Advisors who aim to grow their firms beyond organic referrals often find the traditional marketing techniques frustrating. Following are a few niche marketing techniques for financial advisors to help them define and reach their target audience.
Define Your Target Niche’s Profile
To start developing a functional marketing plan, you need to determine your target market first. This market can be female business owners, divorcees or dentists. Next, take some time to create a comprehensive profile of this audience. Not only will this assist you in your marketing efforts and strategic planning, but the process can also uncover significant hot buttons and various marketing opportunities. Make sure you consider the pressing financial concerns, reasons for changing advisors, questions about financial future, risk tolerance, substantial financial goals, specialized planning needs, location and personal passions. Other factors that can also be examined include gender, age range, employers and occupation, favorite websites and publications, memberships, interests and hobbies, events attended and forms of entertainment.
Come Up with a Targeted Message
More often than not, advisors define their target audience as “anybody with money”. The difficulty with a broad audience is that the message can become generic and watered down. A firm needs to find another way to articulate a persuasive proposition. Tailoring your message along with various other niche marketing strategies allows you to address the specific hot-button concerns facing your target market. Your message then becomes more compelling to those who fit that profile.
Gain a Deeper Awareness
It is naturally less expensive and time consuming to market to a smaller subset of the population. A niche strategy enables you to communicate your marketing message to the ideal prospects repetitively over an extended period because the audience is more targeted and smaller. The more often your niche audience hears about you in a meaningful way, the more recognition and awareness you generate about your brand.
Increase Your Credibility
When you concentrate on the specific planning and investment needs of your audience, you are identified as the go-to expert in that particular area of specialization. Over time, the word of mouth builds your reputation and status as a trusted resource or perhaps as THE trusted resource. One tactic that advisors can make use of is to build credibility as a subject specialist is to write a paper solving a technical problem faced by your target audience.
