Education-first marketing offers 25 business benefits – as listed below.
So, most financial service firms offer some educational content, but very few become trusted (go-to) places for answers to key money questions.
The leaders offer Accurate, Balanced, and Compelling (ABC) content; I help them with that, and I’m now offering my core content to you for about 90% less than it would cost you to create.
Yes, my first client told me that the educational content I created with them was the ‘clincher’ for landing TESCO and other FTSE Companies as clients for their services.
Two of my clients were finalists for the prestigious Workplace Savings and Benefits ‘Financial Education Provider’ award – and two others tell me that the content I created for them is described as ‘superb’ by their chartered financial planner clients.
Great educational content boosts your reputation, attracts new clients, and retains those you have; the testimonials here, from consumers and business clients, prove it.
But these are only a few of the 25 benefits of an education-first approach to your marketing. Click below, on the 25 benefits tab, to learn more.
You and I know that financial planning is a high-value service – whether offered by a financial planner, adviser, or coach – where that person is competent at the work.
However, most people know little or nothing about the value of financial planning. As we can see from the blue line in this chart, almost no one ever searches for it!
For information, the search numbers for financial coaching are down there with financial planning, too.
So, there’s a massive ‘awareness’ gap about financial planning and coaching.
The fact is – a great many people are sceptical about the value of financial planning. And the confusion about the difference between financial advisers, robo advisors, financial planners, life planners, wealth managers, financial coaches and more – does not help.
So, to help you address these issues, I’ve written a consumer-facing insight called ‘Should you pay for advice?’
And yes, of course, for the right reasons, I make the point in that insight that we absolutely should pay for personal financial advice – and other professional services!
That Insight is currently on special offer, so you might want to grab it before the price goes back up.
We’ve known for decades what consumers (and introducers) value most from a professional adviser.
People love to gain insights into their financial challenges and get some sound solution ideas.
The problem now is that they expect to have access to those ideas immediately.
Of course, clients were more patient in the pre-digital age – because they had to be, but those days are now largely gone.
As Marcus Sheridan, a respected business adviser and author of the book ‘They Ask, You Answer’, says,
”too often firms make the mistake of avoiding customer questions, saying ‘lets wait until we’re face to face in conversation’ “
In the modern digital world, this rarely cuts any ice with consumers.
And, as Sheridan says, that phrase is:
…a big turn-off for customers – who can easily find other people who’ll go out of their way to provide full and honest answers to their questions”
‘Your goal’, says Sheridan, ‘must be to establish your company as the No 1 resource in your space’
Of course, not everyone can be number one, but a good many firms can build a reputation as a ‘go-to’ place for reliable answers to money questions.
And a few (like my clients) will also reach the finals for some prestigious awards.
For more on how to thrive in a digital world, read Will Page’s ‘Tarzan Economics’ or follow Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the guys small business owners now turn to for business growth advice.
Vaynerchuk urges us to give away all of our best ideas for FREE.
Yes, it sounds crazy until you learn that this approach has built him a tribe of 30 million followers.
Gary says that 99% of people never apply his ideas on their own.
People want advice that’s tailored to their unique situation.
And precisely the same applies to your financial planning or coaching services, right?
In this digital age, 40% to 80% of consumers (depending on the service) now decide on their supplier before making contact.
That’s not surprising, is it?
You and I review suppliers before hiring them, so we can’t expect our clients to act differently, can we?
Of course, nothing has changed in that clients still value ideas and insights above everything else.
It’s just that they expect to access those Insights before they meet with us.
So, if you have no engaging insights to offer, you may only get a fraction of the enquiries you could, or a high proportion of your enquiries may not suit your services.
Sound familiar?
Becoming known as a ‘go-to’ place for reliable and fascinating answers to money questions could attract many more of the right people to your website.
That much is obvious, but I appreciate that this may not be important to you if you have enough referral business from existing clients and professional connections for now.
Just be aware that if you don’t offer any Insights, your business’s risks will increase over time.
Your clients (and professional connections) will inevitably start seeing other firms as their ‘go-to’ place for answers to key money questions.
Yes, if your clients are loyal enough to tell you what else they’ve been exploring, you can always dismiss any ‘flaky’ ideas they’ve latched onto.
But people seldom tell us when they’re getting itchy feet. And let’s face it: Some firms now post seriously good quality content. I know – I work with some of them!
So, please don’t ignore your need for this educational bridge to your clients – and introducers.
Once you have some Insights in place, those assets will promote you and show your warmth and competence (see tab 5 for why this matters) all day long.
Yes, there’s a small cost to put those assets in place, but there’s no further charge for them to promote you every day.
What’s more, where it’s necessary, you can use your Insights to signpost your readers to other reliable sources of help like these FREE and Government recommended services:
What’s not known by many outside of the financial planning world is that:
For the over-50s, there’s the Pension Wise service, which offers an hour’s consultation on generic pension questions.
For questions on state benefits, there are:
The people there can also point your readers to explanations of how state benefits are calculated and affected if you start work or change your working hours.
And then there are organisations like Step Change, National Debtline, or Citizens Advice that provide reliable and FREE advice to those struggling to pay priority bills or make payments on credit cards, personal loans or other debts.
So, you can provide extensive guidance to a wide range of people without getting personally involved in the process.
This part of your content strategy may be relevant to your future business, too – given that c.65% of adult inheritors say they will not use their parents’ advisers after they inherit. (Source Schroders/Adviser Home)
Either way, your core money Insights should bring the right people back to you when they need your help.
Research (from LangCat and others) suggests that most advised clients appreciate the value of financial planning after they experience that service.
However, it’s hard to explain that value to someone who’s not experienced it.
They’re standing on that red dot (above), too far from your services to see what’s involved.
Mostly, it’s only when people realise they have a financial challenge that they start exploring the available solutions and, hopefully, seeking sound guidance or advice.
That’s why I design my consumer-facing Insights as stepping stones to advice, planning, and coaching.
We must help people consider and confront their financial obstacles before it’s too late.
What’s more, we now have years of research (by Psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen) proving this strategy is effective in helping people achieve more in their lives.
So, there’s really nothing not to like about it.
The confusion between the various advice services and the concern about value for money are really just parts of a bigger issue in financial services: a lack of trust.
Yes, well-advised clients trust their advisers, but we cannot ignore the fact that, in general, trust in financial services has sat at the bottom of the Edelman Trust barometer for years.
Indeed, financial services only got off the bottom of the table in 2023 when Edelman added a new industry sector: Social Media!
Of course, this begs the question of whether it makes sense to focus on direct-to-consumer platforms if very few people trust them, but we’ll save that issue for another day. 
More importantly, there’s some fascinating research* into how we’re perceived by others, which can inform what we should focus on to build more trust with consumers.
And it turns out that two factors (our ‘Warmth’ and ‘Competence’) have the biggest positive effect.
So, I developed this simplified version of a trust equation for business.
You’ll notice it’s similar to (but simpler than) the trust equation in the Trusted Advisor book by Maister, Green and Malford – and I’m happy to explain my thinking for that – if you wish to explore it further.
In short, I’m broadly with Charles Green on what drives trust in business. I’ve just simplified the equation!
Unsurprisingly, there are other formulae for trust, like this one, which uses the words ‘Benevolence’ instead of ‘Warmth’, ‘Ability’ instead of ‘Competence’ and ‘Integrity’ as an additional factor.
And that all makes sense, too, but I view someone’s integrity (the fact that they adhere to good behaviour principles) as a combination of their warmth (do they care about our well-being?) and their competence.
More importantly, the research* clearly shows that we are judged by our warmth before our capability is considered, which makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective.
We survived in the past by first asking – are they friend or foe?
Of course, some wise people worked this out long before the Psychologists proved it.
Given that most buying decisions are made before we’re contacted, the critical question for us is how we demonstrate warmth and competence before a conversation.
Testimonials and other forms of social proof are helpful, of course.
However, you can’t beat relevant money Insights, written in plain English and a warm conversational style, to show you genuinely care for your audience.
How many financial websites offer that?
* Research reference: Fiske, Susan T., Amy J. C. Cuddy, and Peter Glick. “Universal Dimensions of Social Cognition: Warmth and Competence” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 2 (2007)
If you’d like me to send you a colourful slide deck on the 25 ways educational marketing will boost your business, e-mail me at hello@paulclaireaux.com
Add the subject line ‘Send me the 25 ways’, and I’ll send you the pack.
You can then tailor the slide deck and use it to promote an initiative within your business to make your firm a ‘go-to’ provider of financial education – regardless of who you work with on the content.
The colourful pack is worth having, but in the meantime, in plain text, here are the:
25 benefits of putting education at the heart of your business.
These licensed Insights aim to help non-experts make better decisions about money.
So, they’re written in a way that talks directly (in a conversational style) to potential clients of financial advisers, planners or coaches.
Of course, in the license agreement for this content, the ‘Customer’ is you, the adviser, planner, or coach.
Standard pricing is set to make the content easily affordable to smaller firms.
Prices for larger advice-type firms (and other types of business) are available on request to hello@paulclaireaux.com
The standard prices for licensable Insights from the content shop depend on the work involved in producing each item.
It takes a considerable amount of time to:
Assuming you follow a similar process (and allow for some internal reviews of the content across your business), you’ll find that my prices for licensed educational content are about 90% less than the cost of creating your own.
So, if you’re building (or adding to) an educational library, you could save enormous sums of money.
The bottom line is that using our good-quality licensed content could save you around £100,000—and possibly much more—over a few years.
You can explore these costs in this other Insight and please ask me any further questions you have about value for money – and why your own costs could be ten times (or more) than the cost of my licensed content.
Priced for smaller firms
My standard prices in the content shop apply to firms employing seven or fewer client-facing advisers, planners or coaches.
When you invest in a license to use my content, you confirm this status at the checkout.
Of course, I am happy to quote prices for larger firms.
The prices depend on the number of advisers/coaches you employ, but rest assured, your license costs per adviser/coach are much lower than for smaller firms.
Prices for larger firms are available on request by emailing me at hello@paulclaireaux.com with the subject line ‘Licensed Content Price Enquiry’.
If you run a large advice firm (or other business in Fund Management, Employee Benefits, Education or Training services, etc.), you may prefer to have bespoke (tailor-made) content – including ‘derivative’ content based on what’s in my shop.
We can discuss a contract for such work if you e-mail me in the first instance with the subject line ‘Bespoke Content Creation Enquiry’.
Please be aware that you’re not permitted to create ‘derivative’ versions of my licensed content.
The reasons are explained below, but in short, this is about protecting both of our reputations.
Our licensed Insights:
That said, you must check that any content you license:
As I’ve shown above, an education-first approach to marketing offers up to twenty-five benefits to your business and clients. And many of those benefits apply to licensed and tailor-made content.
My license agreement permits you to use the content:
You are free to:
So, you have considerable freedom to use this content – which should help you obtain many of those 25 benefits outlined above.
Just be aware that you are not permitted to:
* Note that my approach differs from that of some licensed content providers, who offer content only as ‘drafts’ for you to amend as you see fit.
I strive to offer extremely high-quality (accurate, balanced, and compelling) educational content to small business owners who lack the time, desire, skills, or budget to create their own.
So, it’s in your interests, and ours, to ensure that no one corrupts this content to make it:
Is that fair?
Great educational content will help you build trust in your business, but it can only do that if it tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
How much content from financial service providers in the market today do you (or your clients) trust to do that?
I’d hope you’d agree that there’s already enough misleading or low-quality nonsense content in the market.
We have no wish to add to that pile!
Of course, I’m not suggesting that you would corrupt our content, but sadly, we have experience of some people doing that.
So, I’ve applied this rule to the license to protect all of our customers. None of us wants similar-looking content (with the same high-impact images) in the market—unless it’s of the highest quality, right?
To allow anything else undermines all our efforts.
Just remember:
You can brand this content to your business style – in your own colours with your own images – provided those new images don’t corrupt the messages.
And, you can add your own call to action and replace the term financial adviser with ‘planner’, ‘coach’, ‘wealth manager’ etc.
We must ensure, however, that these Insights retain their integrity – and pass the ABC (accurate, balanced and compelling) quality tests.
To be clear, I’m also not suggesting that any Insight I write is the final word on that topic.
I’ll aim to constantly improve these Insights – with any updated or improved versions placed directly into the content shop for existing license holders to download for FREE.
I may also create derivative versions of our content. And will be pleased to hear ideas for content improvements from our licensed content customers.
If you read an insight you’d like to use in your business, purchase a license to use it.
If you have ideas for improving our Insights, read tab 13 on how to advise us.
Our licensed content is primarily created for small firms (1 to 5 advisers/coaches) that lack the skills, desire, time, or funds to create their own content but value the accuracy, balance, and style of what we produce.
So, I’d expect requests to change our content to be rare, but I absolutely welcome improvement suggestions – submitted before you license the content.
I don’t want you to spend money on our content if you want something substantially different. And I’m keen to avoid the hassle and cost of issuing refunds.
Of course, I’ll never agree to any requests to make our content inaccurate, imbalanced or dull.
I’m sure we’d agree that the financial world already has enough of that nonsense!
My aim is to raise standards in financial education with content that passes those ABC tests.
To create trustworthy content – that genuinely helps you to engage more clients.
Indeed, I hope our content helps some of you reach the finals for a prestigious Educator of the Year award, as it has done for some of my other clients.
So, subject to adding your own calls to action, etc, our content should be ready for you to use.
Which is why we’ve called it our ‘content-to-go’ service!
That said, if you’d like to suggest improvements, please e-mail them to me at hello@paulclaireaux.com, and I will, as soon as time permits, take one of the following three actions:
Please be aware that I have a limited capacity for bespoke content creation contracts.
And I rarely undertake ‘one-off’ bespoke works.
As you’ll know from your financial planning work, ‘one-off’ tasks are seldom financially viable. And the same applies to content creation work.
It takes a lot of time to get to know a business leader and agree on all elements of a content brief – to ensure the content is tailored to their particular audience and their style requirements.
So, I’ve designed this new licensed content to work for a wide range of advisers, planners and coaches.
I aim to help you engage your clients and prospects (and your introducers) in the fundamentals of personal finance – to help more people make better financial decisions.
Your ‘call to action’ words (which connect these core Insights to your service offerings) are entirely up to you.