Financial planning firms that do not have an up-to-date online and social media presence risk being left behind as consumers begin to base their choice of planner more on their own research than on word-of-mouth referrals.

Angus Woods, managing director of Adviser Ratings, says about 40 per cent of advice firms do not have an up-to-date website. Other research puts the figure at close to 50 per cent. Either way, a significant proportion of the advice industry is out of touch with its potential consumers.

Easy and inexpensive

Woods says getting a contemporary-looking website set up today is simple and cheap. For about $2000, an advice firm can have a complete online makeover (or build a site form the ground up) and create an effective LinkedIn profile or completely overhaul an existing one.

“There are simple investments an adviser can make that will cost them less than $2000 and help them get everything done, from videos to website presence – all that sort of stuff,” Woods says.

He argues that having an effective, contemporary and easily found online presence is critical to winning a consumer’s trust.

“Two over-arching themes keep coming up. [Firstly] there’s no longer trust in the industry, or [at least] it has been severely eroded. [And the second theme is] around how technology can be an enabler not only for people’s businesses but also for that trust element,” he says.

Consumers have the power

He explains that consumers’ decisions are no longer dictated to them; people are much more empowered to make their own choices.

“They have got a wealth of information,” he says. “So it’s about advisers keeping up to date. We’ve always said that 95 per cent of people will go online and research the hell out of you before they go to see you, rather than just say, ‘Geoff down the road recommends you’ and come in. Ninety-five per cent of them will also go online and check you out and see what you’re doing.

“We’re finding that people still, even in the referral mechanism, are going online. And advisers are being told that more and more as well.”

Woods says representatives of both Google and LinkedIn will be at the Adviser Ratings’ FinForward conference in Sydney on March 20 to explain just how straightforward it can be to develop an effective online presence.

“You need an online presence, and you need to maintain an online profile,” Woods says. “You need to embrace that. If you don’t, you’re going to get left behind. If you have an old-looking website that was done in the early 2000s, if you’ve got a really blank LinkedIn profile, if you’re not on Adviser Ratings…consumers are going to go, ‘Well, just how relevant are you? If you can’t even keep abreast of what’s happening online, how can you keep abreast of the changes that are going on with my investments?’ ”

Woods says firms can buy off-the-shelf websites that look great and require only a little bit of work to populate and get started.

“Say, five years ago, $2000 wouldn’t have got you a smashing website,” Woods says. “Now they’re all template. You can buy professional packages that start at $400 or $500 to get a seamless, nice-looking website.

You need a relationship with the younger generations

“What the event will focus on is that there’s going to be this massive transfer of wealth. For the next 10 years, you’re still riding the baby boom wave, but that’s all going to get transferred to the next generations – the Gen Xs and Gen Ys.

“So it’s about having a relationship not only with the mums and dads, but with the family – and the kids, are online-savvy. They’re the ones going, ‘Why have you got a website that’s not engaging? How relevant are you to me?’ ”

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