There are many things I love about marketing, but what I love the most is seeing the way it affects the person being marketed – namely, the adviser.
“This process has really given me the opportunity to feel revived and refreshed about my work – thank you,” said someone to me recently.
I think it’s simply the act of having someone external come in and add a new viewpoint; it’s hard to do this yourself when you’re too close to it. Finding out what your clients really value, boiling that down to a coherent message, and seeing and reading this back can be very cathartic.
It is, in fact, very much like the financial advice process – and I know this because I’ve recently been through it. My experience of financial planning happened in the summer, but I’m still not over it. I found it profoundly moving but not in the way that we often hear about.
Yes, there was lots of financial wellbeing stuff in there – understanding my options, being able to plan ahead, working out how much I needed to do the things I wanted – but for me, there was something far more basic to it than that. Or perhaps I was just in a weepy mood.
Financial wellbeing: Inside the movement to make clients happy, not just wealthy
When I saw my life on a graph through cashflow modelling, I was truly taken aback. And I’ve seen a lot of this stuff already, so I thought I knew what was coming.
It wasn’t the surprisingly positive news, or the way the money was arranged, although this was great too. It was the first time I’d seen my life plotted out in a tangible way. There I was, on the screen, as a 100-year-old!
It was this that moved me. It made me feel as if I mattered. I believed I could, all being well, live a long and happy (and prosperous) life, because it was there on a big screen.
And I think it’s because it’s the only other time you’ll ever see your life mapped out in this way. It’s like the opposite of that advert of the stag about to be run over when he speeds through his life backwards, seeing everything he’s done right back to his birth.
It’s as if my adviser actually believed in me. And that’s a very rare feeling. It’s much more meaningful than a friend or family member saying it.
Seeing your life in this way is truly weird: a bit like those face-ageing apps, but better, because it’s more believable.
But why? I mean, as soon as we’re born it’s sort of implied that, all being well, this will be a life well lived. Long and healthy.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve written so much marketing material about the need for protection insurance (because you never know what’s around the corner) but, even without that, unless you’re an extremely glass-half-full person, you’re primed as a human to look out for danger.
Roger Edwards: The right way to promote protection
Life is full of unexpected stuff. Bad, bad stuff. The news is only ever disastrous, otherwise it wouldn’t be news. So, we live in fear a lot of the time and in protective mode.
Now, it’s one in two people, not one in three, who will experience cancer. Environmentally and politically we’re all going to hell in a handcart, and it’s very difficult to think positively about what’s coming.
‘Live each day as if it might be your last’ is supposed to be a positive message, but it sort of gets you used to the feeling that it might be. This cashflow modelling lark takes all of that away in one fell swoop
Perhaps this is just me. I’m super-sensitive, a big worrier and I have some truly frightening emotional baggage around money, which is a story for another time.
But think of all those people out there like me, who are worriers. There are loads of us.
Whenever you’re marketing to potential new clients, if you mention one thing tell them you’re the person who will enable them to see their lives mapped out on the screen (never mind that it will be well lived). It may be all they need to know.
Faith Liversedge is a marketing consultant
Consulting with Prestwood perhaps?
Nope