Previously, I broke down how advisors don’t just evaluate features—they react emotionally first. That’s why stories outperform specs at the top of the funnel. However, this perspective presents a problem for many WealthTech marketers: you still need to explain your product. So how do you balance resonance with clarity?
Storytelling matters.ut how do you make sure they understand what the product does–and trust it enough to move forward? Advisors might be more moved by narrative, but there are a few factors that can complicate this approach to WealthTech marketing:
- Time Limitations: You might only have a few seconds of your prospect’s time - and you need to get to the point. It can be easier to quickly list features and make the rational case than drive home an emotional hook.
- Buyer Needs: Stories engage individuals, but your goal isn’t just to persuade your buyer - it’s to equip them to sell the product to their stakeholders. The problem is your story is unlikely to resonate with all of these stakeholders, which means your buyer either needs stories that will resonate with those personas - or some compelling facts and features.
- Risk Aversion: Rational pitches feel safer. No one gets fired for presenting facts. But story-driven marketing still wins—if it connects.
This may sound like a conundrum, but it’s not a choice between resonance and clarity. It’s a sequence. Emotional connection earns attention. Rational detail earns action.
The best messaging doesn’t ask buyers to choose between story and substance—it aligns them. And that alignment isn’t guesswork. It’s a process any firm can follow—if they’re willing to test what actually lands.
Four Steps to Craft WealthTech Messaging That Actually Converts
1. Map Your Decision Makers
The first step is identifying your true audience. Most WealthTech purchases must be signed off by multiple internal stakeholders - often including big players like the CEO, CFO or COO. While they are unlikely to engage with much of your marketing, there must still be a compelling message that connects your product to their specific needs and wants.
Map these personas out and assess each of them across multiple factors:
- Pain Points: What pain are they hearing about most often—from clients, advisors, internal teams, or investors? Even if the stakeholder doesn’t personally touch the problem, they’re responsible for solving it—or at least showing progress. Your messaging needs to reflect that chain of influence.
- Current Strategic Goals: How are they assessed, and what the firm is actually trying to accomplish this quarter or year? You should understand their KPIs and how they relate to specific tasks your product addresses.
- Objections: Where should you expect friction when moving a deal forward? Your marketing should be primed to get in front of these objections and position your product as addressing whatever problems they raise.
Of course, these factors will all differ somewhat at each organization you target. The goal is simply to get a working hypothesis of your buyer teams that roughly maps onto most of your ideal prospects.
2. Develop Multiple Messaging Frameworks
Most teams stop at one good message. But in advisor marketing, range wins. Use your persona research to develop a wide range of messages that could theoretically resonate with each decision-maker. This should include a mix of emotional, narrative-focused messages and feature-focused messages - preparing you to identify which kind of message delivers better results, and in which context.
The more variety here, the better. You can generate a broader range of messages by experimenting with:
- Different ways to frame your pain points. Brainstorm various ways the problem crops up in your persona’s daily life, different emotional language, and different ways to position your product as an effective solution.
- Different ways to describe your features. Explore how different levels of technical specificity change your message and how you can present different statistics or performance metrics.
3. Test Messages Across the Funnel
Run comprehensive tests to evaluate which messages resonate with your audience at which stage of the funnel. HubSpot allows you to quickly deploy custom landing pages and test varied messaging. You can pair these with paid ads (LinkedIn or Google are likely best) to test which messages drive the best results.
Advisors’ attention shifts as they move down the funnel. That’s why emotional hooks often work best early, while details close the detail. I recommend two key testing approaches:
- A/B test emotional vs. rational messages. Run two campaigns simultaneously to the same audience, at the same funnel stage, and evaluate how each performs. You may not hit statistical significance, but you’ll almost always spot clear patterns for one approach working better than the other at each stage. Note: It’s important to run multiple tests over time with different messages for each category (rational vs. emotional.) It’s always possible that you might have run a much stronger emotional message against a weaker rational one.
- Multivariate test multiple messages in the same category. Run several messages from the same category simultaneously to identify which emotional and rational messages perform best. Google Search Ads are particularly useful for this, as you can deploy numerous headlines in a single Ad Group and generate a relatively large volume of performance data in a short period of time. Though it will, of course, depend on the search volume of the keywords you select.
4. Build a Proven Messaging Framework
Leverage the data generated through your tests to develop messaging frameworks that are mapped to who’s buying and where they are in the decision process. This will help you use language and positioning that resonate at every stage of the funnel. The framework should be shared with the entire marketing team, along with your sales reps to ensure your brand message is cohesive and optimize performance across all revenue teams.
We typically find that emotional messages perform best at the top of the funnel and feature-focused messages drive more bottom-of-the-funnel conversions. But the beauty of this process is you don’t have to guess. The data shows you what actually lands.
Develop, Deploy, and Optimize Your Messages with ProperExpression
Most WealthTech firms try to scale before clarifying what actually makes them resonate. They jump into campaigns and conversion strategies—without ever answering the real question: why would an advisor feel pulled to this?
That’s where I come in.
I translate the real psychology of advisor decision-making into language that buyers recognize, stakeholders support, and marketers can use. I speak the buyer’s language and engineer a narrative that lands emotionally and strategically—so marketing doesn't just look smart, it works.
Once that narrative is nailed, WealthTech firms trust ProperExpression to build the engine to carry it to the market with precision. They scale the story across touchpoints, test what hits, and refine messaging until it performs—everywhere it needs to.
Resonance first. Distribution second.
This isn’t a funnel. It’s a force.
When message and medium align, you don’t chase demand. You become the one they’re looking for. Because getting noticed isn’t the goal—getting chosen is.
Want to find out what your best buyers are already waiting to hear?
