work with?

- The Importance of insurance / protection

- How are you changing / contributing to the protection industry?

- How does the process work?

- How easy is it for advisers and insurers to navigate your website? How does this tie into their daily processes and communication with clients?

- Are there any costs to the adviser for using your services?

- Any upcoming events you would like to mention?

Follow Katie on LinkedIn.

Visit Underwrite Me here.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

Alex and Tessa are joined again by The Lead Engine's newest team members, Cathy Manso and Hannah Sturman, on this second episode of 'Talking Ads' podcast series!

What do adorable creatures, yellow shoes, Santa, and texting have in common? Alex, Cathy, Hannah and Tessa reveal the answer and discuss on how it could relate back to advertising financial services.

We recommend you view all four adverts before, after or during listening to this episode to engage in the discussion.

Immerse yourselves here: https://theleadengine.co.uk/talking-ads-dec23

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

David Thomson gives us a massive injection of sales advice and a reminder on how powerful influence and persuasion is. Trained by Robert Cialdini, the author of "Influence" and former financial adviser. There's nobody better in financial services than David when it comes to sales.

Taken from the latest Facebook live, Alex and Tessa share what's coming up in the next episode with their guest, Chris Targett from Social for Brokers.

From the team at The Lead Engine. 

The back to school edition...Funmi Olufunwa, Mortgage Broker at The Mortgage Mum joins The Lead Ladies on Room 101 this month to rant about all things school related.

From school uniforms to WhatsApp chats...parents and teachers, you have been warned and just in time for the new school year! 

Follow Funmi on LinkedIn.

Follow Funmi on Instagram.

Visit The Mortgage Mum here.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

In this episode, you'll learn about the impact of having the most Google reviews in your local area.

Brought to you by the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in generating leads for financial advisers and brokers.

If you need a shot of adrenaline then this chat is it! Alex came away feeling very motivated after this chat and got loads of work done that afternoon! Julia Smith is a regional business consultant for the Openwork Partnership and works with a lot of successful firms in the network. We discuss why Openwork is a great network and what she sees all the great firms doing day in, day out. You'll get to know her a bit better with all the usual superhero questions too!

This week, Alex is joined by Jessica Bird, Managing Editor at The Intermediary, a leading news website and the only monthly print and digital magazine for the UK mortgage and property finance industry. 

Have you got a story you would like to pitch? Email jessica.bird@theintermediary.co.uk. 

...Remember to quote FROZEN TURKEY!

Follow Jess on LinkedIn.

Visit The Intermediary here.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

Having seen how Anish had dealt with some repulsive trolls we knew he definitely deserved the title of a business superhero! He's a consistent video content creator and has just started building up his team. Here his story today!

Alex catches up with Business Coach and Strategist, Libby Langley, to chat about 'life in business' and much more!

Visit libbylangley.com.

Follow Libby on Instagram.

Follow Libby on LinkedIn.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

Alex, Steph and Tessa share the adverts that have caught there eye this time, including Hannah's advert in her absence that has them fooled!

Cats and dogs, roofing and makeup take the lead for this episode...

We recommend you view all the adverts before or during listening to this episode to engage in the discussion.

Immerse yourselves here.

If you would like to send in an advert that has caught your eye, please Whatsapp us on +44 7874 469647 and tell us why this made you stop and look, and we will include this on the next episode of Talking Ads. 

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

“But you don’t look like mortgage advisors” Nope. You won’t find any stuffy suits or ties here. It’s not that we don’t take your mortgage application seriously, it’s just that we don’t feel the need to hide behind a corporate image. We want you to know that we are real people, just like you. The above is taken from Graham Taylor's mortgage firm website and completely sums up the wonderful business. Although I'm sure he takes it for granted there's some real courage in going against the grain. Hear Graham's story today!

We run through 9 ways that you can generate mortgage leads with digital marketing. In part 2 we discuss email marketing, Facebook Ads, creating your own audiences and generating more leads from your existing website visitors.

Alex: Hello, my friends in financial services welcome back to the podcast this week I've got an equity release advisor. And wow, we've talked about loads of stuff, loads of tips from Stuart probably more tips per minute than you get from your marketing expert. And so I think one thing for us as a business when we've helped people advertise equity release is a lot of negative kinds of thoughts and opinions of how things were done before a lot of people that are in situations or heard of people in situations that are not good because of equity release. And I've seen Stewart sort of on a bit of a mission to try and he's very passionate about getting this message across that modern equity release is much better. There's just so much in this episode of like how to negotiate with the press. We talk a lot about videos. So Stuart messaged me and emailed me in June about videos and him starting that video journey. We talk a lot about that. It's just such an interesting story about partnerships as well about how to focus on marketing to get partnerships not just to get cold leads. So whether you do mortgages, life equity release, or don't even work in financial services, there's so much you can get out of this episode from a marketing perspective. So, I want to introduce you to Stuart. How is an equity release at fly advisor in Plymouth used to work in banking used to work in Debenhams went out on his own after sort of a long corporate career and it's really fascinating to see where he is at now. Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast and I've got a very special guest on today. I have got Mr Stuart Powell. How are you doing today?

Stuart: Hi, how are you? I’m very good. Thank you mate. Thanks for setting this up. Be nice to have a chat. 

Alex: Yeah, no, absolutely. I was just well, we just before we hit record, I was just pulling out an old email that you sent me and I couldn't remember the date of it. And I think I sent you an email on kind of pop my sort of email sequence about doing videos. In fact, I think it's Yeah, it's entitled, you have to make bad videos to make good videos.

Stuart: Yeah.

Alex: He said, you've inspired me after listening to this podcast. We now have a YouTube video and four videos on equity release. 

Stuart: Yeah, yes. Take a look. Give me some feedback. 

Alex: So that was June 2019. We're now January 2020. So what six months ago and now I'm seeing the videos that you're doing now and you've got like you see you're not hiring in a sort of production crew and things like what it looks like.

Stuart: Oh, yeah, we got producers, directors, actors, we've got that now. Yeah, you know, I think where we were with the business around June and your podcast on, you know, try it. If it goes badly, that's good because you learn a lot and the rule and this is exactly what people want to see. So I think to start with Sammy, my office manager and I were at probably a simply biz seminar down in Cornwall somewhere and we were on a break, and we were just playing around with the laptop of mom now actually, and just recording a couple of videos out in the sunshine in their garden, and just talking about equity release and she was interviewing me and we were playing around and they were good enough to release but they kind of inspired me to give it more of a go and then I listened to your podcast and yeah, don't worry about it. If it's bad, just start somewhere. So yeah, I went into the office. Did I think about a five-minute video? And it got really good feedback even though it was grainy and wobbly but yeah, that's where it started. Yeah, June last year. 

Alex: Yeah. Wow. Okay. It's great. I love it because like, well, the thing is with having podcasts you don't get more ratio of feedback to listeners is very different to anything else. Because like on a podcast, there's no natural place to comment or anything. People have to take the time out to send you a message. So like when you're putting videos on YouTube is easy to comment and you put posts on Facebook, it's easy to come up with a podcast, there's nowhere to comment. So I only get the old kind of message pin when people do actually reach out and it normally is because they've done something so it's always like, brilliant to hear that something that we've done has kind of affected someone else. So it was really.

Stuart: Yeah, no, that's good. I sent you a quick message to say thanks you've inspired me. Yeah, but I watched it and got some feedback on it. And I think the feedback was great. I love what you're doing not enough people are talking about equity release. Not enough people are trying to educate both clients or potential clients or other introduces as to why it's good for the older generation, but also why it's good for other financial services businesses to understand a little bit more about it. And I went online and went on YouTube and there's no one really being real online about equity release other than being lossy companies who and millions on production or they've got their remember to morph Sony heart and all that they.

Alex: Oh yeah.

Stuart: They've got those types of videos which are great. So I decided to probably shorten the videos a little bit. Because the feedback was great, I really like what you're talking about. But it's too much information in a five-minute video, why not 1-minute videos. So, so yeah, I thought, right, let's break them down and literally put something out on LinkedIn. were based in Plymouth. So put something on LinkedIn, then you will know any good videographers. And a guy called Luke Strata was recommended a couple of times and he and I met he came in the office and wow, what a setter. I mean, the cost wasn't too bad at all. But the camera equipment I know you've seen it on some of our LinkedIn vids. It looks like yeah, so being in next Hollywood blockbuster, this coffee breaks a lot.

Alex: And if you're in a restaurant or a cafe and I was at Stewart's house, and they were at the tables, that's definitely a restaurant or a cafe or something. I was like, I'm in the wrong game from and if you can get a house like that.

Stuart: Equity release, and you're fortunate And I know that you know that we're very near the home, which is the beautiful see parts of glimmer, the office and we go down there for a coffee sometimes and of course we're OSHA mortgages notion act to release and the cafes overlooks the ocean and you know in my brain it made sense but the cafe owner said yeah, yeah come down for the morning and then you know just to make sure you have some tea coffee and bacon buses and you can have the room for free and you know, he asked me about the buses I'm honest. Luke and I went down there Luke set up first and I came in and oh my god, he has taken over, probably half that blooming cafe. And yeah, it didn't seem like a great idea at the time I took the dog down and I don't you've seen the first video but the dogs and James Bond villain stroking the dog up on my lap. I read two minutes before the video started to shit right. So in the cafe as yes and customers are coming in for breakfast so yeah. Not quite as glamorous.

Alex: Yeah.

Stuart: Oh then a storm came so we were filming with the storm in the background so the beautiful ocean waves were quite as I expected but you know you laminate and you've got to do better to do it well.

Alex: Well, that's brilliant. I love that so much has happened to me so much to actually put you off doing it and make it harder to work with it. Let it go baby is still peeling off and I've just found my replies to you because I yeah, I think I said yeah, so one thing I think I said was like, Don't worry about you don't need an excuse to make the video I think I was like, I think a lot of people do that they sort of when you're first doing videos, you feel natural. You need to explain why during the video. Yeah. I remember saying that as well. And then yeah, I think I said splitting it up into smaller, smaller ones. 

Stuart: Yeah, great. 

Alex: Yeah.

Stuart: It was fine because the first step videos were very much okay. The clients out there don't understand about equity release. So let's tell them what the process is. Let's tell them why modern equity release is better than the old equity release. Let's tell them you know, the interest rates are lower than they've ever been. Let's tell them there's no negative equity guarantee on just about every product out there. So, you know, there's a real fear in my world is about equity release. So let's dispel some of the untruths. Let's tell people what the process actually is. And let's try and be a little bit more accessible. There are some really big companies out there doing equity release, you know, you have Vivos, Liverpool, Victoria, and there are some huge broker firms. I think the more local the more family-based business, such as ours is where local older people want to be where they want to be, you know, they want the products they want their people to be from where they're from, and understand a little bit about them and their world. Does that make sense?

Alex: Yeah, no, that's exactly what we found when we've cuz we've run some x release ad campaigns on Facebook. Yeah. We've found when we've advertised the advisor, rather than a brand, and we've made it very personal, they work really well. And the cost per lead is slightly higher than what you typically get with mortgages. Yeah, we brought that down a bit. But the quality when that comes through when we're advertising the person. What we have found, though, like, you rightly say, a lot of fear, like every ad campaign, we've put out, there'll be loads of people saying this is a scam. Yeah, many of them and we don't, a lot of our clients aren't where we're trying to get. We're creating written content to dispel the myths but a lot of them don't want to do video. It would be great if we had with each comment rather than having to hide it. We could put a link out Oh, actually, if you check this, you can see the difference between what you think and what it actually is.

Stuart: Yeah, you know, we played around with some men, we did some Facebook marketing last year and yes, absolutely right. The feedback you get is, you know, it's quite vitriolic. They don't hold back. But I was doing it to get that over the phone, but we've just experimented with it. And they kept deleting the comments and I'm like, No, no, no, no. If this is the comments we're getting, we need to address them. So I took over replying to the office as a scam or that you used to get things like oh, my dad took out 70,000 pounds and now he owes 180,000. And I remember one specifically who'd said but you know, you don't know the backstory, so it could have been his house was repossessed. So we need 70,000 pounds. Therefore 70,000 pounds is a great investment to keep your property or the other thing, and actually, this is what I found now, he has taken it out seven years ago, and the interest rate was 8%. So what actually happened there at the time, it may have been the right thing, but now it's not that a huge part of our education is well, we need to review it. You know, I was looking at stats the other day, and it's about 40% of the public are on a standard variable rate for their mortgage for equity release, 92% of the public have never reviewed their rates. Well, that guy went back to and said look really sorry to hear but the interest is accelerated so much more neck to release lets you pay some of the interest, all of the interest and the interest rates start from 2.8%. Why don't we review that and we reviewed it and got an array of just over 3%? So bring your critics on it. It was brilliant. Because of how many people read that?

Alex: Yeah, fantastic. 

Stuart: Yeah, very not so much. And we try to use those case studies because that's the thing. It's, you know when we're talking about rates, when we're talking about the non-equity release being x, y, and Zed, it doesn't really mean a lot to people. But when we're saying this client came to us on an 8% interest rate, we managed to do it for three. This is how much money he saved each month, or this is how much less the interest is accruing by so. So yeah, definitely the case studies would be a tip I'd give any equity release advisors out there, you know, make it real. Use the examples you are doing for clients because that's what people want to see.

Alex: That's amazing. I think you may have single-handedly helped, as I was gonna say, millions of people who don't have lots of light bulbs. Go Often in my brain, I'm sure and you're on it but I know we get a few people listening to the do equity release as well that are thinking Actually, I can use and you do well that's made me think of randomly. Have you ever seen suits the

Stuart: Yeah, Meghan Markel and all that.

Alex: Yes. And it just reminded me of Harvey spectre saying when there's a gun pointed at you, you turn it around and you've turned that negative feedback into a positive by going into a colour, no-win situation of someone slagging you off on Facebook, into a new client, you've literally acted them, ensure.

Stuart: It's good to do and you know, it's quite good for the soul because if you're putting yourself out there in any context, we started off talking about videos, but this is Facebook advertising yourself out there and people are actually not slacking off your company as such. But then you're in and you know, my Facebook has got all my friends on my family on and if people are actually seeing The industry I'm in, it's got a bad reputation, then that tells what I do. So I want people to understand the passion I have for actually getting people to understand that modern equity release actually is a very far cry from where it was five years ago, and actually is the right thing for a lot of people. It's not the right thing for a lot of people as well. Yes, they need to approach us so that we can, you know, with full integrity, sit down with them and go, actually, it is right for you, or Actually, no, let's phone your lender and just renegotiate your deal. You know, we've done that for a couple of clients where we'll come into the office, we'll look at release, and you know, they're in their late 50s. And I'm like, well, no equity release can't be right for you at your age, because we don't want to pay the interest and the amount you're learning when you get to the age you're probably going to get to is a huge chunk of the likely value of your property. So let's speak to your life. And see if they will let you continue on your interest-only mortgage, let's be about other options for you. And if none of those options work, actually, equity release might be right for you. But it has to be right for the person at the time, the wise people and says, actually, I think equity release might be suitable for you, but in five years, but in five to 10 years, so let's stay in touch over the next few years and see if your position changes. So I think integrity has to be a huge part of it, which is why we've got to get out there and talk to more people.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I think just linking this back to video so if I put myself in. So my mom is 70.

Stuart: Yeah.

Alex: She wasn't elite mortgage-free debt-free. If she wasn't, and I am. I worked in a different industry and I didn't know about equity release, and I didn't know about any sort of financial services like that. I would be worried about my mom at her age sitting down with any kind of financial advisor without me being there? Yeah, because they watched too much rogue traders and stuff like that and you're very protective over your parents. So linking this back to Vivio I think the great thing about video for me, if I was looking at it for her, and I saw you doing all these videos and you come across the way you do, I would feel much more confident picking up the phone to you and saying, Can you sit down with my mom and talk to her about it? Because I've got to know you a little bit and like you say, integrity, and trust.

Stuart: Yeah.

Alex: Really, really important for me and I think there's a lot of people who are like me.

Stuart: I totally agree. And, you know, I can hear myself saying this to clients and I've said it's a mom, dad that five years ago, I wouldn't have done equity release for my mom and dad. Today without a doubt. In fact, we're talking about at the moment I would get mum and dad to do it. And if someone can say that they would advise their parents to do something like, I think that's hugely rare of how they feel about it. And yeah, you're right that the videos do help because people see you, people get to know you a little bit and it's only a little bit isn't it because it's a one minute, but they see you, they see you with the dog, they see your family business, and that does grow some confidence. And we, you know, but it's only one part of many, I would say, you know, our reviews are fundamental to us. Both have good reviews and are vouched for and vouch for, I think a brilliant company, who have really helped our business grow with their reviews and the way they do things. I also think if you're looking for an equity release advisor for your family, or for you, your business to work with Got to be by referral. So who would someone recommend? And you know, are they a good company ethically? And that's tricky to work out. And are they a member of the equity release council? That's the one that I would look at, you know, the equity release Council have standards for our industry. If an advisor or a company is part of that to release counsel, actually, they're taking steps to almost certificate how reliable they are. So yeah, videos are important, Alex, but I think, as a part of several other issues that people should consider.

Alex: Absolutely. Do you think the equity release counts or do enough to make people aware that they as a body should be you know, they are that stamp of authority because you go to a website and you see that there but I think a lot of consumers may not know what that means. 

Stuart: Excellent question. I had this conversation with the equity release Council, probably about six months ago, I was in contact with the chairman, the CEO and the marketing department. And it was good. I'd made the videos. And then I thought, well, let's connect to the risk councils website, see what videos they got? And check. No, no joking at all. I think the most up to date video was from 2016. And maybe 2017. I think they modernized recently and went to the marketing department. I said, Look, I don't understand. And we are trying to get across to people how modern equity release has changed how the products for everyone out there. But your videos are just not up to date. I've made some videos, how about I send them to you. And you have a look, why not use them on your website. And they've used to, I should have told you. Sorry, I haven't told you that.

Alex: I think I mentioned something about the equity release count. So like you said, I got a mention in a blog or something. 

Stuart: They put two of the videos on their website and we've set up a YouTube channel with all of our videos and they learn this but I completely understand if they can't be seen to be promoting one company. And you know, my argument to that was no, I don't want you to. I want you to show the equity release advisers out there, what is possible, you make videos, and make them interesting, make them popular, and we'll publish yours too. They started off with it's become my famous video now. It's the Wendy Bohunan video and it's a lovely lady from Plymouth who first got in contact with me last year, who and she'd seen an advert I put up a local glossy Plymouth magazine that goes up to about $40,000 And she'd seen it and she saw the family. The family photo as I call it. My wife sent me the office manager and the dog and then said I'll, you know, bulk bloke with glasses looks like a nice chap. They think I'll get him around. So I wrote around to see her and she was in a bit of a safe state. That was a horrible phrase, but she was suffering and her son was bringing her food parcels. She told me, she was wearing a 199 Oxfam dress, or someone's bringing her food parcels each week and a half, pretty dilapidated, and she got a call while I was there, from someone chasing her for money. Fast forward six months. I went to see her just before Christmas, and she was wearing a nice outfit. She now treats herself to Marks and Spencers once a week her son doesn't bring food parcels. The property has had some improvements and she no longer gets phone calls from people. Because she took out equity release, that is it's mental health has improved as well, that is a kind of rags to riches story for me because it's real. And she blesses her. She was recorded by the local paper who got hold of the story and she gave a one-minute explanation of what had happened and it was super Android equity release council saw this and said we want to use that Stuart, it's, it's a great story as to how to release can help people in the right situation. So you have to cancel since then. I've opened up this to equity release advisors. So if you are an extreme supervisor and produce some good video footage or a good blog, they couldn't have it on that site. So yeah, a good little tip there.

Alex: Lovely, brilliant. Perfect. So I want to find out the kind of like because you were we've been talking off the air, we were kind of mentioning your sort of retail background, and then you've done you were sort of your last sort of employee job was with Santander. Is that right?

Stuart: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I spent seven years straight from uni with deponents. And loved it there. Yeah. through the various management roles. You know that a lot about people and service, then, yeah, just happened to get into banking and was doing branch management and mortgage supervisor roles, regional mortgage manager roles. And, and then actually, I thought I could do this and I could do it as a business and there are so many marketing things that I want to do that a big corporation looks at and goes, it's not really the brand is not really what we want to do. It's not really where we want to go and I thought, well, actually, a good friend of mine owned financial investment companies. Short financial planning. And I said to him, Look, you don't have any mortgages. And I know you don't want to do mortgages, how about I have a room in your lovely offices, and I start a mortgage company, you helped me by being my supervisor. And then we came from there. And that was, what, two and a half years ago. And last year, it changed and we wanted to rebrand. We felt that we were growing to such a size that we saw the alarm in the background. Really, we thought, yeah, it's time to go out on our own. I bought his shares off him. Then we rebranded the company in January last year, and have a look back we went directly authorized and the big thing has been all the marketing we do all the branding we do is up to us. We've got no one saying oh, no, that's not what we want to do. That's not how we want to do it. We would play in our own funnel. And, and that's really, really how we want to do things. So, yeah, as a great step for me. And as I look back on it, we're sort of done 10 years before. So yeah.

Alex: Was it scary?

Stuart: Hell yeah. Yeah. Because you go from a decent salary to knowing money is coming in. And I know, a lot of advisors out there. I've done similar and it is scary. My wife had to work a lot of hours to pay the bills, and what it's like there's a pipeline for business and it takes two-three months to come in. So yeah, the early days were scary. But then we grew as having a reputation. But we started off as a mortgage company, Alex, residential is only and we started getting more and more equity released inquiries, and I've done the exams. And I thought I love this. I love how life-changing equity releases. And it's a booming business. And it's a niche. So all of those things made me think, actually that's the direction I want the business to go.

Alex: Yeah, fantastic. And what's the kind of the plans for the future then are you kind of thinking about this? I'm happy to sort of, as far as we are or want more advisors or you know, want to go national or want to keep it local? what's kind of in your Have you thought about it? Because we're sort of about a year over sort of Christmas. I was thinking about the next year, what you know, future and things like that.

Stuart: Yeah, very much. So I think, probably about six months ago. I thought, right. Okay. So, and you notice like you get anyone gets to a stage with a business that actually this business takes over nicely. I do the things that I want, I can pick the kids up, I can drop them at school. I don't have to work weekends but don't want to or we can go to the next level. I think because I've started collaborating with a lot of businesses around the country. We've got some good institutions in London, Oxford, Bournemouth, Basingstoke, new Bri, actually, we want to expand the business. I want to be out there more and meeting new introduces. So we've got two new advisors who actually are just going through their CMPA now. They've got a week away in Bristol next week doing what the week after, and then they've got two months gap, and then they've got another week in Southampton. I think the second one is.

Alex: Okay.

Stuart: So yeah, we'll have three of us advisors, recruiting additional admin, but we want to grow organically. So one of the advisors has been our office manager, so that's Sammy, and other ones my wife, so it's still keeping it a very close-knit family business. Because, as I'm sure everyone out there knows, recruitment is really difficult. Getting the right person that fits in your ethos in your model in your business, given the service that you give is very difficult. Whether we go that way in the future, I don't know. But it's interesting because I've just been working on this in the last couple of weeks. What do we want the business to represent in 2020? Well, we want to continue the education we're doing around equity release. We want to continue the collaboration we're doing with Well, we've got solicitors, we've got accountants, we've got mortgage brokers, we've even got equity release advisers who don't really like doing it to lease sending us business and with commission sharing with them. Because you know, if you've got a mortgage business and your equity release qualified, but you don't do many equity releases, it's difficult to actually sit down with Brian, and go, these are your options because you're not up to speed with it. It's fast-moving, so yeah, we're working with groups like that. And that's what I want my role to be going forward. But last year, our best things we did were the things where we went to events, we ran events with our introduces with our partners. And I'll give a couple of examples. So far this year, we've got fine dining experience. We've got a gin tasting event, and we're going to horse racing, we're going to eat now but races and then they help for our partners and are introduced as where we say, thank you. We say thank you for introducing that business to us last year. And don't forget us this year. Because for us, having fun at work is really important. You know, in the past, I've had mental health issues and I've struggled getting up. So the balance of business is really important to me. So yeah that's what 2020 looks like.

Alex: fantastically you have me at gin tasting I am I'm a huge draw to know what my may want to know my knees or regulation is.

Stuart: Come on. 

Alex: Find a gene that I like more than sip Smith.

Stuart: What's it called?

Alex: Sip Smith

Stuart: I'm actually writing this down what flavour?

Alex: Well it's like a London dry gin. There's nothing fancy about it. 

Stuart: Yeah. 

Alex: Every gin that I try. 

Alex: Yeah.

Stuart: It's like it's good, but it's not quite. So my solution is to find a gene that I like better than sip Smith.

Alex: Oh, you have to try and then do a lemon drizzle lemonade just have the normal the green one. It's got a swan on it. I'm on like, it's one of the gin is on my things like I'm I think I'm known for having beard glasses. Loving and drinking gin is like the key things

Stuart: So I've just written down green with swan. So.

Alex: Yeah, I'm after that. Well, if you love Sip Man, then you'd have enjoyed the research that I was doing last week of places in Devon, that have good gin events. And one of them and I'm not making this up, we've got the National Marine Aquarium in clover. 

Alex: Right.

Stuart: They got an event coming up in a few Saturdays time called Gins with Finn. I'm honestly not making that up. They somehow have managed to get the National Marine Aquarium and the gym company together, and they didn't know what to call it. So it's an evening event where they've got a company with several different gyms and obviously the sharks and the various animals they've got in the tanks are the fins. So yeah, you might have to come up with four gins with fins, Alex.

Alex: Well, the other thing I love is a good pun. I absolutely love it. So that sounds like it. My event well it's a full house.

Stuart: Yeah.

Alex: Oh, my so I'm gonna touch for a second I'm not gonna pass away this year but my funeral should be called gin's event.

Stuart: Yeah. People will be pleased to hear we've actually decided against that one as Baba has 143 different gins and now teaches you how to make them and part of the event is you get your first three as part of the deal. So yeah, I think we've got. I think 12 of our introducers and partners come into that one. So yeah, it's all part of it. It's yeah, enjoy business, enjoy collaborating and let's make up days fun, I think is the key.

Alex: Absolutely. Well, we've got a I was just looking at my podcast schedule and there was a guy we recorded with Adam King who, so when yours goes live, his would have already been on the thing he talks about is partnerships. That is massive for him so yeah it just makes sense doesn't it getting those right partnerships where it's kind of a win-win for you and for them even like you say people that are qualified in an equity release but do it as an add on? 

Stuart: Yeah, absolutely. 

Alex: Getting with the right people and yeah, and the thing coming like bringing it back to the video that is building rapport but it's meeting people in person builds rapport more than ever. Giving them free Jin builds a lot more report is all about for me like relationships are like having a good life. I just think I like doing business with people that I like.

Stuart: Yeah.

Alex: So and then doing like videos is getting to know them a little bit first, but then that's why we do our events in peace where I can meet a lot of people that listen to the podcast and things like that, and then that builds our relationship. Even more. And that's just the same across any business especially I think if you're giving financial advice. 

Stuart: It is a nail on the head, I think. Yeah, the videos when we started them in June and then through July and August, we released one a week of a series of educational ones and the ones we just started releasing all the why, as a sister, accountant, mortgage broker, etc. Should you work with us? So yeah, the second one will come out this week, and then we're doing them weekly. But the last set of videos, actually, yeah, you've just made me think of a guy contacted me on LinkedIn and said, I want to collaborate with you. You know, you could really do a lot of equity release. You see a lot of clients. I haven't got the confidence to do it at the moment. So yeah, can you see my client will like I'm sending them completed on Monday, the client completed on Monday and I'm sending him a check for just over 6,000 pounds this week, but actually check is so 1980s However I send him the funds as soon as I received them. So yeah, that the collaboration thing can be lucrative and he hasn't done any of the work or taken any of the risks on that, other than he has a good relationship with the client who now has helped her three daughters out one was struggling with our business one was struggling to pay a mortgage. And the third one was just delighted that her two sisters were struggling. Now she wasn't obvious but the other way we'll be fair to divide the money equally three ways. So the third child got the same as the two others who really needed it. So yeah, it's a good story about how videos can lead to increased collaboration and how that can help a business because how does that guy who sent the client to me know how does his client feel about him now that we've helped her solve a problem. Exactly.

Stuart: Exactly. Thank you so much for introducing me to Stuart. Exactly. It's brilliant. It is like it is a win-win. And so yeah, no, I think we spend a lot of time naturally in our businesses thinking I want to find new business myself, and when I'm on a market myself, just to get new business, but actually marketing to get collaborators and partnerships as well is, you know, coming massively.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. And it's something that I cottoned on to later on last year because any marketing you do for clients is actually hard work. And it needs to be very consistent. You need to do a lot of it. And finding the right niche is really tricky. Whether that is you know, because obviously, my niche is, well, probably age 65 to 75 owns my own property. But has a need for a lump sum or income, whether that be to improve their lives, whether it be to invite them, improve their family's lives, whether that be to reduce their inheritance tax liability, and they're perhaps not easy niches to find in a marketing campaign. But when you're collaborating with people who, you know will write as, as an example, whether they're a solicitor or just a will writer firm, one of the questions they ask someone when they're writing Well, do you own your own property? Oh, yes. And we're writers that say to me that the phrase we hear most is where asset rich but cash poor. And, you know, I know someone who may be able to help you with that. Let me introduce you to Stuart. And he can talk to you about being asset rich and a little bit less cash poor. So yeah, it's those collaborations and when someone finds a client for you, the relationship is virtually almost there. 

Alex: Yeah, exactly. 

Stuart: Whereas when you find the client, you have to build the relationship. So yeah, the collaboration pieces are where the future is Alex? It really is. That's a huge part of our business for 2020. And I would suggest for people out there, it should be part of this.

Alex: You've been dropping value bombs all the way through this Stuart. Exactly. We've needed for 40 minutes. I can't believe it. 

Stuart: Wow. 

Alex: This is what I love. So the podcast, but amazing is nearly when it will be a year old by the time we published this.

Stuart: Okay. 

Alex: We would have only had this conversation if I had started it. And what I love about talking to advisors is that I learn more from your perspective as well. But yes, you know, we only generally only do the marketing stuff we don't deal with the end consumer. So for me, I get loads of different ideas from, from having people like yourself on. So I've really enjoyed chatting with you. I love your enthusiasm for everything. It's really refreshing. Is there anything we haven't talked about? That could help anyone listening? Do you think?

Stuart: Yeah, the only thing that I think that I was thinking about? Obviously you, you invited me to this last week and I'm thinking about well if I was listening to a podcast, what would I want to hear that we focused a lot on video and I think the video is, is kind of the symbol of what we as advisors need to do. And what I mean by that is, the video was try something outside of your box, or something out of your comfort zone. Well, in the last six months, I've been trying things out of my comfort zone, and things like contacting that journalist in the Daily Mail, who's done an article about your industry and saying really interested in your article? A couple of things that disagree with that data? How about you ask me for a comment next time. I'm going to the local press and saying, Okay, what do your readers know about equity release? What do they know about investments? Whatever your niche is, what do they know? They will try to get you to do an advertorial and pay for it. But yeah, maybe that's the right thing for you to do. That morial is how I've grown my business in Plymouth. I think my advertorial now a lot of the local newspapers are online as well. And one of the 2400 videos that I referenced earlier on that got over 6000 hits from people online. So yeah, it's trying things that are a little bit different, be open to ideas. The last one I'll say is next Saturday, I think it's the 25th we've got an advertorial appearing in The National paper in the times and national paper, and I would never have considered going national, even a year ago. But the company phoned me up. And obviously, it's a selling space advertising marketing company to say, you know, we've got a quarter-page advertorial. It's 8000 pounds. Okay, can I have two? No, no, no way. As you know, I'm a small business. There's no way we can afford anything like that. But I'm interested in the concept, talk to me about it. And he sent me the article. I hadn't looked at it. And then I said, 8000 ridiculous. And you had three and a half thousand. I said, Wow, there's a discount for you. And I said I'm really interested, when's the deadline? And he told me when the deadline was and I said, Well, I need to have a think about it. I need to have a chat with the directors on their new director. I need to have a think about it. And he came back to me: The date for deadlines ledger What are your thoughts? I said I want to do that. But what's your very best price? 1500 pounds we're going to 1.2 million homes I'm really scared now Alex. NET today because we were just trying things a little bit out of the box. We're prepared to negotiate, we want to build relationships. He wants us to advertise in the future. And I think Yeah, what's a 8,000, 1500 pound discount that's a pretty good discount so if you're out there and dealing with agencies and papers, kids sticking to your guns negotiate to be a bit cheeky and wow, you can find yourself in positions you possibly think it would be.

Alex: That's fantastic, or you will have to let me know how that goes on LinkedIn because I will. I'll add it to the outro of because it will be by the time we get this published so that all you'll kind of know what's happened with our 

Stuart: Yes, yeah.

Alex: We'll do it with a bit of time travelling. Stuart this has blown me away genuinely, the amount of value you've given. I'm really excited to get this live and share it with everyone. And it's been great to hear what 2019 has been viewed and I'm really excited to like, I don't want to wish my time away but I'm really excited to see where you are this time next year.

Alex: Yeah, no it's gonna be exciting in May and yeah, I really appreciate you. You asked me to come on this because the value bombs thing I've never even heard of. But yeah, I like coming up with new ways of doing things. And I really enjoy sharing those ideas. Because, you know, we know active release advisors in this country is my enemy or my competition. The enemy in the competition is people who are saying that equity release isn't right for people and by us why it's right for people and as educated people, we will you know, what is that lovely phrase? A rising tide lifts all ships. And that is what we're trying to do here.

Alex: Fantastic. Love it. Love it so much. So awesome way to end this, Stuart. I really appreciate your time. Let's definitely do this again next year if not in kind of six months.

Stuart: Great.

Alex: All right, Stuart. Thanks again.

Stuart: Yeah, all right. Thanks again, mate.

Alex: There we have it. That was my chat with Stuart, an absolutely great guy. He's the first equity release advisor to be featured on my new podcast, the equity release podcast, which will be out now as well. It's kind of out I'm recording this on the week of it launching. So by the time this is live, it will definitely be out. So check that out if you haven't already. And I will see you next time. And in fact, I'm recording this a bit early. And I'm a little bit worried about the outbreak of the coronavirus kind of outbreak affecting a lot of events. So as I record this now, our event is going ahead. And this should be published on the 23rd a couple of days before our event. So hopefully fingers crossed touchwood I'll see you in a couple of days if you come in. If, if it's not happening, and I haven't had the chance to re-edit this podcast episode, that's a bit confusing but hopefully I will be seeing you in a couple of days. See you there.

Founder of Hoops Finance, Media Finance Expert and Financial Educator, Funmi Olufunwa joins The Lead Ladies on Room 101 after nearly a year on to share  parental updates and more!

Will Funmi stick to her previous pet peeves and keep them locked away or has she found a new perspective on school life?

Follow Funmi on LinkedIn.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

Lee Thompson from Protection Matters talks us through how, why and when you might refer protection cases and the process. You'll get to know the types of cases Lee deals with, his background in the industry and the types of cases that get referred into him.

Should I ask people to choose how I should contact them (if I don't have to?)

Chris Targett and his team at Social For Brokers create topical social media content for busy mortgage brokers & estate agents. Working closely with them to increase their social media presence through the creation of engaging content.

In this episode, you'll hear some best practices for making the most out of social media on all platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and TikTok.

Provide Finance is the award-winning, independent online funding platform which seamlessly connects those borrowers and intermediaries seeking non-regulated lending solutions with lenders from across the UK.  It strives to make the lending journey easy to navigate by providing clients with jargon-free, transparent finance solutions which are the best fit for them – one size does not fit all when it comes to finance. 

Originally formed in 2020 as Pitch 4 Finance, the innovative FinTech very quickly evolved from simply a lending platform to a more comprehensive offering, which included providing clients with support from a dedicated team of specialist finance experts and an online library of educational resources.  The company’s vision was to revolutionise the way borrowers access alternative finance solutions, through continued investment in technology and digital innovation, alongside a commitment to delivering first class customer services. And so in October 2022, Provide Finance was born.

The company has a strong track record in the sector and has established long-standing, successful relationships with a wide variety of partners including more than 200 lenders and more than 1000 registered brokers, and has processed over £300m worth of enquiries.

Brokers have access to the fastest, cheapest and most well-researched solutions in the market. This empowers them to offer a great customer experience to their own clients, reducing stress and increasing efficiency, and allowing them more time to grow their own businesses. There is also a team of in-house finance experts on hand to support brokers and clients through the process, particularly useful when dealing with complex funding cases.

The numbers behind life insurance lead generation. We discuss the size of the audience online in terms of search volumes on Google and the Facebook audience too. Do people just expect to get a quote online or do they want to chat with someone?

I got a bit sick of only seeing my accountant once a year and only looking backwards. I never really planned for tax, felt guilty paying myself and felt disorganised. For me, it turned out the answer was to put profit first. I read the book, tried and failed myself then hired a new accountant (Annette) in January 2020 and haven't looked back.

Insurance Expert, Matt Chapman believes protection for your clients or business is not only important but essential in life. We often perceive this as a sales tool and secondary product rather than a necessity. As a mortgage adviser, where do you start? How do you explain this to clients? Through Matt's coaching programme, he helps to explains the who, what, where, when, why and how through a holistic approach.

 

Talking Points:

How important do you think protection is? Do you think all Advisers/Brokers agree?

People are often put off by insurance  - how do you deal with it?

Any stats on the amount of unprotected mortgages? Unprotected businesses? Brokers to clients?

Types of protection - life, critical, income protection, business protection - different tactics?

What does protection coaching entail?

 

Follow Matt on LinkedIn.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services. 

Join The Lead Ladies and some of The Lead Engine team in this entertaining episode as they vent about their holiday annoyances!

Featuring input from the Queens of Christmas on what to banish to Room 101, and a surprising twist from our resident Grinch, it’s a festive mix of humour and holiday spirit. 

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

This week, I have got a very special guest, someone that was at our financial services brand accelerator conference, they actually stepped onto the broker Q&A panel at the last minute. I've never actually met this guy in person until the event and just casually asked him as you do, but the weird thing about kind of social media and people that do video content on social media is you kind of feel like you know them a bit already from their content. And we do actually talk about that a bit. 

Now, one of the weird things about people like this is they would be an incredible client for us as an agency, but I'll never pitch to them and I didn't think I would ever have to because I didn't They'll need to because they're generating leads themselves already.

They've kind of got a clear vision of what their businesses is who they are, who their customer is. They're creating content and they're generating leads already. Hopefully they'll only ever need marketing support when they want to sort of grow and expand. 

So they get the next step for them would be maybe if they wanted to hire another advisor is try som Facebook and Google ads.

So this is if you haven't guessed already, it's Thomas honour.

At our event, he said something along the lines of “I've only been doing video for a couple of months, but I'm getting getting a steady flow of leads already.” So it can be done. I want you to hear it from the horse's mouth. 

See for yourself what he’s doing just follow him on social and follow people like Ash Borland and Jim Smyth. Amanda Marsden, Jonathan Warren, Pete Matthew as well.

Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast. This week we have got a very special guest, Nicola Firth, founder and CEO of Knowledge Bank. Nicola started as a mortgage advisor before deciding to work independently for her own company which is Knowledge Bank, a mortgage criteria search system. She used to be a broker and turned into software as a service. She wanted to have everything in one place for the lenders and brokers who place mortgage business. Saving hours and even days using a product sourcing system which is simple, very intuitive, fully searchable, easy to access place. With everything in one place, it will be quicker and easier to place cases. Every lender will have their login to Knowledge Bank, they can input their criteria to showcase to all the brokers that use it in no time. Making all information readily available and crystal clear. Knowledge Bank is not just for new brokers and inexperienced ones. Even brokers with years of experience in this country who spent time researching criteria to place a case can help save a considerable amount on time. This software was purposely designed to be as simple as possible to use because people who will use it are busy, working long hours and they don't have the time to learn to use a new system. It's very intuitive and all you need to do is simply log in and start the free 30-day trial and put a case. Monthly plan at £14.99 excluding VAT with no contract, after the 30-day free trial or annually for £149.99 excluding VAT, non-refundable and a 3 month notice period. If you have a team, you can get it for £25 per month for 5 to 10 users excluding VAT with a 3 month notice period or £50 for more than 10 users. Any questions, you can reach out to her via Twitter and LinkedIn, just type knowledge bank and you will find it there. For email and phone enquiries, our contact details are listed in our website https://www.yourknowledgebank.co.uk/ As I said at the start of our episode, there is a special offer here and a lifetime discount on it if you go through the link below. So instead of £14.99 per month, we have managed to arrange for you that is £12.75 plus VAT per month and all the annual option is £134.99. http://www.yourknowledgebank.co.uk/join?LeadEngine

Reels are short videos, normally around a minute and some brokers are getting millions of views and hundreds of leads. Ash Borland joins us to discuss whether this is an easy-to-do sustainable source of leads or whether is it harder than it looks.

The first and probably last episode about "Mindset". I have a talk called "Be More Like Batman" but how could adopting a superhero mindset help you get more business?

Paul Gray from 313 Financial talks through their journey from humble beginnings to a flourishing and rapidly growing FS business. We talk about finding clients, hiring the right team and growing pains.

A really interesting discussion between an Adviser (Alice Williams) and marketing manager (Catherine Lidgley) on how they market their business through video. Recorded pre-covid (back in the office!) discussing how Alice and Catherine are working together to market their business to property developers.

The Lead Engine team return for 2023...Following Alex and Tom's episode on landing pages, Daniel and James join Tessa to give their second ever review on the Advisers Assemble podcast, this time sharing their thoughts on a landing page builder they have trialled called, Carrd. 

Brought to you by the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in generating leads for financial advisers and brokers.

The Lead Ladies are joined by their very first guest on the show, Hemat Natha,  the Founder, CEO and Advisor at Mortgage Advice Point. 

Hemat reveals his  pet peeve and The Lead Ladies share their opinions - join in on the latest rantalong and let us know on The Lead Engine socials if you agree!

Visit Mortgage Advice Point.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

Mike Greene returns to the Advisers Assemble Podcast to talk all about what a business mentor does.

Visit Mike's website.

Listen to Mike's podcast.

Read Mike's book.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services. 

 

Jim Smyth, is the mortgage prinicipal adviser at First Stop Mortgages & Protection NI Limited. Jim started off in Protection in 2012 and got into mortgages in late 2018. In this episode you’ll hear;-

1. Jim’s backstory in his career life.
   
2. The importance of educating people about your services.
   
3. Jim’s experience with a business coach he had hired.
   
4. How Jim and his brother expanded his business from Protection into Protection & Mortgages.
   
5. Jim’s first experience with a successful door to door business sale.
   
6. Techniques deployed by Jim to seek referrals.
   
7. The introduction of Social Media to grow their business.
   
8. Jim’s advice to people who want to get started in the Mortgage business.
   
9. Methods on how to optimise on Social Media Marketing.
   
10. Free video resources by Jim Smyth.
    
11. What Jim would do if he was to start from scratch today.
    
12. Importance of personal branding over commercial branding like logos.
    
13. How Jim and his team generate reviews for their business.
    
14. Jim’s advice to people struggling with Social media marketing.
    
    

Links

Jim Smyth On Linkedin

Jim's Website

Following  the solo episodes on Google Campaign Types and Google Bidding Types, Alex Curtis is back to talk more about Google Ads but this time to focus specifically on Keyword Types. 

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

From the team at The Lead Engine, specialists in generating mortgage leads as well as financial planning, life insurance, equity release and bridging leads too.

Connect with Darin on Linkedin and check out Bomb Bomb for yourself

 

Brought to you by the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in generating mortgage leads, bridging leads, pension leads, wealth management leads, and equity release leads.

I sit down with Katie Hart a psychologist and marketer who specialises in gender marketing. We discuss the difference between male and female brains and how we can adapt our marketing to not put off one or the other.

I'm a huge psychology fan and absolutely love how we as marketers can appeal to more people using different imagery, text and fonts etc.

Katie's website: https://www.rhetonic.co.uk/
Connect with Katie on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aboutkatiehart/

Host of "Mortgages, Money & More" and the "Mortgage Broker Broadcast" podcast (Which launched since we recorded!). Craig Skelton founder of CS Mortgage Solutions and CS Retirement Solutions joins us this week to discuss "My Brand, My Way". There are quite a few options for Advisers who want to set up their own brand, you could go DA, be an AR, use a franchise model, join a network (almost endless!). My Brand, My Way is a great opportunity to have your own thing but with a load of support too. Tune in to find out more.

The last in a four-part customer retention series Dush talks us through how we can help your clients prepare for a brighter future by:

• Understanding your customer and their needs
• Looking at the life evolution process.
• Sales opportunity at each stage
• How can we get this important information?
• Developing a customer journey and contact process

My mentor Mike Greene told me to either get a plan or get a F****** job. So I created a plan and that plan needed goals. He taught me how to create a transition map to move from where you are to where you want to be. This episode explains what a transition map is and how you can use it.

"I could learn enough to be confident enough to call them." This was direct feedback from a consumer survey comparing two different mortgage websites. It stuck with me that some people feel like they need a little bit of knowledge so they feel comfortable enough to chat with an adviser. Alex talks you through some of the other responses we've had too.

Customer Retention In Financial Services
One mistake that a lot of businesses make in the financial services sector today is focusing on acquiring new clients and giving little thought to retention. In fact, retaining customers can be your biggest and most significant weapon as a business. With that being said, in this blog post, we are going to take a look at customer retention in the financial services sector in further detail to help you get a better understanding.

What is retention?
Customer retention is a term that is used to describe the actions and activities that organizations and businesses take in order to lower the number of customer defections. The goal of implementing a customer retention program is to enable businesses to keep a hold of as many of their customers as possible. This typically involves using brand loyalty and customer loyalty initiatives, however, there are many different strategies to choose from depending on the nature of your company and your target consumer base.

Do you know how many customers are leaving you or are just dormant?
When focusing on customer retention strategies, one of the most difficult elements is determining whether or not a customer is going to leave your business or whether they are simply dormant. This is something you will need to figure out using data so you can make sure that you target your efforts effectively.

What are the benefits of retention?
There are a number of different benefits that are associated with focusing on customer retention. This includes the following...

Increase in customer lifetime value
Your brand will stand out from the crowd
You are going to earn more word of mouth referrals
It is cheaper than acquisition
Loyal customers are more profitable
Enables new product sales
Customers will explore your brand
You will get more feedback from engaged customers
Loyal customers are more forgiving
You will have more room to try out new things

When you consider all of the advantages that have been discussed, you can see how focusing on customer retention is the only way to drive true value to your business. Getting a new customer can feel exciting and like an achievement. However, it’s not until you have converted that client into a loyal customer that you will really begin to feel the fruits of your labour.

Importance of retention some food for thought.
i) Business don’t make money in year 1
ii) Profit from customers start in year 2 onwards

Therefore, you need to focus on retaining customers to truly drive profit. If you have a high turnover of clients, you’re not going to make much money.

So there you have it; the importance of customer retention in the financial services sector. As you can see, holding onto customers is arguably even more important than finding new customers in the financial services sector. This is something you need to give a lot of consideration to when it comes to your marketing efforts today.

Chris Barker is the principal of Manchester Money which was one of the first companies within the Money Group. Chris is now at a point where he's not advising now so he can fully work on the business, rather than in it. You'll hear Chris' journey, some advice he would give his younger self and of course the usual super hero questions.

The team are back this month with another eclectic mix of adverts to help get the creative juices flowing. From Smoothies and Satan to babies and dogs, it's another tail-wagging episode!

We recommend you view all four adverts before or during listening to this episode to engage in the discussion.

Immerse yourselves here.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

Alex & Tom explain why it's a bit harder to help startups than established businesses but there are a few quick wins. Here's the advice they would give to anyone starting up a new financial advice business.

LinkedIn Ads is paid advertising which can drive leads and reach your target audience. It can reach a more professional target audience by narrowing down the targeting options. Based on your campaign’s objectives, LinkedIn allows you to generate leads and creates a connection between you and relevant, professional audiences. Compared to Facebook, LinkedIn’s targeting selections are more high-level and custom to a professional audience. How to advertise in LinkedIn: - Pick your ad objective (Advertisers can run campaigns around intentions, such as brand awareness, lead generation, or website conversion or job applicants.) - Set up your audience targeting parameters. - Add audience attributes These include company connection, size, job experience, and interests depending on who you are targetting. LinkedIn’s targeting abilities enable you to target audiences based on location, company, company industry, age, gender, education, job experience, job title, interests, groups, etc. Interest - fairly new in LinkedIn ads and we will dig deeper into this on my upcoming in between episodes. - You can add three different formats: single image, video, and carousel. - Placement - Set your budget. (You can decide whether to set a total budget, or both a daily budget and total budget.) - Schedule.

This month, Co-Founder and Director of Trackerhub, Graham Wilson joins The Lead Ladies for a rant and shares his views on social media.

Visit TrackerHub.

Follow Graham on LinkedIn.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

Arguably the biggest name in Live video across the world his blog has had millions of views Ian Anderson Gray joined me to chat all things live video. We discuss why someone in financial services would leverage live video to generate leads and how to go about it.

In this short Inbetweenysode Alex walks you through one method to find a new domain name using a search engine called expireddomains.net. This could help you find a domain that has been used before and could give you some SEO benefit. Obviously do your due diligence before you go ahead and launch though!

Tessa chats to Joanne Cole, the CEO and Founder of Broker IQ - an app designed to connect mortgage brokers with their clients at all times.

Talking points:

- What is Broker IQ and where did the idea come from?

- What’s included in the App - services?

- How does the process work? How does it fit into the mortgage broker’s workflow?

- What sets you apart from the rest?

- How easy is it to navigate the app?

- Does it cost to download / use the app?

- Where can the app be downloaded?

Visit BrokerIQ here.

Follow Joanne on LinkedIn.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

Michael O'Brien needs no introduction as a well known name in the mortgage industry. On this episode, he introduces his new Wills and Estate Planning referral service for mortgage brokers, offering training, administration assistance, and an overall easier process to offer their clients.

Michael explains to Alex and Tessa why he felt the need to set up the referral service, noting a staggering 69% of adults in the UK haven't got a Will and 99% of people with a mortgage don't have a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA). He aims to highlight the importance of having a will and a LPA and normalise this through the home financing process.

Follow Michael on LinkedIn.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services. 

Should you be thinking about Pay Per Click advertising before you launch your new website? If so what exactly do you need to consider? Tom Maplethorpe joins Alex Curtis to discuss exactly this.

Talking Ads is a live show where my team and special guests discuss the adverts we have seen recently and whether we love or hate them.

I've selected some of the more interesting topics and concepts that should give you a great insight in to how to make your ads more effective.

You'll need to join a Facebook Group to watch Talking Ads Live - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1612904965454759/

The second part of our catch up with Mortgage Broker Ash Borland - we discuss what's changed and what the future holds

Jonathan Needham from The Money Group (TMG) introduces the mortgage network and explains how they are making their processes more efficient and why and how they differ from other networks.

Talking points:

- Who are TMG? History?

- Why join TMG? Benefits? What makes you different?

- What do your members say about you?

- How do you join TMG?

- Upcoming events

Visit The Money Group here.

Follow Jonathan on Linkedin. 

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

Alex, Tessa and Tom share their highlights ahead of the next episode featuring Sarah Robinson, Founder & Paid Media Manager of the Google Ads agency, Platypus Media.

From the team at The Lead Engine

Imagine having access to the unfiltered truth about buying mortgage leads straight from the mouths of experienced brokers. In this episode, we dive into the real-life stories of nine mortgage brokers who have navigated the ups and downs of lead purchasing. From the highs of securing new clients to the lows of dealing with subpar leads, these brokers share it all.

We caught up with some of the mortgage brokers at The Right Mortgage Annual National Training Event - 'Embracing Change' in Birmingham last month, to find out why they joined the network and what advice they would give to other advisers. 

Visit The Right Mortgage here.

A big thank you to the advisers that took time out to chat with us (in order of audio appearance):

Charles Breen - Montgomery Financial

Justin Moy - Essex Home Finance

Paul Collinson - Brick 2 Brick  Mortgage Solutions 

Humaira Shahid - Alpha Financial Services

Richard Crow - Richard Crow Mortgage & Insurance 

Mike Brooker - Neilson Financial Limited  

 Paul Littlewood - Silveridge Financial Limited

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

I first recorded an episode with Ash Borland back in early 2019. At the time he was a forward-thinking, social media savvy mortgage broker. He's now the host of the Personal Branding 101 podcast and a personal branding coach. I would normally roll my eyes at someone who got a bit of success on social then decided to become an "expert" but there's so much depth to Ash's knowledge and strategies. You can see his work first hand with clients like Omar Ghafoor (ep 82) and others in his Facebook group. We chat how the strategies have changes and what advisers could be doing now to get some traction online.

Having only started Bliss Financial this year Amanda is getting incredibly busy. It looks like she might need to hire in extra help already. You'll get to hear the kind of impact she's had from posting educational videos on Social Media.

Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast and I've got Angela Davidson with me today. Angela Davidson has been in financial services for many years and started 33 years ago with Barclays Bank before she realised that she wanted to help people more. She named her business Passion for Protection and she is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about what she does. She helps advisers to sell more to raise the bar on protection in the industry. Protection is still one of the most essential viewpoints of financial planning for achieving the financial resilience of clients and also one of the hardest subjects to discuss. She aims to help people to achieve their goals, empower salespeople and provide some of the tools and product knowledge that they can execute to raise the profile of protection advice to engage in a more in-depth conversation with their clients. Being able to overcome objections, getting people interested in getting it and closing the sale are the most common pain points in this process which they can overcome by allowing the clients to see what could possibly happen in the future. It doesn’t always have to be about what the needs of their client today but also for them to think about their future. Angela strives to get more clients covered with the suitable protection they need through best practices, NLP technique, listening and overcome objections, soft skills and asking the right questions.

Mortgage Marketing Forum is a community for marketers and business owners within the mortgage and specialist lending sectors. They run a series of events to give you tips and insights that are relevant to marketing in the mortgage market The Forum is run by Alex Hammond, Paul Hunt and Jeff Knight. In Short: The Forum is built by marketers, run by marketers for marketers. Listen in to hear more about it.

First of all, I don’t claim to be a social media expert, influencer or strategist. Our business creates social media content but it’s not a core part of our service. We don’t rely on getting leads for our clients or our own business through social media. Social media has had an impact on my business though so I want to explain how, why and what I do, then how this can be used for advisers. You'll hear: Why do I use social media? Why I don’t try and help everyone with everything Why I don't post much as the company Choosing the social media platform Why I cleared out connections & followers Why I follow, I like, I comment way more than I post Why there's no comment left behind Types of content I post Social Media Ads Why I try new things What I would do on Social Media if I was an adviser

Another legend who switched Primis for The Money Group Mr Jonathan Needham joins us as part of our Business Superhero Series. Jonathans talks candidly about mental health but we also discuss all the key parts required to build a successful brokerage. Having been there and done it for years he's a valuable source of advice for anyone wanting to grow their business in financial services.

Linkedin and Facebook Ads expert Cathy Wassell joined me to discuss how you can advertise your financial services business.

Cathy talks us through the structure of her new online course on how to use Facebook Ads.

We answer your questions on Google Display ads so you can get a much better understanding of what is possible. What is the display network? Do you have to make the banners? Can you do animated banners? Who sees the ads? How much do they cost? Are they good for lead gen? Search & Display combined, is that good?

I would like to introduce you to a guy called Adam King whom we met at a conference back in November. Adam used to work for a wealth advisor investment firm. He's got a background in financial services marketing. His company is all about this concept of thinking like a fish. Marketing allows companies and businesses to shine and build loyalty and sales. It improves every successful business operation. According to Adam, as a business owner, you need to stop thinking like the fishermen and start thinking like the fish by considering if the company's products or services meet the customer’s needs, wants or solves a problem. No matter how much you love chocolate cake, you won't catch any fish if you use the cake as bait. Instead you use worms to catch fish because fish love worms. Marketing is all about people, understanding their needs, dreams, and wants. It can attract and keep consumers. Building a connection through your customer or client’s interest through marketing strategies can create understanding between you which will allow them to trust you. Adam uses a systematic framework called 3 Growth Accelerator Ecosystem. An overall approach for reaching potential consumers and converting them into customers. Authority Asset Alliance These things will help you understand possible ideas on how to produce or create ROI. Take advantage of automation to make yours and the clients lives easier. Gather pre information about the potential client and validate if that person will be a good client for you. Having soft referrals to reach out to more people which can possibly be future clients or just simply creating alliances. Adam’s website: https://www.thinklikeafish.co.uk/

What advisers can look at to see if their website is climbing the Google rankings, so they can work on getting more free traffic and quality leads. We look at SEO KPI's mainly within Google Search Console so you can quickly and easily see how your website is performing on Google. How many times has one of you pages been visible on a Google search and how many clicks have you had? What search terms are you ranking for? At the end of the episode, you should be able to see where you need to improve when it comes to SEO.

Happy birthday to the podcast! It's now one year old! Alex talks about how we're implementing what we have learnt from Mark Pittaccio in the previous 2 episodes. He answers your questions one on public speaking and another on multiple niches. He encourages you to look at SEO as essentially it generates "free leads".

Bonus Episode! Andraya, Stephanie and Tessa are here for another Room 101 rantalong. This months episode highlights our views on international women's day, dogs off leads and the irritating noise of people chewing their popcorn and rustling packets at the cinema - all very relatable right?! 

From the team at The Lead Engine.

We run through 9 ways that you can generate mortgage leads with digital marketing. In part 1 we discuss why creating content is so important, Google Maps and Google Ads.
 

1) Creating content  for people who need advice

2) Get featured on Google Maps for people who want a local adviser.

3) Google Ads - local broker campaign.

4) Google Ads for mortgage products/types.

 

Daniel and James explain why we use certain spelling and phrases to create rich SEO content for client websites.

From the team at The Lead Engine. 

Some of the best leads are the people who call you directly. It sounds obvious but if you miss that call then that opportunity has gone. No matter the size of the business it's normally rare that someone is free to answer straight away. This is why so many advisers use a call answering service like MiPa which also helps out with admin too. Emma and her team work with quite a few broker firms answering their calls, booking appointments and with the admin side too. She's also a brilliant marketer too so you'll pick up a few content marketing tips while you listen as well.

Alain Desmier, the founder of Contact State is back on the podcast for a second time, chatting to Alex and Tessa about how the Lead Gen company is getting on and how they are dealing with the impact of cold calling.

Talking points:

What does Contact State do / offer?

Factors that have impacted cold calling.

How do you think cold calling should be addressed? What is the solution? How should this be resolved/ monitored?

What are you working on now? / Where are you now?

Who can you help? / How can you help mortgage brokers?

Visit Contact State website.

Follow Alain on LinkedIn.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

Alex and Tessa share what's in the next episode live on Facebook, with Chief Partnership and Marketing Officer at Uinsure, Lauren Bagley.

Word of advice...be sure to skip to the good part after a few more technical glitches made for an interesting intro!

This episode is brought to you by the team at The Lead Engine.

Rosalia brings adviser's stories to life on Social Media. With a background in financial services and a strong, unique and entertaining social media presence herself Rosalia is one of the industries go-to personalities for online coaching. She is definitely someone you'll want to hear from if you're looking to up your game on social.

Mike is the guy firms speak to if they need to find an awesome new adviser and/or they're thinking of going DA. OB1 Financial work with mortgage brokers from the day they step off their Cemap course right through to growing their own successful brokerages. They’ll help you find your first role in the industry, then support you while you grow and develop your career to the next level. They provide business development services to assist you in creating the best possible foundation to build your business from. Connections with industry-leading firms, they can ensure you’re talking with the best systems and product providers, clubs and companies essential to creating the best business possible from day 1. Whether you’re looking for a network to call home or have decided to go directly authorised as the best route for your business, they can support you in making your business the success you hope it to be.

Alex and Tessa are joined by LinkedIn expert, Louise Brogan to talk through the dos and don'ts of the ever growing business social platform.

Talking points:

About Louise Brogan - LinkedIn with Louise

How to use LinkedIn effectively - From the about me and experience section to commenting on posts, LinkedIn polls and avoiding 'Broitry' plus so much more.

What services do you offer? - LinkedIn Marketing/Training/ Intensive and Private coaching

How brokers can use LinkedIn properly for business

Follow Louise on LinkedIn.

The Advisers Assemble podcast is brought to you by the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation for financial advisers.

Digital Marketing Supremo and friend of the Show Mr Bob Gentle joins Alex for the business superhero series. You'll hear how Bob has changed the fortunes of the brands he works with, the importance of a personal brand and what it's like to work with Bob directly.

 Alex and Ross reunite to discuss the significant strides made by Blue Fish Mortgage Solutions, particularly in content creation through SEO, which has led to an increase in leads by targeting niche markets. They emphasise how this strategy has not only enhanced visibility but also positioned the company as a thought leader in the mortgage industry. Additionally, they highlight the crucial role of a robust social media presence in complementing the website, driving traffic, and further engaging potential customers, thus reinforcing the overall marketing strategy.

Follow Ross on LinkedIn.

Listen back to episode 260. 

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

Tom and Alex discuss 3 tools that are pretty much essential if you want to see how your website is performing, the data you can get and how this can help you make changes. Google Analytics - What people interact with your website Google Search Console - How your website is performing on Google Hotjar - How people interact with your website

Understanding the value of a click

Is it worth trying to get free clicks from Google? Alex would heavily argue yes, as some brokers pay a lot per click to get people from Google to their website. No matter how deep their pockets, how big their budget nobody spends money on ads without a return, especially brokers.

In this episode, Alex looks at the value of clicks generated from Google (not from ads) for three websites:

Website 1 £6,240 pounds worth of traffic in the last 28 days.

Website 2 with £6,900 worth of traffic in the last 28 days.

Website 3 with £27,000 worth of free traffic in the last 28 days.

Alex explains how he got to those numbers, what it means and how you can understand the value of a click from Google to a website.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

Tessa is joined by Chloe England, Telephone Account Manager at The Exeter, an insurance provider of Income Protection, Life Insurance, Private Medical Insurance & Cash Plans. 

Talking points:

What is The Exeter all about? How long have you been working for the company? 

What can you help with?

Where does the financial adviser / broker come in?

Insurance statistics - what are you noticing?

How are you overcoming the most common protection objections?

Are there any costs involved? Is there a fee to the  adviser for using your services?

Visit The Exeter here.

Follow Chloe on LinkedIn.

Brought to you by the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in generating leads for financial advisers and brokers.

Roger Lane and Tony Nunn from Fort Advice Bureau (FAB) join Tessa on another episode of our 'What Network Should I join?' Series to chat about their recruitment process, an alternative career and business opportunity for mortgage advisers.

 

Talking points:

Who is FAB?

Why did you create FAB?

Why would someone want to join FAB?

What do you look for in an adviser / broker?

Where / how can people find out more?

Follow Roger on LinkedIn.

Follow Tony on LinkedIn.

Visit Fort Advice Bureau.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.  

In a world where influencers and bloggers often tout quick fixes and shortcuts, it's refreshing to hear a different perspective.

Join us as we sit down with Lee & Neezam, two successful professionals who believe in investing more time with their clients to achieve outstanding results. 

They share their process from the moment a lead drops in their inbox and how they have refined this approach over the years.

Tune in for an insightful conversation on the value of dedication and time in creating lasting success.

Visit Rebus Financial Services here.

Follow Lee on LinkedIn.

Follow Neezam on LinkedIn.

Brought to you from the team at The Lead Engine who specialise in lead generation, web design and content marketing for financial services.

Tom & Alex discuss whether search marketing is better than social media marketing or not. So many advisers focus on when they should be posting on social, how often etc. But are they better off looking at what people search for instead?