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To be effective, your marketing message has to be differentiating and memorable – and motivate potential clients to want to learn more. By that standard, most advisor communication fails.
I recently looked at more than 20 advisor websites. Two conclusions emerged from that exercise:
- Most websites need serious help, not just a minor tweak but a total revamp. (A future article will focus on the elements of a compelling website.)
- While many websites contain tag lines (or “benefit statements”) explaining what clients stand to gain from working with an advisor, most of these are so broad and generic as to be meaningless.
Your chance for lunch with Dan
This fall, Dan Richards will be hosting advisor roundtable lunches to discuss key challenges, share ideas and answer questions.
There is no cost to attend these lunches. Lunches are currently scheduled in Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas and Houston – with other cities being added.
If you’re interested in more information on these lunches, please email [email protected]
Dan Richards
ClientInsights-President
6 Adelaide Street E, Suite 400
Toronto ON M5C 1T6
(416) 900-0968
Recently, a newsletter from Ivan Levison, a Silicon Valley copywriter, contrasted two tag lines from television commercials for trade schools. If you were in the market for vocational training, which of these would be more likely to move you to request more information?
ITT Technical Institute. Education for the future.
Heald College. Get in. Get out. Get ahead.
The first of these is pablum. It’s safe, inoffensive and utterly undifferentiated; chances are that someone in the market for a trade school will forget it seconds later. By contrast, Get in. Get out. Get ahead strikes a chord and speaks to its target audience in an unconventional way. For that reason it has teeth to it.
In looking at advisor websites, almost all tag lines fall into the safe and generic category. Some examples:
Providing peace of mind
Planning for a worry-free retirement
Securing your financial future
Trusted advice for over 20 years
The serious nature of peoples’ finances clearly limits the opportunity to be too bold in how you articulate your benefit. That said, I’ve seen benefit statements on advisor sites that were professional in tone and still sent a message that differentiated the advisor. One advisor who’s a CPA focuses on tax effective investing – his tag line is “Reduce tax, keep more.” Another advisor who works with HNW families has this message: “Helping wealth transition across generations.”
If you have a benefit statement on your website or in your marketing material, think hard about whether it falls into the ho-hum category. If the answer is yes, it’s time to rethink how you communicate the ways in which clients are better off working with you.
Click here for more on delivering a differentiated message.
conducts programs to help advisors gain and retain clients and is an award winning faculty member in the MBA program at the University of Toronto. To see more of his written and video commentaries, go to www.clientinsights.ca. Use A555A for the rep and dealer code to register for website access.
