Credibility Marketing: How I Use Client Testimonials

In this edition of What’s Working Now, an AdvisorRADIO feature in which Horsesmouth members tell us about recent success they have had running and growing their businesses, we hear from advisor J’Neanne Theus, who has started using client testimonials on her website.

You can read an edited version on J’Neanne’s comments below, or listen to the full interview in the video.

Background

I’ve been an advisor for about 19 years. This is my third career. In my first career, I was a naval intelligence officer for about 21 years. Then I was raising kids, so I was eight years active with the reserve. And then I had this “Aha” moment after a stint in small corporate that maybe I should become a financial advisor.

It was a brother of mine, who has been an advisor for 37 years, who said, “You should do this. There aren’t enough people doing it right. And you care about people.”

I wanted to become an advisor because I was looking for what I couldn’t find, which was a holistic advisor. So I did a couple of stints with advisors—and they were nice guys and everything, but not what I was looking for. So, I broke away to independence, started my own RIA, later than most, and then built the business by offering continuing education at the local community college.

How I built my business

For about four or five years in the D.C. metro area and Maryland, I taught classes. And it was exhausting. And what you find, especially in the evening, is that people are coming from work and they’re glazing over. Even if you’re trying to be entertaining, it’s difficult.

But overall, it worked well. Although I was used to briefings and presenting, the first couple were tough. But I quickly got used to them and figured them out. That’s what I tell the young folks coming in: you may know the material, but it’s conveying the material in a way that people take in and then want to take action.

I think there’s been a shift in the marketing aspect of this education piece, in that we need to provide them enough information so that they see the complexity of it and realize they should hire somebody because they do need help. I built my business fast, in about four or five years, as a result.

All testimonials face certain restrictions

So a couple of years ago, FINRA updated regulations around advertising, allowing advisors to do testimonials from clients. But of course, anyone who has been around for a while knows that any testimonial is under some restrictions. But obviously, I think FINRA and SEC’s biggest objection is people talking about promises and guarantees. That to me is just common sense, you just don’t have them say anything about that.

So I told the folks that would be doing this for me that they couldn’t mention certain things, “Oh, you can’t mention interest rates. No guaranteed promises. No, this, that, and the other thing.” That’s all that I told them.

And they did a beautiful job with what they said. So, it was just capturing that. I think the testimonials should be more about working with you as a person and your personality, and that you’ve helped them, versus that you do comprehensive planning or whatever it is you do.

Even very smart people need financial advisors

I know my clients pretty well, so it was not difficult to choose who I would ask. I have an eclectic mix of backgrounds among my clients, but most are engineers or scientists. So, I picked two couples, one couple were both aerospace engineers, the other two are physicists.

But even when you’re really, really smart, doctors, lawyers, whatever, it doesn’t mean you know this business of wealth management. Even these very smart people value having an advisor. One of the things I’m targeting is the self-directed brokerage accounts that a lot of defense contractors have.

So with the video on my website right now, the wife is an aerospace engineer at NASA. Her husband’s an aerospace engineer who also does race cars. And he’s working for a firm that’s currently up in Baltimore. The other two clients that we interviewed are both physicists that were at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory working in two different programs. And we have clips from them in reserve.

How I got the clients involved

I’m very communicative with clients. So they’re getting one to two emails a week. I’ll send out a video a couple of times a month and “Java with J” or something, just to keep in front of them.

This whole thing that happened recently with Silicon Valley Bank, I had a couple of emails go out explaining, OK, here’s this person’s opinion, here’s another opinion, here’s what we’re thinking and your Chase bank is going to be fine. So it’s just to keep people not just informed, but comfortable.

The people in the testimonial, I talk to these clients all the time anyway, so I just approached them and said, “Hey, would you guys be willing to do a testimonial for my website? And then we’ll go to dinner.”

And that’s what we did. And it was a good match for the two couples because they had not really talked before at client events. So, there was enough in common for them that it was an enjoyable evening. Both couples agreed without hesitation, which was nice.

Listen to your instincts

I was planning to do some video shoots with a young guy who wrote me some marketing material. Now that particular marketing didn’t work at all, because I don’t think it was personal enough. This guy who wrote the content, I told him it wouldn’t work because it wasn’t me, it didn’t sound like me. It sounded too professional, not personal enough.

So I told him this and he said, “Well, this is what works. We know what works. We’re the marketing specialists or the experts.” And I’m like, “OK, but I’m just saying this is not how I speak and it’s not going to work.” And I was right—it didn’t work at all!

But since I had the videographer there, I decided to see if I could get some testimonials done, too. So with the couple, I said, “Since I have somebody coming to do this video anyway, would you be up for getting video for a couple of testimonials?” And they were like, “Yeah, absolutely.”

We had a videographer who tended to all of the technical stuff and that helped position and pose us all. And the rest was up to them. So, I just gave them the parameters of what not to mention.

You could be taking a chance that somebody’s going to say something awkward, but I knew them well enough that they would do a great job. After, I took both couples out to dinner to show them my appreciation and gratitude.

People like stories

I have a guy that I’m using that built my website and who does a lot of Facebook marketing for me. And we went back with the clips and what to use. He’s been doing this for advisors for a long, long time, and he said, “These are some really good clips.” Our criteria was “Is it great?” And so, we just chose one. The lighting was good, the clients came off well.

Because I run my own RIA, I do my own compliance, so I looked it over for any issues. I didn’t notice anything out of bounds that FINRA or SEC would have an issue with. Because when you look at it, there are no mentions of returns, interest rates or guarantees or anything like that.

It was very heavily along the lines of, “We like her, we like dealing with her, and she is not a hard-sell type of person.” People like stories, as we know, and stories sell better than just a bunch of facts.

That makes people comfortable—because people want to want to feel at ease when they’re talking to somebody about money. And I think that was the more important message. It’s that relationships that you are establishing.