Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. We’ve got Phil Bray coming from the other side of the pond, and this is fun. We met with your team. I don’t even know how we connected, but you guys are doing some very cool marketing concepts for advisors in the UK and probably other places over in Europe. So, we want to dive in and figure out what’s the same, what’s the different, and how we help advisors get appointments on the calendar. So, welcome to the show, Phil.
Phil Bray: Sounds good. Let’s do it. Thank you for having me.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, the name of your company, The Yardstick Agency. You’re out of Nottingham, UK. Give us people in the US, where’s that at in comparison to London, or where are you at in the country there?
Phil Bray: So, we are 120 miles north of London, a couple of hours on the train, and right in the center of the UK, we are the furthest from any sea, any beach that you can possibly get in the UK, but about 120 miles north of London.
Brad Johnson: So, you’re the Kansas of UK. You’re right in the middle of the country, just like we are here.
Phil Bray: Yep. There’s no Dollar Trees, but yep, that’s a decent description.
Brad Johnson: There we go. Alright. So, we’re definitely going to get into marketing. You guys are an award-winning marketing agency in the UK. You work specifically with financial advisors and in finance. You’re not working outside of finance, are you? Or do you dabble in other areas?
Phil Bray: Nope. We believe in the power of niche, which we might get into later. And we work exclusively with financial advisors, financial planners, and then firms that provide services to financial advisors and planners as well, in the B2B space. But we don’t work with lawyers, we don’t work with accountants, it’s financial services.
Brad Johnson: Okay. Well, what’s cool is the journey that got you to founding The Yardstick Agency. You actually, if we go back in time, you started as a financial advisor, and you have quite the origin story. So, would you mind sharing that journey? You’re a financial advisor. I think you hit some adversity along the way, the learnings, and how did you get to here?
Phil Bray: Yeah. So, I started in financial services back in 1995, 31 years ago. And I started as what in the UK was called a tied agent. You were working for an organization essentially selling three products in that organization, a pension, a protection policy, and in the UK, something called a PEP, which is a tax-free savings plan. And did that for three years, was made redundant, and then became an independent financial advisor in the UK. Did that for seven years and then in 2006 set up my own business. We moved my old clients across. That all went fine. And then we decided to go and purchase another IFA business. And that again went fine. Not a problem. We were buying a client bank as opposed to buying a business. There was no offices that came with it. There was no team members that came with it. It was just clients. That worked well in 2007.
And then we got a little bit ahead of ourselves and thought, “First one went well. Second one must go well.” Didn’t turn out quite that way. We bought the other business, but this time we bought the business. So, we bought the clients, but then there was offices, there was teams, et cetera. And also at that time, there was a small matter of the financial crisis hitting firms like ours. And as markets fell, our ongoing advisor fee fell. Our ability to service the debt that we’d taken on to finance these client banks was reduced. And ultimately, the bank called in, the lender called in the loan. The business was sold to another organization, and I was left holding. I don’t know if you have the same things in the US, but I was left holding what are called personal guarantees. And I was forced in a certain route from a financial perspective. Car went, house went. Yeah. It was an interesting time.
Brad Johnson: That had to be tough.
Phil Bray: Yeah. You know what, sun still came up. Nobody died. Kids still love me. And it taught me fabulous lessons. And when you were in the epicenter of it, the eye of the storm, you didn’t really get a chance to think being that tough, to be honest. You were just buffeted from all sides and carried along with the wave of it all. I guess it was only maybe a year or two later, when you look back, that you start thinking, “Yeah, that was tough.”
Brad Johnson: What lessons came out of it as you looked back?
Phil Bray: Ambition can be really dangerous. I was too ambitious, was too arrogant thinking that we did the first deal well, the second one’s bound to work out. So, I think that combination of ambition and arrogance was a real eye-opener, a real lesson. I think the other lesson was getting ahead of the game, getting ahead of things, proactively looking for the next issue, because one of the things we found was there was an issue to deal with. You would take the minimum action to try and deal with that issue. And actually, then when it wasn’t enough, you had to do a little bit more, a little bit more, and a little bit more. There were certain things that I would’ve done more radically.
For example, cost-cutting. I would’ve not tried to cut the minimum because you want to make as few redundancies as possible. I would’ve cut harder and then rebuilt. So, I think there’s a lesson around arrogance and ambition being problematic. I think there’s a lesson around getting ahead of the game, and then I think there’s a lesson about how many people you trust, how many people you have in the corner, and then looking at things like conflicts of interest and that sort of stuff. Bunch of lessons. I don’t think Yardstick wouldn’t be the business it is today without me going through that all those years ago.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. What I hear you saying is when you started to see on the horizon, things are maybe going the wrong direction, it’s easy when you’re in that moment, “Oh, you know, the tide will turn. It will reverse course.” You’re saying, “I should have made more decisive, quicker action, created more of a margin of safety,” in hindsight.
Phil Bray: A hundred percent. Quicker actions, more significant actions, and maybe this isn’t the right word, but maybe less collaborative actions. Going down this road, let’s do it rather than trying to collaborate all the time, but yeah, 100% quicker, deeper, more decisive,
Brad Johnson: As in, “Hey, we’ve got to do another meeting. Let’s get the executive team together and sort through this.” It’s like, “Nope. Must do it now. Let’s go.” Is that what you mean by that?
Phil Bray: Yes. Let’s talk less and do more would be my… And this is something we’ve taken into Yardstick or at least tried to take into Yardstick. There’s a lot to be said for, in that circumstance, in that crisis mode taking much, much quicker action.
Brad Johnson: Great business lessons. Well, let’s get to the redemption arc. So, where we left off there, you’re kind of starting to hit rock bottom. You have to sell the house, sell the car. You’ve still got the family that loves you. I mean, were you moving in with relatives? Like, here’s where we hit bottom, and then here’s how I started to dig my way out.
Phil Bray: Yeah. We rented a place. So, at that time, a couple of years later, actually new partner went to the place, and 2010, set up a new IFA practice. We had an empty room. There was three of us in the room, and my job is to make the telephone ring or the email ping with new inquiries. And that business is still going. It’s still flourishing. It’s now run by my wife and her business partner. My wife’s a financial advisor, so we don’t talk about a lot other than money and finance, and financial services. That’s not true. We talk about a lot. But that business is run by my wife and does very well. But that was 2010, empty room. We need to start building back up again.
And I did that until 2014. That business was good. I then went to work for the network that that business was part of. So, a network is a way of getting authorization in the UK from the FCA. And I went to work for that network as Head of Marketing and Business Development. Did two years there. The commute was not great. 90 minutes either way, beginning of the day, end of the day. Didn’t really get to see the kids that much and always had an itch. The only two things that I know anything about are marketing and financial services. Seem to make sense to start a marketing agency specializing in financial services. So, I took the decision to do that in 2016. We launched 9th of January 2017.
There was three of us. There’s now 55 of us, and the other two guys who are with me at the start are still with the business. One of them is a director and a shareholder now.
Brad Johnson: And that was Yardstick in 2017.
Phil Bray: That’s Yardstick. So, we’ve been nine years and a month and a half.
Brad Johnson: Cool. Congrats. Well, before we dive into marketing and Yardstick, I think it’s important because most of our audience are independent financial advisors in the United States. From your experience, what’s the same and what’s different about the financial advisory models? I heard you say charging a fee for services. Obviously, very common in the US, registered investment advisors, IRs, where they’re charging a fee to oversee a portfolio. So, what’s different? What’s the same?
Phil Bray: So, I think the obvious thing that’s different is the sheer scale of your market in the UK compared to the, sorry, your scale of your market in the US compared to the UK. That’s the obvious thing that’s different. Your market is huge compared to ours. I suspect as well both markets are pretty segmented between those who offer financial planning, people before products, and those who offer what I would call financial advice, which is focused on products and investment management. And my read on it is that the split is fairly similar, albeit your market is much, much larger.
In terms of differences, there are some obvious granular differences. The way you guys can deal with social proof has been over the years very different to what we can do in the UK. Minimal things, really granular stuff, as I say, like things like Google reviews, other reviews online, client testimonials, and that sort of stuff is treated very differently in the US to the way it is in the UK. So, I think there are a lot of similarities, and there are a lot of differences that even come down to that granular level. You’ve clearly got product differences, but at the end of the day, a financial planner in the UK is trying to do the same as a financial planner in the US, give clients confidence, peace of mind, reassurance that they’re going to be okay, whatever okay looks like for them.
Brad Johnson: Let’s hit the social proof really quick. So, if I’m an advisor in the UK, can I post Google reviews on my website? Can I not? How does that work?
Phil Bray: Yeah, you absolutely can. We would generally recommend that advisors in the UK use two platforms for their online reviews, Google and a platform called VouchedFor, which is similar to Wealthtender in the US, that sort of platform. And they can collect reviews, advisors in the UK can collect reviews on those platforms or indeed any others that they want to without restriction. So, there’s not that restriction that they have to ask every single client. Ideally, they should, and we absolutely recommend that they do so they get an authentic review pattern. But there’s not the same restrictions. And then what they do with those reviews, embedding them on websites, talking about them on social media, again, no restrictions.
Brad Johnson: Interesting. So, what’s interesting, it’s evolved in the US to where you can post reviews, but it has to be disclosed. Are they a client? Was it paid for? So, if a client that leaves a Google review leaves your firm, do you have to take it down? Or is it just it is what it is?
Phil Bray: It is what it is, and trying to get Google to take a review down would be really quite interesting. They’re not known for their responsiveness and being able to have a two-way conversation around Google reviews so that would be tricky anyway. But no, it is what it is. It can stay up. And the same on VouchedFor, and clearly, same with other platforms, but no, review can stay up.
Brad Johnson: Okay. Well, let’s get into marketing because one thing I do know advisors love to dive into is marketing. I think it might be their favorite topic. So, one of the things before we hit record that you mentioned, marketing can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And you said, “Well, when somebody comes to us, when an advisor comes to Yardstick, we literally say, ‘Let’s lay out a plan for the next year.’” So, let’s just pretend Brad here, I’m a new advisor. I’m in the UK. I just moved to Nottingham. I say, “Phil, hey, I want to start getting some appointments on the calendar. What should I do? Where do you take me?”
Phil Bray: And the first thing is to start talking about the basics. Who do you want to work with as this new start advisor, the new start firm? For me, you can’t effectively market your business until you know who you are talking to. And we would encourage firms, new start firms, a bit harder for existing firms to really focus on a target audience or a niche. I see them as slightly different things. But if you have a defined target audience or defined niche, it just makes marketing so much easier. It’s easier to shoot fish in a barrel than it is go fishing in the ocean. So, I think that’s the starting point. Who’s your target audience? Who’s your niche? From there, I think it’s getting the marketing foundations in place, online presence, website, social proof.
New start firm, social proof can sometimes have to come later, but I think it’s getting those foundations in place and then understanding where the advisor wants to take things. What are their targets? Do they have an AUM target? Do they have a new client target? How many seats have they got on their bus or their plane? How many clients can they take on? At what rate do they want to onboard them? So, understanding what they want to achieve and then writing a plan to help them achieve what they want to achieve over the next one, three, and five years.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, let’s break that down. The first thing you said, you see a target audience, and we call it ‘nitch’ here, ‘nitch’ ‘neesh.’ How are those different?
Phil Bray: So, yeah, love the way you guys do it, which is in niches. It doesn’t work quite so well in the UK. How are they different? So, for me, a target audience is broader. So, when firms come to us, they will often have that misconception sitting in their head. The wider the addressable audience, the quicker they will build their business. The opposite is true in reality. The more we can focus, I believe, the quicker they’ll build their business. And, for me, a target audience is relatively broad. So, a firm might say, “We want to work with people in the glide path to retirement, at retirement, or in retirement.” So, I would say they’re broad-target audiences.
For me, you can then turn those into a niche by overlaying a local area here in the UK. Don’t know if it’s the same in the US. Be interested to find out. Consumers often want to work with a local financial planner, someone that they can kick the tires on, they can go and visit and go and knock on the door if things don’t work, if things aren’t working out. So, for me, you can take that target audience, that broad target audience, and turn it into a niche by overlaying a local area. Or you can shoot straight for a niche. So, for example, we’ve got clients that work with dentists. We’ve got clients that specialize in buying commercial property and pensions. One of my favorite clients, you shouldn’t have favorite clients, should you?
But one of the clients that we work with, and we launched Kate’s website last year. Her niche is leaders in retail businesses, supermarkets in the UK. And that niche makes her business so much easier to market. So, for me, that’s the difference between a niche and a target. So, you would go general target, niche, and each of those levels, you’re getting more and more focused on who you want to work with.
Brad Johnson: That makes sense. Would you say when you go, like the last example you gave there, so this client of yours is working with leaders or owners of grocery stores? Did I get that right?
Phil Bray: It’s leaders, so senior managers, execs in the large supermarkets in the UK. So, think Walmart in the US, but the equivalent in the UK.
Brad Johnson: And so, what I would assume happens, because if I look at the US, I mean, I’ve seen some examples where one advisor only works with optometrists. Another advisor works with McDonald’s franchise owners. Another advisor works with high-net-worth divorced women. So, what I see is like you kind of become the guy or the gal, and it’s a very referable conversation because there are certain criteria or needs that that audience has, and they’re like, “Oh, I’ve got the person.” Do you see that play out the same way?
Phil Bray: A hundred percent. We want experts in our lives, don’t we? We want people who have the answer to our specific problems. We don’t want to be the Guinea pig, someone learning on us. Now, here we are today, one of our key selling points is you don’t have to explain what you do to us. You don’t have to explain to us what you do as a financial planner. We get it. We know what you do. So, we’re starting from three or four stages on, and it’s exactly the same with a financial planner that specializes in a certain audience. We all want experts these days. We don’t want generalists, and that’s one of the beauties of working in a niche.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, let’s go down the path. I’ll paint a little bit of a picture in the US, what I’ve seen, and then I’d love to hear what works also in the UK, or maybe there are some different things that we could import to our market. So, for a lot of independent advisors, they’re going to focus on one-to-many marketing strategies. So, if it is traditional, they might do public events, seminars, pay for a meal to fill a room, hopefully get some to book appointments, and go down the path. You might have educational workshops that happen at universities, a little more of a curriculum-based approach, television, radio, now podcasting, YouTube, referral sort of experiences, “Hey, we’re going to do a wine tasting, bring your friends.”
That’s kind of more that in-person, traditional. What if that applies to the UK, or do you have other ways you’ve seen that work in your market to actually take one-to-many and then start to manufacture appointments on the calendar?
Phil Bray: So, I think one-to-many absolutely applies here in the UK. What I see in the UK is far, far fewer firms doing that one-to-many in person. You talked about some of the events that people might run, and I see far less of the one-to-many being in person. I also don’t see advisors, planners in the UK advertising on TV. It’s just most firms in the UK, most financial planning firms in the UK are really relatively small, four, three to five planners, something like that. They’re relatively small. They’ve only got so many seats on the bus, the airplane, whatever analogy you want to use. And for most of them, they don’t need to go and run events like you talked about to achieve their business objectives.
So, most will start with, we recommend most start with implementing a really effective referral strategy, which also can be a form of one-to-many marketing if you’re training your clients to who to recommend you to, how to do it, and when to do it. That can be a form of one-to-many marketing if you train them well enough and they speak to enough people. But most start with referrals and recommendations from existing clients because they’ve got the highest conversion rate, the lowest cost of acquisition. And for a lot of firms in the UK, that’s all they need. They don’t need more than that, so they don’t need to go to that one-to-many form of marketing.
For those that have a gap between what they want to achieve and what they can get through referrals from existing clients, they will fill it with other tactics. And then in terms of one-to-many marketing, what would they do? Local advertising plays a real part or advertising in the niche. We’re seeing a lot of firms wanting to do more analog stuff. Over the past 12 months, there’s been a bit of a shift away from digital to analog for some firms. We’ve even got one firm that does leaflet drops, literally leaflets through people’s doors, and that works really, really well for them. In terms of other one-to-many marketing, building audiences, whether that’s on an email audience or a social media following, clearly you own one, you rent the other. So, there’s a bit more risk with the audience on social media.
Webinars, becoming much more popular in the UK. So, absolutely, we have examples of one-to-many marketing. They tend to be either analog or digital rather than those in-person events that you talked about. And certainly, TV advertising in my experience is not a place that advice and planning firms will go in the UK.
Brad Johnson: Is that because it’s expensive and the ROI isn’t there? Is it because of regulation? It’s not allowed?
Phil Bray: Certainly not regulation. It’s absolutely allowed. No issues there. I think it’s a couple of things. A lot of firms are small and therefore don’t have huge growth ambitions. That’s part of it. I think it’s probably quite a daunting prospect advertising on TV. And I think there’s a cost. There’s a cost element. I don’t know what it’s like in the US. You tell me. But quite often, one of the first questions we get asked by advisors is, how much will it cost? How much does marketing cost? We try and get them to flip that and start talking about, well, we turn on investment. But I suspect most people, most advisors would be pretty daunted by the cost of advertising on TV, whether it’s producing, running the ads, et cetera.
Brad Johnson: You mentioned earlier one of the niches is geographic, a local advisor. I believe that to be true in the US as well. And then we all have this little thing called COVID, where everybody lived remote on Zoom for a year. And I feel like that kind of cracked open the code to where the older generation was almost forced to embrace virtual. How much do you see that playing out in the UK, where YouTube, for example, I’m familiar with at least a couple of advisors, they’re generating hundreds of millions of dollars of AUM off of their YouTube channel annually, and oftentimes never meeting the clients in person. They’re all doing virtual appointments via Zoom. Do you see any of that shift? Do you see a balance? What are the themes?
Phil Bray: So, I think, in the UK, there are three, four financial advisors doing very well on YouTube. The godfather of them all is a chap called Pete Matthew.
Brad Johnson: I had Pete on the show way back. Nice guy.
Phil Bray: Ten years ago, I think.
Brad Johnson: Yeah,
Phil Bray: I think I’m the second Brit that you’ve had on the show.
Brad Johnson: You are. Blazing a trail.
Phil Bray: So, hopefully, it’s not another 10 years before you get the next Brit. So, Pete is the godfather of this with meaningful money, and he has created his YouTube channel with huge numbers of videos on that, leading into I think two or three different service propositions. Having said that, I think if people in the UK, the advisors in the UK, are thinking about using this type of one-to-many communication, they do seem to be gravitating a bit more towards podcasts than necessarily the educational type of content on YouTube. Now, clearly, podcasts start up as audio. They’re now the best ones are audio and visual. We sat on one now.
But even then, that’s in the minority. The number of advisors who would be thinking about these things it’s a small minority. Now, that’s not to say that the majority is right. I don’t think they are, but that small minority will take advantage of the opportunity as Pete has demonstrated and blazed that trail for the last however many years it is, 10, 12 years.
Brad Johnson: So, when I look at marketing back to how you laid it out, kind of start with the end in mind, start with the ideal customer, and then work back into the marketing, 100% agree. And I see a lot of advisors mess that up, where they just start throwing stuff out there and hoping it sticks. As you do that, what are common themes you see? You mentioned the retiree, pre-retiree market. Is it income planning? Is it risks and fees? Is it tax planning? What are kind of the topics? The dog whistle language that’s like, “Yep. That’s the one that’s going to bring them in.”
Phil Bray: Yeah. So, we run on behalf of the firms we work with client surveys. We run surveys for the firms we work with, generally every one or two years. And one of the questions in there talks about the challenges, the concerns, the aspirations that their clients have, what’s important to them. And we break this down between clients who have not retired yet and clients who have already retired. And for those clients who have not yet retired, the most popular answers, the most popular two answers are almost always, “Am I going to have the lifestyle that I want in retirement? And when can I afford to make the transition?” Those two key two things are real drivers and almost always the most well-ranked drivers.
For those people who have already retired, drivers change a little bit. It’s about whether they’ll continue to be okay. Can we continue our lifestyle? But then they also think about legacy and being able to pass their wealth on. And two things again in the UK that post-retirees are concerned about, one is what we call inheritance tax. How much is going to be paid to the state on their death? And third, how much is going to be paid potentially in long-term care fees if they need care in old age? And of course, both of those things, cost of care and the cost of inheritance tax on their death, will eat into their estate and eat into the amount that they will then leave on there, that financial legacy that they’ll leave on.
So, those are the key drivers. And clearly from a marketing perspective, we want to use those key drivers to pull people to us, pull people to the firms that we work with.
Brad Johnson: Do you see those key drivers evolve or change as the investible assets go up?
Phil Bray: No.
Brad Johnson: Really? What we see in the US a lot taxes matter more as wealth goes up. Do you see any of that lever playing out?
Phil Bray: No. I think it’s probably slightly skewed in the UK at the moment. There has been some quite significant changes in the UK. Pensions used to be, broadly speaking, exempt from inheritance tax. So, whatever was in the pension could be passed on tax-free. From April next year, that’s changing, and people’s pensions will be in their estate from an inheritance tax perspective. So, it is a real perceived concern for a lot of people. Whether that is an actual concern clearly depends on somebody’s wealth. So, from what I see in the UK, I think we’ve got a window where this is skewed, and everybody seems to be really quite concerned. Everybody of a certain age seems to be really quite concerned about these things.
When we’re analyzing content. So, our teams produce newsletters and content, blogs, and articles for our clients. And when we are analyzing what lands and what doesn’t land, we’ve seen a real trend to the content landing that talks about pensions, inheritance tax, and just general tax take here in the UK. I don’t know if it’s different with you guys. Again, would be interesting to find out. But you write about those three things, and your open rate, your click-to-open rate will rise substantially in the UK at the moment.
Brad Johnson: And it makes sense with big changes coming, where that sounds like a bit tax sheltered prior, and is now going to be included. I’m sure that will definitely make that more of a marketing topic you’ll want to talk about in the UK. Okay. You mentioned newsletters and content. What makes a good newsletter? Because I’ve seen a lot of not good newsletters in finance. So, what makes a good newsletter?
Phil Bray: Targeted to the recipient. It needs to be relevant to their goals, their aspirations, their challenges, what gets them out of bed in the morning, what keeps them awake at night. It’s got to be relevant to them. I think that’s the first thing. I think we’ve got to meet people where they are with a newsletter, which generally means putting it in their inbox. Big fan. How many years of people predicted the demise of email marketing? Yeah. It’s still the quickest route to get a message out to somebody. So, for me, I think, what makes a good newsletter? Electronic communications. I think making sure that the content is not only relevant but is in the form that they want it.
Gut feel for me is somebody going to sit down and read 1,500 words, 2,000 words. They might, but I think there’s a move towards more scannable, snackable, shorter form content. I think the more we can make that content repurposable, is that a word? Repurposable?
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Phil Bray: Yeah. So, a blog of a thousand words, that could be a kind of a script for a podcast. If it’s a listicle-style blog, it can be broken down into social posts. It could become a script for a webinar as well as a podcast. So, I think in terms of what makes a good newsletter, relevance, making sure that the content is the format that the client wants to consume it. I think making sure that we are meeting them where they are in terms of how they want the content. Really, really good hooks, headlines, subject lines. So many people spend X time writing the article. And then 1% of that writing the headline, the subject line, or the hook. Really got to spend more time on that. There you go. That’s three or four things that make a good newsletter in my view.
Brad Johnson: What makes a good headliner hook versus a not-so-good one?
Phil Bray: When they get somebody to open it, for me, it is intrigue, it is fear, probably not the right word, but fear, FOMO, concern, all those sorts of things. I just don’t think most people spend enough time writing their headline and writing multiple headlines, actually, understanding the need for the headline in the first place, then writing multiple headlines, stacking them on top of each other, trying to improve each one, taking it to your favorite AI platform, and getting a bit of feedback from it. Split testing different headlines to understand what works and what doesn’t. But I don’t think enough people spend enough time writing really good headlines. And as Ogilvy said, there’s kind of no point writing the rest of the article if the headline isn’t good enough to get people to open it and to get people to read it and engage it.
Brad Johnson: Are you talking about David Ogilvy?
Phil Bray: There you go. Yeah.
Brad Johnson: So, give a little pitch on him. I’m familiar with his background, but I’d love to get your take.
Phil Bray: I just think his lessons, so it is a little bit like, How to Win Friends and Influence People. That was written in what, in the ‘30s?
Brad Johnson: Dale Carnegie.
Phil Bray: Ogilvy did his stuff in the ‘50s and ‘60s, but their lessons are timeless. And Google him, go and look at some quotes to anybody listening to this who’s not aware of either of them, but certainly, David Ogilvy. And everything he says and, in this case, in relation to headlines, it applies today. They’re timeless nuggets of advice that work then and absolutely work now, even though we’ve moved from an analog age when he was the advertising genius that he is to where we are now.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, for those not familiar with him, actually, how I first heard about him, one of my favorite podcasts is called the Founders Podcast, David Senra. Are you familiar?
Phil Bray: I’m not, no.
Brad Johnson: Okay. We’ll throw it in the show notes. He did it. So, David Ogilvy wrote a couple books and, basically, this guy reads the biography and then extracts the key lessons, turns them into a podcast. So, we’ll throw a couple of those in the show notes, but that was how he first got on my radar. I stumbled across one of the podcasts, but I believe he was like a Madison Avenue ad man back in the ‘50s, ‘60s, kind of, probably a lot of magazine print, direct response. But to your point, he was like a genius, like built this massive ad agency. A lot of those lessons are timeless. So, we’ll make sure we throw some of that in the show notes for those of you that aren’t familiar with him.
But back to headlines and hooks, I heard it said a long time ago, a guy that was a multiple time New York Times bestseller. He said, most people that write a book, they screw it up because you’ve got to start with the title. He’s like, if you have a bad title, just don’t even write the book because nobody’s going to open it. So, it sounds like it’s the same concept you’re talking about with emails, newsletters. It’s like if you haven’t thought about the message at the highest level that you want to deliver that people need and want to consume, don’t even bother writing the article. Is that the same concept?
Phil Bray: Completely. I personally believe that the headline should be written last. And if you look at traditional print media or what print media has evolved into now, it’s pretty common that the journalist, the person who’s written the article will not write the headline because it’s a different discipline. Writing long-form content is a different discipline, in my view, to writing headlines.
And this applies to, go and look at LinkedIn, and if you look at the hooks that people write on LinkedIn, those first two lines that we need to get people to really engage with, to get them to click see more, and what, look at the rest of the post. Most of them are terrible. Most of them are really, really poor, and we just need to invest more time in it after we’ve recognized the importance of it to write good subject lines, headlines and hooks. Study it. Go and look at people like Ogilvy. Look at what works because people who are sending content. We’ve got data, haven’t we? We’ve got data from newsletters. We know what headlines work. We know what headlines don’t work. Go and engage with AI, but just spend more time on it than you probably are doing already, because if you don’t and people don’t open the email, get past the headline or get past the hook on LinkedIn, you’re right. There’s no point of writing the content in the first place.
Brad Johnson: Do you have a favorite hook that sticks out in your head, whether it was a newsletter, maybe it was a direct response piece that you all worked on, this one that just like popped and you didn’t see it coming?
Phil Bray: That’s strange, isn’t it? What pops and what doesn’t? And the most engaged hook that I ever had on LinkedIn was eight words after the lunch on holiday in South Africa when I got the bill and I was talking a bit about nudge theory. So, I guess that goes against what I’ve just said, it was a real off-the-cuff hook, and it just, like you say, popped and worked really well. But that’s luck, isn’t it? I wasn’t actually spending too much time thinking about that because I just had a really good lunch.
But for me, the hooks that seemed to go really well are the ones that list-based hooks seem to go very well. It’s a really good formula. I’m a big fan of listicle style content. And listicle style content lends itself to a really good hook in terms of 10 things that, 8 mistakes that, they work really, really well. I like using certain words in the hook as well. This, how, why, they all work really, really well in hooks. This, how, and why, if you can get one, two, or three of those in, they work really well as well.
Brad Johnson: What do advisors screw up in marketing? What are the common mistakes you see?
Phil Bray: You said this was an hour, an hour and a quarter podcast, didn’t you? Not three-hour podcast.
Brad Johnson: There’s plenty of options to pick from, I’m sure.
Phil Bray: So, I would say not starting with the end in mind to begin with, and I think there’s two ends where we would encourage people to start. What you want to achieve from your marketing and who you want to work with, rather than just diving straight in. So, that’s mistake number one. I think mistake number two is focusing too much on cost rather than return on investment. Cost just is the wrong frame here. If you can spend a pound and get five pound back, the question should be, how do I spend more pounds? So, again, I think that’s a mistake.
And then I see a lot of limiting beliefs around social proof. My clients won’t leave me online reviews. Online reviews can be fake. Therefore, they have no value. My clients won’t appear in testimonial videos. Social proof doesn’t work with high-net-worth clients. So, I see a lot of myths and misconceptions that live in advisors’ heads about the importance of social proof. So, there are three big mistakes – not working backwards from an ultimate aim, not focusing on return on investment, focusing on cost, and then believing in myths and misconceptions around social proof. And it’s no great surprise really because they’re great at what they do. It doesn’t necessarily make them great marketers.
Brad Johnson: Different skill set for sure.
Phil Bray: It’s a completely different skill set. I have– myself and my wife, as I mentioned earlier, as a financial advisor, we have our own financial planner. We pay somebody to be a financial planner because it serves a skill set. It’s not my skill set anymore. But we know the importance of having that relationship.
For me, there are examples of great financial planners who are also great marketers. We mentioned one earlier in Pete Matthew, but they’re rare. They’re incredibly rare. And that’s why, for me, and I’ve got skin in this game, I’m running an agency that’s based on people hiring us, but for me, it’s really important that if an advice firm wants to grow, yet absolutely have an input that gets some experts on board.
Brad Johnson: So, on your second point, cost versus ROI, 100%, I see that all the time over here, where it’s like, oh, I only want to spend 50k, I only want to spend 100k. And you’re like, wait, the analogy I always use, a slot machine. If you had a magical slot machine, you put $1 into, one pound in the UK, and you pulled the handle and it put out five, you’d be like, how quickly can I shovel money into this magical machine? But one of the biggest disconnects is not knowing your numbers, it’s all emotion based versus math based. Is that a common theme where advisors just don’t even know the math to get to the ROI?
Phil Bray: 100%. If you talk to, and again, I caveat with this saying, well, why would they, because it’s not their job. But if you talk about client acquisition cost, lifetime value of a client, they’re not terms that are used on a regular basis in the UK with financial advisors when it comes to their marketing. And I think there’s all sorts of reasons for that.
The key one for me is education about why these things are important. One of the big challenges that we have when we start first working with firms is their lack of data. They’re not, for example, recording new inquiries that come into their business. They’re not tracking what happens to them. They’re not calculating conversion rates. They’re not calculating client acquisition costs, return on investment, et cetera. So, that’s one of the things we really try and get them to, we do for them once we’ve got the data.
But certainly, those conversations often start with how much does marketing cost? And the answer is always, it depends. Let’s get into the detail of what you want to achieve.
Brad Johnson: Okay, let’s change course here. Some would say financial advising is a very commoditized industry. There’s a lot of financial advisors in the US. I’m sure it’s the same in the UK. As it gets to marketing, part of marketing, I believe, is branding, what is your messaging? How do you differentiate back to niches? How do you start to stand out in a sea of sameness when it comes to your marketing, your branding? What are some strategies or tips that you would give?
Phil Bray: I think the first one is back to what you talked about, niches. That’s the first way of standing out, becoming the go-to expert or one of the go-to experts for the type of people you work with. I genuinely don’t think there’s anything better than that from standing out in a sea of sameness. What else would I do? I would over-index on social proof. Here in the UK, most firms don’t have Google reviews. Most firms don’t have client testimonial videos. They might have a testimonials page on their website with anonymous written testimonials. Pointless. 1% to 2% of all website visitors will ever go to the page. Absolutely pointless.
So, I would stand out by niching, I would stand out with my social proof, and I would stand out with my attitude towards giving and educating. I would be giving information away for free and selling the implementation piece. So, I would just be always on giving mode, trying to educate my audience on how to solve their problems, how to help them achieve their aspirations. And I think if you do those three things, you will build an audience. So, when people move themselves in market, it’s you that they’re going to come to rather than a generalist because as we said earlier, people want specialists.
Brad Johnson: On that note, back to niches differentiation, serving a specific sort of client, you mentioned referrals earlier. Let’s maybe just take a couple case studies because I’m sure you have a few. Here was a niche, here was somebody that went deep in that niche, and here was, once they brought on a client or two, how they cracked it open and brought on a lot more from that same niche marketplace.
Phil Bray: So, I think, for me, a referral strategy sits within a wider marketing strategy, and that referral strategy should be based on three things – client education, client communication, and client appreciation. The education element should be based on educating clients on who to recommend you to, how to do it, and when to do it. So, for me, I would be, or we encourage the advisors that we work with to be talking to their clients, educating them during the annual review process because most advisors here in the UK will review their clients once a year.
But during the annual review meeting, updating the client about their business and educating them on where they want to take the business, things get really important to get specific about where you want to take the business, and who in their niche they would like to be recommended to. My personal take on it, I think asking for referrals is the wrong thing to do. I think it’s counterproductive, but I think educating clients on who you want to be recommended to produces much more positive long-term effects.
Then I think there’s three points when advisors, planners should show appreciation. When the referral is received, I think they should say thank you. Saying thank you by email or telephone, it’s fine. It’s a bit 6 out of 10. We all get lots of calls and lots of emails. Let’s find a way of standing out. And my personal preference is that advisors stand out by sending a handwritten thank you card to the client or a handwritten thank you note, because when that card arrives, it will stand out. It taps into effort bias. It’s just a nice thing to do. It’s a classy thing to do.
Brad Johnson: You said effort bias like E-F-F-O-R-T.
Phil Bray: That’s it, yeah.
Brad Johnson: So, they took the effort to hand write the note. Therefore, it’s much more appreciated.
Phil Bray: Correct. We all value things more when we believe there was additional effort taken to produce them.
Brad Johnson: For sure.
Phil Bray: Second time I would show appreciation is when the referral converts, which might be three, four, five, six months away. I would send a personalized gift at that point. The value of the gift is less important than the personalization. And then the third thing, and I see almost no advisors do this, if the person who has been referred to the advisor, who has become a client then leaves an online review, wherever that may be, Google or different platforms, we’ll encourage the advisor to take a screenshot of that online review, send it to the original client who made the introduction with a little note, “Hi, Brad. Thanks for referring me to Jane. Jane’s left a lovely online review. Just thought you’d like to see it. Thanks for the recommendation again, Phil.” And that closes the loop, validates your decision to make the introduction, and shows you did a good thing.
And there’s a bunch of other things that I think fall into a good quality referral and recommendation strategy, regular communication with clients about referrals. We’ve seen some firms in the UK adopt charity or charitable schemes where they make donations when referrals are received. We’ve even seen some firms run financial incentives. There’s numbers of ways of doing it. But I do think it needs to be based on those three things – education, appreciation, and communication.
Brad Johnson: I really like that last one. I run a sports card shop as a side hobby with myself and my two sons something to do. Haven’t got my daughter into it yet. Are sports cards are things in the UK?
Phil Bray: Yeah, they are. I mean, there are probably different sports in the US, where you’ve got basketball, hockey, that sort of stuff. But yeah, there’s cards, sticker albums, that sort of stuff.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Probably a lot of Panini soccer where you’re at.
Phil Bray: That’s it. That’s it. Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Erling Haaland, he was the guy a few years back. I don’t know if he still is, Mbappé. I’ve got a few. I dabble. But anyway, back to the point, one of the things we found with the sports card shop is how much Google reviews have driven traffic, because people literally are like, sports card shop, pops up to the top. This is a good one. Make it fun for kids, et cetera.
So, back to social proof, it works in every business. And I love the idea that you put that in the referral because if I send a friend somewhere, my reputation is on the line. If I send them to you and you close it by saying, “Hey, Brad, your friend loved the experience. Thank you.” And it’s like, “Cool, I sent you one, it worked.” Now, I’m actually building my reputation by sending people to you because you took care of them. So, it’s almost like starts this little domino effect of like, hey, it worked the first time. Don’t be scared to do it a second. Have you seen that start to crack that open?
Phil Bray: Oh yeah. there is– we see in the UK, back to those client surveys that we did, around 95%, 96% of clients would, in principle, recommend their financial planner on. Around 52% have done so in the last 12 months, but it isn’t 52 out of 100 clients making the recommendations. It might be 20 making 3. And the concept of snipping the review and sending it, of course, it relies on the advisor planner actually getting the review in the first place, which means good processes, good habits. That’s a different conversation. But like I say, it validates the decision. It shows they did a good thing, makes them feel warm and fuzzy. Why wouldn’t they do it again?
Brad Johnson: So, 95% to 96% from your surveys, what’d you say, they approve of their advisor, like they’re doing a good job?
Phil Bray: No. So, I’m not a big believer in NPS. I don’t like NPS. Much bigger…
Brad Johnson: Why not?
Phil Bray: Why not? It’s too complicated to explain. If you’ve got an NPS of 76, how do you put that into context? You’ve got to explain it. You’ve got to explain the calculation. And here in the UK, certainly, the B2C space, NPS is not something that has high levels of awareness. Average consumer, I would suggest, doesn’t know what it means. So instead, as a proxy for that, we ask a question in our client surveys, would you recommend your financial advisor? And 95%, 96% say yes. So, in your marketing, so we’ve got a firm, 97.85% of our clients would recommend us onto other people. That’s a beautiful stat to use in your marketing. because it’s high enough to be impressive, but it’s not perfect.
Brad Johnson: So, basically, you take the survey. Hey, thank you for filling this out. We’re trying to get better as we serve you. By the way, here’s what came back, 96.2% of you said you’d recommend us to a friend. Do you then tie that to the next step? I had an advisor back in the day. He used that concept. He did a survey and then he tied it to client events, like where you have fun and bring your friends. And he said, “Hey, this high amount said you would recommend us. We’ve kind of failed. We haven’t done a very good job of creating a way to do that, by the way.”
And then he said, “We’ve got these. We’ve got a wine tasting. We’ve got a movie night. We’ve got a go down the list. We’ve got these four ways. We are thinking about what do you think? Would these be fun? Would you recommend something different?” So, he let them kind of speak into it. And then when that came back, he’s like, “Good news, we listen. We’re doing this. Bring your friends. Let’s have fun.” So, have you worked with any strategies like that? Have you played around with using the surveys to feed events, referral things?
Phil Bray: So, I think the first thing that we train advisors, planners to do is use the survey results to start conversations with clients at their annual review meet. And we believe the referral conversation should take place in the context of an update about the business. And during that referral conversation, that business update conversation, we need to understand whether we’re talking to an advocate or a detractor. And if the client survey has been done, the advisors looked at the results beforehand and the client filled in, they’ll know before they go into the meeting whether they’re talking to an advocate or not.
Brad Johnson: So, it’s not anonymous. They know what each individual said.
Phil Bray: We give two choices on this when we’re doing the surveys. So, one of the opening questions is, do you want to leave your name or do you want to leave it anonymously? And then we circle back to that with the last question in the survey. Do you want to change your mind? Yeah, if you answered it anonymously, do you now want to leave your name? About 80% leave their name. About 20% answer anonymously.
Brad Johnson: Okay.
Phil Bray: And clearly, if you’re going into that conversation with your client. And you don’t have the survey results, then you need to ask a couple of other questions to understand whether you’re talking to an advocate or a detractor. So, first place we use the client survey results is in those conversations with clients at annual review meetings, but I think they can be used in so many other ways.
And you gave a really good example. If you were running client events then, and you want this to be a plus one event where the client brings somebody that they think might make a good client, then yeah, you’d start with your client survey results and think, right, these are the people that said they would recommend us. These are the people that were engaged enough to complete the client survey.
Let’s start here with our client events. And I love it doesn’t happen very often, but I love the concept of actually asking clients what type of event they would like to attend. It’s a radical concept asking clients what they want to do.
Brad Johnson: Weird. Yeah.
Phil Bray: And I’ve heard advisors say, our team likes golf; therefore, we run golf days, meet clients where they are literally if it’s an event. And then, plus one, the key thing is to try and make sure that a) they bring their plus one; and b) there’s enough team members to get around everybody that they’re having good quality conversations that are consistent. And it’s not just a social event. There is a business purpose for it.
Brad Johnson: Well, I’m hearing a theme kind of woven throughout this whole conversation. Data, data, data. Like, whether it’s surveys, whether it’s ROIs, and just the intentionality of who are we even trying to attract in the first place. So, there’s this new thing a few years back, AI, large language models. I’m sure it’s all over the headlines in the UK, just like it is the US. How has that impacted what you all do and how you look into the future of advisor marketing?
Phil Bray: So, talking to the team this morning, we wrote our first blog article about how AI will change how consumer behavior, how they find a financial advisor. We wrote that back in June last year, and I think we’ve talked about it every week, probably every day since, whether it’s long-form content, podcasts like this, webinars, et cetera. We ran a webinar earlier on this week actually, around how AI is changing the consumer journey to a financial planner’s door.
And I think it’s changing in three ways. We’ve always believed that consumers go on a digital journey to an advisor’s door, sat between awareness of the financial planner and taking action traditionally was Google because if a consumer was recommended to a couple of advisors, they would head online, they would Google the advisor. They did a bit of due diligence and digging to work out which advisor to contact.
Now, clearly, huge proportion of that is still done on a traditional Google search. Equally, clearly, we now have AI disrupting that, either because the consumer proactively says, I’m going to go and use ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, whatever it is, or because they type the traditional Google search into Google and get an AI result. And that happens more your side of the pond than it does outside of the pond right now. But Google will catch up in the UK.
So, that is disrupting the journey because consumers are doing their due diligence on Google as well as AI. We’ve been monitoring the amount of traffic going through to advise planner websites from AI. It’s up 86% over the last six months.
Brad Johnson: Wow. 86%, in what time period? Like the last year?
Phil Bray: Last six months compared to the previous six months.
Brad Johnson: So, just to be really clear there, prior Google financial advisor, Nottingham. Best financial advisor, Nottingham, now they’re going to chat or some other model and that traffic is up 86% because chat is delivering links. Hey, here’s three based on us, scouring the internet to go check out.
Phil Bray: Yes and no, I sense, so the 86% figure is just the amount of traffic coming, the number of people clicking the links through from the AI to the planner’s website.
Phil Bray: I think that actually underestimates the proportion of consumers using AI to check out a financial planner or to find one. And that’s because we are only and can only monitor the clicks. We can’t monitor the number of times when somebody types a prompt into ChatGPT. It recommends three firms, and the consumer just picks up the phone to one of them because there’s no link clicked. We can’t monitor that happening, and the consumer then go into a traditional Google search and typing the name of the firm. But what we do know is the number of people who are visiting financial advisor websites, having clicked a link from an AI search is up as I say 86% over the last six months.
Brad Johnson: And what I hear you saying, that’s an ultraconservative number because a lot of them are getting the information in AI and just getting there a different way.
Phil Bray: 100%.
Brad Johnson: How do you think– you said something earlier I wrote down, people before products. I 100% agree with. I mean, I started out wholesaling annuities, and then I just saw this evolution to where those that led with product versus those that led with a process, financial planning, ideally trademarked and proprietary to them, it changed the conversation and actually elevated the investible assets, the service, got rid of all of the objections that you have with every product. But back to that idea, people before products, how do you think AI impacts those that lead with product versus those that lead with people and serving them with a custom plan?
Phil Bray: We’re all making best guesses predictions when it comes to AI. And we’ll only know who is right with the benefit of hindsight. But my take on it would be that if you are selling a service based on being able to choose “the best product,” the product with the highest investment returns, the lowest risks, the lowest charges, et cetera, that’s going to be very easily, if it probably already is replaceable by AI.
And as more and more people get comfortable with using AI and we know the adoption of AI is much, much faster than the adoption of Google was in the early 2000s, then if you’re selling on price, product, investment returns, I think you should be really quite nervous right now. If you are selling a– I think you are selling financial planning, everyone’s selling something. But if your service is centered around helping people achieve their objectives, understanding them, empathy, that’s going to be much, much harder to replace. So, for me, those businesses that are going to be more resilient to AI are those that offer a financial planning, lifestyle financial planning, people first proposition.
Brad Johnson: I agree with that take, by the way.
Phil Bray: We both could be wrong. We both could be wrong, but I…
Brad Johnson: Well, here’s the way I look at it. If I was a betting man, if I’m placing a bet, I’m placing it on your take over the other way. I mean, information is being democratized on every level that, I mean, my family took a trip to Africa last year. We’re in this village, middle of nowhere. People living in mud huts. Everybody had a cell phone. We’re on a safari. Everybody had coverage. That’s how they do their banking over there. So, I can be in the middle of nowhere Africa, and if I can download an app, I’ve got unlimited knowledge that I can tap into. That’s what’s happening.
So, if you were selling a product back in the day as a stockbroker that just, you knew more than the consumer, you might have been able to pull one over on them or whatever you want to call it. Not anymore. So, I mean, that’s my take. I completely agree.
Well, Phil, I’m between you and the weekend. I don’t know what that means over there. Maybe a pint in a pub, I hear, but– or maybe it’s just hanging with the fam. But I’ve really, really enjoyed this conversation. It’s fascinating, the similarities between the financial market in the UK and the us and also some of the differences.
We haven’t got a ton into the do life side. I do know you’re a family man with kids. One of the things we say here at Triad, when we say do business, do life, we want to help our clients, our members build their business in a way that blesses their life, doesn’t become their life, doesn’t consume them. Some of that early story you were telling, I love how you tied back. I still have the stuff that mattered at the end of the day. I might have lost the house, I might have lost the car. But I would love, as we wrap here, to hear your definition of what does do business, do life mean to you?
Phil Bray: For me, it’s just to have as much fun at work as I do when I’m out of work. Doesn’t always happen, but I struggle and this isn’t right for everybody, but I struggle with work-life balance being two binary different things, black and white. Yeah, for me, they merge into one. So, I guess my answer to the question is to have as much fun when I’m here as I do when I’m at home.
Brad Johnson: And you’ve solved part of that equation. You just brought your Wi-Fi in, so there’s some of that integration right there. Are you able to do a family dinner and not talk business? Have you figured out that dance?
Phil Bray: Yes, we do. So, tonight is Takeaway Curry, which is a thing here in the UK. I don’t know if it’s a thing in the US.
Brad Johnson: What’s it called? Takeaway what?
Phil Bray: Takeaway Curry, Indian Meal.
Brad Johnson: Oh, okay, cool.
Phil Bray: And from the local takeaway, and we’ll be planning and talking about our next holiday, which is to Africa. So, yeah, we can absolutely talk about things that aren’t money.
Brad Johnson: Where are you going in Africa?
Phil Bray: Cape Town, Durban, and on Safari.
Brad Johnson: Awesome. Have you been on Safari before?
Phil Bray: Yes. Twice in the last three years. Very lucky.
Brad Johnson: Ah, very cool. We just did our first one last summer, actually. I don’t know if this will come through. There’s the crew, the Masai Mara, right as the sun was setting. So, yeah, it was beautiful. Actually, I’ve got a buddy I just talked to that’s taking his first family trip over there and it’s beautiful. You really get a very different perspective when you see nature, and it’s natural occurrence, just all of the circle of life and how it all plays out, so.
Phil Bray: You absolutely do.
Brad Johnson: Well, really enjoyed the conversation, Phil. I’ve only been to– actually, I went to London on my way to Nairobi. That’s my only trip to London. I was there for like three hours. You guys do chocolate different over there. Cadbury’s a thing, different than over here, but I make it over and spend some time, I’ll have to look you up.
Phil Bray: Look forward to it, Brad.
Brad Johnson: All right, Phil, till next time.
Phil Bray: Thanks for having me. Cheers, mate.
Brad Johnson: We’ll see you.
