Marketing to Your Ideal Client Achieving sustainable growth for your financial advice practice

Table of Contents How do Client Personas Help Financial Advisers? ……………………………………. Slide 3 What Are Client Personas?...……………………………………………………………. Slide 4 What Are Negative Personas? ……………………………………… ….. Slide 5 How Can You Use Personas? …………………………………………………………... Slide 6-7 How Do You Create Personas? …………...………………………..……………......…. Slide 9 Creating Your Firm’s Client Personas …………………………………………………... Slide 10 Your Turn Slide 14 Next Steps … Slide 15

How Do Client Personas Help Financial Advisers? Understanding your ideal client positions your advisory firm for growth – it helps you decide which business to pursue, and which clients may not be the best fit. In a financial advice or financial planning relationship, building trust is key. And when you have a clear understanding of the best clients for your firm, you can tailor your newsletters, marketing materials, website content and social media posts to speak directly to those clients. Prospective clients don’t want to be sold; they want to be educated. Knowing your ideal client starts you on the path to delivering the meaningful information and communication your prospects need to help them make smart decisions about choosing a trusted adviser.

What Are Client Personas? Client personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal clients. They help you understand your audience (and prospective clients) better, and make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups. The strongest client personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual client base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. (Note: If you’re new to personas, start small! You can always develop more personas later if needed.)

What Are Negative Personas? Whereas a client persona is a representation of an ideal customer, a negative -- or “exclusionary” -- persona is a representation of who you don’t want as a client. This could include, for example, clients with limited net worth, do-it-yourselfers who are only engaging with your content for research/knowledge, or potential customers whose financial advice needs are beyond your scope.

How Can You Use Personas? At the most basic level, personas allow you to personalize or target your marketing for different segments of your audience. For example, instead of sending the same lead nurturing s (such as newsletters that prompt readers to take action) to everyone in your database, you can segment by client persona and tailor your messaging according to what you know about those different personas. If you take the time to create negative personas, you’ll have the added advantage of being able to segment out the “bad apples” from the rest of your contacts, which can help you achieve a lower cost-per-lead and cost-per-client (and see higher sales productivity).

How Can You Use Personas? When you combine the information in your personas with where your prospect is in the “Buyer’s Journey” (i.e. how far along someone is in your sales cycle), client personas enable you to create highly targeted and desirable content.

How Do You Create Client Personas? Buyer personas are created through research, surveys, and interviews of your target audience. That includes a mix of clients, prospects, and those outside of your contact database who might align with your target audience. Here are some practical methods for gathering the information you need to develop personas: Interview clients, either in person or over the phone, to discover what they like about your firm.

How Do You Create Buyer Personas? Look through your contacts database to uncover trends about how certain prospects or clients find and consume your content. When creating forms to use on your website, use form fields that capture important persona information. (For example, if your specialize in providing financial advice to medical professionals, ask prospects for information about their careers on your forms. You could also gather information on what forms of social media your prospects use by asking a question about social media accounts.) Take into consideration your team's feedback on the prospects they are interacting with most. (What generalizations can they make about the different types of clients you serve best?)

Creating Your Firm’s Client Personas

11 Software engineer at a startup Joined the company 5 years ago Recently married, wants kids Background Job? Career Path? Family Male Age Dual HH Income: $170,000 Urban Demographics Male or female? Age? Income? Location? Calm demeanor Prefers texts to calls Asks for documents electronically Identifiers Demeanor? Communication Preferences? Persona Name: Thrifty Tom

12 "My student loans are killing me." “We want to buy a house so we can start a family.” “I care about my finances, but I don’t want to spend too much time on them.” Real Quotes Financial advisers seem "old school" I can't afford financial advice Using software seems easier Common Objections Persona Name: Thrifty Tom

13 Software when you want it; a real person (who understands your entire financial situation and goals) you need it most. Marketing Messaging “How should you describe your solution to your persona?” We provide software and calculators to make it easy for you to understand and monitor your finances, and an experienced adviser to help you think through all of your options – all for a reasonable fee. Elevator Pitch Persona Name: Thrifty Tom

Your Turn! Using the framework provided in the example, create your own client personas and negative client personas. You may have multiple personals for your firm. To help you visually connect with your personas, consider adding a photo of someone who fits your persona’s profile. After you’ve completed your personas, consider how you would communicate with that person as he or she considers engaging a financial adviser. Is the person in the awareness stage, researching what financial advisers do and how they can help? How does your message change when the person enters the consideration phase? What about the decision-making phase?

Next Steps Once you’ve developed your client personas, and considered which messages are important at each stage of the Buyer’s Journey, it’s time to think about developing content that helps educate your prospects and build their trust in your firm. At msgwrks ltd., we specialize in helping financial advisers develop their marketing strategies and create content tools that educate, motivate and inspire prospective clients to take action. To learn more about how we can help, visit us at call us at , or drop us a line at We look forward to working with