Indeed, creating trust is a big issue in courting millennials, and specifically that means trust in you as an individual advisor, not necessarily in the firm whose flag you fly.
“Probably the biggest adjustment advisors need to make when marketing to millennials is moving away from a reliance on 'the brand' and instead moving toward emphasizing their own real selves,” says Joshua Escalante Troesh, founder of Purposeful Strategic Partners in Alta Loma, Calif. “Research shows that millennials largely eschew brands in favor of personalities. So if your own quirky personality isn't showing through in your marketing and sales messages, you are less likely to reach millennial investors.”
“Perhaps the single biggest thing we see is that millennials want to be able to trust the person they are working with,” adds Jamie Hopkins, director of retirement research at Carson Group in Omaha, Neb. “In a digital world, you need to show that you can adapt and deliver service where they need it, when they need it. But this does not mean you give up on the human touch. Young and millennial individuals want a mix of technology and human interaction. You need technology to help support what you are doing, but it is not a replacement for human interaction.”
But whether it’s online or off, the kind of message you put out there is critical. For financial advisors, education—not a sales pitch—is the best thing to offer when approaching millennials.
“We have discovered that keeping things high-level and education-focused are big keys,” says Ian McMillan, director of research and operations at Sherman Wealth Management LLC in Gaithersburg, Md. However, he says, there shouldn’t be “a lot of industry lingo, but approaching conversations in more elementary ways at first. And then as their understanding of planning and investing grows, the conversations become more complex.”
The best way to deliver that, according to several advisors, is visually and orally, less so through text. That means such things as videos and podcasts, not reading material.
“I find the best way to communicate with the younger generation of clients is through different variations of visual information,” says Mike Desepoli, a financial advisor at Heritage Financial Advisory Group in Port Jefferson Station, N.Y. “Video, infographics, animated PowerPoint have all been extremely effective for us. This allows prospects to conceptualize important topics and help quantify the impact different strategies will have on their money.”
“Podcasts give millennials the opportunity to control where, when and what they listen to all through their smartphone,” adds Mark Mersman, chief marketing officer at USA Financial in Ada, Mich. “Even though they are attached to their smart device, their attention span is typically limited. Most of their communication and interaction with the world is in sound bites and video clips. As a result, short videos and simple ‘freemiums’ offered via social media are an effective means of engaging with them.”
In addition, he says, podcasts and short videos “give advisors the opportunity to create content easily and focus on their message and content without additional noise or fluff.”
Of course, no discussion about marketing to millennials would be complete without mentioning fees, which are always a touchy subject but which may be an even more sensitive issue with younger people given their age, relative lack of financial resources and the abundance of cheaper online-only competitors aimed squarely at them.