Why every advisory website says the same thing

Comprehensive, personalised, client-focused, independent. Four words that appear on nearly every firm's site and distinguish none of them.

Why it happens

Because saying something specific means excluding someone, and every firm is afraid of excluding anyone.

The result is copy that is technically true of your firm and equally true of four hundred others.

The compliance excuse

Regulation constrains claims about results. It does not constrain describing what you do, who you do it for, and how you work.

Blaming compliance for a vague website is usually a way of avoiding a harder decision about positioning.

Name who you are not for

The fastest way to be chosen by the right client. A firm that says it is a poor fit for people who want to trade their own account has told a reader more than three paragraphs of adjectives.

Every sentence that could appear on a competitor's site is a sentence doing no work.

Describe the mechanism

Not "personalised service." What actually happens. How often you meet, who they speak to, what you do between meetings, how decisions get made.

Specifics are inherently differentiating because no two firms actually work the same way.

State the boundary yourself

What you do not do. Your affiliations. Where your interests and the client's diverge.

Published up front, a limitation reads as confidence. Discovered later, the same fact reads as concealment. Same information, entirely different effect.

Say fees

Most firms do not, and clients notice. Being one of the few that does is differentiation available for free.

The test

Delete your firm's name from the page. If a reader could not tell which firm it belongs to, it is not describing your firm.