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Branded fridge magnets. Logo-shaped fly swatters. "Lunch and learn" sessions for busy executives. Brochures that explain a business approach to accountants or other centres-of-influence. Which one is the best use of your time and money?
Over the years, I’ve seen every one of these tools used to market a financial practice. But if you’re looking for the "ultimate" marketing tool — the one piece that entrenches long-lasting credibility in a highly crowded marketplace — you need to write a book.
Our company has written, designed, and printed a number of financial planning and investment books. And I’ve seen some incredible marketing success stories that come out of them. A well-written, well-researched book can transform your practice in a way no other marketing tool can.
I’m thinking of one case in particular, where an established advisor wanted to transform his practice from a high-volume, product-focused practice with over 1,100 client families into a service-oriented, "boutique" practice dealing exclusively with high-net-worth individuals. He used a book as the lynchpin in a well-coordinated marketing campaign intended to brand himself and attract his ideal client. Two years later, the strategy has been an outstanding success. He is one of his firm’s top producers, and deals with fewer than 100 client families, all of whom have $10 million or more to invest.
Or how about this advisor: a 25-year industry veteran who used a book to successfully distinguish himself and build his practice in one of the most competitive markets in Canada. Faced with increased competition from bank-owned firms, this advisor used a book to explain the virtues of independent thinking. Through his candid, entertaining writing style, he was able to explain open and honestly what products and services an investor needs, and what they don’t. He used real-life case studies to illustrate his points, and included a number of interesting facts and points in every chapter. The book was a tremendous success with his intended audience — novice investors who are looking for a full service financial planner for life. As a result of his book, this advisor has one of the best referral records I’ve ever seen, along with the lowest rate of client attrition.
It’s stories such as these that lead me to believe that a self-published book is the ultimate marketing tool for financial advisors. Simply put, there is no better method of revealing who you are, what your philosophy is, and how you approach investment management, all in an impressive, persuasive package. But there’s a lot more to a book than words on the page. What can a book do for your business? Here are a few:
Forces you to think about what you believe: There’s a lot of business thinking that goes behind a book. Writing a book is a great way to think about what exactly it is that you love about this business, what you don’t, and how you can change it for the better. It also helps you zero-in on a particular market niche.
Acts as a marketing springboard: A book becomes a natural source of "raw material" for further articles, discussions, seminars, newsletter content, media interviews, etc. These additional opportunities make it easy for you to deliver your marketing messages to your intended audience with very little additional time or money.
Generate a media buzz: A book is a natural "attention-getter" with the media. Send financial reporters a copy, and you can bet they’ll be on the phone for interviews.
Instant credibility: Having your name in print provides an instant boost to your credibility in the eyes of clients and prospects alike. It’s like a super-powered business card, one that tells people you’re a person with knowledge, ideas and substance, rather than just another face in the crowd.
Demonstrate your commitment to clients: By definition, the purpose of a financial handbook is to educate and inform readers. The effort taken to write it becomes a concrete example of how you care about empowering your clients.
Demonstrate expertise: A book gives you the ability to lay down your financial principles in detail, and demonstrate the depth and breadth of your ability to deliver wealth management services and supporting client service — in your own special way.
I could go on. Despite all of these advantages, many advisors take a pass on a book strategy. Writing a book is a major undertaking. Many professionals don’t feel that they’re up to it. And that’s too bad. Because in my experience, the most significant challenge in writing a book isn’t necessarily the writing. It’s getting it done.
With the average book taking at least nine months to complete, the time crunch is a challenge successful advisors find difficult to hurdle. What advisors may not know is that much of the business writing today by successful business people has been produced with the help of co-writers, editors, designers, print consultants, etc. Together, as a team, with the advisor leading the process, a book can be completed with relative ease, and with complete control.
The big issue, essentially, is planning. I’ve seen a lot of professionals start off with an excellent idea for a financial bestseller. But they fail to plan ahead, and outline exactly what they want to say, and why they want to say it. So they write a chapter or two, and then they don’t know where to go from there. Inevitably, other business issues and marketing ideas come up, distracting them and diminishing the momentum they’ve built. The result: a lot of wasted time.
Probably the most effective way to think about content is to ask yourself what kinds of financial behaviours or dangers your reader needs to be rescued from. That’s a dramatic way to look at content, but when you think about it, that’s what all financial books are: an attempt to empower readers with the knowledge needed to protect themselves from hidden dangers.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you want to write a book about hedge funds. That’s a little too broad, so you ask yourself what you can "rescue" your readers from. The answer is clear: misinformation. As it stands now, there is a deluge of misinformation about hedge funds, misinformation that is putting your readers in financial jeopardy. This theme leads to some interesting topic ideas: debunking the myths about hedge fund risks, the real story behind hedge fund blowups, etc. You now have a viable theme for your book, and have instilled a sense of urgency about why your readers need to pay attention to it.
How can you "hook" readers? The best financial books I’ve read have a theme or "hook" that flows throughout the entire publication. Given the often-dry nature of financial topics, this is a particularly important step, one you should spend some time thinking about. It’s often the difference between a book that gets read and one that’s used as a doorstop.
The classic example here is David Chilton’s The Wealthy Barber. The information in the book is very straightforward, very simple. By today’s standards, perhaps even a little boring. But what sets the book apart is the way it’s told — by way of a conversation — and that makes all the difference. That makes the simplistic into the interesting, and is a particularly attractive way to hook the audience of novice, never-invested-before readers that Chilton was targetting. No wonder the title has sold more than two million copies.
Write a chapter-by-chapter "roadmap" This is probably the most important part of the process, and one that I’ve seen a lot of advisors stumble over. Before you put pen to paper, take the time to write down a detailed "roadmap" of the entire book. This should be carefully articulated, with every chapter containing several bullet points that describe the topics you’ll explain in every chapter.
I can’t stress the importance of the roadmap enough. One book we wrote was roadmapped down to the paragraph. The roadmap ended up being over 30 pages long, and took over four months to complete. That might sound like overkill, but actually, it was the best investment we could have made at that time. Because of the planning effort, the actual writing went remarkably smoothly, and took less time than the planning! In fact, we actually saved time on the overall project by spending more time on the roadmap.
Bottom line: don’t be in a rush to put pen to paper. Inevitably, you’ll end up with a shoddy, confused writing that rambles from topic to topic without a clear sense of direction. Instead, invest in the roadmap, and know where you’re heading.
Get it done In our experience, this is the biggest stumbling block our clients have: getting the book done. In fact, this part is probably the easiest part of the book production process.
If you plan on writing your book yourself, my suggestion is to treat it as a serious marketing effort rather than a hobby or "rainy day" project. Help yourself get into a groove by setting aside at least two solid hours every day to work on your book. These should be your most productive hours, whatever those happen to be for you (for me, it’s early in the morning — before the phones start ringing). When you’ve completed a chapter, put it on the shelf for a week, then go back and edit it through once. Then put your edited copy in a draft binder and start the next chapter. Once all chapters have been written, go back and edit the book in its entirety. This system will help keep you moving forward to get the job done, rather than writing and re-writing the same chapter without getting any closer to the end goal.
If you have the resources, the best scenario is to hire an expert to co-write your book. This isn’t as strange as it may first seem. Most celebrity authors have co-written books with established authors. Leveraging your time makes a lot of sense. Once you’ve completed the planning, editorial strategy, and vision, you can outsource an expert to execute the technical work.
Take the same approach to the design and printing. Use professionals. I see advisors do much of the same thing every day with the outsourcing of estate planning, insurance, stock selection, or other parts of wealth management that are not their primary expertise.
No doubt about it: writing a book is the most challenging, most time-consuming marketing project of them all. However, as you’ve read above, you can get in the way of your success if you allow it. The secret: turn obstacle into opportunity and you’ll succeed beyond your wildest expectation.