Our guest writer Mark Siegmann shares how customer-focused copywriting can make all the difference when it comes to connecting with prospects, communicating the value you have to offer, and closing the deal…
To show customers and prospects you understand their needs, your financial copywriting should literally speak their language.
Take your sales deck, for instance. Your sales deck is one of the most powerful tools you have to help quickly and effectively differentiate you from competitors, and win new customers.
But often, businesses with complicated products and offerings, such as financial service firms, tend to create detailed decks with too much content and not enough focus on the customer.
They spend lots of time talking about what their company offers, without tying that to how it actually meets a customer’s needs.
Or, they use language that is internally-focused, rather than what the industry and the clients actually use, which derails conversations from the start and can potentially cause their company to come across as out-of-touch.
But if you focus your financial copywriting on the customer—the human being you’re actually speaking to—and use copy that resonates with them, it shows that you understand what’s important, engages them, and opens up a conversation.
With that in mind, how can you get the most out of your financial copywriting and leverage your sales deck to spur action and close the deal?
You have a captive audience, so make your headline count
That prospect who could really benefit from your retooled investment or asset management services has agreed to talk to you. Great! When you meet with them, they want to know who you are and what you have to offer, right?
Well, not exactly.
If they’re taking the meeting, they already know who you are. So while it’s nice to give some background on your company, you need to show what you can do for them. And the headline of your sales deck is the first, and most logical, place to start.
Sure you could title your pitch “Asset Management Capabilities of J Peterman Financial”, but what the prospect or customer wants to know is how J Peterman, can meet their needs.
Since you’ve done your research on the prospect, tailor the headline to them and what they value. For instance, a pension fund might be interested in maintaining the safety of their investments, so play to that. “Keeping Your Assets Secure” tells the prospect you know what’s important to them and starts the conversation on the right foot.
A sovereign wealth fund wants to maintain asset value too, but they could also be interested in finding new global growth opportunities. So, if that’s important to them, say that in the headline. “Navigating Markets to Find Growth Opportunities” tells them that you have the global expertise to help get into new investments.
The point is, your headline, in financial copywriting or any pitch, sets the stage for the rest of the conversation.
If a customer says the sky is green, paint it green
As our founder says, you should lose the “we” and shift the focus to “you.”
What this means is that your sales deck should be tailored to the unique needs of customers, and the copy needs to reflect that. It should use language that the customer and the market use, and focus on specific challenges that exist for them.
Then you can, and should, make the connection and tell them how you can help solve these challenges. If you have something unique in the industry, call it out in your sales deck, but make sure that the description and supporting copy are focused.
For example, you may have a great new name for your foreign exchange offering, but if it doesn’t say “foreign exchange”, you need to have copy on the page that says this so the prospect understands what your offering is all about.
Your sales deck sets the stage, but your salesperson tells the story
As the old saying goes, sometimes less is more. This is true in financial copywriting, but can be a challenge because of the complexity of products. You want to highlight key features, but if you get too detailed, you risk someone reading from the page rather than engaging in a conversation.
The goal of each page should be to start the dialogue, and let the salesperson show their expertise. Too much copy can hinder this and make it difficult for a salesperson to adapt based on the conversation.
So keep each page focused, and move information about the size of your firm, your history, and other facts to an appendix. You want enough on each page to get the conversation started but not so much that it comes to a close.
The customer wants to know that this isn’t your first rodeo
All the expertise in the world doesn’t matter if you can’t demonstrate you have a track record with real-life examples of customer success.
Prospects and clients want to see that you’ve been there, done that. Case studies, especially in financial copywriting, help bring your products and services to life. They let you show off a little and highlight how you’ve helped other customers succeed in growing their assets, launching new investment products, and breaking into new markets.
If you can identify customers by name, that’s great, but even if you can’t, having examples from relevant industries shows that you’ve been down this road and you have a solution.
At MarketSmiths, we have helped our clients inject humanity into their financial copywriting and
transform sales decks into dynamic pieces that are compelling, concise, and relevant to the customer, laying the foundation for a great conversation and spurring action. Ready to tell your story? Reach out to us today.
