How Human Emotion Can Bring Financial Advisors More Clients
As consumers, we’re funny in the way we make decisions. We like to think that logic plays a major role in deciding how to spend our time and money. But, the truth is, the vast majority of our decisions are driven by emotions.
As Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, put it, “We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
That’s why, as a Financial Advisor, you absolutely must understand this critical point: the vast majority of your prospects don’t care about you.
This may sound like a liability, but, it’s not. Because, when you understand how to leverage human emotion to your advantage (detailed in our book, Systematic Advisor Marketing), you’ll be positioned to attract and serve more clients than you’ll know how to handle.
The key to your success is understanding these two things:
1. Your prospects’ interest in you and your services is directly related to the fact that you can either help them solve a problem or help them achieve a desired goal. In other words, they are primarily focused on themselves – and will be far more responsive to your marketing efforts if you focus on them as well.
2. The decision to work with you will be overwhelmingly based on emotion (though it will likely be justified by logic). Study after study has shown that humans make decisions based on feelings, not facts. If your marketing is built entirely around facts and figures, and lacks emotion, you’re missing huge opportunities to connect with more prospects.
With that in mind, how do you use your prospects’ self-interest and emotional decision making to your advantage?
Offer Your Prospects Something They Will Value
There are two general approaches to marketing: brand marketing and direct-response marketing. Brand marketing is all about getting your name widely known and recognized. In general, you’ll see category-leading companies invest heavily in this type of marketing. The goal with this approach is to connect the business or product name with their category in the consumer’s mind.
While brand marketing is used by the big wire houses, banks, and other financial institutions, it requires an enormous capital investment, and return on investment is very hard to track. Those are just two reasons why financial advisors should not waste time or money on brand marketing.
Direct-response marketing, on the other hand, allows businesses to present offers directly to consumers, getting them to take a specific action. Examples of direct-response marketing might include TV or radio ads promoting a toll-free number for people to call to order a free cosmetics kit sample, request a life insurance quote, or join a class action lawsuit. Or it could be an online form offering a free guide about weight loss, or dating or investing guide.
These type of “special offers” are known as lead magnets and are usually provided free or at a nominal cost to the consumer in exchange for their contact information.
Why do businesses collect contact information?
One reason, of course, is to be able to deliver the promised gift (the lead magnet). Another reason is to be able to follow-up with the consumer to make additional offers, extend invitations, or sell something.
For advisors with a target market, there’s no need to use generic lead magnets like “10 Things You Should Consider When Hiring A Financial Advisor.”
Instead, you can consider your prospects’ self-interest and emotional decision making to create a lead magnet that’s meaningful to them.
For example:
• “The Five-Day Family Financial Plan That Won’t Have You Fighting Over Money”
• “The Divorced Woman’s Guide To Financial Independence”
• “Are You Making These Financial Mistakes in Your Dental Practice?”
• “Wealth Preservation Guide For Family Business Owners”
The key to your success with a lead magnet is to keep it simple, make an effort to be original, and leverage emotion if at all possible.
Emotions That Drive Financial Decisions
Remember that “emotion” when dealing with financial issues isn’t simply restricted to thing like “fear of loss” or “desire for greater wealth.” There are a whole host of emotions you can play into when creating your lead magnet (or developing website content or making YouTube videos or designing a brochure, and so on) to attract clients.
Here’s a brief list of some possible emotions you might choose to use (though, some might be hard to get by your compliance department):
• Curiosity – “The 3 Critical Decisions You Must Make If You Don’t Want To Run Out Of Money In Retirement”
• Benevolence – “Charitable Giving Blueprint”
• Exhaustion – “How Effective Retirement Planning Can Lead To Better Sleep”
• Insecurity – “Are Your Financial Plans in the Right Hands? Here’s How To Find Out!”
• Optimism – “How To Be Set For Life Financially… In Any Market!”
• Boredom – “Financial Planning Doesn’t Have To Be Boring”
• Happiness – “Retire Smiling – How To Create Your Own Happy Retirement”
• Complacence – “Life As Is vs. Life As It Could Be: Simple Tweaks To Create A Better Financial Life”
• Laziness – “The Done-For-You Retirement Plan”
• Sadness – “Maintaining Your Financial Health After The Loss Of Your Spouse”
• Pessimism – “Financial Planning For People Who Think It’s Pointless”
• Revenge – “How To Outdo Your Brother-In-Law In Retirement”
• Mistrust – “7 Ways To Keep The IRS and Wall Street From Stealing Your Money”
• Patriotism – “How To Achieve The Wealth That Every American Deserves”
• Whimsy – “A Bizarrely Contrarian Approach To Retirement”
• Love – “Financial Planning Together: The Couples Guide To A Loving Retirement”
• Guilt – “It’s Not Your Fault You Haven’t Started Planning For Retirement (And How You Can Get Started Today)”
• Indifference – “Case Study: How The Wrong Financial Plan Can Cost You As Much As $486,000”
• Fear – “Can You Afford To Retire?”
• Vanity – “5 Keys To Living Well and Looking Your Best In Retirement”
• Confusion – “Financial Planning Simplified”
Of course, these ideas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to attracting clients using emotion. For a more complete understanding of how emotion works together with other factors to attract, convert, and retain more clients, grab your copy of Systematic Advisor Marketing on Amazon today.