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The 52: Understand Plagiarism to Avoid Liability
Week 32: Are you plagiarizing without even knowing it?
Week 32
Understand Plagiarism to Avoid Liability
Did you know, your team may be posting plagiarized content on your website and they don’t even know it? Most people know that copying someone else’s writing verbatim is plagiarism, but there are less obvious forms that can create liability for your firm, such as paraphrasing or following inspiration articles too closely in structure and sentiment.
Here are seven ways to avoid plagiarism:
Write in your own words.
Put quotation marks around verbatim copy.
Give credit to the original source even when paraphrasing.
Include links to the original source.
Include sources for all data, charts, and graphs that are not proprietary to you.
Use footnotes.
Use a plagiarism checker like Grammarly to make sure you, your team, and your freelancers aren’t accidentally plagiarizing.
The 52: Define the Purpose of Your Content
Week 31: Not all content serves the same purpose.
Week 31
Define the Purpose of Your Content
When developing content for your website, consider first the purpose of your content. Here are some options:
Nurture relationships (e.g., canned newsletter content)
Generate leads (e.g., ebook, recorded webinar)
Establish expertise and credibility (e.g., original blogs, original videos)
Change mindset (e.g., blog on why hiring a financial advisor is better than DIY)
Search engine optimization (e.g., blog on how to find a financial advisor in San Diego)
Demonstrating client experience (e.g., case studies, testimonials)
Behind the scenes (e.g., press release on the company winning a Best Places to Work award)
Once you know your purpose, you can craft your content with the end result in mind.
The 52: Match the Sales Experience to the Client Service Experience
Week 30: Train your prospects to be good clients.
Week 30
Match the Sales Experience to the Client Service Experience
Use your sales process to train your prospects to be good clients. Often, advisors will bend over backward to convert a prospect only to shift expectations once the paperwork is signed. If you take a prospect’s call immediately the first time they call in, they will expect you to be available every time they call as a client. But if you teach them to schedule a time to talk as a prospect, they’ll do the same as a client. By matching your sales experience to your client service experience, you’ll attract the right kinds of prospects to your firm and train them to be good clients.
The 52: Provide a Unique Service that Solves a Unique Problem
Week 29: Provide a service that makes you stand out from the pack.
Week 29
Provide a Unique Service that Solves a Unique Problem
The next tip in our series on how to simplify your marketing is to provide a unique service that solves a unique problem. When you provide the same or similar service as thousands of other advisors, you have to do a lot more marketing to get noticed over your competitors. Do you think you can make more marketing headway with the message “We help clients achieve peace of mind during retirement” than the largest financial firms with the biggest budgets?
When you provide a unique service that solves a problem for a specific niche (e.g., “We develop estate planning strategies for blended families”), it’s immediately obvious how you are different. And when you are truly different, you don’t have to spend as much time, money, and energy promoting that message.
How to Choose a Niche Market for Financial Advisors: Step 1—Understand Your Options
Advisors can choose a niche market based on any of six categories: career, event, expertise, mindset/values, affinity, and demographics.
When advisors hear the words niche market, they often think about a specific type of person, like a business owner, widow, or pre-retiree. This is a misconception, though, because you can choose a niche market based on any of six categories: career, event, expertise, mindset/values, affinity, and demographics.
Let’s look a little closer at examples in each of those categories:
Career
Category 1, career, includes professions, employers or companies, and industries. Some examples that would fall into this category are attorneys, business owners, physicians, technology employees, health care employees, military personnel, Facebook employees, United Airlines pilots, and federal government employees.
Event
Category 2, event, includes money-in-motion events, life transitions, and life stages. Some examples include inheritance, death of spouse, kids leaving home, job change, employer IPO, starting a family, and retiring.
Expertise
Category 3, expertise, is a specific service, product, or solution you offer to solve a problem your niche has. Examples include special needs planning, exercising stock options, and divorce financial planning.
Mindset and Values
Category 4, mindset and values, includes religion, life philosophies, and cultural mindsets. Examples include Christians, socially responsible investors, and philanthropists.
Affinity
Category 5, affinity, describes common connections people share. These can be hobbies, interests, or lifestyles—for example, golfers, families who homeschool their children, RV snowbirds, and university alumni.
Demographics
Finally, Category 6 is demographics. This can be geographic area, gender, age, or generation—for example, residents of Durango, CO, baby boomers, divorced people, and women.
Register Today!
Register for our free “Select a Niche” on-demand course to take the first step in choosing a niche for your business.
As you can see, you have many options to consider when choosing a niche market. Some niche markets you may be considering could fall into more than one category.
For example, maybe you are looking at divorcing women as a niche. This falls into the demographics category of gender and marital status. It falls into the event category because divorce is a life transition and a money-in-motion event. And finally, it falls into expertise if you have a specialty in divorce financial planning.
Not all niches are going to be good options. For example, I generally recommend that advisors stay away from niches solely categorized by demographics, such as geographic region, generation, race, or gender. There is too much variation among these people in their financial needs.
In the next blog, I will discuss how to choose a niche that is right for you from one of the six categories.
Need help picking a niche for your business? Take our free, on-demand Select a Niche course.
The 52: Focus on a Niche
Week 28: Simplify your marketing with a niche.
Week 28
Focus on a Niche
The next tip in our series on how to simplify your marketing is to focus on a niche. When you focus on too many audiences at the same time (e.g., pre-retirees, widows, and young professionals), you need different messages and different campaigns to make sure you resonate with each group. This not only creates complexity but also increases the volume of marketing—which means more of your time, money, and energy—that you must do to achieve results.
The 52: Focus on What Moves the Needle
Week 27: Do what matters most.
Week 27
Focus on What Moves the Needle
The next tip in our series on how to simplify your marketing is to focus on what matters most. Too often, advisors spend their time on marketing activities that seem fun, easy, or interesting instead of the ones that actually move the needle. For example, a firm changes the images on their website when they could be reaching out to influencers who can help them get in front of their niche. Advisors feel validated that they are spending time on marketing, but they aren’t producing results. When you focus on only the activities that make an impact, you don’t waste your time on frivolous exercises that don’t get you anywhere.
