How To Create Financial Services Buyer Personas

Creating financial services buyer personas is not a particularly well covered topic in the world of finance marketing. It’s nothing new from a marketing perspective and you are more than likely already using these personas in your outreach and lead generation efforts. The only thing that you aren’t doing is referring to them on a regular basis and working around how you can help these people achieve their goals and overcome their challenges. 

So, why should you be referring back to buyer personas? Well, first and foremost they keep you on track with who you should be thinking about when you are looking for new leads. They are a constant reminder of who you are trying to help. In this article we will be breaking down how you can create your own financial services buyer persona which will help to keep you on track when looking for new clients, as well as how you can better serve the existing ones you have.

What Are Buyer Personas?

Buyer personas are defined as semi-fictional, ideal candidates that you would like to do business with. They are what a perfect client looks like to you and your business. There is no one single financial services buyer persona so it’s imperative that you think long and hard about who you work best with.

It’s really important to dig down deep into your financial services buyer persona. Quite often when we have been working with new clients, especially here in Dubai, we ask who they want to work with. The answer typically is far too broad and incredibly vague. E.g. Expats. ‘Great!’ we say, ‘but what kind of expat?” The answer that usually comes to this one is, ‘British.”

Now, consider that you are trying to help people with ISA’s. The British expat buyer persona certainly fits the bill here, but that’s still incredibly broad. Are you really interested in someone who has had an ISA for a year and has just relocated, or would you rather someone who has had it for 15 years and is desperate to continue adding money into it so they don’t lose the momentum of compounding interest?

Financial services buyer personas, as with all personas, should be as detailed as a person sitting in front of you. The more you flesh out the persona, the higher success rate you’re going to have when it comes to speaking with potential new clients, as well as helping to get them the best result. 

Why Are They Important?

Financial services buyer personas are so important for advisers and firms because they are an incredibly powerful tool that helps you stay on track in terms of your outreach efforts. Think of it as a qualifying criteria before you even speak with them. If you know what you are ideally looking for before you even start looking, you will be more likely to find them. 

It can be really easy to get lost in the features and benefits of financial services products. It’s often easy to think that everyone wants to be rich and this can mean you lose sight of what you’re actually trying to help someone achieve. Many advisers work with products and services that seem to be no-brainers, as well as with people who are their ideal candidate but can never understand why they don’t want to invest more or buy the new product. 

They forget that there are a number of objections that people will naturally have and if you have these as part of your buyer personas, then you will be able to understand why they have them and position your offering in the right way. Financial services buyer personas help you to remember that you are dealing with a person. They keep you focusing on what their main goals and objectives are and speak to them about the things that are important to them.

How To Create A Financial Services Buyer Persona

There are a few things that you will need to think about when it comes to building a financial services buyer persona. It’s critical to realise that one size doesn’t fit all, so you need to think about all of the people that you work with and think about how they differ from each other. One of the best pieces of advice we have been able to give is, ‘don’t think about what you do. Nobody cares about what you do. Think about who you work with.’

Let’s break this down a bit. Why does nobody care about what you do? Well, unless you are single-handedly solving world hunger, bringing about peace in war-torn countries and stopping climate change, the things you do for a job aren’t interesting to someone else. Especially in finance as most people have no idea what you’re talking about. 

When you tell people that you work with people who are reaching critical stages in their lives, but have no savings or an ability to pay for education fees later on down the line, this becomes a bit more interesting. It should be an immediate switch for you as an adviser. I do my best work working for these kinds of people. I help them with these specific challenges. And this is where we start our first part of our buyer persona build out; demographics.

Demographics

When building out financial services buyer personas the demographics of the people you want to know must be thought out. How old is the desired person? Are they male or female? Are they university educated? What’s their monthly income? Are they married, divorced or single? Do they have children? If so, how many? 

The level of detail here cannot be deep enough. By building out detailed demographic information you immediately start to understand a key set of qualifiers. Are you really going after people who have recently divorced, have 2 small children and a mortgage to look after? That depends on what products and services you have that may be able to help them (tax planning anyone?).

Goals, Plans, Challenges, Objectives

Now it’s time to dig into the goals and plans of your ideal clients. What do they really want to achieve with their money? Do you actually have any products and services that can help these people? Realistically, your demographic data should be able to dictate what you are able to help your clients with. 

Do they want to build wealth for retirement? Are they looking to make more risky investments for a higher yield? Whatever it is, you need to be able to easily articulate and translate this for your clients in order for them to get on board with what you are trying to offer them. 

Messaging And Language

Try selling an exhaust upgrade kit on a car to a busy mum of 2, on top of that, all whilst speaking to her in French. You may well have your demographics and goals nailed through your financial services buyer personas, but if you aren’t speaking to them in a way they can understand, or about why what you are selling them is essential, then they will never buy it. 

You have to remember that you are not dealing with your peers. Most of your clients will never have the level of understanding about the way finance works as you do. As a result, you need to speak with them about the things they care about in a manner that they can understand.

Objections

One of the key things you will need to understand and learn to overcome is objections. There are two factors at play here; trust and pain.

It’s well known that financial advisers aren’t exactly the most trusted group on the planet. No matter how good your offer is, no matter the kinds of results you have gotten for clients in the past, if your new prospect doesn’t trust you, they will never hand over their money. 

The second thing is pain. Trying to sell a 25 year savings plan to a 25 year old, whilst it’s something they really should be doing, is a difficult sell, because there simply isn’t any pain experienced. 

You will need to think about and write down the major objections you get from your buyer personas. Why doesn’t the 25 year old want to start saving? Generally you’ll hear something along the links of, I don’t really have $300 spare every month to save. At this point, you’ll probably want to break down their monthly expenditure and it’s quite likely they will be spending more than that on takeaways and time in bars. 

Getting a definitive list and then breaking down these objections before they even arise will ensure that your financial services buyer personas avoid any hidden pitfalls on the way to generating new clients.

Financial Services Buyer Personas Template

To make things even easier for you, we’ve created a template for you that you can fill out. It’s fully editable and can be reused as many times as you like. All you have to do is fill in your details below to get immediate access. 

Download The Template Now

Where To Find Buyer Persona Info?

The good news is that you aren’t starting blind when creating financial services buyer personas. You already have the info and data available to you, it might just be a bit obscure right now. As stated above, you’re going to want to create an ideal prospect. Someone who would be a magical, says yes straight away kind of client. Then we’re going to work backwards from there. The thing with ideal prospects is that they are just that, ideal. Very often what we would envisage as perfect is simply non-existent.

Your Existing Clients

You know those people whom you’re already helping? Spend a bit more time with these people and really get to know them. Invite them out for a coffee and speak with them about their lives outside of the work you do. You may well have already had some conversations with them about their goals etc… So now would be a good time to dive into those demographics. Explain to them why you are doing it with a view to helping more people and you will likely get lots of willing participants. 

Go through your client roster and see the common themes in why they are working with you. There are likely some common groupings of ages, income levels and other demographics, so use those as starting points.

Sales Teams

If you work in a large organisation, then you will no doubt have a group of people who are doing business development. You may even have a business development assistant yourself. It’s astounding how much info you can get from these people simply by asking. A lot of the time divisions within a company simply don’t speak to each other and a lot of vital information gets lost.

These people, who are speaking to people every single day, will have lots of bits of information for you that will be helpful when building out your financial services buyer personas. 

Feedback Forms

Another great tool for finding out this information is simply to ask your prospects. You no doubt have a much larger list of people who didn’t become clients than did. Why not reach out to them and ask them for their honest feedback?

Setting up a google form and firing out a link to them will result in some very insightful responses. As long as you are honest about why you are asking for this info then you will likely get honest answers back. Be prepared from some not very nice feedback, but also be prepared for some insights that you would never have thought of otherwise.

Get A FREE Strategy Session

Adviser Leads helps advisers to generate a regular stream of qualified leads on a daily basis for our clients. If you want to get a FREE strategy session (worth $1000) that by the end of, you will have a defined pathway to targeting and generating your ideal prospects on a regular basis, then fill out the form below.