Unlocking Your Unique Value as a Financial Coach

The Journey to Rediscovery

For months, I felt disconnected from the brand in my own financial coaching business, Fiscal Fitness Phoenix. My website didn’t feel like me, and my messaging was all over the place. I had hired a marketing strategist that took things in a direction I didn’t love and wasn’t aligned with. One day, I woke up thinking, “What the hell is this? This isn’t me…” So I put up a temporary website and called it good for a while.

But here’s the thing: 85% of our clients at Fiscal Fitness come from referrals, so redoing my website simply wasn’t a priority. I knew that when I did tackle it, I wanted to do it right. Not fast, not efficiently, but totally right.

It took me 8 months of completely clearing my mind of anyone else’s awesomeness to find my own voice again. The result? A website I love, messaging that feels authentic, and a clear vision of the value I bring to my clients. Now, I want to help you feel the same way about your business.

Understanding Your Client: The Power of Personification

Let’s start with creating a vivid client persona. This goes way beyond basic demographics – we’re talking about getting inside your ideal client’s head. Your client persona is imagining just one person. It’s personifying your niche into one individual that you can see and imagine yourself talking with.

My client persona is Sarah, she’s 35-45 years old, lives in the suburbs of a medium to large city. Here’s what I included in my persona:

• Her life phase (single, married, kids, no kids, working, etc)
• Values
• Relationship with self
• Current situation vs desired situation
• Outlook on the future
• Biggest daily challenge
• Biggest desire
• How her friends would describe her
• Her relationship with material things
• Relationship with money
• And so much more…be sure to listen to the whole episode to hear what else I included!

This level of detail might seem excessive, but it’s crucial. It helps you focus your brand voice and build a genuine relationship between your brand and your client.

The Client Conversation: What Resonates?

Once you have your persona, imagine having a conversation with them. What might they respond positively to? For me, it’s personalization, empathy, and future-focused planning. My clients don’t care where their money went last month. They just don’t. Yours might.

Your clients might prefer tough love – it’s all about understanding their unique needs. When I didn’t like my marketing for a while, this was a big part of it. Everything was this very “hard” approach – like a coach who yells in your face to motivate you, which is just not my style of coaching or communication at all.

The Big Picture: Your Point of View

Step back and consider your overall perspective on money and coaching. What’s your philosophy? How do you see your role? For example, I think the cookie-cutter approach to money is dangerous and doesn’t help most people. That’s been my view of our industry for a very long time, and while that’s not such a disruption nowadays, when I first started saying that back in the day, it was unique.

Owning and claiming your point of view is a really important piece of your brand message. Take some time to consider what your point of view is as a whole. What do you think about money? What are some of your philosophies?

Understanding the Competitive Landscape

Identify potential alternatives to your services and why they might not be the best fit for your ideal client. For example, they could do nothing, they could use an app, they could try to educate themselves using Google – those are all alternatives to your client hiring you.

Also, list 3-5 specific competitors and consider the gap you can fill with your unique approach. I know this can put you in a bit of a funk, but remember, money struggles are a very pervasive problem – there are plenty of people who need help and more than one person can occupy a space and be successful.

The Buyer Thought Process: Beyond Cost and Credentials

This is where many coaches make assumptions that can hurt their business. Let’s break it down into three components:

1. Reasons for Hiring a Financial Coach
2. Evaluation Factors
3. Possible Hesitations or Objections

Surprisingly, cost and qualifications often aren’t top priorities for clients. For my clients, factors like customization, coaching approach, ethics, trust, clarity, and ongoing support rank much higher. In fact, cost and qualifications are #13 and #14 on my list of 14 factors!

The Danger of Misaligned Messaging

Your marketing content can inadvertently train clients to care about things that don’t align with your coaching style. For example, if you constantly focus on cost-cutting tips, you make price a primary factor in their decision-making process.

I once reviewed a coach’s funnel from their podcast to their website to their freebie to their first few emails, and this misalignment of messaging was exactly what was happening. The overall difference was there was one message that was all about how you need to invest time and effort into managing your money, and then there was this messaging too that was like “managing your money is fun and it’s totally cool to geek out on money and it can be easy…”

Real-World Example: The Dave Ramsey Subreddit

I once saw a post that perfectly illustrated a client’s thought process:

“I got an email today for their one day $11 sale, but I’m still thinking about the $10 sale they did last year, do y’all think it could repeat? Or is $11 probably our lowest? I have some friends and family I know could greatly benefit.”

This reveals so much about what this particular customer values and how they make purchasing decisions. It’s clear they care about cost or price over value – they would rather save $1 than provide the benefit to their friends and family.

Addressing Client Hesitations

What’s stopping your ideal client from hiring you? For my clients, privacy concerns and a belief that they should be able to manage finances on their own are bigger hurdles than cost. That desire for self-reliance is why I talk a lot about how it’s OK to ask for help. I give lots of examples of ways we hire people to help us all the time and draw a connection between those things and getting help with your money.

The Power of Personalization

Remember, each client has different opportunities, privileges, and risks. That’s why personalization is key when creating a financial plan. In the Client Creator Challenge, we give coaches weekly prompts for their social media posts, but the coach still has to write the post. They can even share whatever they come up with us, the coaching team, and we’ll proofread it and spruce it up for them, but only they can write it.

Taking Action: Your Next Steps

1. Create your detailed client persona
2. Identify what they respond positively to
3. Clarify your point of view and philosophy
4. Analyze the competitive landscape
5. Define your buyer’s thought process

This work isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Consider forming accountability pods with other coaches to work through these questions together. Post in Financial Coaches Unite, our free community on Facebook, and find people you can meet with and tackle just one of these questions each week.

Whether you’re a new coach or you’ve been in business for years, this process can help you refine your message and truly connect with your ideal clients. It’s about understanding yourself, your clients, and how you can uniquely serve them.

Remember, your goal isn’t just to sell a product or service. It’s to understand your client’s needs, problems, and aspirations, then align your offer to solve their problems and fulfill their needs. The difference between scam marketing and honest marketing is whether your goal is to compassionately understand and speak to these emotions or if your goal is to evoke these emotions.