Adviser site VouchedFor has announced its intention to launch a national televised advertising campaign to promote financial advice.
Beginning in April the online comparison website’s campaign will target the pre-retirement market with adverts showing across platforms such as Channel 4’s network.
Three quarters of adverts will air in the day with the remaining showing at peak viewing times later on in the evening and weekends.
Kim Barrett, IFA at Barrett’s Financial Solutions, said: “Advertising is always a Catch 22 scenario.
“You can pay money for advertising and hope or you can do nothing. The trouble is with independent financial advice is that it is a passive area, so sometimes you need to nudge clients in the right direction.
“Speaking generally we get a lot of traffic from Vouched For, although sometimes a lot of these might just be queries, there is not always a lot of hits.
“If this is one of the ways they are demonstrating new ways to generate traffic and actively promoting advice then this is a huge help.”
Alex Whitson, chief marketing officer for VouchedFor, said: “We conducted consumer research and a few key themes emerged - one of these being that it’s really important to champion the belief that people are better off for having access to financial advice.
“From the focus group people avoid the issue of financial advice and their future as it is intimidating. Particularly since the crash, there has also been a distrust of quick and easy access to financial advice.
“We’re hoping that the TV campaign will address this and will let people know where to turn to for assistance with their finances.”
The news comes following concerns raised by IFAs after VouchedFor increased its prices in return for only introducing validated leads.
The changes came after several IFAs questioned why more work had not been done in the past to ensure leads they were paying for were from clients requiring advice.
At the time Adam Price, founder of VouchedFor, said: “VouchedFor works very well for most advisers usually earning their money back many times over.
“That said, we are always looking to improve, both for consumers and advisers.
“Our recently announced changes were prompted by a survey of all our advisers - the clear consensus was that they would like us to increase our marketing activity.”
