Author: Joe Steuter

There are plenty of places to hear predictions about the future of financial services marketing.

The CMO Collective is different.

We created it to give senior marketing leaders across wealth management and fintech a place to talk candidly about what’s actually working, where new challenges are popping up, and where they’re investing next.

At Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, that conversation continued with a packed room of more than 120 marketing leaders discussing some of the issues shaping growth right now: how brands build credibility, the growing role of reviews and third-party validation, the changing economics of video, AI-driven discovery, marketing talent, and the pressure to prove ROI.

This year, the Collective took an important step forward.

The CMO Collective Is Becoming More Than an Event

Since launching the CMO Collective, our goal has been simple: create a community where financial services marketing leaders can learn from each other.The conversations at Future Proof reinforced why that matters.

Marketing leaders are being asked to do more than ever. They’re responsible for brand, demand, client experience, recruiting, AI adoption, technology, growth strategy, and, increasingly, proving how all of it connects to business results.

Those are hard problems to solve alone.

That’s why we were excited to announce the next evolution of the community at Future Proof: the new CMO Collective app.

Apple | Google Play

The app gives members a place to continue the conversations that happen at events throughout the year, connect directly with peers, ask questions, share ideas and tap into a community of marketers who understand the unique challenges of growing financial services firms.

The goal isn’t to create another place to scroll.

It’s to create a place to solve problems.

Visibility Is No Longer Enough

One of the strongest themes from our conversations was the difference between being visible and being believable.

Financial services firms have more ways than ever to get in front of prospects. The harder challenge is giving people a reason to trust what they see.

That means reviews, client stories, earned media, executive thought leadership, and third-party validation are becoming increasingly important parts of the marketing mix.

This matters even more as AI changes how people research firms.

Prospects aren’t necessarily moving neatly from a Google search to a website anymore. They’re reading reviews, consuming content, checking social profiles, seeing media coverage, and asking AI platforms to help them make sense of it all.

Marketing leaders have to think about the full body of evidence their brand creates.

Video Keeps Moving From “Nice to Have” to Core Infrastructure

Video was another major part of the conversation.

For years, many firms treated video as a special project: something produced occasionally for a campaign, executive message or product launch.

That model is changing.

Marketing teams increasingly need to produce video consistently and at scale, while still protecting quality, brand standards and authenticity.

And as AI makes content creation easier, the human side of video may become even more important.

People want to hear from real advisors, executives and subject matter experts. The technology should make those voices easier to capture and distribute, not replace them.

Reviews Are Becoming Part of the Growth Engine

Client reviews and testimonials also played a major role in the discussion.

Their value goes well beyond reputation management.

Reviews can help prospects validate a firm, reinforce positioning, strengthen conversion and give search engines and AI platforms more independent evidence about who a company serves and what it does well.

That changes the way firms should think about review programs.

The question is no longer simply, “Should we ask clients for reviews?”

It’s: How do reviews fit into our broader growth, content, search and credibility strategy?

Our Sponsors Help Make This Community Possible

The CMO Collective would not be what it is without partners who believe in the value of bringing financial services marketing leaders together.

We were proud to have the support of Amplify Reviews, StreetCred PR, Allspring Global Investments, WiserAdvisor/Indyfin and YT Era for this year’s Future Proof experience. Intention.ly highlighted all five as CMO Collective sponsors ahead of the event.

Each brings a different perspective to the challenges marketers are navigating, from reputation and earned media to advisor discovery, content and investment management.

More importantly, their support helps us create the kind of environment the Collective was designed for: candid conversation, useful ideas and relationships that extend well beyond a single conference.

Thank you to all of our sponsors for helping us continue to grow the CMO Collective. We couldn’t have made this possible without their support!

The Conversation Doesn’t End in Huntington Beach

The best part of the CMO Collective has never been a single panel or event.

It’s what happens when smart marketers who face similar challenges start sharing what they know.

That’s why the launch of the CMO Collective app is such an important next step for us.

Future Proof gave us the opportunity to get everyone together in one room.

Now we have a way to keep that room open all year.

If you lead marketing, growth or communications for a wealth management, fintech or financial services organization and want to be part of the conversation, we’d love to have you.

Join the CMO Collective by applying through the app.

Apple | Google Play

Future Proof has always been a useful snapshot of where wealth management is headed. This year, the signal felt especially clear. Marketing is becoming more central to growth. AI is forcing firms to rethink how work gets done and how trust gets built. The technology landscape is becoming simultaneously more capable and more overwhelming. 

And as more firms adopt the same tools, channels and language, differentiation is becoming harder, and more valuable. After several days of conversations with CMOs, CEOs, advisors, fintech leaders and growth executives in Huntington Beach, a few themes kept resurfacing. 

 

Marketing’s role inside the firm is getting much bigger 

One of the clearest takeaways from Future Proof was how rapidly the definition of “marketing” is expanding. That was especially evident on day three at our CMO Collective event, where we brought together marketing leaders from across wealth management to talk about what’s driving growth right now. The conversations ranged from credibility and client reviews to segmentation, video, AI and the challenge of deciding which opportunities deserve attention in the first place.

A few themes stood out. Visibility alone isn’t enough anymore. Brands need to be believable, which means building a clear point of view, creating strong client experiences and giving clients, partners and other third parties reasons to advocate for them. At the same time, more activity doesn’t automatically mean more growth. Several leaders emphasized the importance of narrowing the audience, choosing the channels and priorities that matter most, and having the discipline to say no to everything else.

AI added another layer to that conversation. Giving a marketing team access to AI tools is very different from building the skills, processes and judgment required to use them effectively. As the technology becomes embedded across the organization, marketers are increasingly helping determine not only how AI is used in campaigns, but how it affects search, reputation, personalization, content and the overall client journey.

That reflects a much broader change we’re seeing. The strongest marketing leaders aren’t simply responsible for campaigns, content and brand anymore. They’re increasingly involved in business development, organic growth, advisor recruiting, client experience, retention, technology decisions and AI adoption.

In many organizations, marketing is becoming one of the connective functions between what the business wants to accomplish and how the firm actually gets there.

That changes the profile of the modern marketing leader. The job increasingly requires someone who understands the business model, client journey, technology, data, sales and operations, not simply communications.

For growing RIAs and fintechs, marketing is moving closer to the center of enterprise strategy. And the firms that recognize that shift are likely to expect much more from the function than a full content calendar.

AI is everywhere, and it’s making the human advantage clearer. 

AI was an undercurrent of almost every panel, keynote and conversation we encountered. Its ability to reshape productivity, search, content creation, client service and operational efficiency is no longer theoretical. Every firm in the industry is going to have to determine how AI changes its growth model and how its people work.

We got to experience some of that momentum firsthand on day one. Our Advisor Brand Builder was selected from more than 200 submissions as one of just seven companies featured in Future Proof’s opening AI Demo Drop. We were grateful for the opportunity to share what we’ve been building with a packed crowd and show how AI can help advisors get to a stronger, more strategic brand foundation faster.

What surprised us most was what happened afterward. Throughout the rest of the event, people continued seeking us out to ask questions, learn more and talk about how the technology could fit into their own growth efforts. For us, that interest reinforced something bigger than the demo itself: firms are actively looking for practical ways to use AI that make their people more effective, not less important.

Because something else is happening at the same time. The more AI becomes capable of producing information, the more valuable distinctly human capabilities become: judgment, contextual understanding, empathy, experience and wisdom. Financial advice has never simply been about having access to information. It’s about knowing what information matters, what it means for a specific person and what someone should do about it. AI will dramatically expand what advisors and marketers can accomplish. But it may also make the human elements of great advice, and great marketing, even more important.

The technology problem is shifting from access to overwhelm 

There has never been more technology available to wealth management firms. That’s exciting,  and exhausting. Walking through Future Proof, you could see hundreds of companies solving legitimate problems across prospecting, data, AI, portfolio management, client experience, marketing, compliance and operations. 

The challenge is no longer finding technology. It’s deciding what deserves your attention. CEOs and CMOs are being asked to evaluate an increasingly crowded landscape while simultaneously integrating those tools into workflows, proving ROI and avoiding the operational drag that comes from adding technology without a clear strategy. The firms that win won’t necessarily be the ones with the most technology. They’ll be the ones that know what they’re trying to accomplish before they start buying it. 

Differentiation is becoming a business requirement 

The crowded technology landscape points to a larger challenge across financial services: sameness. As firms adopt similar technology, offer similar services and communicate using similar language, it becomes increasingly difficult for a prospective client or advisor to understand why one company is meaningfully different from another. That makes positioning and brand strategy even more important. 

Differentiation isn’t about manufacturing a clever tagline. It starts by understanding what is legitimately distinctive about your firm: your people, expertise, capabilities, philosophy, client experience or way of solving a problem. Then marketing has to make those differences visible. If you don’t decide what you want the market to remember about you, the market will usually default to seeing you as another version of everyone else. In a more crowded industry, blending in becomes increasingly expensive. 

Marketing needs change as firms grow 

Another theme reinforced throughout the week: there is no universal marketing playbook for RIAs. That came through clearly during day two’s The New Playbook for RIA Growth panel, where we joined other marketing leaders to talk about what’s driving growth now, what’s becoming less effective and where firms should be placing their bets as AI, changing referral patterns and increased competition reshape the market. One takeaway was especially clear: the right marketing model depends heavily on where a firm is in its growth journey.

A smaller firm below roughly $100 million in AUM rarely needs an elaborate omnichannel strategy. A few channels executed consistently around a clear audience and proposition can accomplish a lot. As firms move into the $200 million to $800 million range, the equation starts to change. Marketing becomes a more formal business function. Firms begin hiring internal talent, investing in technology and building more sophisticated, multichannel programs.

Closer to $500 million and approaching $1 billion, another challenge appears: one marketer can rarely execute everything the organization now expects marketing to accomplish. Content. Social. PR. Events. Digital. Lead generation. Automation. Advisor recruiting. Analytics. Brand. Client communications. That is where we increasingly see successful firms combining internal leadership with specialized outside execution. The goal isn’t simply to do more marketing. It’s to build the right mix of strategy, talent, technology and execution for the firm’s next stage of growth.

And the mandate can run in two directions: organic growth focused on attracting investors, and inorganic growth focused on attracting advisors, teams and additional AUM to the platform. Some of the fastest-growing firms are now building both engines simultaneously. The broader lesson from the panel was that the old playbook of relying heavily on referrals, occasional campaigns and a handful of disconnected tactics is becoming harder to sustain. Growth increasingly requires a marketing model that evolves with the business itself.

In an AI search world, belief matters as much as visibility 

For years, digital marketing emphasized being discoverable. The next challenge is being believable. Prospective clients rarely evaluate a financial firm based on one interaction. They search, compare, read reviews, visit social profiles, consume articles, encounter media coverage and increasingly ask AI platforms to help them synthesize what they find. That means firms need a broader credibility footprint. 

Client testimonials, reviews, earned media, executive thought leadership, third-party validation and authoritative content all help prospects answer an increasingly important question: 

Can I believe what this company says about itself? 

This also changes how we should think about top-of-funnel marketing. PR, reviews and thought leadership aren’t simply awareness tactics anymore. They help build the body of evidence that both humans and emerging AI-driven discovery experiences can use to understand who your firm is and whether it appears credible. Brand building and demand generation are becoming harder to separate. 

Growth ambitions and marketing investment remain disconnected 

One tension we heard repeatedly at Future Proof was the gap between how aggressively firms want to grow and how much they’re willing to invest in creating that growth. Many firms we spoke with are spending only a small percentage of revenue on marketing, even while setting aggressive growth objectives. You cannot consistently ask marketing to become a growth engine while funding it like a support department. 

Firms serious about growth need to determine what level of investment is actually required to build the people, technology, media, content, events and infrastructure necessary to create demand. There isn’t one percentage that makes sense for every firm. But there is a fundamental question every leadership team should answer: Does our marketing investment match our growth ambition? 

Too often, the answer is no. 

Experiences still matter, maybe more than ever 

For all the discussion about AI and digital transformation, one of the strongest marketing channels at Future Proof was sitting directly in front of us: the event itself.

Sponsors weren’t simply setting up booths. Many were building experiences designed to pull people in, keep them there and give them something worth remembering. That showed up everywhere, from happy hours like Zocks on the Rocks, along with booth activations featuring graffiti wine tumblers, monogrammed flip-flops, custom hat presses and, yes, puppies.

Those details may sound small, but they’re part of what made certain brands more memorable. They gave attendees a reason to stop, talk, participate and spend time with the people behind the logo. A booth tells people what you sell. An experience gives them a reason to engage with your brand.

Whether the audience is investors or advisors, events remain one of the few channels capable of creating concentrated attention, human interaction and emotional connection at the same time. And in an environment where everyone is competing for visibility, those moments can be far more powerful than another piece of collateral or another product pitch.

The best brands at Future Proof seemed to understand that. Their physical presence wasn’t treated as rented square footage. It was an extension of their positioning, personality and overall brand experience.

Twelve months from now will look very different 

Perhaps the most striking takeaway came from looking backward. Think about the technologies that have become routine in just the last year. AI notetakers are an obvious example. Many of us now rely on tools every day that would have felt novel only a short time ago. They help us remember more, move faster, create better work and spend less time on administrative tasks. The version of ourselves working without those tools would already struggle to compete with the version working today. Now project that same rate of change forward another twelve months. 

We don’t know exactly what the marketing function inside a wealth management firm will look like by Future Proof 2027. But we can be reasonably confident about one thing: Marketing, communications and brand will play a larger role in determining which companies grow and which companies disappear into the noise. The technology will keep changing. The channels will keep changing. The tools will keep changing. The firms that succeed won’t be the ones that perfectly predict what comes next. They’ll be the ones capable of adapting quickly while remaining very clear about who they are, who they serve and why someone should believe in them. That may ultimately be the biggest lesson from Future Proof this year. The future of marketing isn’t about doing more marketing. It’s about becoming a more important part of how the business grows.

There was a time when marketers needed to remind executives that their brand was more than their logo. I don’t think that’s the most interesting conversation anymore.

Most sophisticated financial services execs understand that brand includes positioning, messaging, experience, reputation, and plenty of other elements beyond colors and typography.

But is any of it creating the intended meaning in the minds of the people you’re trying to reach?

Your biggest branding problem probably isn’t whether people recognize you. It’s whether they know what to remember you for.

A prospect can recognize your company name, see your advertising, follow your team on LinkedIn and even visit your website without developing a particularly strong idea about why your company matters. That’s just awareness.

Your brand has to do more. It should give people a shortcut for understanding who you are, what you stand for, and why they should choose you over the alternatives.

In other words, the job of a brand isn’t simply to make your company recognizable. It’s to make something recognizable about your company. In financial services, that’s harder than it sounds.

Observation 1: Most Financial Services Brands Suffer From Sameness, Not Ugliness

Spend enough time on wealth management, asset management, and fintech websites, and you’ll encounter a familiar collection of words.Trust me, I know them by heart. 

Independent. Fiduciary. Comprehensive. Personalized. Holistic. Client-first. Sophisticated.

None of those are bad things. In fact, many firms using those words to describe themselves can prove exactly how they live up to the definitions. But truth and differentiation aren’t the same thing. That’s where I think many financial services companies misdiagnose their branding problem.

They don’t have an aesthetics problem. Their websites look professional enough. Their logos are contemporary. Their presentations have been polished. Their executives photograph well.

They have a sameness problem.

The language sounds like everyone else’s language. The claims sound like everyone else’s claims. And when a buyer encounters five firms making some variation of the same argument, they have no reason to remember one over another.

Professionalism can get you into the consideration set, but it rarely tells someone why you should win it.

Observation 2: Differentiation Doesn’t Mean Nobody Else Can Say It

I’ve watched executives dismiss potentially strong positioning with some version of the same objection:

“But couldn’t one of our competitors say that too?”

Probably, but that’s not necessarily a problem.True differentiation doesn’t require finding a sentence that would be impossible for another company to claim too. It requires choosing an idea you can credibly own and then reinforcing it so consistently that the market begins associating that idea with you.

A current financial services example illustrates this well. Consider Altruist. The firm entered an RIA custody market dominated by enormous incumbents. Advisors already understood what a custodian was. Altruist didn’t have to invent a new category from scratch; the firm just had to get advisors to consider it in a different mental bucket.

For years, Altruist has consistently positioned itself around the idea of the modern custodian: technology-forward, purpose-built for independent RIAs and deliberately contrasted with legacy custodial infrastructure.

When it overhauled its brand identity in 2025, Altruist explicitly said it wanted the visual and verbal expression of the company to feel distinct from legacy competitors and represent what the custodial experience should look and feel like for modern advisors.

Then, on August 26th, Vanguard announced an agreement to acquire Altruist, with Altruist continuing to operate as a standalone business. I’m not suggesting branding caused a transaction of that magnitude. Acquisitions happen because of businesses, economics, technology, distribution, talent, strategic fit, and many other factors. However, the moment provides an interesting illustration of brand equity.

Altruist doesn’t simply identify as another custodial platform. For many advisors, the name represents an idea about what modern custody should become. That’s what a brand is supposed to do. Jason Wenk knew it early on, and so did his team. 

Schwab and Fidelity are significantly more recognizable names. But Altruist didn’t need to beat them at recognition; it needed the right audience to think:

Altruist? That’s the modern one.

That’s a mental shortcut. It’s brilliant, especially in an age where we burn too many mental calories absorbing a ridiculous amount of new information every day.

Observation 3: A Strong Brand Reduces How Much Selling You Have to Do

At a certain point, branding stops being a marketing exercise and becomes a commercial one. When your positioning isn’t clear, every interaction starts from zero. 

• Your salesperson explains the company.
• Your CEO explains the company’s vision.
• Your website explains the company’s ideal clients.
• Your PR firm explains the company’s thought leaders.
• Your ads explain the company’s value proposition.
• Your content explains the company’s point of view and process.

And every explanation sounds slightly different because nobody has a sufficiently strong idea around which everything else can organize. That’s inefficient and expensive.

When you’ve already established a strong brand, people enter those interactions with useful context that saves time and energy.

They’ve encountered the same perspective in an article. They’ve heard it from your executives. They’ve seen it reflected in your product. They’ve heard someone else describe you that way.

Now, your salesperson isn’t introducing an entirely new idea. They’re reinforcing one, and that has implications far beyond branding.

PR makes a bigger impact because reporters understand the story. Content compounds because each piece strengthens the same association. Referrals become easier because clients can easily explain what distinguishes the firm. Advertising becomes cumulative rather than a collection of disconnected campaigns. Sales conversations start further down the funnel.

Marketing creates exposure. Brand determines what survives the exposure.

Observation 4: Every Additional Sentence Creates Friction

Financial services suffers from another particular branding affliction: we confuse complexity with sophistication.

As companies grow, they accumulate: new capabilities, new audiences, new service models, new technology, acquisition, specialists, the list goes on. And because every one of those things matters internally, companies inevitably try to communicate all of them externally.

The homepage becomes a catalog. The pitch becomes a paragraph. The positioning becomes a list. The buyer gets handed the complexity and told to sort it out. Unlike the marketing efforts for advisors two decades ago, buyers don’t experience your company through your organizational chart.

They experience fragments of it. A headline. A recommendation. A conference conversation. A LinkedIn post. A Google search. A fifteen-minute introductory call.

They will never remember everything you want them to know. Which is why I increasingly think about brand as compression.

Your organization may consist of hundreds of people, capabilities, beliefs, products and proof points. Your market might retain three ideas. Brand strategy determines which three.

The best companies don’t make their businesses simpler just for the sake of marketing. They make complex businesses easier to understand.

That’s different, and in today’s RIA and fintech space, it’s enormously valuable.

Observation 5: The Real Test of Brand Is Recall

Most companies measure brand using things they can easily see.

Did awareness increase? Do people recognize our name? Does our website feel premium? Is our visual identity consistent?

Those are useful questions, but I’d add a much harder one:

When your ideal client encounters the problem you solve, do they think of you? And do they know why?

That’s the standard. Ask a client what you’re particularly good at. Ask a prospect what they believe differentiates you. Ask an employee to describe the company in one sentence or what they feel about working for the firm. Ask a referral partner when they would recommend you instead of somebody else.

If every answer is different, or the answers are generic, you’ve learned something important.

You might have recognition, but you haven’t created enough meaning, and recognition without meaning is a fragile advantage.

Make Yourself Easier to Choose

Financial services will always involve thorough decision-making.

People aren’t selecting wealth managers, custodians, asset managers, or enterprise technology platforms on the strength of a tagline. They’ll evaluate capabilities, look at performance, conduct due diligence, and look for evidence that they’re selecting the right partner.

A strong brand presence doesn’t eliminate any of that, but it does help someone move from:

I’ve heard of them.

to

I understand them.

to

I believe them.

to

I should consider them.

Brand is a shortcut to belief. That’s why I’d recommend starting your next brand conversation by asking: What do we want someone to remember about us after they’ve forgotten everything else?

Oftentimes, it’s also why I encourage our clients to name an emotion someone feels after engaging with them. Emotions and feelings stick with you and serve as shortcuts. 

Every company already has a brand. The strategic question is whether yours is making the buying decision easier or forcing your prospects to do the work of figuring you out.

The term “brand” gets thrown around a lot, especially today as branding enjoys a resurgence. In recent years, it was often viewed as being the domain of large household companies. When smaller businesses considered it, it was often secondary to digital strategies. 

However, as the digital landscape has become more crowded, as changes in SEO, email, and social media have eroded performance, and as AI has filled most channels with lookalike content, companies are again turning to branding. That’s because, when done well, branding is a competitive advantage. It’s what helps make your firm distinct and unique, separating you from a crowd of cookie-cutter companies vying for limited attention from the same audience. 

This can be particularly true in financial services, where branding has often been overlooked and undervalued. For those financial services companies willing to invest the time and effort, branding is an opportunity to shine.

First, Here’s What Brand Isn’t

You need to build a brand. 

Everyone says it, repeats it, screams it from the mountaintop. And yet the more I hear it, the more I’m left feeling that very few people truly understand what branding is. 

Before we go any further, let’s quickly check off what branding isn’t, because it too often gets reduced to one or two elements. 

• It’s not a logo
• It’s not a tagline
• It’s not a website
• It’s not social media
• It’s not your tone or voice or personality
• It’s not your colors
• It’s not your brand guide (the mere existence of a document does not mean you have built a brand)

All of those things are elements of a brand, and some, such as the logo and tagline, are so prominent that they can be inextricably linked to and confused for the brand. 

But a brand is much more than the sum of the individual parts. Not to get too philosophical, but imagine being asked, “Who are you?” You could answer with your name, personality traits, titles, and family role. You could go on and on, and each answer added to the next could get us closer to understanding who you are, yet it would still fall short. Because there’s something essential about everyone, an essence, that fills the gaps between list items, something ineffable that serves as the glue that helps shape our identity. 

Heady, right?

The best branding operates in much the same way. It’s your heart and soul. To be effective, it can’t just be manufactured.

Why Brand Matters in the Age of AI

AI makes it possible for us to do many things quicker than ever before. A one-person team can create all of the content you’d ever need for a website, emails, social media, and campaigns. 

The trouble is that, left to its own devices, AI content typically looks, sounds, and feels remarkably similar to everyone else’s AI content. Generative AI relies on probabilities. It predicts what the next output should be based on the most probable answer. You know the saying “zig when everyone else zags”? AI will always zag and, with lightning speed, head straight for the middle of the pack.

Zigging is a very human trait that defies expectation and prediction. It’s often born from individual human experiences, oddball choices, accidents, and even mistakes. (I always think of Stevie Nicks writing “Edge of Seventeen” after mishearing Tom Petty’s wife say they met at “the age of seventeen” in a thick Southern accent.)

Branding favors unexpected choices and outside-the-box thinking over predictability. AI’s default is to stay inside the box that has already proven successful. As the world adopts AI, most companies will zag. Branding allows you to zig and stand out in the process.

Where To Begin

There are many playbooks, frameworks, and processes for brand building. I use one that’s been modified to what I believe produces the best results. But just following the framework doesn’t produce a worthwhile brand. It’s valuable as a means of collecting information and details in a structured way that builds upon itself and reveals which directions to explore. 

Rather than share a framework, let me instead share three foundational exercises that you can start today, no branding experience necessary. They often work well as team workshops that encourage open discussion and exploration. 

1. Know yourself: Before you can build a brand that connects with customers, you need to know who you are as a business. At your core, who are you? What do you care about? What makes you you? What things make you different or special, and why should anyone care about them? How do you want the world to see you? This should involve a high level of self-awareness and authenticity. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. The most successful brands tend to have a degree of honesty and authenticity that makes them relatable. 

Common questions that can be used to explore your identity include:

• What do you sound like? Are you bold and daring? Helpful and human? Premium or accessible or relatable? Polished or personal? These decisions tend to get to the heart of who you are and your brand personality.
• What do you look like? This can include colors, types of photography (stock vs original), and even preferences about things like shapes (angles vs curves; boxes vs circles vs hexagons). What types of logos do you like?
• What brands do you admire and why? The point isn’t to copy them, but to get a sense of what you gravitate toward. It’s like admiring good qualities in others with the intention of developing them in yourself.

 

2. Know your audience: Many companies, especially in financial services, have never taken the time to create buyer personas or an ICP (ideal customer profile). Demographic data is useful. Psychographic information is everything. Step into your buyer’s shoes and try to truly understand their fears, dreams, aspirations, and goals, and the unique ways that you address those. 

3. Know your competition: Look at your competitors. Review their websites and their social media feeds. What are they saying? What’s their message? What’s the overarching story they’re trying to tell? What colors and design elements are they using? Note what they’re doing that’s working well and what’s falling flat. The idea isn’t to steal from them. It’s the opposite. You want to carve out some blue sky for yourself, a position that you alone can own. That can’t happen if you’re saying the same thing as your competitors and look exactly like them.

Branding Is an Opportunity in Financial Services

To be clear, branding has always been valuable. There are times when it’s been de-emphasized in favor of other strategies, but it has always represented an opportunity to create an emotional connection with your audience by clearly defining who you are, and living it across every interaction and touchpoint. As the foundation of your business, it also serves as the engine for all of your other marketing efforts. Everything you do flows out of your brand.

Outside of the industry’s biggest players, financial services has typically not embraced branding, relying instead on referrals and word-of-mouth. Even now, few pursue it, and even fewer do it well. That makes it an incredible opportunity. Just remember, simply having a brand doesn’t make it good or a competitive advantage. Having a strong brand does. 

Looking for guidance bringing your brand to life? Our Advisor Brand Builder experience blends the efficiency of AI data collection and synthesis with our team of human creative experts to tell your unique story through stunning visuals, compelling content, brand collateral, and a fully built website.