In a nutshell

To successfully implement the principles of 'Teach to Grow' you must have some strategies and tools which can help you to reach to your clients and prospects effectively. Let me share few most effective and influential tools which IFAs/MFDs can use to educate the clients and prospect to grow the business. This list is not exhaustive but these are the tools which comes to my head first when it comes to Education Based marketing.

Quora

Contribute your thoughts on the websites built for the questions and answers created by users. One of the famous such website is www.Quora.com where you can contribute answers to common questions and concerns raised by the various users related to investment and Mutual Funds. This will help you to establish yourself as an expert.

Apart from Quora you may also consider joining various investor related groups and forums on Facebook, where people come and ask their queries regarding investments. Contributing to the answers without trying to sell anything on regular basis will surely help you to grab the attention of the group members. Regular contribution in terms of solving their queries by sincerely educating them will help you to establish yourself as an expert.

Blog

Writing a regular blog can help you a lot in terms of successfully positioning you as an expert. Blog need not be very long and detailed article on any specific subject. Blog can be written on very small topics related to the common concerns of the investors. You may use the free blog creation and publishing tools like www.blogspot.com if you are not having your own website. If you have your own website you may consider having the separate blog section. You may use the Wordpress to integrate the blog creation and publishing tools to your website.

Topic of the Blog: To decide on your topics for blogs, think and research about the common questions and queries of investors. Go to the online forums of investors like Facebook groups of Investors. You shall find many insights about the common concerns and questions concerning the Investor.

Lengths of the Blog: Blog can be as short as approx 750 to as much as 1800 words. You may consider writing even lengthier blogs. But make sure that you write in such a language which is simple to be understood by anyone. Remember you are writing it to impress your ideal prospect and investor and not to impress the other experts of the subject, so it is essential to avoid the jargons.

Title of the Blog: Title of the blog should be such that makes the prospect to want to read it. Your blog title should be relevant and short. It should be such that our reader can't ignore it. Your title works as an attention grabber. Click http://bit.ly/100AttentionGrabbingTitle to know the 100+ Blog Post Title Templates That Grab Attention.

You may consider visiting http://www.jagoinvestor.com/ website. They have used the articles and blogs to educate their clients and prospect effectively. You shall also get the practical ideas on what kinds of title you should consider having for your blogs.

Facebook Live

Facebook Live videos are a new age tool and latest buzz normally celebrities and politicians are using for connecting with their Fans. I think this feature of Facebook Live streaming can be very useful for IFAs/MFDs also to educate their clients and increase their fan following over Social Media.

The session should be long enough so you may consider talking at least for 30 minutes on specific topic targeting various age groups of people on various Investment and Financial Planning related topics.

Here are few Tips and Tricks that will help you in having a live Facebook session.

1. Tell people one day in advance through Facebook post that you are going to be live on FB to talk about the topic. This will help to create the anticipation among the people and advance notice will help them to tune into the live session.

2. Make sure to go live when you have a strong Network Connection. Connecting through wifi is ideal; if it's not available you may consider having the 4G network with strong signal.

3. Write a Catchy description before you go live.

4. Respond to live comments and question during your talk by addressing the person with his name.

5. Broadcast for longer period of time to reach more people.

Teach through small courses

Classroom Courses: You may consider having a small 5 to 7 session's course on financial planning or investment management and offer it to the audience. You can do so if you have a proper classroom setup of your own, or else you may also consider renting such place. You may also associate with the various educational institutes which might help you in marketing your course. For example in Ahmedabad there is a place called Ahmedabad Management Associate which runs various courses on different subject and has the many class rooms where they conduct various courses on different topics for various industries and these courses are open for all on paid basis. You may approach such institute and present the proposal to have one course on investment management and financial planning for Investors to be delivered by you.

Online Courses: You may also consider having the online courses through webinar where you can teach from your location and connect through webinar facility to your audience. You may also consider creating your online course and sell it over internet. Currently I have subscribed to one online course titled "How To Create Your Own Profitable Online Courses" by my friend Sara Cordiner from Australia who is expert in online course creation and helps people to create an awesome online course and to promote those courses online. You may consider login to www.udemy.com and brows her courses. Udemy is the platform where you can also create and put your online courses to sell.

YouTube

YouTube is the second most widely used website for searching the information about the products and finding the solutions to the queries. Nowadays people prefer video over text according to researches done by various agencies. Also retention of message increases to great level when both auditory and visual senses of the clients are involved. You may consider two types of videos for educating your clients and prospects.

Vlog: Vlog is a blog in which the postings are primarily in video form. You may consider filming the short videos of 3 to 5 minutes of your own talking about some small concepts related to investing. Similarly the videos can be on the same topics as your blogs are. So again follow the rule of keeping it simple to understand. The video which follows the principles of blog are also known as Vlog.

Use the same principles as blog creation for deciding the topic and title for your Vlog. Having a professional setup for creating the Vlog is ideal but not must, you may also use your smart phone with the HD video recording facility to shoot small 3 to 5 minutes of video. Make sure to shoot such videos at quiet place with enough lighting.

Small Conceptual Videos: You may consider having animated small videos with professional voice over of around 90 to 120 seconds on various concepts related to mutual fund investing. To create such videos, one needs to have the Creativity, Technical Expertise to do the animation and considerable amount of budget.

If you think you do have creativity, you may consider using few websites those provide you the platform to create small videos which can be created by just 'drag and drop' facility. You might want to explore www.powtoon.com where you can do the animation part on your own.

If you think you don't have enough technical knowledge or expertise, you may consider outsourcing. Having these kinds of video outsourced is very costly. One small video of 60 sec to 90 sec will cost somewhere in the range of Rs 25000 to Rs 40000. So it is always better to have such videos outsource with white labelling. There are few options available for IFAs and MFDs to get such videos outsourced with white labelling, which will be very much economic. As the same video is white labelled, the cost of one such video would be less than even Rs 500.

Few national distributors like Prudent and NJ provide such facility to their Channel Partner. You may also consider subscribing the annual package provided by my firm, AnchorEDGE which provides small animated conceptual videos to Financial Advisors and Mutual Fund distributors on very nominal cost. Click http://anchoredge.in/brandedge.htmlto know more about how you can receive animated videos on various concepts every month to educate your clients which can be used over Youtube.

In a nutshell, these are many cost effective Ideas which IFAs/MFDs can use to teach and educate their clients and prospect and even to generate revenues out of such an initiative. Apart from the few mentioned here, there are many more things which you might do to educate your clients like having a newsletter, writing an article in a newspaper or some online portals and sharing those with your clients and prospects etc. IFAs/MFDs should consider adopting one or more such tools depending on his expertise to continuously educate the clients and prospect which will help them to establish themselves as industry expertise and grow using the power of Education.

Share your thoughts and perspectives

Do you have any observations or insights or perspectives to share on this issue? Did this help you understand the topic better? Do you disagree with some of the observations? Please post your comments in the box below ..... it's YOUR forum !

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