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The process of building a name for yourself as a financial advisor has changed significantly in recent years.
Traditionally, growing your brand as a wealth advisor or wealth management firm meant establishing relationships in your community through time-consuming (and analog) methods: in-person networking, charity events, and community sponsorships. Think coffee chats, direct mailers, and seminar dinners at your local Italian restaurant.
These grassroots efforts can work and will likely always have a place in the wealth management industry. But they take years to bear fruit, and their geographical reach is often limited.
Conversely, social media and the internet has not only afforded advisors opportunities to expand their reach, but clients also expect their advisors to have an online presence. Recent surveys have found that 40% of investors under 35 would use social media to find an advisor, and nearly half all clients searched online to research their prospective advisor before establishing a relationship.
If you want to grow in today’s marketplace, your brand must be searchable, visible, and trusted online.
Key Takeaways
- Identify an audience or content niche that speaks to your desired clientele.
- Find an outlet to serve as your core content medium (e.g., podcast, YouTube, blog).
- Nurture your audience by providing consistent value.
- Use testimonials and referrals to show proven success in your chosen market.
- Leverage other audiences to expand your reach.
Understanding Your Brand Identity
The most important step in developing a brand for yourself and your firm is the first one: establishing a brand identity.
While it’s tempting to market yourself to any and every one for fear of losing a potential client, there’s a saying that speaks to the benefits of establishing a clear identity for your brand: there’s riches in the niches.
Even if your business offers generalized planning and wealth management services, establishing a brand identity that speaks to your target customers’ specific fears and needs will help you stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Think about the ideal client or connections you hope to gain from your marketing efforts.
- Where do they hang out?
- What type of content do they consume?
- How do they talk, think, and make decisions?
- What keeps them up at night when it comes to their finances?
Take all of these answers into consideration when establishing your brand identity.
Building an Online Presence
Gone are the days when having a slick website distinguished you from other advisors.
Potential clients and centers of influence not only expect to find you online easily, but they also want to verify your expertise. Does verified expertise mean you’re licensed, have no formal complaints, and have a verified address? No, it means having multiple pieces of content where you’re speaking or writing about your niche.
Your online presence needs to establish credibility, clarity, and consistency. The fastest way to do that? Choose one core content medium and build around it.
- Podcast: Great for advisors with strong verbal communication skills
- YouTube: Best for visual storytelling, demonstrations, and personal connection
- Blog: Ideal for SEO, thought leadership, and written pieces
- Short-Form Video (TikTok, Reels): High engagement, low friction, fast growth (especially with younger demographics)
If you’re a wealth advisor who creates weekly videos on investing for your target market, the audio of each broadcast can be reposted as a podcast. The session transcript can be released on your website as a blog post. The key points can be summarized in a graphic or even condensed into a short -form video posted on social media.
Tip
While you don’t want to spread yourself too thin trying to optimize content for multiple platforms, creating niche content and strategically repurposing it can increase brand awareness amongst your target clients or centers of influence.
Effective Content Marketing
After creating brand awareness, the next step is to nurture your audience by providing consistent value.
While the occasional prospect may contact you after consuming one piece of your content, it can take months or years of consistent marketing efforts before a person reaches out to an advisor.
One step that makes nurturing easier is to treat the collection of email addresses with the same importance you treat meeting prospects at a networking event. Social media platforms can change their algorithms and restrict the reach of your content. However, an email address gives you direct access to your audience and guarantees they receive your message.
Nurturing through email can take many forms, with a newsletter being one of the more effective tools to communicate your brand value. Newsletters can include invitations to speaking engagements or webinars relevant to your target market, curated articles and podcasts that add value, and even highlighting the content you’ve created on other platforms.
Note
The point of nurturing content is to move your audience from awareness to an intimate relationship with your brand. The last step is to show them how that relationship can benefit them.
Harnessing Testimonials and Client Referrals
Even the best content can’t outshine the power of a real-life endorsement.
Research the rules governing public testimonials and referrals and find compliant ways to integrate them into your content.
Even if your audience doesn’t know the client providing the testimonial, you can still see results by choosing a client whose circumstances and the value you provided speak to similar problems faced by prospects in your target market.
By this point, you’ve validated your status as an expert in the community through top-level marketing efforts, such as your core content medium and social media channels. You’ve continued to nurture your audience with content specific to their circumstances. When they then see a person with similar life circumstances to whom you’ve provided value, you will be the first and the only person they reach out to when they’re ready to move forward with an advisor.
Networking and Building Partnerships
Validating your expertise has the benefit of allowing you to leverage other platforms to expand your reach.
Media channels, such as local news outlets, national publications, podcasts, and YouTube channels, often seek experts to present to their audiences.
Forming connections in these spaces can look different depending on the platform. National publications and news outlets often have fast turnaround times, meaning you may need to be camera-ready within a few hours or turn around a quote for an article on the same business day. Conversely, podcasts and YouTube channels may offer more lead time or have submission forms where you can apply to be a guest on a future episode.
There is obvious value in appearing on a platform with a larger reach than your own, but even a smaller audience unaware of your brand can be a great place to expand your audience. New followers from these appearances will go through the same process: brand awareness, nurturing the relationship, and eventually establishing a client relationship.
How Can an Emerging Financial Advisor Define a Unique Brand Identity for Their Wealth Management Firm?
Working in wealth management isn’t easy, and every advisor has a reason for choosing this profession and sticking with it. Identify what’s unique about your reason and highlight it in your brand identity and marketing efforts.
What Are the Best Digital Platforms for Emerging Financial Advisors To Build an Online Presence?
How Can Content Marketing Help Emerging Financial Advisors Attract More Clients?
Content marketing helps an advisor validate themselves as an expert through consistent content creation, rather than waiting for external validation or other people to grow their community through word-of-mouth.
What Are the Most Effective Ways for Financial Advisors To Ask for Client Referrals and Testimonials?
Be transparent. Let your ideal clients know their words matter in an area where you’re trying to grow, and ask for their help in whatever ways they’re comfortable with.
How Can Emerging Financial Advisors Build Strong Partnerships With Other Professionals To Grow Their Client Base?
Continue building your online credibility in a niche that adds value to other professionals’ communities. If you receive a referral from another professional, provide consistent updates to the referrer and gold star treatment to the referral.
The Bottom Line
As we move deeper into the Digital Age, people in need of financial advice will rely increasingly on an advisor’s online presence to decide whether to establish a relationship. By taking time and thinking strategically about your marketing efforts, you can expand your reach beyond your local community and establish a brand appealing to potential clients and centers of influence.
