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November 09, 2017 at 07:00 PM
Relying on organic referrals alone may not be enough to grow your firm as much as you’d like, but trying to get new business from traditional marketing techniques can be ineffective. We’re all exposed to marketing messages every day, making it hard to stand out from the masses. How, then, can you achieve specific, measurable results from your marketing activities? It may help to focus on one specific subset of individuals you’d like to work with. By narrowing your message to this niche audience, you can position yourself as the expert for that group and develop a name as the preferred provider for them.
Why Specialize?
According to CEG Worldwide, 70 percent of top financial advisors (i.e., those earning at least $1 million annually) focus on a niche. These advisors are specialists with expertise in solving particular problems for a very select group of people with similar needs. Here’s what I want you to take away from this data: Specialization makes your firm more attractive than those offering general services to a broader audience.
Who’s Your Target?
To begin developing a specialized marketing plan, you first need to determine your target market (e.g., female business owners, dentists, or divorcees) and create an extensive profile of this audience. This process will help guide your strategic planning and marketing efforts, plus uncover critical hot buttons and marketing opportunities.
As you create a profile of your target market, it might be helpful to think about this group in the following ways:
- Top financial concerns
- Questions about financial future
- Reasons for switching advisors
- Goals
- Risk tolerance
- Specialized planning needs
- Personal passions
- Location
- Gender
- Age
- Occupation
- Memberships
- Favorite publications and websites
- Hobbies and interests
- Accountants, attorneys, and centers of influence
- Events attended
What’s Your Message?
Once you’ve identified the hot-button issues facing your target market, you’ll want to tailor your message to help address those issues. When you do this, you’re likely to find that your message becomes more persuasive to those who fit that profile. Let’s look at an example to help illustrate this point.
Mike is an advisor who targets highly compensated corporate executives between the ages of 45 and 60. His goal is to tailor his marketing messages to executives who need to sort through complicated benefits packages, lack the time to adequately plan their finances, and may even want to retire early from their frenzied lifestyle.
So, how can Mike tailor his message? One strategy is to package it in a format preferred by corporate executives: a simple résumé. Knowing that his clients evaluate potential employees via a résumé, Mike can use this traditional format to showcase his own experience in the financial services industry.
What Marketing Activities Will You Pursue?
A niche strategy allows you to communicate your marketing message to your ideal prospects repetitively over a longer period of time because the audience is smaller and more targeted. The more frequently your niche audience hears about you in a meaningful way, the more awareness you generate about your brand. One way to do this is by interacting regularly with your target market, as illustrated in the following example.
Carol’s target market is women who are experiencing a financial transition (e.g., retirement, divorce, or the loss of a spouse). She participates in a women’s golf league and has made many friends within the group. Although it’s a social activity, joining the league opened opportunities to interact with the group on a business level as well.
