How Last Week's Democratic Sweep Can Mean More Clients and Referrals

What to get people talking about you? Say something timely and relevant.

One of the most important principles we follow is remarkable is referable. Remarkable as in worthy of making a remark about. If you generate content (and I believe every advisor who is interested in attracting more clients should) make it remarkable.

My advisor has a really interesting perspective on giving me peace of mind, said no one at a cocktail party ever. But find some clever opportunities people like your clients may find in the new Republican tax plan and you will give them something to talk about.

To paraphrase Seth Godin , if people are not reading and forwarding what you send in the form of blog posts, articles, emails, or client newsletters, there is a reason. And that reason is because it’s boring. Three guidelines will help make your content remarkable:

  • Make a timely
  • Make it relevant
  • Make it specific
  • Timely means that it is something the client needs or wants to know now or has an opportunity to take action on now. What’s in the Republican tax plan that might be an opportunity or a peril for your clients? How will your clients be affected if Congress manages to repeal the affordable care act? How might you adjust client portfolios if Trump manages to provoke North Korea into a conflict?

    Did you ever wonder why the consumer financial press regularly publishes stories about topics like the 10 mutual funds you must own right now? You know as a financial advisor there is no fund you must own right now – it contradicts the most basic philosophy of a mutual fund. But when you include words like “must” and “right now” it creates a sense of urgency that makes people want to know about the message. Remarkable.

    The epitome of timely is David Meerman Scott’s concept of Newsjacking (you can read about it here or listen to our podcast interview of him here ). Tie your message to a current event and borrow the language appearing in headlines and in addition to having a message with some urgency, you can get found by people (like reporters) for searching those terms seeking current information.

    Related: Why You're Always Talking About Your Referability

    Relevant refers to the clients unique interests, needs, wants, and desires. If your message is applicable to everyone, it’s relevant to no one – it’s background noise. That’s why blog posts about the importance of retirement savings, staying the course as the markets bob up and down, and economic updates tend not to get much readership. If you work with doctors, create something around the economic aspects of the affordable care act. If it’s post-career adventurers, talk about how some of the new possibilities like air B&B open up for them. If it’s young families, investigate the pushes and pulls of reasoning (and financing) children.

    Specific means dive into the details. One of the reasons public relations and content marketing work is because they can provide a platform on which to show off your expertise. If you talk in generalities and basic principles, it fails to showcase your knowledge. Dig down in and demonstrate, without having to brag, how deeply you know a topic. I was on a coaching call with an advisor last week and we were working on coming up with some titles for blog posts. In her particular sphere, divorce mediation, financial planners are sometimes but not necessarily part of the team of people advising the client. One of her ideas was a post about when to make sure you have a financial planner on the team. It doesn’t really have the specificity to be intriguing. My questions were what are the issues that call for a planners expertise, and what are the most frequent issues you work with when you get called in as the planner? By answering those two questions we got almost a dozen ideas for posts because each one can be explored in depth. And going deep puts her expertise on prominent display.

    As an additional benefit, we also steered clear of a “here’s why you should hire me” kind of post and into an exploration of issues that communicate real value to the readers.

    So what does the Democratic electoral sweep mean for your business development? If you can tie some of the possible effects – maybe on issues like tax policy or healthcare policy or immigration policy or other changes that may ripple through Congress and the statehouses – to issues that affect financial planning opportunities of your target market, you can get more people talking about you.