BDH Sterling used to pay hundreds of pounds for ads but a refined marketing strategy means it can now connect with its target clients for a fraction of the cost.
The firm wants to be number one in UK-Australian cross-border advice and to achieve this growth it felt a marketing push was needed.
Surrey-based BDH Sterling operates in the UK and Australia and specialises in serving clients who relocate.
There are a number of specific issues these clients face, says group managing director and co-founder Simon Harvey, especially around tax and transferring their pension assets. And for a long time the niche positioning of the firm alone has ensured a healthy client flow.
It is one of the only chartered financial planning firms with dual authorisation in the UK and Australia and “because of our positioning, we get a lot of direct enquiries,” says Harvey.
He adds: “We want to grow the business to a significant size and to do that I think we need to do more.
“That’s why we’ve got a marketing strategy that we’ve continued to work on and evolve how we can differentiate, how we can promote our service or how we can reach more people.”
To attract the right clients for the lowest cost it markets predominantly on social media.
If someone’s taking the time to go through that process and complete the scorecard we know that they’re fairly engaged
It works with lead magnets – or content that is designed to peak people’s interest such as articles offering 10 Top Tips for Brits retiring in Australia – which people can download, in turn prompting initial engagement with the firm.
Social media allows the firm to set detailed criteria for the people it wants to reach and hence put paid ads in front of a highly targeted audience.
Then, about five days later, those engaging in the lead magnets are sent a scorecard, asking them a number of focused questions, for instance how ready they are to retire in Australia, what they know about their pension entitlements and the Australian pension system.
Once completed, the scorecard provides them with an assessment of how ready they are for retirement. If they’ve indicated they are interested in advice, the firm will contact them to invite them to a webinar or an initial meeting.
“If someone’s taking the time to go through that process and complete the scorecard we know that they’re fairly engaged,” says Harvey.
“So we might then invite them to webinars on topics that are focused on the challenges they might face such as the pension transfer piece, or currency conversion, or tax issues for people with assets in the UK.”
The conversion rate from people downloading the initial report to becoming clients is low, he says, but that’s to be expected as most might not be ready to receive advice at that stage.
Out of 100 people downloading the report about 20 would complete the scorecard. But the conversion rates from the first meeting to engagement is high, at around 50 per cent.
What we want to do is try and identify amongst all of our leads who are the clients that are going to get value from our service
BDH Sterling has been operating for 15 years and currently looks after about 1200 families. It already has offices in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney following a buyout, but it wants to be in each of the major capital cities and to do that organically.
The firm’s target client is a former professional who has moved to Australia on a skilled visa and has accumulated a reasonable level of wealth and is now looking to retire in Australia.
Often people will engage with the firm once they’ve been in Australia for five to 10 years and start moving their assets across, realising the challenges this brings.
But it also gets “hundreds of enquiries” from other people looking for information about their state pension entitlements and taxation issues, who are not ready for advice.
The marketing strategy is a way of filtering those down, says Harvey.
“So what we want to do is try and identify amongst all of our leads who are the clients that are going to get value from our service.
“But we have to sort those inquiries because our service isn’t going to be relevant to all of them. And so it’s a way for us to sort those inquiries into a manageable number that we know meet the profile of that target client.”
All change
The firm hasn’t always had a marketing strategy in place and there are some lessons it has learned on the way when it comes to building one.
It now has a marketing manager who works with marketing agencies, something Harvey deems important for any firm “serious” about wanting to grow.
BDH Sterling spends about 2 per cent of its overall revenue on marketing but in return gets more clients come in and more suitable clients, so it can be selective about who it decides to take on.
The firm used pay per click campaigns on Google in the past, which were “incredibly expensive”, Harvey says.
So they switched to social media, which cost them a fraction per lead, typically only a pound, as opposed to a couple of hundred pounds.
‘We want it to be very clear that we are a credible firm and we’re not operating from a poorly regulated jurisdiction targeting British expats’ (Carmen Reichman/FTA)
“I’m not saying it didn’t work for us because we did it for a number of years but the budget when there’s competition for those keywords, it can get quite expensive,” says Harvey.
A similar targeted approach could work for UK based financial advisers who want to target a particular group of clients, such as doctors, he says. “If you have a niche I think it’s just a really good way to differentiate and attract new clients.”
BDH Sterling was growing at about 20 per cent year on year when Covid hit. Since then it has found time to take stock and focusing on putting the right foundations in place for its next phase.
“We’ve done a lot of things to improve our social proof,” says Harvey. “Each of our offices has got a Google profile, and we’ve got over 100 5-star reviews across each site, but you don’t get those without having a systematic approach to asking clients and you have to follow through on these things,” he adds.
Adapting its service
People relocating between the UK and Australia face particular challenges, many of which are around transferring pension assets.
For instance, there are caps on the amount people can transfer in any given year and assets need to be transferred into particular fund structures.
But there are also significant benefits because in Australia the entire pension fund can be accessed tax free, says Harvey.
“It’s quite attractive because their system works in reverse of ours,” he says.
For people who are coming back there are issues around how to access their Australian superfund.
To cater for people’s particular needs the firm has had to evolve, says Harvey.
“[Pensions is] the main reason people initially engage with us to move their assets but then we are delivering lifetime cashflow, we have to use the UK and Australian versions because what works in one doesn’t work in the other,” he says.
“That’s often a challenge for us as a business, off the shelf solutions generally don’t work because what we do is so unique so we end up having to build things ourselves. So we’ve worked with pension providers to develop unique products to meet the needs of our clients,” he adds.
It has also set up a tax firm to help clients file their tax returns which they need to do for their specific Australian self managed superannuation fund. This is needed to transfer a UK pension and BDH Sterling has set up an administration service to help manage the fund.
“We really have tailored our service to meet the needs of our target clients,” says Harvey. “The goal for us is to have lifetime relationships with those clients rather than have just that transactional piece of advice.”
carmen.reichman@ft.com
