Having built my career helping advisors find fresh new ways to market their businesses to investors, I’ve learned a thing or two about how the minds of wealth management professionals operate. For one thing, while every advisor thinks they’re doing things differently, far too many are unaware of what truly makes them special.
Ask most advisors how they stand out from their competitors, and you are likely to hear about their dedication to client service or holistic financial planning. While these attributes are essential to running an effective financial advisory business, they are not unique to any one practice. Every good advisor strives to offer clients white-glove service and customized financial plans!
So, what actually makes one advisory business different from the rest? In my experience, it’s the stories, life experiences, values and interests of the people who work there. My Irish background makes me a natural storyteller, and it’s the best part of my job as head of marketing at Hightower: helping advisors pinpoint their true differentiators and using those stories to build digital marketing campaigns that speak directly to potential clients.
I came out of grad school thinking that financial services was boring, and I was wrong! If you dig a little bit, you get to the good stuff. Here are my four best tips for advisors and their teams to identify what makes them tick, and how to use that insight to build campaigns that drive growth.
1. Start With A Real Conversation
Many advisors have never really stopped to think about what truly motivates them, which is why it’s essential to start any marketing campaign with a real conversation, exploring the advisor’s life, interests and passions. Email doesn’t cut it—you need to sit down with someone, either face to face or over Zoom, and really find out what makes them different.
I like to come prepared with questions that can help dig deeper than credentials. A couple that get the conversation going: As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? If you hadn’t become an advisor, what would you be doing? What’s on your bucket list?
Asking the questions is the easy part; you need to listen carefully to the responses, and watch facial expressions to see what topics make them truly light up—those are the topics that will also engage potential clients, or can help make topic-driven campaigns more personal and authentic.
2. Pinpoint An Area Of Interest And Find The Hook
Once you find “the hook,” the next step is to build that out. For example, my team worked with a Hightower advisor in the Washington D.C. area named Leah, who had recently earned her Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA) designation. After years of working to help high net worth women deal with divorce in productive ways, Leah was extremely passionate about making sure these women—many of whom had never dealt with financial matters—emerged from their divorces strong, empowered and more knowledgeable about their finances.
Leah’s interest in helping female clients deal with emotionally and financially devastating divorces was interesting, but in order to help her create an effective marketing plan around this passion, I needed to better understand the issue.
We went deeper into her knowledge around this topic and found a timely and relevant “news hook” that made it seem more pressing and essential: How the pandemic has changed the divorce landscape. Leah explained to me that Covid-19 hasn’t just heightened the tension in marriages, it’s also heightened the tension in divorces. The pandemic changed everything from how long a divorce can drag on, to how parties appear before the court; for instance, virtual backgrounds on video calls are frowned upon, because a judge needs to be able to see who else might be in the room. The pandemic also required women to adapt to virtual meetings when consulting with therapists, lawyers and real estate agents while juggling a lack of privacy at home.