While there are certainly times and instances where blending into the crowd makes more sense than standing out, differentiating your firm for competitive success is not one of them.  We’re often asked by financial advisors; “What is the single best thing that we can do to distinguish our firm?”  Our answer is consistent and straight forward… proprietary content.   

Having a point-of-view and sharing it with clients and prospects is the most effective way to establish thought leadership and a “voice” for your firm that reflects your values and beliefs.  Stakeholders want to hear from their FA during good times and bad on issues of interest and or concern to them.  From a practical perspective, advisors must incorporate a range of communications vehicles in order to efficiently reach clients, prospects, alliance partners and employees in a timely and efficient manner.  These include website postings, email and social media posts to be certain.  

Unfortunately, one of the most effective communication channels available for influencing clients and attracting prospects is often overlooked by advisors and that is online video.  The ability to combine sight and sound when delivering your message is further enhanced by the positive impact on the firm’s visibility.   Both online video usage and visits to video-sharing sites such as YouTube have increased dramatically in the last twelve months.  In fact, according to a summer, 2011 Pew Research Center study on internet usage showed that 71% of online adults in the U.S. reported watching videos on sites such as YouTube and Vimeo.  Its worth noting that YouTube is also the second largest search-engine in the world and that video content often indexes higher from a search engine ranking perspective.  Video production costs and technical acumen issues have been overcome, providing advisors with a range of simple, low cost, easy to execute tools to produce their own videos within the confines of their home or office.   

When the combination of the message and the medium come together in an effective manner, the results speak for themselves.  By way of example, there is an advisor based in New York who was recently profiled in Investment News that produced a brief video entitled; “Top 7 Things Your Wall Street Broker Doesn’t Want You to Know” dealing with the difference between suitability and a fiduciary standard.  The net result, the video was directly responsible for generating two viable leads, including one prospect with $1.0 million in investible assets.  Interested in seeing how one advisor is “standing out?” … Watch the Video