How do I market myself as a financial management coach with looking skanky?

March 3, 2010 9:41 AM

How do I market myself as a financial management coach with looking skanky?

I would like to start marketing myself locally as a financial management coach. This means that I would help people gather all of their bills together and assess their situation. Then set up systems using online and offline tools so that they could track spending, set up a budget and pay bills on-time.

As I ask around, the best place to advertise services is through our weekly shopper. I need to come up with a short 2-3-4 line advertisement that explains my business without sounding like a crook. The financial landscape is littered with crooks.

Any ideas? How do I market? What are some credibility indicators that I can establish?

Thanks

posted by frodoxiii to Work & Money (4 answers total)

Become a CFP.
posted by paulsc at 9:51 AM on March 3, 2010

Since the first thing on my list when I was looking for financial advice was certification, I can't really offer suggestions on how to make your ads more appealing without the letters CFP. Aside from that, my advice is, figure out who you want to work with, and tell them so, ignoring everybody else. When choosing a planner, we were looking for someone who seemed to be marketing themselves to our demographic - not looking for an major-investment manager or a bankruptcy advisor - we found someone who seemed to specialize in dealing with young professionals with positive net worth of less than 100k, which is what we needed. Make your materials clearly targeted, so when such a person reads your literature, they say "this person understands what I need to do".

Or maybe you know that already, but are concerned that since you're targeting marketing to people who don't have their spending under control, and don't necessarily have much common sense, it's the same demographic as scam targets, so anything you say will look like a scam? Avoid exclamation points and best-case scenario promises. Focus on small, local, user-friendly, customization, and personal help rather than reputation/fame and foolproof systems. You probably can't have very splashy marketing, but I think you have to rationalize that anybody who'd fall for pure scam-like flash is someone who couldn't reliably pay you anyway.
posted by aimedwander at 11:40 AM on March 3, 2010

frodoxiii, can you clarify what kind of services you want to provide? "Financial Management" may be the wrong term to use. The people who have responded so far seem to think you want to provide people with investment advice and long-term financial planning. From my reading of your question, you want to help people get out from under credit card debt, learn to pay their bills regularly, etc. Much more basic life skills, and less about financial management for people who actually money and other assets to manage.

So, what is it? I'm not sure that being a CFP is required if you're basically teaching people how to balance their checkbooks and pay their bills on time using online tools. (I don't say that to diminish the importance of the service you're offering. I think it's great. But it's different from "dealing with young professionals with positive net worth of less than 100k" &etc).
posted by alms at 7:24 PM on March 3, 2010

I think the question needs to turn back to you--what have you done to establish your credibility? I.e.--what sort of training and experience do you have that makes you qualified to perform this service as a professional?

I agree with alms that a CFP may be overkill for what you're wanting to offer. But on the other hand, if your professional experience and training consists of having successfully managed your own personal finances and reading some blogs and books, then that would be "underkill."

To put it another way--whatever credibility indicators you *have*, that's what you highlight. If you don't really have any, that's where you need to start--rather than figuring out where you're going to advertise and how to word your ad copy.
posted by drlith at 4:46 AM on March 4, 2010