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Conversations with clients should be about them, not you.
Your clients don’t care about you. That may sound harsh, but it’s true.
That’s not to say that they aren’t interested in the services you provide. They must be – after all, they hired you) And it doesn’t mean that your credentials and experience are irrelevant. Clients do want to work with a financial advisor who has demonstrated expertise.
But when it comes to your marketing message, they don’t want to listen to you drone on about how great you are, like a boring party guest.
They want to know how you can help them.
What’s in it for me?
When a prospective client asks you about your firm, do you immediately respond with any sentences like the ones below?
We have more than XX years of experience.
We are fee-only, fiduciary advisors.
We have won [insert name of award here].
We deliver customized service.
What’s the problem with these statements? They are all focused on you rather than your client. Some advisors tout characteristics and accomplishments that are meaningful to those in the financial industry but mean little to most clients. You can’t be confident that the average person knows what “fiduciary” means, for example.
Instead, try thinking about your business from a client’s perspective. Whether they are considering hiring you or thinking about taking their business elsewhere, your clients are asking one simple question: “What’s in it for me?”
Your job is to answer that question as clearly as possible.
One way to answer this question is to focus on the benefitsof your service rather than the features. Say you offer clients online account access (a feature). The benefit might be convenience (clients can check their account balances at any time) or less paperwork (they will never waste time looking for lost statements). Or perhaps you offer retirement-income projections (a feature). You might explain the benefit by saying, “You can find out how much money you need to save to enjoy the retirement you want.”
Do a “we” audit
How do you know if you’re talking too much about yourself and your firm in your marketing materials and not enough about your clients (or prospective clients)?
Do a “we” audit. Looking over your firm brochure and website for statements like the ones listed above.
If you are seeing a lot of statements that are firm-focused, rather than client-focused, that is a problem. It’s okay to have some firm-focused language in your marketing – after all, you need to tell your story – but if you find that you spend more time talking about “we” than “you,” you are alienating people without even realizing it.
Put the focus back on your client
You’ve worked hard to get where you are and build a successful firm, and it’s understandable you want to talk about your business and how great it is. But remember, what clients care about most is themselves. By talking directly to them, you demonstrate that you understand and care about their concerns and are not just trying to sell them something. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms, which may turn people off.
Take the advice of advertising executive Leo Levinson, who succinctly explained the power of focusing your marketing message on your customers in a recent article in Wharton Magazine: “Using ‘you talk’ demonstrates that you understand exactly what the customer is experiencing, building trust that your product or service can solve a problem or meet a need. Successful ‘you talk’ looks at the marketing message through their eyes, not through yours.”
Megan Elliott is the senior copywriter with Wealth Management Marketing, Inc., a firm specializing in outsourced marketing department services to Registered Investment Advisors and fee-only financial planning firms. For more information, visit www.wealthmanagementmarketing.net.
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