As financial planning shifts increasingly to a pure fiduciary focus, many advisors have begun to differentiate themselves by explaining to prospective clients their fiduciary obligations, ostensibly in an effort to demonstrate that they are trustworthy. Unfortunately, though, the reality is that saying "You can trust me" is actually a terrible way to establish trust, especially when it's done using complex jargon that most consumers don't even understand! Even worse, in many cases an advisor talking about fiduciary status is less about demonstrating the trustworthiness of the advisor, and more about bashing the competition for not being worthy of trust - despite the fact that may make the advisor appear petty or desperate with little value to offer, and may actually prime clients towards distrust of any advisors! So what should financial planners do instead? Focus on conveying credibility more holistically, which includes a focus not only on motives and intent, but also the advisor's integrity, capabilities to deliver value to the client, and track record for positive financial planning results. And establish your trust and credibility not just by your words, but by your actions and behaviors. Or stated more simply: stop trying to establish client trust by saying you're a fiduciary; instead, build real trust with your clients by actually being one and behaving accordingly!
As consumers increasingly turn to the internet for information about potential products, the ability of a company and its products to turn up at the top of search engine results is increasingly crucial for success and growth - leading to an explosion of consultants that will help companies with their "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) to ensure that their products and services come up first. A similar process occurs when consumers search for information about services and people to work with, although the process is more complicated due to the fact that many experts may appear prominently on lots of sites, not all of which are necessarily tied to their business.
To better understand not just where influential content is, but the influential people who create it, Google has begun to develop a new system for its search engines to track authors and determine who's influential, called "AuthorRank", which is intended to supplement the "PageRank" algorithms it uses to identify and rank influential websites and content. The upshot of this change is that for the first time ever, financial planners and other service professionals will be able to start establishing their own online "webutation" as they tie content they have produced to their personal profile and business, regardless of where it is published. The caveat, though, is that Google accomplishes "Google Authorship" tracking by having authors tie their content and websites to a specific Google+ profile - which means any financial planners that produce a blog or other content who hadn't already established a Google+ profile need to go create one, now!
Advisor surveys continue to show that the #1 marketing strategy for most firms is to grow through referrals. Unfortunately, though, most firms still get modest results at best, leading them to double down on their referral efforts by asking clients for referrals even more.
A recently released book by marketing consultant Stephen Wershing, however, suggests that the optimal path to success is actually to go the opposite direction - "Stop Asking For Referrals" and instead focus on creating the environment that makes it easier for clients to refer, by understanding what it is that drives clients to refer in the first place. The end result is a practice that has a well identified target market and a clear niche, so that clients truly understand who is and is not an appropriate person to refer, and when someone is referred what they find is compelling enough to make them want to follow through for an initial meeting.
Notably, recent research by Julie Littlechild has shown that overall, 91% of clients are willing to refer, and 29% of clients actually do refer - given that most firms are not growing at 29%+ organic growth rates, though, suggests that there is a lot of room for improvement by applying Wershing's recommendations to fix the weakest links in your own referral growth strategy!Read More...
As financial planning practices grow and become more focused, they generally establish a minimum for new clients. Depending on the nature of the firm, that might be a minimum of investment assets, a minimum net worth, or simply a minimum fee amount; the fundamental purpose is to ensure that the firm can generate an appropriate minimum amount of revenue per client to maintain its financial viability and profitability given its costs. Yet many firms do not actually state their minimums on their website or other marketing materials; instead, advisors wait until a prospect comes in to the firm for a first meeting or "approach talk" and then assess on the spot whether the potential client is "qualified" to work with the firm. While this may seem like it makes the process easier and affords the ultimate flexibility for the advisor to make a judgment call about whether the prospect is a good fit, the reality is actually the opposite. It's an extremely expensive and wasteful process for the firm, it discourages new prospects from contacting the firm, and perhaps worst of all, it makes referral sources less willing to refer prospects at all!Read More...
Traditionally in the financial services world, services offering "lead generation" for advisors were typically used to deliver prospects who might want to buy a particular financial services product - not necessarily people who were looking for advice. For consumers who wanted to actually find a real advisor, the primary option was to seek one out through the financial planning membership associations.
In recent years, though, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of platforms providing prospective clients for financial planners, following a wide range of business models, from a "registry" of qualified planners to choose from, to companies that give away some basic planning for free in the hopes of drawing some prospects in to go deeper, to advisor review sites.
While many remain skeptical about the value of such services, the reality is that the process of "sales" - converting a prospective client into an actual client - is very specific to an individual firm and its advisors, but the process of "prospecting" to find prospective clients is a marketing function that really is much more conducive to size and scale. Thus, while not all the companies competing in this space will be winners - many will likely be gone in a few years - it appears that outsourcing prospecting may be an emerging trend as yet another way for some financial planning firms to get more efficient and grow, especially for firms that don't yet have the size and scale to effectively market themselves.
Identifying centers of influence has been useful and effective for businesses and advertisers as long as people of influence have wielded power in their communities. Historically, though, the challenge has been that it's not always clear who is influential, especially in relatively narrow niches. However, as the use of social media continues to grow and evolve, quantifying influence, at least through social media channels, is becoming possible for the first time - and companies are jumping quickly to fill the void.
The current leader in this space is a company called Klout, which seeks to make itself the standard of measuring (online) influence. While thus far the company is relatively new and its impact is limited, it is growing fast. In fact, in some industries, an individual's Klout score is already impacting their ability to get a job, or their opportunity to receive discounts and perks from advertisers. While the time hasn't arrived yet, Klout may soon become relevant in the world of financial planning as well, for everything from increasing the visibility of an influential planner, to identifying centers of influence to contact in a target niche market. Which raises the question: do you have Klout?
Using newsletters for drip marketing has long been a cornerstone of marketing for financial planners. However, the newsletter process itself is relatively inefficient - costs of production can be high if it's printed, the process of building a distribution list is slow, the content often cannot be effectively shared, and there is no means for someone to find and access the content if they aren't already on the mailing list.
By contrast, operating a digital blog has no printing cost, has content that can be distributed on multiple digital channels, can easily be shared by readers and prospects with others, and can even be found by search engines without any further effort from the planner.
The challenge, of course, is that a financial advisor blog requires content - yet the reality is that for firms already producing a newsletter, the content is already being created. In which case, the blog is simply a more efficient way to get the content out there and drip market to a growing a list of prospective clients!Read More...
As we enter the digital age, gathering information on the internet becomes a regular part of our lives, whether it's looking up the answer to a question, purchasing a product, or looking for a professional to work with. At the same time, many planners have been reluctant about trying to establish a "web presence" out of fear that whatever appears on the internet may be immortalized, good or bad. Yet the reality is that as the number of websites explodes to unimaginably large numbers, most people will only ever see what search engines show them. Consequently, we actually have a remarkable amount of power to "control" what people see about us on the internet, by establishing a web presence to try to ensure that the information we want prospective clients to see is in fact the first thing they do see. Furthermore, the reality is that having the basics like a website has shifted from being a "nice to have" aspect of your marketing, to a minimum requirement just to be deemed a legitimate professional in the first place. And of course, if you're curious about where you stand and what your prospects might see, there's an easy way to find out: when you search for yourself on the internet, what do you find?Read More...
As the visibility of social media continues to grow, many advisors have become skeptical about whether it represents a new trend for growing a business that's here to stay, or simply a fad that will soon be gone. Yet the reality is that when done best, social media isn't really a new strategy for growing a business at all, it's simply a new medium to facilitate the same strategy advisors have always engaged in: to become someone that people know and trust, to whom they would be comfortable to refer, and cultivating a network of prospective referrers. The difference is that with social media, the potential exists to reach both a larger and more focused network of potential target clientele, allowing the growth strategy to be implemented even more effectively. Read More...
As the financial planning profession continues its inexorable march towards a fiduciary client-centric standard of care that minimizes or outright avoids conflicts of interest, those most passionate about carrying the torch have often been the most vocal in promoting those standards within their own businesses. Yet recent research shows that from the consumer's perspective, "fiduciary" is confusing and the word "fees" evokes an outright negative response; the special meanings we attach to those words inside our industry have translated poorly to the general public. The key, then, is to figure out how to operate in the interests of clients, while communicating a message that is less about the battles being fought inside the industry and more about how the client benefits. Otherwise, while it's true that those firms doing the best job of truly serving clients may be rewarded with the most referrals, they may not be able to convert those referrals to clients and grow their businesses if they have dug themselves a hole they can't climb out of by using consumer-unfriendly terminology in the first place!Read More...
