Shaping Your Brand

One of the frustrations advisers face with marketing is trying, and not seeing, voluminous, tangible results after six to 12 months. I need to convince these clients to "stay the course" just as you need to reassure your clients to do the same. Marketing is strategic. There may be some tactical benefits, but the issues, solutions, and measures are certainly strategic. There is no quick fix turning a predominantly selling entity into a marketing/selling entity. The best way to make a strategic impact is to develop and continuously nurture an effective brand.

Brands attract, bias, and convince people that what they don't see yet is what they will actually receive – quality reasonably assured. They don't think about it as much as they feel it, and the brand thinking they do forms a convincing logic to accept the name or reputation. That's a positive in marketing. In fact, scientists have just discovered (Journal of Neural Plasticity, April 2002) that branding decisions (which take about two seconds to make) occur in the right parietal cortex of the brain. The right parietal cortex is also where conscious decisions are made. Brand selection is becoming more predictable than we thought.

The negative? Bad branding can turn people off and away from services or products, whether they deserve it or not. Between the extremes lies the ether of ambivalence, where a prospect is not swayed either way. In competition, consumer ambivalence defeats you.

The key element of branding is truth. For example, State Farm says it all in a jingle, "And like a good neighbor, State Farm is there." Recall the ads? Nowhere. State Farm ads are simple, unslick, real. To the consumer (and there is much evidence available), the ads match State Farm's performance. Truth is in the brand. The brand works.

Why not an adviser example? First, you wouldn't recognize the adviser, even if I told you the trademarked Personal CFO™ and Wealth Navigator$trade; work for clients of mine. Secondly – and this is your advantage – so few advisers in retail financial services understand brands and brands in service businesses that they have not popularized the idea. It's too bad, because everyone has a brand, like it or not. You have one. It may not be the one you want and you may not be nurturing it, but it's yours nevertheless!

Not to shape your brand rigorously and nurture it is to leave it to your public to decide. That is the much less effective alternative.