01 · Google
The first move
They search your name, often with "financial advisor" attached. Whatever owns page one owns the story, whether you chose it or not.
Presence audit · For advisors going upmarket
The Sniff Test. What a referred prospect finds.
Before a referred prospect ever calls, they look you up. This is what they find, and whether it earns the call.
Companion to The Positioning Blueprint. Runs in Claude or ChatGPT.
Free · PDF
For financial advisors
Presence Audit · Vol. 01
The Sniff
Test
Test
What a referred prospect finds when they look you up.
DI//ONKeir Dillon
The Premise
You are looked up before you are hired.
Trust is the whole game, and most of it gets decided before you are ever in the room. Think about your own behavior. When was the last time someone recommended something that actually mattered, a doctor, a contractor, an advisor, and you didn't go look them up first? You did. Everyone does. That search is the real interview.
A referral gets you in the door. It does not close anyone. You were referred for a reason, usually some version of your value proposition. The prospect takes that reason and quietly verifies it across everywhere you show up. If what they find confirms it, trust compounds. If what they find is generic, contradictory, or absent, the referral leaks out the bottom and you never know it happened.
The higher up market you go, the more this matters. Bigger clients do more diligence, not less, and they are far more sensitive to a presence that doesn't match the introduction.
Where the sniff test happens
Four surfaces. One verdict.
It doesn't happen on a single page. It happens across four surfaces, in about four minutes, and the prospect blends them into one feeling. Most advisors have never looked at all four together as one system. The prospect always does.
02 · LinkedIn
The professional read
Your headline and About either restate the reason you were referred, or read like every other advisor's template.
03 · Instagram
The human read
Increasingly checked even in finance. Does the person here match the professional on LinkedIn, or are they two people?
04 · Website
The deep read
The surface you fully control. That makes a generic or stale site the most expensive miss of the four.
What a coherent presence requires
Five things have to be true.
Run every surface through these. The audit prompt below scores each one for you, but read them first. They are the standard the whole tool is built on.
01
Coherence
The same person shows up on every surface. Same value proposition, same audience, same promise. The fastest way to fail is to be three different advisors across three different platforms.
02
Differentiation
Swap your name for any other advisor's. Does your copy still read as true? If it does, you're invisible. You wrote the words everyone in your category could have written. The reason you were referred has to be unmistakable, not implied.
03
Narrative Control
When someone searches you, do you own the story, or does the algorithm? Page one should be the narrative you'd choose, populated by things you made, not things that merely mention you.
04
Proof · Compliant
Visible evidence that you do what you claim. For advisors this is where it gets delicate: the instinct is to reach for client wins, and that is exactly the wrong move. Read the note below.
Compliance · read this
Build proof without testimonials.
Under the SEC Marketing Rule, testimonials and endorsements about advisory services are heavily restricted. So this audit builds proof a different way: your body of work, the consistency of showing up, credentials, third-party features and press, and educational content that shows how you think. Compliant proof is slower to build, which is precisely why it's a moat. Your competitors won't do the patient version. (Not legal advice. Confirm anything client-facing with your firm's compliance team before it goes live.)
05
The Sniff Test
The net effect. If someone referred you for your value proposition, and a skeptical prospect spent four minutes verifying, would they walk away more confident or less? This is the score that decides the outcome. The other four are the reasons behind it.
Before you paste
Gather your surfaces.
Five minutes of collection makes the audit ten times sharper.
Your name, exactly as it appears publicly
Including any middle initial or credentials you actually use.
Your Google results
Search your name + "financial advisor." Copy the top result titles, or screenshot page one.
Your LinkedIn headline and About
The full headline and the entire About section, pasted as written.
Your Instagram bio and recent posts
The bio verbatim, plus a one-line description of your last six posts.
Your website homepage
The main headline and first paragraph. No site? Write "none." That is itself a finding.
The reason you get referred
In one sentence. The thing people say when they send someone your way. The benchmark everything is measured against.
The tool · Two passes
Run it on yourself.
Gather your surfaces with the checklist above, then paste everything into Claude (preferred) or your LLM of choice. Pass 01 scores you and names the one fix. Pass 02 rewrites your weakest surface. Run it in the same conversation so the model keeps the context.
You are a brand and presence auditor for financial advisors. You understand that for advisors trust is the deciding factor - especially moving up market - and that a referred prospect quietly verifies an advisor across Google, LinkedIn, Instagram and their website before the first call. You also understand U.S. compliance: under the SEC Marketing Rule, testimonials and endorsements are heavily restricted, so "proof" must never depend on client quotes about advisory services or performance.
Here is everything a prospect would find when they look me up:
- MY NAME:
- WHAT I WANT TO BE KNOWN FOR (the reason someone refers me):
- WHO I'M TRYING TO REACH (and whether I'm moving up market):
- GOOGLE (titles/snippets for my name + "financial advisor"):
- LINKEDIN (paste my headline + About):
- INSTAGRAM (paste my bio + describe my last 6 posts):
- WEBSITE (paste my homepage headline + opening copy, or "none"):
Audit me across five dimensions. Score each 1-10 with a one-line reason:
1. COHERENCE - same person on every surface?
2. DIFFERENTIATION - swap my name for any advisor's. Still true? Then I fail.
3. NARRATIVE CONTROL - do I own page one, or does the algorithm?
4. PROOF (COMPLIANT) - evidence without testimonials/performance.
Flag anything resembling a client endorsement as a risk to remove.
5. THE SNIFF TEST - after 4 minutes, would they be more confident or less?
Then give me:
- THE VERDICT: one paragraph. Do I survive the sniff test today?
- THE ONE FIX: the single highest-leverage change. Not a list.
- COMPLIANCE FLAGS: anything that could trip the SEC Marketing Rule.
(You are not my compliance team - flag it and tell me to confirm.)
Be direct. I'd rather hear it now than lose the client later.
Tip: screenshot your Google results page and paste the image in too. The model can read it.
Using the audit you just ran, rewrite my weakest surface so it passes the sniff test.
My positioning: [paste your positioning statement - if you don't have one yet, run The Positioning Blueprint first, then come back].
Rewrite [ my LinkedIn About / my IG bio / my website headline ] so it:
- says the same thing as my other surfaces (coherence),
- could only be me - no line any advisor could claim (differentiation),
- makes the reason I'd be referred unmistakable in the first two lines,
- contains zero testimonials, performance claims, or specific product
recommendations (compliance),
- sounds like a person, not a brochure.
Give me two versions - one tighter, one warmer. Then tell me which you'd pick and why.
The root cause
If the surfaces don't match, the leak is upstream.
When the audit says your presence is incoherent or undifferentiated, the instinct is to go fix the copy. Sometimes that's enough. Often it isn't, because there was never a single position for the surfaces to express. You can't make four surfaces say the same thing until you've decided what that thing is.
The two tools are a sequence: decide, then prove.
First
The Positioning Blueprint
Pick the lane. Pressure-test it until it holds. The three-pass system that turns "I help people with their money" into a position only you can own.
Get the blueprintThen
The Sniff Test
Make every surface say the one thing you committed to, and verify a referred prospect would trust you before the call.
You are hereThe honest claim
This won't build your reputation for you.
It tells you the truth about the one you already have, before a prospect does. The work of becoming someone worth referring is still yours. This just makes sure that when the referral comes, your presence confirms it instead of quietly talking the prospect out of the call.
Get the audit
Want me to run it with you?
Comment AUDIT on the post and I'll send the full Sniff Test (this page, the PDF, and both prompts) straight to your inbox. Or take it now.
Free · the full audit, both prompts, the checklist