The World Does Not Need More General Educational Content from Advisors—It Needs Your Perspective
The world does not need another financial advisor writing general educational content. There are literally billions of blogs on financial topics, and probably hundreds of thousands of newsletters on the topic. The internet is cluttered with generalized guidance of every variety, chief among which is probably financial.
What the world needs, what our clients want, what our clients will pass along to their loved ones, is your perspective.
Perspective is the only differentiating factor left in the world of content. Not accuracy. Not length of content. Not even the best ideas. Perspective alone will set your content apart in a lasting way and allow you to connect with both clients and prospects on a personal level.
People don’t let businesses into their personal spheres very easily. Their personal realm is reserved for people they love and things they enjoy, not their financial advisors. It is reserved for people they relate to on a personal level, not professional.
Your perspective is the most personal thing about you. It is the result of your life experience up until this point. By sharing your perspective, you can connect with clients and prospects on a personal level.
The problem with generalized educational content is that when you share it, you are fighting against a flood of competitors. Readers can come and go when they need help.
They might come to you for help on Social Security, but then they’ll ask ChatGPT or Gemini for help with budgeting, and then they’ll turn to Facebook for opinions on annuities.
Like an all-you-can-eat buffet, the reader will pick and choose which content to consume and which to ignore. When all content serves the same purpose, they are free to find it wherever they want.
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By defining your perspective clearly and employing it frequently, you step into the role of personal advisor, and your clients seek to connect through the opinions in your content just as much as they seek to be informed.
Perspective is the foundation of magnetic content.
If you create generalized content, you may attract an audience, but your staying power will be limited, resulting in greater effort and a longer timeline for results from your communication efforts.
The purpose of perspective
Perspective is an exercise in differentiation. When differentiating your firm, your goal is to position it as the best choice for a select audience (your ideal clients). When you share your perspective, you will find that your ideal clients are attracted and non-ideal clients are repelled.
Many advisors mistakenly believe they should work with anyone who meets their asset minimum. The truth is that not every client is a right fit for your services. By accepting that you will repel some readers, you free yourself from the desire to please everyone and otherwise compromise your vision of what your firm can become.
The 3 steps of perspective
Sharing your perspective is providing education through the lens of a worldview. Developing these components of education and worldview requires that you undertake three steps to achieve meaningful differentiation:
You must first know your audience—what affects them, what interests them, what attracts them, what repels them, etc.
Then you must know your own perspective—what differentiates you and your opinion
Finally, you must provide analysis and commentary where you apply your perspective to topics that affect, interest and attract your audience
We must not be confused here: Your perspective is not the words and colors on your website, and it is not something that can be outsourced or that a professional can provide you with for a fee. You may choose to enlist a guide to help you get there, but the perspective must be yours.
The first step—to know your audience—is to answer the strategy question of “What kind of people do you serve (or want to serve)?”
Here, you must resist the easy, safe answer of “anyone with enough money,” which will immediately derail your mission of finding your firm’s perspective. Much like going on a roadtrip without choosing a destination, if we aim to connect with certain people but are unable to identify who they are, we should turn off the car, go back inside, and start from the beginning again.
Many firms leave this question unanswered, worrying that they may scare away someone who might have given them money for some service or other. Financial firms large and small fail to make a lasting impression for exactly this reason.
The second and third steps of perspective are simple by comparison once the first is completed. But the first step is not directly tied to revenue, and, thus, is often ignored by advisors.
The benefits of perspective
You can measure the distinctiveness of your perspective by gauging your ability to elicit a desired response from your target audience. In the online world, any response at all can feel like a win, but we must keep the goal in mind: a desired response from specific people.
What response should you desire?
If you are speaking with clients, you may want them to click a link, reply to an email, read an article, schedule a meeting, etc.
If you are speaking to prospects, your desired response is, of course, that they become a client—but you must not rush them.
It may sound simple, but simply getting people to read your emails is a worthy goal in and of itself. Prospects will not buy simply because you ask them to do so. They will buy when you have earned their trust and they are in need of help. Trust cannot be forced. Your goal at any given moment should be to simply get them to consider what you have to say.
If you elicit the desired response in people you do not want to work with, then you must make the proper adjustments in terms of message or medium.
To be clear, you will never build a funnel that does not catch at least some poor-fit prospects. Everyone wants to work with a good advisor, and successful messaging will inevitably resonate beyond your core audience.
Rather than simply deleting poor-fit prospects from your CRM, treat their appearance as learning opportunities. Where did they come from? What drew them to you? Use what you learn from these situations to fine-tune your approach and clarify your messaging further.
Perspective properly executed results in consistently seeing the right response from the right people. Clients engage more deeply, prospects become clients at a faster rate, poor-fit prospects are able to self-identify—your funnel operates as it should. In addition, people begin to anticipate your next communication rather than passively receiving it.
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