In the rush to give everything away free, a lot of mainstream media forgot what made it valuable in the first place.
People point to declining sales of print newspapers and blame it on the rise of the internet but that is an oversimplification; it seems to me that more people are reading print newspapers than ever before, but they are reading those that they get free, rather than the paid-for titles that we see plummeting sales figures for.
I doubt anyone reading the Metro believes it to be ‘better’ than the Independent, Times, Telegraph, Guardian, or even the Sun, but its one selling point is that they don’t have to pay for it.
For many, that is enough, and the same is true of advice.
All the banks currently returning to the advice market are doing so in the knowledge that they will find an audience which is happy simply not to be paying for a service, however basic it is.
But, and I concede that I may sound like a naïve old romantic, I would like to think that there will always be a market for quality. People will pay for something if they perceive value in it, whether it is legal representation, print media or financial advice.
You don’t need to just be better than the banks, you need to be sufficiently better to justify whatever you are charging for your service, otherwise all those currently populating the advice gap will end up settling for advice that is ‘good enough’, which won’t help them and certainly won’t help you.
You need to remind the paying public that you provide a service worth paying for. And then convince them to pay for it.
