Since achieving organic growth seems to be the holy grail of advisor marketing, let me share a two-part successful growth formula I’ve gleaned from watching TV shows popular with my fellow baby boomers. First, identify a simple, focused theme or message that resonates with a narrowly defined target audience, then hammer away. Let me explain.
Watch an old-person program—any evening network news show, Jeopardy! or Wheel of Fortune—and you’re likely to see a stream of commercials from pharmaceutical companies. Don’t ask me what Skyrizi or Dupixent or Eylea HD actually do, but to paraphrase the latter’s “Dancing in the Moonlight” (circa 1972) theme song, we boomers hear about them almost every night.
That’s the hammering away part of the equation. Thankfully, my wife and I can let them wash over us because we just take our vitamins, statins and a few cheapo generic pills and call it a day. But it’s clear that spending a lot of money on TV commercials—an estimated $7 billion last year—pays off for Big Pharma. And that’s for products the viewing audience can’t even walk into a store and buy or order online!
Spending billions or millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV commercials is obviously out of the question for virtually all financial advisory practices and small firms. But spending even small amounts consistently and wisely—whether on TV, radio or online—certainly is doable. The problem, even if money isn’t the issue, is that most advisory firms don’t know what their simple message is.
The one advisory firm that I think has done a great job of implanting its message into the public’s collective brain is Fisher Investments. Their message is simple: Fisher is different. Without coming out and saying it explicitly, they imply they’re different from a wirehouse or a large broker/dealer. Over and over and over, they tell us that they create personalized portfolios, they are fiduciaries and that their compensation formula is a simple “we do better when you do better.”
To me, that sounds pretty much like what every other RIA firm does. But they seem to be the only RIA firm that packaged the RIA message into a simple 30-second spot. They spend so much money hammering away at that point, I’m sure many people assume Fisher is unique.
But you’re not billionaire Ken Fisher or have his multi-million-dollar advertising budget. So, what should you say? Here, I suggest looking at the other major category of advertisers on boomers’ favorite TV shows: personal injury law firms.
Morgan & Morgan boasts about being the largest such firm. Others talk about how they don’t charge you a cent unless they win your case. Since that’s how all personal injury firms work, talking about their compensation model in a TV commercial is similar to the way Fisher uses its RIA-ness as a unique selling proposition. But with several huge personal injury law firms competing for attention on TV, trying to get attention by saying the same thing is a tough way to attract new clients. New York’s Parker Waichman takes a different and narrower approach: it focuses on bedsores.
Rather than saying it’s a huge personal injury firm (the broadest approach), or that it fights “nursing home neglect,” a more targeted approach, but still fairly broad and one that most personal injury firms say they handle, Parker Wachman goes very narrow. It comes right out and says that if a family member in a nursing home is suffering from bedsores, they can help. Even though they do everything that other plaintiff law firms do, they have positioned themselves as the bedsore law firm, even using 1-800-BED-SORE as their phone number. That niche strategy is brilliant, and it’s what advisory firms should do.
For financial advisory firms, that translates into being specific and shedding the typical financial advisory jargon and highfalutin’ mumbo jumbo. Forget “full-service” (who promises half-service?) Forget “comprehensive financial planning” (few know what that means or why it has value). Forget “wealth solutions” (for most people, more money is the solution).
To reach the desirable pre-retirement market and those already in retirement, don’t be a generalist, BE SPECIFIC! Your message should be that you specialize in a particular problem someone on the cusp of retirement or early in retirement is dealing with. That could be an older woman struggling with divorce. An older couple worried about their adult child with special needs. A doctor selling her practice. An about-to-be retiree befuddled about rolling over a 401(k) plan. If you can deliver a solution to a particular problem, talk about that!
In an age when a prospect 3,000 miles away can find you as easily as someone living across the street, it’s your specific expertise that is likely to open the door, not some vague, generic promise about delivering a great retirement.
