There are approximately 300,000 financial advisors in the United States. That’s about equivalent to the entire population of Pittsburgh.

Now let’s perform a quick thought experiment. Imagine you’re a client looking for a new advisor. You’re spending the day walking around Pittsburgh, and every single person you pass is an advisor who wants your business. How would you pick who to work with?

Most people would probably select someone they can relate to for one reason or another. Maybe they strike up a conversation with someone and discover they share the same interests or life experiences. Maybe they’re drawn to someone with a unique style who stands out from the crowd. Whatever the case may be, what ultimately drives the decision to pick a single person out of 300,000 options is connection.

Connection also happens to be what successful marketing campaigns aim to build. And it’s the reason why humanizing wealth management and financial advisors is such an important element of marketing strategy.

Crafting a unique personality

If you were to visit a series of wealth management websites, you’d quickly notice a lot of similarities. Firms tend to spend a lot of time talking about what services they offer; however, many of them spend almost no time at all sharing who is providing them. It’s the equivalent of wearing a business suit on the streets of Pittsburgh along with everyone else and hoping you’re going to stand out. Not very likely!

How we help humanize advisors

At Graham, we use several different strategies to help advisors bring out their personality in a way that feels natural and effective:

• Personalized bios — Your bio isn’t just an opportunity to reveal your qualifications; it’s also a chance to show who you are. We often recommend that you share a few details about your family and hobbies at the end of your bio. It may be the one detail that best helps you stand out and connect with a prospective client.
• Social posts with photos — Social media is a great tool for building brand awareness. But you probably are not taking full advantage of it. We often recommend incorporating photos that feature genuine, personal moments and exciting milestones. Not only does this help boost the reach with the social media algorithms, but it also helps humanize you and gives your clients a sense of who you are behind the account.
• Video content — Much like with photos, adding video content to a strategy can help humanize you. Recording a short video discussing market trends, for instance, can be leveraged across different channels, from social media to email newsletters. Clients like to hear directly from you, and video content often stands out amid all of the written market analysis that advisory firms typically publish. While recording video content can seem daunting, you don’t have to be Martin Scorsese to pull it off. All it takes is a small tripod, a light, and an iPhone!
• Client stories — Another way to help build a connection with prospective clients is to tell existing client stories. Your website may be missing specific stories about how you have helped serve existing clients. Publishing client case studies can be an effective way to not just tell prospective clients what your firm offers but show them how you’d serve them. It builds credibility while expressing your value proposition more compellingly.

A case study: Faubourg Private Wealth

Our team recently led a website redesign for Faubourg Private Wealth, an RIA based in New Orleans. Faubourg already did lots of things right: Their bios were casual and personable, and it was clear they were written by the advisors themselves.

With the new website, our team suggested Faubourg do more to tell the story of the ways they serve clients. Working with their team of advisors, we created seven different client “personas” — ranging from families to retirees to business owners. The idea was to build these personas and craft a story for each one, showing exactly how Faubourg would serve this person. Here’s how it worked out on the site: