I have seen how seldom advisors ask how well they are really doing. Maybe it’s ego, or the fact that most firms are doing great financially, so advisors aren’t that introspective. As a marketer, I know that a leading indicator for future growth – the kind that works in all markets – is how much time and intensity is applied to questioning ourselves. Your marketing message has to grow and evolve, or it’s simply decaying. In larger firms, we make this a priority as marketing is always a forward-looking part of the business.
For many firms, marketing budgets are tight and the team members may not be professionally-trained marketers who understand building and managing brands. With that in mind, I decided to share two tools that will help you:
- Better understand your brand personality
- Assess your effectiveness in the digital landscape
These tools are easy to use and free. That said, you still need to be curious and open to getting better. The “cost” is you have to carve out some time and be willing to set aside your ego and attachment to how you’ve always done things.
Why Does Brand Personality Matter?
If you have been following any of my articles you may know my favorite word to describe most advisors’ marketing: boring. As an industry, we have terminology like “comprehensive wealth management” and “fiduciary standard” that consumers don’t fully understand. When the whole world says, “The difference is the quality of our people – we have highly experienced, seasoned investment professionals,” the point loses its impact. Redundancy, legalese, excess amounts of copy all make it hard to stay awake. Here’s my point of view: When someone comes to your website or reads a brochure, they should feel like you are talking to them as real people, not talking at them. Think about it.
Visuals have a lot to do with brand personality, too, but they aren’t easy to judge from the sidelines, where I am sitting. However, I can give you a personality test based on what you say.
The Power Of Word Clouds
One of my favorite pastimes is to run my own (and other people’s) marketing through word cloud software, which is easily found on the web and is absolutely free of charge. Here’s a link to one that is easy to use, Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/. I like to look at what we say in blogs, our positioning statements and collateral systems to see what pops out. The larger and bolder the word , the more prominent it is in your message. For our brand, I know the words we like to be big (“You,” “Life,” “Truth,” “Choices,” “Caring”) and the words we want to be smaller (“We,” “Us,” “Financial,” “Investments,” “Returns”). When I look at other firms (perhaps even yours) I see a lot of big words like “Respected,” “Expertise,” “Holistic etc.” At the end of the day, choose the personality that’s right for you and be more thoughtful about it, and your clouds will shift in the direction you want.
Just for fun, here’s the word cloud from this article:
Grading Your Marketing Is Easy And Enlightening
There are a few choices out there for website or marketing grading tools, but one of my favorites is offered for free by HubSpot: https://marketing.grader.com/, You basically put your web address into the query, and in a few minutes you get an overall grade, as well as tips to improve your digital presence. Some of the things you will learn include: