Don Draper and his Mad Men peers were fans of the Market Research Survey. While the tv show was based in the 1960s -1970s, market research surveys were still considered cutting edge at the time. Now we have arrived at the one hundred year mark, the relevance of market research surveys are certainly on the decline.
If I had to wrap XY up into a single word – it would be ‘strange’. It’s a strange company, with a strange name, a strange beginning, and a strange business model. I think the reason we’re still answering the question ‘what is XY Adviser’ eight years later is because XY is by definition, hard to understand.
At XY we are an adviser-first company. Our goal is to continuously improve the value we provide to the advice community. Last Friday we held our first ever All Licensee PD Day to a resounding success. We were initially unsure of how it would go, but we were quietly confident it would succeed.
One of the core values we have at XY is reducing the 10,000 hours to mastery rule. This has allowed us to play a role in the rising tide of financial planning around the world. The momentum to explore what it means to be a great financial advice provider has been moving in from the fringes for years.
The simple truth of adviser marketing is this – if you don’t use financial planners in your content, there is a low chance it will resonate. Marketing experts are fantastic at B2C communication, but adviser messaging needs to be different. Compelling language appeals to retail clients. Actionable outcomes appeal to professionals
Emily and her team spend their days speaking with financial advisers. On the corporate side of XY, we’re focused on meeting with institutional clients. And we meet many of them. Over time we’ve had the chance to watch the trends and listen to the strategies. During this process, what did we find? While each product vertical experiences unique struggles, and each company proposes different solutions, most problems come down to building brand and building leads.
Financial services are the world’s largest industry. Estimates put the sector at around a quarter of world’s wealth. As such, the level of investment thrown at acquiring a piece of this pie is astronomically large. And with vast amounts of investment comes a vast amount of activity.
XY Adviser is growing fast. Really fast. Launching a stand alone platform to compete with Facebook and Linkedin was always going to be a huge risk. But with just over two years under our belt, and almost 1 in 5 advisers now using the platform, as one of our clients put it to us recently – we’re now a ‘part of the furniture’.
Seeing your logo up in lights is what comes to mind when someone says ‘brand awareness’, so why has the market been shifting towards content for the last half a decade?
Today we follow Emily Blanch, one of XY’s co-founders and Head of Community to learn how she supports a rapidly growing professional network of financial advisers.