I'm about to use a dirty word in this column, so if you are squeamish or have small children in the room, you might want to turn the page to a more family-oriented part of the magazine. For the rest of you, I'm going to try to figure out what I can get past Financial Planning's censors.

The subject is m*rk*ting, an activity many of you believe is beneath your professional dignity and rather unpleasant to discuss in mixed com-pany. One of my favorite lines came from Roy Diliberto, who practices in Philadelphia. When asked how he m*rk*ts his services, he said: "I wait for my phone to ring." When asked what he did when business was slow, he said: "I wait harder."

TALKING TO THE CONSUMER

There is solid evidence that Diliberto's m*rk*ting plan is not unique. More than a year ago, I invited the members of my Inside Information community to enter a contest for the best m*rk*ting materials. To judge this event, I brought in Brigid O'Connor, former director of m*rk*ting for the Financial Planning Association, who is one of our better conference speakers on this nasty subject. She applied various criteria to select the winner: The com-pany brochure had to be attractive (she called it "the eye-candy quotient") and the materials had to be designed with a consistent message, graphics and colors. The winning brochure also had to be intriguing enough to pass her "open test"--which means, basically, does the cover make me interested enough to look inside?

Despite a high number of submissions, and tens of thousands of dollars obviously spent on form and message, not one of the m*rk*ting packages met her final criterion: that the message be client-focused rather than what she calls "we-focused."

All of the marketing packages were basically saying: We offer tax planning; we have these credentials; we are one of the leading firms. "As the consumer, I want the focus of what I'm reading to be on me, not on the planner or the planning firm," says O'Connor. "I understand that a sales piece has to speak about the service provider. But it ought to do that within the context of what's in it for the client."

Based on this sample, and on more extensive work by Andrew Gluck at Advisor Products, it seems clear that the planning community suffers from a unique dysfunction in the business marketplace. "The most basic advice in m*rk*ting," says O'Connor, "is to talk about benefits, not features." In other arenas, this is so common that you don't even notice it. An ad for an expensive wristwatch doesn't talk about how the mechanism works be-hind the dial; the message is all about how it looks and how reliable it is. A restaurant doesn't tout the ingredients that go into different meals; it offers tasty food and a pleasant atmosphere.

WHAT DOES PLANNING OFFER?

We realized that independent advisers are simply not communicating the benefits of financial planning to their prospects and clients. In fact, they may not yet have articulated those benefits clearly to themselves, much less come to a profession-wide consensus on what they are. We asked advisers for their best ideas on how to communicate this value, and got hundreds of good, creative responses, the best of which I later collected into a document called "The M*rk*ting Template."

Some of the suggestions take us closer to defining those elusive benefits:

• "Financial planning is helping you prioritize your scarce resources (time and money) to meet your personal and future lifestyle."
• "We foster your personal and financial success."
• "We offer freedom, peace of mind and a trustworthy relationship."

To give credit where it's due, about the same time that we were doing this study, Gluck at Advisor Products was offering the same message about adviser websites that he was reviewing: Virtually all of them were much too "we"-oriented.

More recently, his firm brought in Howard Gendel, who conducts focus groups for large financial services firms such as Merrill Lynch, to discover the optimal way to communicate through a brochure. "He showed people brochures from different financial services companies," says Gluck. "We asked them what they were likely to read, and more importantly, what they were not going to read."

"SKIM FRIENDLY" BROCHURES

One insight: The typical 812- by 11-inch tri-fold brochure, known as the "Slim Jim" in the m*rk*ting trade, was not taken seriously. For some reason, the small size suggested that the planning firm itself was small or insignificant. People are far more likely to pick up a four-page document and browse it. Another insight was that no consumer picks up a brochure to read the text; the best you can hope for is that they'll skim it. They're not likely to read paragraphs of text, but they might read bullet points.

Armed with this information, Gluck created what may be the world's first do-it-yourself automated brochure

creator designed primarily for advisers. At www.advisorsites.com, you pick from one of 11 different design templates, insert your own headlines in the preformatted space provided, write your bullet points, upload graphics and come away with a four-page, full-color 812- x 11-inch m*rk*ting brochure that Gluck would describe as "skim-friendly," and that otherwise meets Gendel's focus-group standards. All you provide is the you-oriented message that fits your firm.

RAISING YOUR PROFILE

But m*rk*ting is about more than creating fancy materials; it's also about becoming visible in your community. I see a lot of expensive marketing programs, consulting programs and sometimes-superficial research on the subject, but the best advice on how to do this seems to also be the simplest: Develop a sincere desire to educate people in your community about financial issues with as little personal agenda as possible. Do it according to your own strengths and preferences; some people appear on (or host their own) call-in radio shows; others write occasional educational columns for local business papers or trade publications serving specialized clientele.

D-I-Y APPROACH

One adviser who carries this advice to an interesting extreme is Steve Hungerford, with Woodard & Co. in Winston Salem, N.C. His firm conducts free, basic educational seminars at local libraries, with the goal, stated up-front and often, of making it possible for the attendees to manage their own investments. "We tell everybody who comes in the door that they don't need us or anybody else to handle their investments; that they can manage their money on their own," says Hungerford. "And as we show them the basics, as we teach them what a mutual fund is and how to work with a discount broker, we repeat that message over and over."

THIS IS M*RK*TING?

Several things make this approach extremely powerful as a business mag-net, and I think these lessons are portable to pretty much any kind of m*rk*ting effort. First, the overt message inspires complete trust; the pros-pects will relax, stop worrying about a m*rk*ting agenda and listen to what you have to say. In other words, it is possible not only to give up the sales agenda, but also to gain credibility by leaning hard the opposite way.

Second, Hungerford directly addresses the toughest m*rk*ting hurdle in the planning profession: the fact that people who think nothing of delegating plumbing or dental work to a professional feel embarrassed if they aren't doing their own financial planning. As often as he says that people can manage their own money, he also brings up areas where people delegate work to an outside professional.

"When we talk about doing it yourself," says Hungerford, "we use two illustrations. One is changing your own oil in the car and the other is painting your house. Anybody can buy the paint, spread it on the walls and save money. But we think that we, as professionals, will get fewer drips on the windows, make the trim look better and then we'll come back in and touch up all the sun fading and do that automatically every month, so you don't have to worry about it."

There's a third advantage to this approach: It efficiently repels anybody who isn't a committed delegator, so the firm doesn't waste time trying to convince a reluctant prospect to become a client. For those who, as they learn the basics, realize that planning is like plumbing or house painting, Hungerford's firm becomes the logical, trustworthy, m*rk*ting-agendaless option to delegate the task to. "The harder we push these people away and tell them to do it on their own," he says, "the more strongly they come back to us."

The dirty subject of m*rk*ting has come up a lot in my community recently, with discussions on m*rk*ting outside the box, follow-ups to The M*rk*ting Template and an interesting process, first introduced in the U.S. by Australian planner Wayne Lear, called The Elevator Speech Construction Project. With the help of O'Connor, Gluck, Gendel, Lear and a handful of brave advisers, the planning profession may finally be starting to articulate its value and discuss it in public. Instead of waiting by the phone, the profession is beginning to figure out how to make it ring.

Bob Veres publishes the Inside Information service (www.bobveres.com), which collects and publishes ideas about marketing and other practice management and client service issues. Send feedback to bobveres@yahoo.com.

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