What image should an IFA portray? What should a good website look like? What are blogs and tweets all about?

As a company, we spent a long time debating these issues and changing our minds along the way. Deciding what your brand is, and stands for, is the most important decision. We saw far too many companies with just their proprietor’s names or regal sounding names. We opted for Fish Financial -  ”contemporary without (hopefully) being too frivolous”.

www.fishfin.co.uk Clearly a website is the no.1 marketing tool these days (apart from us as individuals) but I don’t believe for an IFA that a website will ever be a ‘sales fulfilment’ tool to capture new clients who trawl the net. An IFA business is built on trust. It is essential to have the site as a credibility reinforcer because the first thing every person in the universe now does, after an initial contact, is click through from an email or look up the site having received a business card.

Fresh is a good word (in an industry with a dull reputation) that should refer to the name, brand and website. We decided to take out all the generic and technical product/industry information (stuff that you can find anywhere on the net). We have built a site around client case studies and testimonials that we hope potential clients can relate to.

We have taken on board some good advice from www.abusinessinnovation.com and www.topleftdesign.com and embarked on the new world of blogging and tweeting and I believe that is an important conduit – we are novices in this field but I do feel these are important and do provide colour and personality for any of us. In to the brave new world…