A few years ago, I was talking with an accomplished financial advisor who was overhauling his marketing 10 years after starting an independent practice. I was producing a video as part of that effort, and in preparation I asked him the following question: "How would you describe your practice?"
I knew the advisor — I'll call him Paul — to be a confident but modest man with a dry wit. His affectionate manner makes clients feel like he works for them alone. He has a talent for easing their anxieties, a result of making peace with the money struggles of his own youth. Like all of us, Paul has a unique set of mannerisms, inflections and facial expressions.
But you would never know that from his answer to my admittedly dull question: "I take a comprehensive, holistic approach to helping clients achieve financial peace of mind."
Paul was speaking "advisor-ese." Part of that was my fault — impersonal questions elicit impersonal responses. But advisor-ese is pervasive throughout wealth management, as you know if you've heard — or used — industry platitudes like "guidance through life's transitions," "we start with learning about you" and "trusted partner," to name a few.
Each advisor is great in their own way,
READ MORE:
Authenticity takes practice
Advisor-ese isn't a result of laziness or lack of creativity — you wouldn't be an advisor without a strong work ethic and a creative mind. It's an inherited language. Compliance training rewards generalized claims on the theory that they're harder to flag as misleading than specific ones.
But marketing that uses an advisor's own words, experiences and perspectives is actually a more effective compliance strategy. Talking about your feelings is about as unfalsifiable as it gets, and far more reassuring to prospective clients.
Eschewing advisor-ese pays off in two ways. On the business side, authentic marketing builds trust and qualifies prospects faster. You spend less time with bad matches, and prospects enter discovery meetings already familiar with your personality. When they're deciding which firm to pick, yours is likely the one that feels most approachable.
On the personal side, when your messaging aligns with what you actually think and feel, you skip the exhausting work of performing a character just to live up to your own marketing. You get to be yourself every day, which reduces burnout.
READ MORE:
Unlearning industry jargon
Marketing with your authentic voice becomes second nature once you're in the flow. But breaking old habits is hard — especially if you learned about marketing through a risk-management lens. Here are three techniques to get started.
- Ask the client.
Read their reviews, watch their video testimonials — or just ask them directly why they stay with you. Their perspectives and the words they use to express them may be very different from what turns up in your marketing materials, and will likely contain little trace of advisor-ese. Write down the key points as the basis for your next article or video. - The voice memo test. Record yourself explaining what you do to a friend — no notes — in under three minutes. Then transcribe. You'll discover speaking out loud makes advisor-ese feel weird, which is the point.
- The strike-through technique. Take your current website copy and cross out anything another advisor could say word-for-word. What survives is the basis for copy based on your real voice.
These days, I don't ask advisors to describe their practice — or any question that encourages rote summaries. Instead, I use the kind of natural conversation you'd have with a friend to elicit their thoughts. Had I known to engage Paul that way from the start, I doubt he'd have reached for "holistic" or "peace of mind" at all.
