How does your wealth advisory firm come across to clients? A way to find out

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Are you able to explain what you do to potential clients quickly and efficiently? When you’re a wealth advisory firm or multi-family office looking to distinguish yourself from competitors, it helps to understand who and what you are before you can help and support clients.

Even if you’re a single-family office, does your “brand” accurately convey your family’s goals and values? Are you in charge of your story, or is it in the hands of the media?

If you’re not sure, that’s when conducting a branding exercise might be necessary. While it sounds like something a marketing or creative agency might do, family office brands matter more than most think, both for the firm itself and families and clients.

How does a wealth advisory firm conduct a branding exercise and use that information to determine their specialty and target audience?

Branding helps a company define its values, which act as the cornerstone to all decisions, according to Patrick Hanlon, author of the book Primal Branding. As he said in a recent article for Forbes, “Your brand is a belief system. If you don’t clearly define your values, you run the risk of others defining them for you.”

Single family offices: Managing your narrative

Single-family and multi-family offices often have different goals, but both can benefit from a branding exercise.

“Single-family offices typically have been below the radar,” says April Rudin, a New York-based marketing consultant who specializes in helping wealth management firms, banks and family offices. The families behind them often prefer to remain anonymous, but Rudin says that has changed with the younger generations, who have grown up on social media and see it as a way to grow their following and their personal brand.

“They feel that their family’s brand is old, stodgy, musty and impenetrable. They understand enough about SEO and social media to know that they should have a website and a social media presence,” she says.

That website can be used to talk about the work that the family is doing and control the message, addressing philanthropy, their foundations, values, family legacy and genealogy. In fact, social capital has become a helpful strategic tool for some families and their family offices.

“So instead of having fragmented information out there that’s put up by many different sources – some of which might be accurate, some of which might not be accurate – why not grab ahold of your own reputation and create your own brand around it?” says Rudin.

Multi-family offices: Growth

These firms are seeking growth and market differentiation. A branding exercise can help a family office figure out its strengths, says Martha E. Simmons, chief operating officer at Forthlane Partners, a multi-family office in Toronto.

“The term family office is so ubiquitous, but every family office is very, very different,” she says. “It is really important to do a thorough branding exercise to really know how to articulate what we do that’s different from other firms, and how to approach that.”

One of the first things Forthlane did was hire a consultant. “I think that’s also really important – to have an external person interview everyone in the firm and then pull out their own responses.”

The firm then examined competitors’ websites. This helped them understand the strengths they might offer clients.

“We would have an institutional-based asset management offering for families, which is very unique in Canada,” Simmons says. Forthlane used to offer more services, she says, but after the exercise they realized that they couldn’t scale that business. “It was really through our evolution in our experience that we homed in on institutional asset management as our core competency.”

Other things that came out of the exercise, which took a few months, were how to convey their offerings to their desired clients. Simmons says they knew exactly what language to use in their messaging.

It also helped the office focus on being more productive. “It really did allow us to focus our resources a little bit more on people who were maybe best suited for what we’re offering.”

The branding exercise was successful for Frontlane, she says. “Just having a clear message across the company – of exactly what the value proposition is, and how we can articulate it in a cohesive way.”

Simmons and Rudin offered a few tips:

Put the client first

A lot of firms forget this part and focus on their offerings instead of trying to solve a client’s pain point, Rudin says.

“Most people talk all about, ‘We’ve done this, we’ve done that, we’ve been in business for 50 years, so we know families, we manage this amount in assets, we have four offices, we have 50 people.’ But none of that translates into any client benefit,” she says. “So the real exercise there is how to take those data points, differentiate and translate those into client benefits.”

Those data points can come from surveying clients and compiling feedback about their challenges.

Hire professionals

Don’t try to undertake a branding exercise yourself, Rudin says. She’s a branding expert and still hired an outside one for her own company’s rebranding.

“Hire a professional firm, for whom it’s their business. They will provide a 360-degree view of your business and highlight things that you probably didn’t think of yourself, and help you see [your business] in a way that is more client-centric.”

Simmons said that hiring a consultant made their messaging clearer. “It’s a bit hard when you build a company, to step to the outside and look in, and redefine things and see things in a different way than maybe you’ve seen them. So that was really, really helpful and effective.”

Be emotive and authentic

Branding is storytelling, and emotions can play a role. “The website should have a look and feel that is emotive and draws people in,” says Rudin. People looking for an office will respond positively and are more likely to connect with a firm that reflects their own values.

She also recommends not using stock photos, or photos of the team around a conference table. And if you don’t wear a tie in your day-to-day, don’t put one on for your headshot.

Simmons says when Forthlane redesigned their website as part of their rebrand, they decided not to regurgitate a ton of data points and overwhelm visitors with text.

“It’s about, what kind of feeling does this give you? Do you think this is what you want? Then contact us and let us walk you through everything in person,” she says.

As any sales and marketing expert will tell you, it’s always easier to close a warm lead.

More from Canadian Family Offices:

• The List: 78 multi-family offices in Canada
• Canadian celebrities and athletes lend star power to charities
• ‘Friending’ clients: Unprofessional, or a way to deepen ties and boost confidence?
• Grayhawk’s Peter Mann: wealth, investing and family challenges

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