Business strategists spend a lot of time understanding the target audience for their clients and making sure that the strategies are aligned fully with the clients’ goals so there’s no disconnect between marketing and reality. We all know how empty promises can backfire, so attention to your offering is critical. But once you are confident in your strategy and it’s time to go to market, you want the best possible marketing system for your firm.

I’ve summarized my approach for helping clients build their marketing materials.

Step One: The Messaging Brief

Creating a messaging brief is the most important thing you can do to sharpen your message for both your marketing and sales efforts. Essentially, the brief is a one-page form that documents:

• Your business objective (say, that you will grow by adding $100 million a year in assets);

• Your target client, which is described in demographics (by age, assets or profession) and by attitude or persona (say, people who want to feel organized);

• Your value proposition: What do you do? Why do you do what you do? Who do you serve? How does that benefit people? What are your proof points?

The idea of “proof points” may feel new to you, but wishy-washy value propositions are so rampant in our industry that this is a critical step. For example, saying that you provide “comprehensive wealth management” is too vague, so the proof points would be the specific deliverables clients can count on.

• The next part of the one-page brief is the competition—people you are compared to when clients consider you. Typically, I pick three comparisons: You are “unlike brokers,” “unlike discount firms” or “unlike other RIAs”; then you create narratives. For example, “Unlike Schwab, we customize what we do for every client and build deeper relationships.”

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