Financial advisers face a choice between selling the information they have or giving it away, according to marketing expert Tim Reid.

“Advisers are sitting on a mountain of information, and if you share it people will come to you for help,” he told the Association of Financial Advisers conference in Cairns last week.

“The first choice is to persuade people to give you money for that information, or you can share it freely and this will get people coming to you. It is the second choice that will work.”

Mr Reid, founder of the Small Business Big Marketing podcast, says many advisers argue marketing their business is too expensive, complicated and time-consuming.

“It is time to lose all of those limiting beliefs and look at new concepts of marketing, such as being seen as a helpful business,” he said. “It is about solving client problems, and if you take that mindset you will succeed. A helpful industry is what your client needs.”

Mr Reid says a reputation for being helpful and informative can be built online.

“You are what Google says you are. How many people get to page four [when searching through results] on Google?”

The search engine ranks sites by number of hits.

Mr Reid says one good way of attracting hits is to create a question-and-answer page.

“The more questions and answers you provide on a webpage, the more hits it will receive. This will improve your rating with Google, so you will appear on the first pages on a topic.”

He says Google can also reveal consumers’ most popular questions about financial services.

“You can then provide the answers. Social networks can also be a source of questions.”

Mr Reid says adviser should get their websites in order, especially if they have not been touched for years.