27th March 2012
Lights Camera Action
I would class myself as a common-or-garden generalist IFA, earning a decent living helping ordinary people with their financial planning. I’m no specialist or superstar of our profession, not a top-of-the-table high producer or anything like that. I live in the far, far west of Cornwall, because I married a lovely girl from Land’s End 15 years ago. It’s a beautiful place to live and bring up kids, though it is a very long way from anywhere.
Like many advisers I’m sure, I have progressed along the classic career path, working for two insurance company tied sales forces, before making the leap to the IFA world in 2001. Back then, someone told me that eventually the AFPC would become the minimum standard. And so I kept on studying, gaining the APFC, then the Certified Financial Planner, and finally last year, Chartered status for both myself and my firm.
During that time the quality of my client bank has increased, dealing with wealthier clients as my knowledge and experience grew.
But in late 2009, two things happened at about the same time. Firstly I had a kind of epiphany, a realization that if all I did with my career was to help rich people get richer, I would have wasted my life.
Secondly, I read a book. I read lots of books, but this one changed my life; it’s called ‘Crush It’ by Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is a Russian immigrant to the US, whose father worked hard against the odds to build a liquor store business in New Jersey. Gary took on that business and turned it into a $60million dollar per year company and was a very early adopter of e-commerce. In 2005 he saw some of his IT staff laughing at their screens watching very early video blogs, and he decided that he would use internet video to teach the world about wine. He used social media, then in its infancy, to spread the word about what he was doing, and has since become an internet phenomenon.
The premise of Gary’s book is that the tools now exist to spread your message to the entire world, largely for free. And so I thought: “I could do that.”
I wanted to do something about the lack of decent, easy-to-understand information online about basic financial planning techniques. To scale up the one-on-one conversations that I have every day with clients, and instead talk to lots and lots of people.
So I bought a £100 Flip HD video camera from Amazon, set it up on a wall near the promenade in Penzance, and told the camera what I was going to do. I didn’t tell a soul what I was doing, not even my wife, for fear that they might think I was an idiot. Once I had about 15 or so videos in the can, I told a couple of trusted industry friends, and yes, my wife too, and they all thought I might be on to something. I launched on July 23rd 2010 with 25 videos on meaningfulmoney.tv, a website I built myself.
I too am a Social Media addict, and so word got around via my Twitter and Facebook friends and to my surprise, people started watching.
By the end of March 2012 I will have posted my 200th video. I am now getting about 50-60 views a day and 20,000 people have watched me standing in various windswept parts of West Cornwall, talking about pensions, or trusts, or income tax.
After nearly two years of practice, I can write, shoot and edit 3 videos in three hours, and I put up three videos a week pretty consistently. Since January I have been broadcasting a live show every Friday at 4pm, looking back at the week’s big news stories and how they affect people’s financial planning. All this as well as being Managing Director of a six-adviser practice with about £120 million under management.
The response to the videos has been fantastic, and though I never set out to gain clients this way, I have done so, and I now work with people as far away as Bexhill-on-Sea and Yorkshire. I have also gained sponsorship, having my new website built for free by the fabulous Gareth Thompson of Codepotato. Seven Investment Management are my main sponsors and pay me to have their logo on my videos because they believe in what I am doing.
The best thing about it for me is the emails, website comments and tweets I get from ordinary people who have been helped by the site. Like the following from Mark Meakings, who has since become a client. This was his first email to me; I’d never heard form him before:
“…having watched several of your videos, we feel like we know you and can trust you. Will you work with us?”
That email alone was worth the effort of making all those videos!
So should you consider getting involved with internet video as part of your marketing? I believe that video is powerful in a way that written blogs and podcasts are not, but they all have their benefits. Mark’s comment above about feeling like they knew me and could trust me is the key. There is no hiding on video. The audience can see you and hear you and see the whites of your eyes. Body language is on full display, unlike in a written blog.
I believe that the RDR will make it more difficult to distinguish ourselves from our peers, and video is a great way to do just that. We all know that most people visit our website to find out more about us before picking up the phone and making an appointment. Why not help them along the way by putting videos of you and your team on your website? Or film a day in the life of your company? Or a series of helpful guides?
It isn’t difficult to get decent quality video made these days; even if you haven’t a clue how to go about it, I bet you or someone in your office knows someone who could.
If you want any pointers on how to get started, please feel free to email me, on pete@petematthew.com.
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