Financial planning firms must use new communication methods to ensure they stay front of mind with SMSF clients, particularly the younger generations, who are digitally savvy, do their research and are instantaneous in their behaviour.
“You need to get laser focused on your marketing, whereas before you’d be putting ads on television costing a couple of grand or giving thousands of people a call,” Future Accountants and Advisers SMSF strategist James Allen told the SMSF Conference convened by ARC Super, NowInfinity and WPIAS Training in Queenstown, New Zealand, earlier this month.
“Now you can spend a couple of hundred dollars on Facebook to get to the exact people you want to target.
“For example, we ran a transition-to-retirement campaign where we targeted males in these industries, over 55 in [a specific geographical] area, and you can go even deeper than that.
“It’s pretty powerful – that’s how you stay in front of people’s minds.”
Allen said advisers and accountants needed to be mindful of treating generations X and Y differently from older clients.
“They have an attention span of about five minutes and then they move onto the next thing pretty quickly, so you’ve got to stay front of mind with them and you’ve also got to gradually sell to them,” he said.
“It’s not like baby boomers who are open to the hard sell, will come into a meeting for an hour and a half and expect to be sold to.
“These [younger] people are coming to us now with all the research and knowledge.
“It means they’re engaged. Their engagement level is right up there.”
