Finding Your Natural Market
Whether you’re a rookie advisor or manage a successful practice, your financial success depends largely upon thinking strategically with the clients you work with. However, advisors wanting to grow their practice often find traditional marketing strategies frustrating. Successful advisors frequently have one thing in common. They identify with and prospect to a specific niche or segment of the market with which they share common ground or other characteristics. A recent study identified that 70 percent of top financial advisors – those earning more than $1 million annually – focus on a particular niche.
Natural market
So do you have a natural market? Most advisors inherently do, but few actually use this to prospect to a specific client base. Therefore, identifying a natural market is an often overlooked growth opportunity.
Why market to a niche group?
It's much less expensive and time consuming to market to a smaller subset than to the general population. A niche strategy allows you to communicate your marketing message directly to your ideal prospects because the audience is smaller and more targeted. With this group, you speak the language, understand the issues and have some presence and credibility. It’s an easy and straightforward way to build relationships because you can easily connect. And if you can easily connect, your closing ratio will increase dramatically.
Increase your credibility
When you specialize in the specific investment and planning needs of your audience, you become known as the go-to expert for that area of specialization. Remember, the goal is to build a reputation as a trusted resource, and be known as “the” trusted resource.
Determine your target audience
By identifying a target market you will be better able to find new clients and significantly improve the effectiveness of your prospecting. Aside from age, other criteria, such as shared interests in sports, arts or social causes can help you identify members of your natural market. Here’s a list of target audiences to get the process started:
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- Affiliations
- Profession
- Industry
- Important financial goals
- Forms of entertainment
- Specialized financial needs
- Hobbies and interests
Profitability
A niche marketing strategy is also beneficial from a profitability standpoint because your clients will have specialized but similar investment and planning needs. In the end, by narrowing your focus, you are able to offer high-touch, high-value services to a majority of clients. Contact Iron Point for a no-obligation coaching call finding your natural market.