This post is updated. The original post was published in 2017.

Personas represent the needs and behaviors of your ideal clients and are helpful in shaping your positioning and messaging.

We recently published the 2020 Edition of the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™.  This resource is a comprehensive guide to help independent financial advisors build an ‘independent difference,’ that is, a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:

  • Increase Volume: Generate More Visits & Inquiries
  • Increase Client Value: Get Better Qualified Inquiries
  • Increase Velocity: Increase Conversion Rates
  • Increase AUM and Revenue: Optimize Engagement for AUM growth and Revenue Impact.

[Strategy 2 of 9] Valued Offering ~ Craft Market-Ready Service Offerings and Segment Messaging

You will be surprised how effective it is when you communicate offerings based on specific personas that represent the needs (or pain points) and behaviors of your best clients.

Steps You Can Take

Build Offer Messaging

A. Use the Personas representing your priority A client segments to help you effectively characterize the demographics, attitudes, values, and behaviors as well as the pain points for each segment.

B. When crafting advice experiences, know who your advice services are good for, who you actually want to serve. Being all things to all clients won’t work well, everybody wants something different.

C. Organize key messages for each Persona to ensure consistency throughout the prospective client journey. To support each message, develop two or three key facts, or Pain Points (e.g. financial needs, concerns) that can be fleshed out in copy, messages, and images.

D. Widening your net with additional service offerings can make you more attractive for a diverse range of clients. Find patterns within your book to determine what new services to add (e.g., holistic services including financial wellness, and services for aging clients and millennials) and/or COI to recommend.

E. Tailor your Value Proposition for the shared attributes and Pain Points in each segment and articulate your benefits and advantages vs. alternatives and the value for your services (Fee-only/ hybrid, Robo-advisor, full or holistic planning, plan development, etc.).

F. Construct messaging for content and campaigns for each stage of the decision-making process.

Tips

Value Proposition ‘Proof Points’:

• For each target segment, develop a compelling Client Value Proposition that includes ‘Proof Points.’
• Proof Points can be developed in a number of ways including case studies,
thought leadership, client references, partners, affiliations, published articles, and more.


You can explore the first growth strategy, Define Ideal Clients and Market Segments or explore all 9 strategies for growth by downloading the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK .