How To Turn Your Website's "About" Page into a Client Magnet

You're listening to Financial Advisor Marketing, the best show on the planet for financial advisors who want to get more clients without all the stress. You're about to get the real scoop on everything from lead generation to closing the deal. James is the founder of theAdvisorCoach.com where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard. In last week's episode, I mentioned how the 100th issue of the James Pollard Inner Circle newsletter is coming up and it will be mailed on July 1st. I talked about how I wasn't entirely sure at the time what I would write about, but one of the ideas I had was offer creation for financial advisors. Well, I want to confirm that the 100th issue of the Inner Circle will indeed be about offers. The reason I want to dedicate the 100th issue to this specific topic is because it's one of the biggest reasons why financial advisors struggle with marketing in general. Everything in marketing and business is an offer. If you are offering something that people do not want, then you will not have a successful business. One of the biggest reasons why financial advisors are not setting appointments is because people don't want to set appointments with them. That's really what it is. It's the offer is not good enough. Comprehensive wealth management is not a good offer. Main chain financial planning is not a good offer. You could be the best salesperson in the world. You could have Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, who are some of the other ones. Jordan, Belford, the Jeffrey Gettimer guy, all of these salespeople train you. You could blend them all together, create a super salesperson and it still wouldn't work. You would still fail in business if you have a bad offer because people simply will not want it. What's the secret to getting more email subscribers? Have an email list worth joining. What's the secret to getting more website visitors? Have a website worth visiting. Speaking of which, we're going to talk about websites in a little bit. But the offer is really fundamental to marketing success. The problem is that a lot of popular marketing books and courses and programs and YouTube channels and podcasts, these people who run those things have no clue how to talk about offers specifically for financial advisors. They try to improve offers with things like aggressive scarcity where they'll say, oh, 48 hours left, 24 hours left, last chance. And that works in other industries, but it does not work for financial advisors. Another technique that they use to improve offers is discounting. Quite frankly, they will discount the price in order to make it a better offer. So an offer would be something like this refrigerator is usually $3,000. But today only we've discounted it to $1,500. So you can get this refrigerator for 50% off. That is a great offer. It gets people to respond. But it does not work in financial advice and financial planning. Gary Halbert said something that I think about all the time. He said the only people who care about your business are you and your mother and even your mother is on the fence sometimes. The market doesn't care about your firm's history. The market doesn't care about your CFP or your alphabet soup. The market doesn't care about your process. The market cares about one thing and one thing only. Your offer either answers that question or it doesn't. So if you're not an inner circle member by now, it now is a legitimately amazing time to join. Just make sure you're subscribed by June 30th at 11.59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time so you can get this monumental 100th issue in the mail. I'm mailing it on July 1st every single issue. Every since I started it has been mailed on the first of every single month. So this will get sent on July 1st. If you miss it, then you are not going to get it plain and simple. All right. So business is out of the way. Let's talk about your websites about page or about us page, whatever you want to call it. Right now in America, there is a married couple sitting at the kitchen table. Let's just say it's a doctor and his wife. Their kids are in bed. They finally have a quiet moment to themselves and they're about to make one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives. They're going to hire a financial advisor. They've got three browser tabs open. They're looking at three different financial advisor websites. They're going to read all three. They're going to take this seriously and compare them and by the end of the day or night, whenever this is happening, two of those advisors are going to get the axe. They're going to lose this potential client forever or potential clients because it's a married couple. They're not going to read every single page on every single website. They don't have time for that. They're going to skim the homepage, maybe glance at the services and then they're going to do the thing that kills more financial advisor deals than market crashes, feed compression and robo advisors combined. They're going to read the about page. And if your about page reads like every other advisors about page in the country, if it starts with something like, I have over 20 years of experience or our team is dedicated to providing comprehensive financial planning solutions. I want you to understand something and I want this to land. You lost the client. You lost the client because your about page made you sound exactly like everyone else. And now your prospects have no reason to pick you over everyone else. So we're going to fix that today. The about page is the second most visited page on so many financial advisor websites. Sometimes it's the first. I rarely see that but sometimes it is the first. It depends on how you count it. But the point is more prospects read your about page than every other page on your website with the exception of your homepage in most cases. Think about what that means. For all of the money you spend on marketing and all of the time and energy and effort you spend. The huge percentage of traffic that comes from your marketing ends up on your about page. They click on you. They want to know who you are. So they go to the page literally labeled about if you spent $50,000 on marketing last year. A meaningful chunk of that money was spent driving people to read that one specific page on your website. And if that page is bad, you essentially set 50 grand on fire or at least a lot of it is on fire. I have personally reviewed thousands of financial advisor about pages over the years. And I want you to understand I am not exaggerating when I say that somewhere between 90 and 95% are just horrible. They are actively repelling prospects for reasons that I'm discussing here. The typical advisor about page is essentially a resume in narrative form. It tells me that you went to such and such university. It tells me that you have a CFP. It tells me that you have 22 years of experience. It tells me you live in Bucks County with your wife, two children and a golden retriever named Buddy. And while you're telling me all that, I'm sitting there thinking, so what? And I don't mean that disrespectfully. I mean, that's literally the question that I ask and prospects will ask when they're on your page. What does that have to do with me? What does it have to do with my situation? What does it have to do with the reason why I came to this website in the first place? So if your about page can't answer that question and answer it quickly, mind you, then you have already lost. And we are going to fix that today. I'm going to give you seven specific elements that turn an about page from a glorified resume into something that is going to turn more of your prospects into clients. Is it going to get everybody to turn into a client? No, it would be disingenuous of me to even suggest that. But it will tilt the odds in your favor. But before we get into that, I know I'm taking a long time to get to this. There's one more mindset shift that I want you to have when it comes to the about page. I really want you to get this. It's so super duper important. If you change everything on your page, if you listen to the seven elements without getting this, then it won't even matter. You're about us page or you're about page is not about you. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking James, you silly goose. The page is literally called about its design to be about me. It's an autobiography of me and my firm. No, it's not. The label on the page is about that's what the prospect clicks on. It's the door that these people walk through. But once they're inside, the question that matters to them is not who's this person. The question that matters to them is, can this person solve my problem? Can I trust this person enough to let him or her try? Those are the two questions every prospect is silently asking when they land on your about page. Can you solve my problem? Can I trust you enough to let you try? Notice that neither of those questions, it's not, where did you go to college? How long have you been in business? What credentials do you have? Those things support trust. They might do well in certain aspects, but they are not the answer. They are evidence and service of an argument that the prospect is having in his or her own mind. The argument goes like this. The prospect has a problem. The prospect is maybe approaching retirement and scared that he or she's going to run out of money. Maybe the prospect has just inherited a chunk of change or cash or however you want to say it. The prospect doesn't know what to do with it. Maybe he or she sold a business, so on and so forth, right? Whatever the problem is, this person came to your website looking for someone to solve it. Now, once he or she is on the About page, that person is trying to decide if it's you. If you're the right fit to solve these problems, so with that shift in place, let's finally, finally get into these seven elements. The first element is what I call the empathy mirror. This is the opening of your about page. It should start with the prospect. Specifically, it should start with their situation, their pain, their problem. This is the thing that brought them to your website in the first place. You're holding up a mirror to their life and reflecting it back. You're saying, before I tell you anything about myself, I want you to know that I know who you are. I see you. I understand what you're dealing with, and I know why you're here. So let me give you an example. A typical financial advisor's about us page opens like this. John Smith founded ABC wealth in 2003 with a vision of providing comprehensive financial planning to families in the greater Houston area. That's like horrible. Okay, because nothing about that sentence has anything to do with the person reading it. Compare that to this. If you've spent the last 30 years building a successful career, raising a family and stuffing money into a 401k, only to wake up at 58, wondering whether any of that is actually going to be enough, you're in the right place. The second sentence didn't say anything about the advisor. Not the advisor's name, the firm, the beginning of 2003, none of that stuff. But it accomplished something the first sentence didn't. It told the prospect, again, I know who you are. I know what you're dealing with. That is the empathy mirror. It is specific. You're describing the prospect exact situation in a way that makes the prospect feel seen. Listen up financial advisors. This is something special I'm doing exclusively for people who listen to this podcast. If you subscribe to the inner circle newsletter over at theavisercotes.com/coaching, I will send you a collection of seven copyright free emails personally written by me that you can use right away to begin getting more clients. I call these my objection-busting emails because they're designed to overcome the biggest objections financial advisor's face. All you have to do is send me an email, letting me know you'd subscribed, and I will reply back with a link where you can download them for free. I originally offered these in the May 2024 inner circle newsletter issue, and it was one of the most popular bonuses I've ever given away. Today, the seven objection-busting copyright free emails are only available to listeners of this podcast because I'm not mentioning them anywhere else. Go to theavisercotes.com/coaching to subscribe today. Now, back to the show. The second element is what I call crystal clear specificity. After you've held up this empathy mirror, the next thing the prospects need to know is who exactly is this advisor for? And what exactly do they do? And this is where most advisors completely fall apart. They write things like, I work with individuals and families to help them achieve their financial goals, or we provide comprehensive wealth management services to high-net worth clients. Just stop it. Just stop. It's nuts. When you say things like that, what you're really saying is, I'll take anyone with money. I have no specific expertise. I'm a generalist. Pick me last. The advisors who win on this page are aggressively specific. They say things like, I work exclusively with physicians within five years of retirement who have between two and $10 million in retirement assets and want to make sure they don't have to go back to work at age 70. Now that might be a little too specific, but you get the idea. The third element is the origin story. This is where a lot of financial advisors believe the about page should begin. And for the entire history of advisor websites, this is where it really has begun. It starts with something like, found it in 1998. After graduating from Wharton, John Smith spent 10 years at Merrill Lynch before deciding to start his own business, Y'all, nobody cares. Not in the way you think they care. The prospects do want to know your origin, but they don't want to know it in the way that you have been telling it. Your origin story is the answer to one specific question. Why do you do this? Why do you do this work? Why are you specifically a financial advisor or financial planner? And the answer to that question almost always lives in something personal. Maybe your dad got cheated by a bad advisor. Maybe you watched your mom struggle as a result. Well, you grew up poor. You swore that you would help other people to not have to grow up poor or whatever to something like that. Maybe you were a CPA. You got tired of seeing your clients make terrible financial decisions. Maybe you lost a parent young. You saw firsthand what happens when there's no plan or no life insurance. Those stories are gold because they are the stories that tell the prospect what kind of person you are. Now, there's a fine line between a powerful origin story and a self-indulgent one. The powerful version is really short. Okay, it just hits the emotional beat then it pivots right back to the prospect. Have a market focus. Stay focused on who you serve. Don't be self-indulgent because the self-indulgent version goes on and on and on about me, me, more of me. I did this thing. I'm really cool. Look at me. Don't do that. Nobody on the internet has the patience for your hero's journey. Oh no, I know popular marketers talk about the hero's journey. And the hero's journey can work when applied correctly in some instances, but it is not on the about us page. So tell your little story, make it short and move on. The fourth element is your philosophy statement. This is a short section again, keeping in brief, maybe 100 to 200 words where you tell the prospect what you believe. The reason this matters is that financial advice is at its core a philosophical product. Two advisors with the same credentials, the same custodian, fee structure, everything. They can give wildly different advice based on what they believe about money, risk, taxes, debt, will estate, insurance, and a dozen other things. The prospect knows this on some level. And the prospect wants to know what kind of advisor you are. Do you mesh well together? A good philosophy statement is something like this. I believe most people are dramatically overinsured on things they shouldn't worry about and dramatically underinsured on things they should. I believe the financial industry sells products to solve problems that planning would have prevented. And I believe that if you can't explain your portfolio to your spouse in five minutes, somebody is selling you complexity to justify their fees. Woo, that's a good philosophy right there. Oh my goodness, you could take that almost word for word. It would be a banger. The fifth element is what I call strategic proof. Now I'm not going to give too much away here because this is something I talk about in the inner circle all the time. I'm not going to give this type of information away for free on a podcast. But this is basically where your credentials and experience indexing nations and awards and media features and testimonials and case studies. This is where all of that belongs. Most advisors front load this stuff, but you really shouldn't do that. Strategic proof works a little bit differently. By the time you get to the proof section, the prospect is already into you. The prospect already likes you and they get what you do. They understand why you do it because you shared your origin story. And now they're asking, okay, but is this person actually qualified? And that's when your proof shows up. And when it shows up at that exact moment, every credential hits 10 times harder. But again, I'm not going to give too much information away for free. If that bothers you, I'm sorry, you can go somewhere else. The sixth element is what I call the human element. This is where you, the advisor, get to be a human being instead of AI slop and all the robot stuff out here. After all of the empathy and the specificity and the origin and the philosophy and the proof, the prospect has a clear sense of you as a professional, but they don't have a clear sense of you as a person. And in the financial services business, where prospects are essentially deciding to hand you the keys to their financial lives, the person matters as much as the professional. This is where you talk about your family if you have one, your faith, if it's relevant to who you are, your hobbies, your community involvement, the things that make you a three-dimensional human being instead of a brochure. But there's a right way to do this any wrong way. The wrong way is the generic advisor template. And I'm just so sick of seeing this. I see it all the time because again, I've reviewed thousands of financial advisor websites and it's like this. When John Smith isn't helping clients reach their financial goals, he enjoys spending time with his wife Karen, his three children, and the family golden retriever, would I say buddy, if he's a buddy or max or something buddy? I think it was buddy. John is an avid golfer and a parishioner at first Methodist church. It's just like, please make it stop. Please send help because I'm getting so tired of this. The right way to do it is to pick two or three specific things about you and say something interesting about them and tie it back to why prospects you care. I'll give you examples. Don't say you enjoy spending time with your family 'cause you hate your family, right? Why would you ever want to spend time with them? Just kidding. Say that you coached your daughter's soccer team for the last six seasons and you've never missed a game. That tells me something. It tells me you show up. It tells me you keep commitments. I actually have an inner circle member who is literally a soccer coach. He coaches a soccer team. I think that's cool. It's one of the coolest things ever. I think that's awesome Don't say you enjoy the outdoors. I see in so many like oh in my spare time I'm hunting and fishing and things like that Tell me that every September you take a week off to hunt with your brother in Wyoming in the same trip You've taken every year since you were 19 because that tells me that you value loyalty and tradition These are all things that prospect scare about when deciding whether or not to trust you by the way So that's the reason why you put that in there and I've come to believe that it's one of the reasons why the fitness and strength post Not not necessarily fitness because I'm not fit like let's be real. I am not a fit person Nobody would describe my fat slob cell as fit But they might say strong kind of strong and the strength stuff Demonstrates discipline Let's move on to the seventh and the final element is the Miscible call to action. I cannot tell you how many about pages I've reviewed to do everything else right They are so close and then they end with absolutely nothing the page just stops right this is the wrong way to do it If a prospect makes it to the end of your about page that prospect is the hottest leads you have and if you don't tell them What to do next you have wasted Every dollar of marketing that brought them here so the call to action at the bottom of your about page should be specific Single purpose and impossible to miss for most advisors that next step is one of two things either it's a direct booking link or It's a low commitment lead magnet like a guide or an assessment or a video sales letter or whatever It gets them onto your email list so you can build the relationship even more So those are the seven elements that should be present on your about page if you can put those in there You will be well on your way to getting more clients if you got value out of this episode Or you found it helpful or entertaining which is always my goal. I want to entertain you do me one favor I want you to send it to another advisor that you know and say hey look You're about us page really sucks I think you could make it better by doing what James says and that person will say thank you for pointing out my terrible about page And if you want more of this kind of marketing material the kind that actually moves the needle on your business I publish a printed newsletter every single month called the James Pollard inner circle I talked about it at the beginning of the episode the issue number 100 is coming out on July 1st It comes in your mailbox every month full of the kind of marketing tactics strategies and frameworks that I never share Anywhere else and I proved that to you because I literally said I'm not going to share this stuff on a free podcast episode These are things that I have tested in my own business things I've tested with the financial advisors that I help these things actually work Most financial advisors don't even take their marketing seriously enough to pay for great information The advisors who do are running circles around the ones who don't like they are a little appinem If you want to be in that group you can find out more at the advisor coach dot com slash coaching and I will catch you next week This is the podcast factory dot com