Since the release of about 20,000,000 Google Indexed Websites, all pre done and working there has been a great flurry of activity around exactly what is on offer for free from Google.

Well it’s simple, over the past few years the UK amongst other places has been mapped, photographed and indexed in order for your business information to be shared across the Internet under the banner of ‘places’. Now for most Financial Advisers these ‘places’ will remain as is until you do something about it. Like claim your ‘place’, once claimed it belongs to you forever.  A free presence within one of the major worldwide internet search engines! Amazing.

It’s simple to do and of course will cost you nothing. But it will allow you a presence within these search engines and provide a forum for your clients and customers to provide important feedback and personal statements about your services. A decent Star Rating will improve your overall presence in the search results for your given business type.

It is of course likely that decent local search results and some feedback from your customers may prove that your business is indeed different from others out there. Without a doubt some work on your local listing will help with your overall standing in search results.

Importantly the work you have done in the past couple of years in relation to Local Directory listings will no longer count in the main results. Not good news if you own one of these directories, or you if you have been relying on the internet traffic generated. As always in the world of I.T nothing stays the same for long and indeed with the Internet the game is always moving and sometimes very fast.

In order to force you into hurrying up there is a clear reason to start moving this forward now, and this is the fact that your places listing can be claimed by anyone. There is some anecdotal evidence that there is a lot of spoofing going on and you wouldn’t want that to happen to you.

So rush out and claim your free local places listing, fill it up with worthwhile content and with the extra income it creates you can start to plan your summer holidays.There is still demand for what you do with other a 1000 searches per month done for the term “investment planning” and with only one UK IFA appearing on the front page you are all missing out on good business.

Richard Smith

IFA Marketing Expert at the Internet Consultancy

If you have not done so get get over to the Website (www.ifaonline.co.uk) and you will find them all there. Even if you are not a Financial Adviser all of the rules apply to your business.

One reason you should should choose to take advice only from those firms that have a proven ability in the area of Marketing and the use of the Search Engines. and also to make sure that  you get a money back guarantee on all of your work. We are offering a free WEB SITE MOT for a limited amount of time where we will outline your options and the action you can take.

It’s probably the best ‘free’ you will get this year. Please use the contact form here and quote “MOT” in your response.

Here we go.

Google Local and Maps have become a major influence on how people search and get results from the search engine (s) I can show this by simply looking inside Google for something like  ’accountant’ and the search result returns a  list of ‘accountants’, but perhaps too many or in too large an area so we tend to search again by thinning the result and  adding some geography  to the search – ‘accountant in Watford or Sussex’ and the results we see are now closer us.

It should be no shock that Google should be taking a closer look at how we search and attempt to refine the process and provide a more meaningful search result by changing the Google Local search algorithm to make it easier for us to find what or who we are searching for locally.

So with effect from today 8, 2010 we see searches that reference local business and all the relevant places in that location in a revised page located in the upper right corner of a search result page. The now familiar map displays each business with red lettered pins, and links to each business. And as you scroll down the page the Google Places Map will scroll with the page so that it is always visible.

Personally I like the look and feel of the new layout.

We also have  Google Boost is a Google AdWords product that allows local businesses to feature more prominently in local searches. It allows small to medium size businesses the ability to feature more highly in searches, and concentrates much more on the relevance and location of that business than ever before. Now searchers will see sponsored location searches appear on the Google Places map as blue lettered pins and in search results with the blue marker pin next to the content description.

Search results for the ‘accountant in city’ will now appear first below sponsored listings and above organic listings. What this means is that results for a business in a location will now appear grouped with the other search results, making it much easier for searchers to find what they are looking for in a local area.

Google reports that Place Search results will begin appearing automatically when Google determines that you are looking for a ‘business in location’ search result.

Google also states “We’ve made results like this possible by developing technology to better understand places. With Google Place Search, we’re dynamically connecting hundreds of millíons of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. We automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don’t provide addresses and use different names.”

Google Places is being rolled out across the world and will be available everywhere, in 40 languages once complete. Google is hoping to provide a better, local search to users, while exploiting a different revenue stream. It’s also competing with Facebook Places which was launched a while ago. Facebook was able to use very targeted advertising to provide a similar service to its users.

I have had a long and hard think about this over the past week or so, mainly due to a good number of IFA’s being concerned about “ business prevention department” stopping you from making more money by providing value and service to your potential clients. Now as you know we build Lead Generation Machines for IFA’s and want these to be effective for you.

In making them effective some information will need to be presented in a manner that gets your client or potential client to move their backside out the chair and make a call to you, or send an email, to make contact. Question is – is this information a Financial Promotion?

Now you will have have you own processes, and I really don’t want to upset any anyone’s firework party by taking a long wee on the fire. But in the main much of what your potential clients are looking for on the internet and in other written material will not initially mean you making a financial promotion, indeed you would be foolish to do so.

How would I know, well having supervised IFA’s for some 12 years, having constructed big chunks of a compliance manual and helping devise one of the first Asset Allocation Models in the UK. I think I am qualified to comment. Importantly for the work we do with Regulated Firms we have our our own Compliance Consultancy handy eh! As I keep on saying, we take this business of ours, getting business for you bloody seriously.

So what does the regulator say.

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/Doing/Regulated/Promo/regime/index.shtml

A financial promotion is a communication that is an invitation or an inducement to engage in investment activity.

In other words, there is an element of persuasion. A communication that merely informs or educates will not normally be a financial promotion. An inducement is intended to lead, ultimately, to an agreement to engage in investment activity. So an advertisement by a firm claiming customers will make a fortune by investing in securities, and that the firm can help them invest, is an inducement to engage in investment activity.

We define the term ‘engage in investment activity’ and it may not include some activities thought of as financial services. For instance, financial services price comparison websites are not financial promotions (unless they promote particular products or services) because simply comparing prices is not an investment activity. ( hy does that not surprise me or you).

So without meaning to sound like David Beckham…’at the end of the day’ this is your business, something you have ‘strived’ and worked hard for over many years, probably through many ‘toils and tribulations’, your client’s trust you, why should you not think ‘outside the box’ and be scared of compliance……

Okay the Financial Services Authority has set rules in place to ‘Treat Customers Fairly’ (TCF) but not being allowed to communicate with your clients and potential clients in a ‘generic manner’ is totally opposite to that and is absolutely not treating your client’s (and potential clients) fairly…

There is no need to jump through ‘compliance hoops’ or to pay for ‘financial promotions sign off’ which takes time and also costs you money for nearly all communication via a Website, Email, SMS or other electronic and written communication!! What is next….Do you need sign off before you answer the phone!! We are in an age of instant communication where if you do not respond to an enquiry, be it via a SMS Message, an e-mail or Phone Call that client will go elsewhere. As a business you owe it to yourself and your client’s to have the tools to hand to be able to service your client’s needs. That is TCF…………!!!!

The Internet Consultancy have have been doing this for long enough now to know what works and I wanted to clear up what is what is not acceptable.

You are entitled to your opinion and you are entitled to comment on whatever Financial or other matter you want using whatever method you decide to use. Now, if your own internal compliance gets in the way of that perhaps you need to find a way, your business really does depend on you getting your message out there.

Anyway, rant over now can we all get back to meeting the demands of our customers and move forward.

For those of you not on my list, please get yourself on it now, by completing the box below.

Richard

0800 781 2031

Investment Markets are remaining flat since January and of course you have clients that want information and more want results.

One firm we have been working with for sometime has been doing a weekly Fund/Market update and sending this out to clients using four mediums, SMS (Text Message), Website Comment and a brief Audio recorded on his laptop placed on his site, plus email with links to downloads.

Guess what, rather than having clients on the phone complaining they are picking up new business,

Interestingly enough they are putting on clients that are being taken from other IFA firms in the area, In one year in they have picked up some 80 new subscribers to their blog, received 3 new investment clients from these and of course now have a lot more credibility in the firms local market. In simple terms they are bucking the trend and doing it as passively as possible. This is all done in space of about 40 minutes per week,

There are just over 13 weeks until Christmas, and that gives you just 24 for short months to worry about qualifications and of course the brave new world post RDR. However as I know you know there is a lot to do, importantly the post RDR changes are coming early, with most networks looking to cap commissions long before the date set.

I have just one question for you, are you bucking the trend, or getting the same as the the bulk of the IFA firms out there? See the thing is most IFA’s are not updating their Websites with valuable content and opinion and of course are not creating a buzz locally in their targeted markets and therefore not getting the results they should be.

I keep on saying, none of what we do over here at the Internet Consultancy is  complex, “it’s not rocket engineering” but we do, do. That’s the difference.

As always I am happy to work with/discuss options and provide some guidance where possible but please get off your bottom and do something, if not with us then chose another provider but please do it.

You can phone on 0800 781 2031

Richard

PS I often get asked, why I offer a Money Back Guarantee for all of the services offered, and it’s this simple. If you invited a Plumber in to repair a pipe and it leaked 3 or 4 days after you would expect a refund. The same with Argos or Tesco’s. Non delivery from us is a prompt refund and we part friends. Simple.

Today we  see some exciting news for some and probably bad news for others.  But Tesco plans to extend its trial of an in-store branch network giving people access to financial advisers. Tesco Bank will also launch a range of mortgage products by the end of 2010/11 as part of its plans to become a full-service retail bank. This is all reported by Money Marketing today.

So should you be worried, well yes and no. There is some stuff you can do to improve your business model and of course you know full well this is not the kind of business that will fail, not with the mighty tesco’s behind it.

A brief video is below.

Tesco to Offer Financial Adivce in Store

Its been an interesting week this week for Independent Financial Advisers, first Plimsoll seemed to think that they are a bit of basket case, and then of course the FSA  giving further guidance on Retail Distribution Review.

Interesting times eh! Well there is a lot to be negative about, I don’t think.

We have been out and about this week with some interesting financial services firms that are making it pay, and handsomely. Key is, as a firm of financial advisers do you want to be walking into the RDR and 2013 with a half cocked plan or one  that leaves you with money in the bank and processes that work.

I have a little more to say in this area, as you can imagine and therefore I will be updating you further.

Financial Services Sales Managers | Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff

Richard Smith

theinternetconsultancy.com

A short update this morning. It seems that some IFA’s are having a torrid time of it.

It does not have to be like this though, with some simple planning and some alterations to

your processes…..

Independent Financial Adviser Business

You can contact me on 0845 226 9106 if you wish to discuss any aspect of this.

Richard