Marketing Advice You Didn’t Ask For

By Bob Veres

Fee-Only advisors do almost everything better than their commission-compensated counterparts. They provide more objective advice, are generally better educated in the technical nuances, and adhere to a culture of client service that goes beyond simple objectivity to things like a policy of making the client whole if there’s a mistake and focusing on client goals and objectives when formulating the financial planning advice.

But in my experience, Fee-Only planners lag far behind in one crucial area: marketing.

The Challenges of Marketing

Why should this be? I have a few theories, but of course every case is different. I’ve observed a tendency among some NAPFA advisors to think that marketing is a dirty word because it focuses on their own interests rather than the benefit of clients or the public. This is exactly the opposite of the way I see it; the public greatly benefits when NAPFA Fee-Only advisors are more visible, particularly considering some of the choices out there. (Readers know what I’m talking about.)

I also see advisors who are reluctant to take on too many clients too quickly because (and they’re right about this) onboarding clients takes a lot of time and energy and could detract from their ability to service existing clients. If anybody asks me, I recommend creating a waiting list for new clients so the firm can onboard people in a controlled fashion and integrate the time it takes with the existing service standards.  

Advisors who implement this strategy find it actually creates a marketing advantage; prospects who are on the fence or uncertain about making a commitment will jump on the waiting list so as not to get left behind. And it gives them some breathing room to process their decision before that first meeting.

Meanwhile, some advisors can be a bit standoffish when a prospect makes contact. In conversations about the proliferation of lead-generation firms, I was told that many of the best advisors will be less than enthusiastic in that first call or even in the first “get to know you” meeting and leave the impression that they’re indifferent whether the prospect will become a client—or not.  

I get why they act that way; nobody wants to come across as a pushy salesperson as a first impression. But later in the interview, I was told that many times a young Edward Jones broker will win the referral as a client over an established Fee-Only advisor with the CFP^® designation who is a pillar in the advisor community.

How can that be? The lead generation firm routinely asks what made the prospect pick one advisor over another, and the answer would be, “I thought the Edward Jones guy really wanted to work with me, and the Fee-Only advisor didn’t leave me with that impression.”

Finally, it’s possible that many of the more technically oriented advisors are too steeped in their professional knowledge to communicate effectively with an unsophisticated consumer. There’s a lot of jargon that slips into our language that most people don’t understand, and most consumers aren’t likely to stop you every time you say something they find unintelligible for fear of looking stupid. 

This shows up in the most basic marketing messages of all. One of the best presentations at the NAPFA Spring Conference took the audience on a tour of how confusing advisor websites can be when you’re looking for advice. What does it mean that you “put your clients’ interests first?” Doesn’t every service advisor? What does “comprehensive wealth management” actually mean? Or “tax-optimized investing”?

Explaining in simple terms what you do, and how you do it, and why you do it the way you do would go a long way toward differentiating yourself from all those “comprehensive” firms out there.

The Positioning Issue

These marketing dysfunctions are bad enough, but there’s another one that I think is actually crippling. I cringe every time I see the term “wealth manager” in the Fee-Only advisor space.

Why? I can illustrate with a quick story. Many years ago, an advisory firm in Atlanta put a small advertisement in (I believe it was) Atlanta magazine, saying that it provided “financial planning for the yachtless.”

As far as I can tell, it was the most successful advertising campaign in the history of financial services. And the interesting thing about it was that people with substantial wealth would look at the ad and say, “Finally there’s somebody who’s willing to work with me.”

The lesson was that NOBODY thinks of themselves as wealthy. Everybody I have ever met thinks of themselves as kind of average, and that other people, layers above them sitting on a yacht in the Mediterranean, are “rich.”

If you call yourself a “wealth manager,” you are basically telling the public that you specialize in working with people other than how they see themselves. You specialize in “the wealthy”—a category that virtually nobody south of Bill Gates and Larry Ellison identifies with.

Is That What You Intend?

I’ve written about marketing many times in my newsletter, and each time I feel like I have to prevent my (generally Fee-Only) readers from turning the page immediately. And so I preface the articles with a standard opening: without your help, most consumers would never find you and end up in a predatory advice relationship. Maybe you think marketing is too self-benefiting, but I can tell you that the world would be a better place if the Fee-Only community would at least try to out-market the brokerage firms and dually registered “fee-based” competition who seem to want clients more but have less interest in servicing them in their best interests.

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Bob Veres is the publisher of Inside Information and one of the strongest advocates of Fee-Only planning in today’s profession. If you think his columns are full of the stuff that hits the fan, tell him so directly at bob@bobveres.com.

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