Below are eight questions that you can frame for yourself to help your clients visualize your value. You can tweak to suit your style and business.  This is a powerful  sequence of questions that should not be underestimated.

• What will be different in your life and finances with the right partner assisting you to develop your wealth plan?
• What do you want to be different?
• What if you do nothing?
• What will you be able to do that you can’t do now?
• What will be the effect on your financial life?
• What will be the greatest three impacts of the results of this wealth plan?
• What will this mean to you personally?
• What secondary value to you see accruing from this wealth plan?

I highly recommend reading, “Value-Based Fees” written by Alan Weiss.

Enjoy:

My jaw dropped when I read the following line in Clive Cussler’s book The Silent Sea.

Even a beautiful frame can’t help an ugly painting

It’s a little bold but it hit home – hard.  Time and time again, people come to us looking for quick fixes.  Things like: captivating one-sheets, dazzling brochures, compelling stationery or even a killer web site.   Yet they want to do and say the same ol’ things and just put a beautiful frame around it then stand back and watch the referrals build and the clients line up.

It just doesn’t work that way.   You can spend tens of thousands of dollars on marketing and a marketing strategy.  You can print your info sheets on high-gloss funky-sized heavy-bond paper.  It will all be meaningless unless you get your message right.

Before spending one red cent on marketing, first figure out who you are – who you want to be – who you want to do business with – why that is important to you.  If the answer is you want to do everything for everyone then don’t bother marketing.  There are hundreds of similar business professionals in your immediate geographic area that are shouting that same message.  In essence, putting a beautiful frame around an ugly painting.

Once you create a message, a brand, that clearly articulates what you have to offer in a way that attracts and has perceived value to your specific audience, then – and only then – build your frame.
Think of building Marketing around a boring, uninteresting and unimaginative message like getting ready for a blind date and spending $3000 on a new suit but not bothering to brush your teeth or comb your hair.  What’s inside the suit matters.  What’s inside the beautiful frame matters.

A few years ago TactiBrand reinvented ourselves as a Branding company rather than a Marketing company.   We still get asked to create window dressing but the truth is that the power of marketing comes from first and foremost, having a concise and compelling story to tell.

• How effective is your current site?
• What role do you want your new website to play?
• How will you know the if the new site was a success?
• What functionality is imperative to have on your new site to support sales, customer service and management?

The attached exercise will help you and your team uncover important information about developing the right website, with the right expectations for the right reasons.

This exercise will also bring your team together so that all feel part of the process. You can also use this as an opportunity to align expectations. For instance, management may want the site to attract prospects but advisors may simply want it as a credibility piece for getting referrals. They are two different approaches with much different expectations.

Website Requirements Analysis sounds technical but it’s a simple exercise to complete before you consider investing in your new website.

1. Rate your current website. How effective it is and how does each member of your team feel about it’s effectiveness?
2. Rank the three most important roles you want your website to play. Again, have each person on team (sales, support, mgmt, etc) rank for differences.
3. Clearly define outcomes you are expecting.
4. List features and functionality that are imperative to the success and use of this site?

When you’ve completed the exercise, make sure to contact us (877) 260-5710.

We’ll discuss how we can make your new financial services website highly effective.

]]> http://www.tactibrand.com/2011/07/thinking-about-a-new-website/feed/ 0 http://www.tactibrand.com/2011/07/branding-financial-advisor-beyond-the-hype/ http://www.tactibrand.com/2011/07/branding-financial-advisor-beyond-the-hype/#comments Wed, 13 Jul 2011 01:04:41 +0000 kirk http://www.tactibrand.com/?p=1267 There’s a lot of hype surrounding branding for independent financial advisors; and there’s also some skepticism. Branding is often portrayed as Tinseltown in contrast to the value driven services and client experience you deliver which are more like Steel-town. Pumping up branding to Hollywood status is irresponsible and incorrect.

Here is the naked, unabashed truth: branding alone will not lift you business. Branding can however play an important role, maybe even the leading role, but we all know it takes a lot of other great talent to put on a great show – to create the client experience that will have them advocating for your services. Here is a list of branding benefits and the role they ought to play in growing your financial practice.

A Good Brand Articulates A Message

1) CLARITY:
Advisors gain tremendous value from clarifying their message through the branding process. Let me rephrase that…through a good branding process. Unfortunately, I’ve heard many stories about branding feeling more like a McDonald’s processing line than the intimate consultative process it should be.

2) CONFIDENCE:
Advisors have more confidence to pursue ideal prospects and Centers of Influence. With a renewed confidence and focus, they speed up the sales cycle because they talk less and listen more.

3) RELEVANCE:
When advisors think clearly about what they do best and who they best do it for, they end up with a more relevant and compelling message. Being more relevant engages people much more quickly and powerfully.

A Good Brand Builds Instant Credibility & Professionalism

4) LESS DANCING
I know many “Fred Astaire” advisors dance the, “I Gotta Prove Myself” dance with clients and centers of influence. At some point, wouldn’t you rather your brand do the dancing so you can get to the heart of the matter, “how can we help you?” or “how can we help your clients?”

5) MORE REFERRALS
When people trust that you are the expert, they’re more likely to refer, and refer more often.

A Good Brand Plays an Important Role

6) INSPIRES REFERRALS
A good brand makes it easier for people to refer you. They’re more proud. One of the key reasons people refer is to make themselves look good. But they won’t refer if they fear the first impression will be a bad impression.

7) IMPROVES CLIENT COMMUNICATION
When clients understand what you do best and what you can do for them, they tend to listen better and stay focused. It becomes easier to communicate with them when you are consistent.

SPEEDS UP SALES CYCLE
An exceptional brand will help you move more quickly through the sales cycle.  Here’s how:

The Introduction – if a friend introduces you to a professional and they do it with brevity, confidence and enthusiasm, it’s more meaningful.

The Research – after the introduction, prospects will check you out online; they’ll be impressed with a consistent message, professionalism, and a compelling and relevant message.

The First Meeting – you can breeze through the credibility questions, that is if you even get asked.

The Engagement – with a good brand, people won’t expect free advice because they know you can just work with others, they need you more then you need them.

The Referral – clients will refer more often and to more ideal prospects.

Branding isn’t everything; yet it is a key ingredient for sustainable growth.

Exceptional marketing material is a key component to ANY great brand.

You need to know how to leverage your marketing effectively to drive the results you seek. Too many of our peer marketers make promises that are strategically plausible yet tactically unsustainable. We’d like to change that!

Let us know when you’d like to get started

Name: Trajectory Consulting
Tagline: We Build You Lead
Website: webuildyoulead.com
Other Projects: Planning Process, Brochure, Social Media Integration … and more

Name: Beacon Financial Group
Tagline: 4 Dimensional Investing
Website: Coming Soon
Other Projects: Web Site, Planning Process, Brochure … and more

Before & After

BEFORE	AFTER
- click image -	- click image -

1. It’s not “build it and they will come”. Build it then send them there.
2. Your website always precedes you. Invest in your website.
3. Brevity wins, always. Don’t write a book. Write a sentence, or two.
4. Simple text wins, always. Use words your clients would use.
5. Selling is a process. Wow prospects at every step. Don’t skip steps.
6. Complicated, diverse sites don’t impress clients. Get to the point then stop.
7. If you site looks like everyone else’s then so do you. Be different.

This article is not about branding or  focus or message or growing your business.  This article is about the technical side of a web site; some of the common language (Jargon) that comes with having a web site.

YOUR DOMAIN NAME – What’s in a Name?

Before you can have a web presence, you need a web site “name”.  Often you will hear people call that a Domain Name or even a URL (short for Uniform Resource Locator).  Your Domain Name is the address people will type into their web browser to get to your web site.  For example, ours is tactibrand.com.

You will often see web addresses — domain names – published with a “WWW” in front of them.   For the most part, “WWW” is redundant.   The “WWW”, which stands for World Wide Web, was adopted some 20+ years ago to help identify the type of server that hosted the information (i.e. a Web server, a File Transfer Server, a News server… etc) today, “WWW” is actually a sub-domain of the main domain name, and it takes extra work for the internet to translate www.example.com to example.com.  Both work, if the web site is hosted properly but the www really adds no value.

Getting a domain name is relatively easy.  There are hundreds of registrars online that sell domain names.  You just need to go to their web site and on the front page you will see a search area where you can type in the name you want and see if it exists.  There are also dozens of extensions (.com, .org, .net… etc) that you can purchase but by far the most popular and most convenient is “.com”.   If you do buy a Domain Name, other than “.com”.  Make sure you check out the “.com” address first to see if this is a competitor or potentially an inappropriate site… you’d hate to buy the perfect  abccompany.net domain name and then find out that some of your prospects are winding up on abccompany.com’s  adult’s only site in error.

Spend some time and choose your domain name carefully.

REGISTRAR

As noted briefly above, the Registrar is the company that sells and administers Domain Names.  Some of the more popular ones are GoDaddy.com, NetFirms.com and NetworkSolutions.com.   When you purchase your domain name, you will receive an ID and a password for the Registrar.  This is NOT your web site’s id and password.   This is the id and password that allows you to log into your  Registrar’s account and make changes to your Domain Name(s).  Changes like renewals, contact information, privacy and “where” the website is hosted (DNS).

HOST (DNS)

Your web site Host (your Domain Name Server) is the company that holds all your web site information: from your content, and images, to your functionality and “serves” that information to the internet.  Once again there are thousands of companies that host web-sites.   Most large Registrars are also Hosting companies in that they will allow you, to  store you website on their servers.  Hosting your website is different than owning a domain name.  Some of the more popular hosting companies are bluehost.com,  iPage.com and hostmonster.com.   When you purchase a Hosting package from a hosting company, they will provide you with a login ID and Password to transfer information (your files) to and from the host server (next).

FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL (FTP)

Your Hosting company will provide you with the necessary “upload” and “download” the files necessary to run your web site.  You will receive information like the FTP server name, the FTP port along with your ID and password.  The key point here is that your Host ID and password is different from your Registrar ID and password.  Your Registrar manages your “name” and the host manages the web site.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS)

The large majority of new web sites that are being created today for small to medium sized businesses are being created with Content Management Systems like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal.   These systems make it easy for non-technical people to add and remove pages or change simple content.  If your web-site is built with a CMS, you will have yet another ID and Password.  These will allow you to login to the CMS to manage your website content without having to resort to  the more technical FTP.

EMAIL

You’d think that the subject of Email would be pretty simple – unfortunately that isn’t the case.  Most hosting companies allow you to setup email addresses for the domain names you host with them.  for instance, if you host myexample.com with a hosting company, they will allow you to setup email ids for people, like ray@myexample.com and kirk@myexample.com.   You will setup yet another set of IDs and passwords for these email accounts.  Most hosting companies will also provide you with “configuration” information so you can use your newly created email ids with email tools (called “clients”, like Outlook and GMail.

SUMMARY:

• you buy your Domain Name from a Registrar
• you publish your website with a Hosting Company
• you transfer files (your site) to your Host with File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• you manage simple content through a Content Management System
• your Host lets you setup email accounts with your Domain Name

One last thought — Keep ALL your IDs and Passwords in a safe place off your computer & don’t make your passwords easy or “the same” for everything.