Creating a brand will make your advisor practice more tangible and appealing to prospects, says consultant and author Duncan MacPherson.
“[Advisors are] promoting the promise of the future, it is so abstract,” said MacPherson, co-founder, Pareto Systems, speaking in Toronto on Thursday. “Do your clients really understand? They see the statements [but] do they appreciate what you do?”
Rather than focusing on individual marketing tools, such as seminars or social networking, MacPherson, says advisors need a brand that will give clients and prospects an understanding of their services.
“Branding is so incredibly powerful and it permeates everything you do,” he said, “It’s not a campaign, it’s not something that has a beginning and an end, it’s ongoing. It impacts how you’re perceived.”
Part of creating that brand is a value proposition. Follow MacPherson’s four tips to breakdown that proposition and find your brand:
> Identify your ideal client
Be clear about who you work with to make it easy for prospects to connect with you and your business.
You can’t be all things to all people, said MacPherson. Instead, you want to be all things to some people.
> Don’t make it about you
Take the mystery out of what you do by focusing on your clients’ needs.
“If you say, “you’re a financial advisor and you help people achieve their financial goals,” what does that even mean?,” said MacPherson. “Is it a magic wand? Pixie dust?”
Instead, think of something your clients want, such as financial independence.
> Use key words
Get the attention of clients with a few select words.
Telling clients you have an approach, method or process will get them engaged and encourage them to ask questions about what you do. “It’s permission marketing,” says MacPherson. “[The client is] engaged. I’m giving [the client] permission to drill down [and ask] “well, how does that work?”
And you won’t need to reinvent the wheel to find that approach. Chances are you already have a process or a method in place that you use with clients but you just don’t think of it that way.
> Give it a name
Bring a little authority to your process with a name.
“The moment you call it something you take the abstract nature of what you do down to something you can conceptualize and understand,” said MacPherson. “It’s like checking a box.”
MacPherson works with one advisor who calls his approach the Beacon360 process.
To really make the name stick, Pareto Systems help advisors to trademark their brand. Said MacPherson. “They own it, it’s proprietary, it’s official, it’s real.”