The “Should Care” vs. “Does Care” Marketing Question for Financial Advisors
Today I wanted to comment on a big mistake that I see a lot of advisors making with their marketing. I call it the relevance question. The relevance question deals with what your audience should care about versus what they do care about.
Bridging the Knowledge Gap with Marketing
A lot of advisors struggle with this. It’s common because there’s a gap the first time someone sits down at your table to talk about their goals for the future, their financial plan, and the steps they want to take to get there. That gap is a knowledge gap between what they are focused on now and their long-term motivations.
Many people can be shortsighted, especially when it comes to our finances. We're more worried about the month-to-mont or the year-to-year, but not the 20- and 30- year outcomes.
So how is this a marketing challenge? For many advisors, marketing can tend to focus on what people should care about.
Now, why is that a bad thing? Of course, you want to educate people into caring about long-term goals and long-term perspectives that will help them have a steady financial plan for growth.
The difference is that in a marketing setting, you're not sitting across the table where you can dialogue to open up peoples' eyes. It can be harder to move them in the right direction with soundbites.
Advisor Marketing Should Focus On the Hook
Marketing is about the hook that starts the conversations. If you start with the conclusion – what they should care about – that doesn't work as a hook. You have to start with what matters to them now.
When you are sitting down and putting together your marketing strategy, you really want to ask this question: are we only focusing on what people should care about or are we focusing on what they do care about now?
To make this practical, I want to give you three examples of practical ways that you can sharpen your hook.
And the ultimate goal for you? Focusing on what people care about now and using that to leverage into a conversation of what they should care about: having a healthy, long-term perspective on their wealth.
1. Identify What Your Audience Does Care About
It's far easier to start a conversation around something someone cares about now versus talking them into something they should care about. This is especially true in a digital world of soundbites.
The key here is knowing what moments (events, headlines, life changes) create perspective-changing windows in your audiences' world. We are usually shortsighted until something happens that makes us longsighted.
Some of these are easily observable because they are headlines – topics like market crashes or housing challenges. There are easy moments when we can say, “Let’s talk about the panic that's happening now. Then, here are the principles that help you make long-term decisions.”
There are other moments that aren't necessarily going to make headlines, and those are life events. This can be anything like:
The passing of a loved one, dealing with wills and estates
Having a new baby and starting to stay for college
Navigating divorce
Retiring from the workforce
You have the opportunity to meet people on these long-term questions in the moments their life is changing. Whatever the reason, you want to find moments when your audience is experiencing change where, just for a moment, their perspective has gotten longer and their desire to plan for the future is stronger.
2. Tailor Your Marketing to Respond to Those Focuses
If you can find moments when money is in motion for a specific reason, you can tailor marketing strategies to address that specific reason. I'll give you an example.
We work with a financial planner who specializes in pharmaceutical executives. There was a headline that ran recently that AstraZeneca – a big name with a lot of households – announced they were offloading their pension to a third-party insurance company.
Now, this wasn't a “sky is falling” financial default, but it was still pretty unprecedented for most of the people who are impacted by the change.
The change highlighted a knowledge gap – many households impacted didn’t know what the impact would be on them.
There was concern present, but there were also financial opportunities for unique decisions. There were options that wouldn't be available to you if you were just in a standard pension plan.
We put together a marketing campaign targeting this topic. We went to LinkedIn, targeted people at AstraZeneca who had been there more than 10 years, and we said, "Here's a webinar. Here are the PDFs. We want to give you the resources to help you make a good decision in this unique moment."
To the benefit of our campaign, there was a deadline to make a decision with that money. Not only did we know this was on people's radar, but we knew that there was a specific timeline that they had to act, and that we could focus our marketing resources on that “money in motion” moment.
Any financial advisor can mobilize their marketing to respond to moments like this. If you can identify a specific, urgency-oriented question, it presents a prime opportunity to get in front of people and become a trusted guide – especially as they see your proactive approach to helping serve them.
3. Remember It’s Not Always About Money
As the last point and a healthy reminder, clients aren’t always focused on financial goals and benchmarks. Your marketing should reflect this principle.
This is important because few advisors actually have a consistent strategy behind this part of their marketing. It’s usually more of a “post when you remember” kind of strategy.
It’s a critical strategic point though because, as advisors know, you can't promise results with peoples' money. What you're selling in your marketing is the experience they can have as your clients.
If you look at most financial planners' websites, they're all focused on relevant (but more commoditized) pitches like planning for retirement. You have an opportunity to showcase through action what differentiates your culture within your business.
A Culture-Marketing Example
We work with a financial advisor who places a high value on charitable work. What sets them apart is that they actively organize charitable projects and events throughout the year and invite their clients to take part. It's an incredible thing to say to some of your top clients, "This cause you really care about, we want to partner with you in supporting them."
Statements made like that get peoples' attention in the here and now.
It's not about their 30-year plan. It's not about making their money last in retirement. Critically though, it tells them that this is the kind of person who has the same values for their money that I do.
If you’re struggling with a lack of clear “culture” to market…
If you look at your business now and say, "I don't think we have a clear culture edge, and I don't want to make one up just to have a marketing pitch…"
I want to encourage you that this is a massively valuable asset if you can genuinely create a culture that stands out to your clients. Proactive service, valuing family, a gentle “bedside manner” – are table stakes for a lot of advisors now.
What you need is to identify a direction you want to take your culture, and take significant steps that stand out from the rest. Document it so that you can show this is the kind of people that we are. You'll find that that serves as a powerful magnet for those kinds of people in return.
Change the Conversation in Your Next Marketing Meeting
Next time you sit down to plan out your marketing strategy with your team, don't start with the question, “What should people care about?” Start with the question, “What do they care about?” Then bridge the gap.
If you need help changing the trajectory of your marketing strategy (and its results), this is what we specialize in. We help financial advisors de-commoditize their brand and drive their growth. When you’re ready to scale your relational marketing, let’s start the conversation.
