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Kristen Luke 9/2/22 Kristen Luke 9/2/22

Design Your Business Model Around Your Niche

Your niche-focused business model is more than the type of people you serve. It is what you do to help them. This article covers the four elements of building a niche-centered business model.

Advisors who successfully develop a niche practice design all aspects of their business to serve that niche. A niche is not only the “who” you work with but also the service you specialize in to help your target market. It is the “who” plus the “what.”

A niche is a deeper commitment to your ideal client in that it dictates the brand you select, the message you communicate, the services you offer, the content you create, the technology you implement, and the staff you hire.

Let me give you an example of what it truly means to niche.

Many firms describe their ideal client as business owners who are 55 to 65 years old, within five years of retirement, and delegators. They have at least $1 million in investable assets, with more assets coming in after the sale of their business.

Some firms will offer their standard retirement planning and investment management services to these business owners. There isn’t much the firm does differently for business owners than for other clients. The client just happens to be a business owner. The presentations the advisors give are on general economic and financial topics that would appeal to a mass market.

While these firms have a clear idea of “who,” I wouldn’t consider them focused on a niche. They don’t combine the who with the what.

In contrast, a firm that has designed their entire service offering around business owners would look something like this: They offer business valuation services and exit strategies in addition to investment management and financial planning. Their process and services are intentionally designed to meet the unique needs of their niche. They bring in speakers specific to the topics business owners care about, such as business succession options. They make introductions to business brokers who can help list the businesses. They offer software for business owners to do basic business valuations each year to see how they are progressing toward their goals. And they hire staff who are passionate about and have experience in serving small businesses.

In this second scenario, business owners receive greater value because the solutions are tailored to their needs and concerns.

How do you develop a business model tailored to the exact needs of your niche? There are four elements:

Proprietary Process

A proprietary process is the unique path that your company follows to achieve transformative results for your clients. Most financial advisors take their clients through a similar process: information gathering, goal setting, analysis and recommendation, implementation, and monitoring.

Your proprietary process should offer a unique way of achieving results, even if it is just changing the names of the process steps to speak the language of your niche.

Client Experience

Working with a niche will also give you the opportunity to create a unique client experience. The client experience includes your office, staff, deliverables, and technology.

What type of office environment, if any, does your client want to visit? What skills does your staff need to have? What deliverables does your niche want to see? What special technology will best serve your niche?

Services

Not all services falling under comprehensive financial planning (e.g., investment management, financial planning, retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, and risk management) apply to your niche. There also may be some services important to your niche that most advisors don’t offer. For example, if you work with business owners, you may need to provide business succession planning.

Customize your services and how you describe them to be most impactful for your ideal client. For example, if you work with multigenerational families, you may want to include “family legacy planning” instead of estate planning.

Pricing

Your pricing should reflect what makes sense for your niche. For example, you may have a niche that is high earning but doesn’t have investable assets. A traditional AUM fee model won’t work unless you are willing to take a loss for several years, hoping they’ll eventually have the assets to be profitable.

If you want to get paid for your advice when you give it, you may need to develop a creative pricing model for your niche to be profitable. You may have to consider options outside of AUM, such as hourly, project-based, subscription, commission, flat fee, and percentage of net worth.

Final Thoughts

Your goal as a financial advisor serving a niche is to become uncomparable, meaning no competitors can even compare with you in the eyes of your prospective clients. To achieve this, you need to combine the who (your niche) with the what (how you serve your niche). When designing your “what,” look at your proprietary process, client experience, services, and pricing. By specifically designing these four elements for your niche, you create an uncomparable business model.

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke is the President of Kaleido Creative Studio, a marketing consulting firm that positions Registered Investment Advisors and their employees as experts in a niche, making them uncomparable to other advisors. Over the past 16 years, Kristen has consulted with hundreds of financial advisory firms and shared her marketing expertise via industry conferences and publications nationwide. This article is an excerpt from her upcoming book, due out in 2023.

Kristen Luke 8/25/22 Kristen Luke 8/25/22

Should You Build a Marketing Funnel?

Yes, financial advisors should have marketing funnels—but only for specific campaigns. When it comes to building prospects’ trust so that they become clients, advisors need something else. They need an ecosystem.

When I ask financial advisors what their primary marketing goal is, one of the most common responses I get is “We want to build a marketing funnel.”

If you aren’t familiar with the term, a marketing funnel is a concept mostly used by online consumer product companies. A funnel lays out the steps to lead someone from a total lack of awareness about a product to the purchase of that product.

From a financial advisor’s perspective, a marketing funnel is a theoretical path that the prospective client takes from not knowing who you are, to gaining awareness, to researching you, to evaluating you, to finally becoming a client.

In consumer products, a funnel looks something like this: You, the consumer, see an ad for the company’s candle on Facebook. You click the link, which takes you to a landing page selling that candle. Suddenly, a pop-up appears, offering you 15% off your first purchase if you give the company your email address. You do and then exit the website because you aren’t ready to buy.

Now, three times a week, you get an email from this company promoting different candles. A month goes by and you click the link to a landing page and buy a candle from them. This is the funnel: Facebook ad > landing page > pop-up form > promotional emails > landing page > purchase.

The idea behind funnels is that people don’t make a purchase the first time they are introduced to a business. So, the company needs to nurture them before they can close the sale.

Let’s examine a funnel example for a financial advisor’s business. You speak at an event. You encourage audience members to visit your website and provide their email addresses in exchange for a copy of the slides. Once they fill out the form, they get a series of automated emails recapping the presentation’s key points and encouraging them to schedule an appointment. Then they schedule the appointment and become a client.

Sounds great, right? The problem is that marketing rarely works like this when you offer a high-priced, high-commitment service. Prospects don’t follow a neat funnel like marketers would have you believe. It’s common to nurture relationships for years and have dozens of touch points from all different channels.

It’s not until the prospect has a painful and urgent financial matter they need you to solve that they hire you. The purchasing process is not linear. It looks more like an interconnected network of marketing activities … an ecosystem.

A more realistic scenario is that the prospect sees you speak at an event, and they download your slides, ignore your drip emails completely, and receive your monthly newsletter (which they also ignore). But they see your name month after month.

Two years in, they are on a social media group you also belong to, and they see your comment answering a financial question that’s also been on their mind. The next time they get your newsletter, they decide to open it just to see what you are up to. They notice you are hosting a webinar on a topic that has been concerning them lately. They attend the webinar. They get a new set of drip emails that they also ignore. But they decide to connect with you on their favorite social media site and see your updates weekly while still getting your newsletter.

A year later, some sort of money-in-motion event common for their niche happens (laid off, spouse died, sold an appreciated asset, etc.). All of a sudden, they need financial help. And you are the first person who comes to mind. Finally, they schedule the appointment and become a client.

It takes time and effort to gain the trust of your prospects to hand over their life savings to you. And because it’s a relationship that usually lasts their lifetime, it’s a huge commitment on their part to work with you. Expecting people to trust and hire you because they have been funneled into your marketing process is unrealistic.

Hourly planning or commission-based services may have more success with a traditional marketing funnel because the perceived costs and commitment are low. But when you offer a service that may end up costing north of $200,000 over a client’s lifetime, funnels don’t work as they have been designed. You are not asking them to hand over $25 for a candle. You are asking them to trust you with their net worth.

Trust has to be built, and you do this through an ecosystem like the one described here.

Funnels do have value. Each campaign you implement should be designed using a funnel framework. It is a worthwhile tool to plan all the components of any individual campaign. It provides one hypothetical path for prospects to follow to become a client.

While they probably won’t follow the funnel, the structure helps shore up any holes in your process. But your overall marketing strategy should comprise a network of interconnecting and interacting parts. It should be an ecosystem.

Final Thoughts

Traditional marketing funnels are ineffective for the high-priced, high-commitment services that financial advisors provide. Instead, you want to focus on building your prospects’ trust over time. The way to do that is through a marketing ecosystem, a network with dozens of touch points in multiple channels. In this way, you nurture your prospects until they come to know and trust you and are ready to work with you.

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke 7/28/22 Kristen Luke 7/28/22

How to Generate Topics for Your Content Marketing

When starting with a niche, you may find it difficult to come up with topics for your content marketing. To get ideas, take notes about what your prospects are talking about. This article covers specific points to note to create an effective content strategy.

Most professional marketers spout the importance of content marketing. That is, creating original and relevant blogs, videos, and podcasts that provide prospects such value that they want to learn more about your business.

I agree that content marketing is an effective form of marketing, especially when selling a service based on expertise. However, content marketing for content marketing’s sake will not produce results. It is important to choose the topics that connect with your niche and encourage them to act.

The best topics are the ones that directly address your niche’s primary pain points—the ones answering the questions that are top of mind and keep them up at night. Focus on things that your niche is curious about or even afraid of. And consider topics that would be top of mind for your prospect within 90 days of hiring you.

For example, if your niche is divorce financial planning, consider the issues on a prospect’s mind before hiring a financial advisor to help with their divorce. For example, it could be “Why Getting Half Isn’t Always Financially Fair in a Divorce.” If your niche is people who have received an inheritance, a topic could be “Common Tax Mistakes People Make with Their Inheritance.”

Help your niche understand that the content is specifically for them by inserting them into the title. If you address retirement planning for business owners, then you can tailor the title to be “3 Mistakes Business Owners Make When Selling Their Business That Can Damage Their Retirement Plans.”

Whatever you do, do not include generic topics, such as economic outlooks. Every subject must be specific to your niche, use their language, and provide examples that resonate with them. If you must write about a generic topic that applies to any investor, tailor the topic title and examples to your niche.

Choosing topics when you first work with a niche can be challenging. But as you gain more experience, it will become easier to find issues to address. To help do this, take notes about the situations your prospects face. Your notes will tell you exactly what you should address in your content.

Specifically, here are the things to make note of:

Triggering Events

What event was happening in the prospect’s life that triggered them to reach out to you in the first place? In the example about women getting a divorce, the triggering event could be finding out a spouse is cheating, talking to a divorce attorney who referred her, filing for a divorce, or going through a divorce and having the gut feeling she isn’t getting a fair settlement. These are just four different triggering events for the same niche, and I’m sure there are many more.

Primary Financial Concern

What does the prospect say their primary financial concern or frustration is? For a divorcing woman, her primary concern may be “Will I have enough money to maintain the lifestyle for myself and the kids that we are all used to?”

Goals and Aspirations

What does the prospect say is their ultimate goal or aspiration? What would they like to achieve after working with you? For the divorcing woman, she may say her goal is to rebuild a life on her terms where she feels happy, confident, and secure.

Services and Solutions

What services or solutions does the prospect say they need? Make note of these even if they are not services you offer. For example, the divorcing woman may say she needs to refinance the house in her name. You note that she may need mortgage services, and you write content on refinancing a home as part of a divorce settlement.

Words and Phrases

What specific words and phrases does the prospect use to describe their situation? It will be important to reflect this wording back to your niche in your content.

For example, the divorcing woman may not say she needs to “refinance” her home. She may say she needs to lower her mortgage payment or get her husband’s name off the mortgage. These would be key phrases to write down that you could use as a topic. The topic, in this case, would be “How to Lower Your Monthly Mortgage Payments So You Can Afford to Keep Your House After a Divorce.”

Avoid using financial services industry jargon. Instead, use the language your niche clients would use.

Final Thoughts

Your content marketing can be a powerful tool in getting niche prospects to schedule a call with you. The key is to focus on your niche’s triggering events, concerns, services, and aspirations. You also want to use the language that your niche uses, not your industry’s. By speaking directly to your niche, you can get their attention and, ultimately, their business.

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke 7/20/22 Kristen Luke 7/20/22

Prospective Clients Have a Lot of Problems; Your Message Needs to Focus on Just One

When creating your marketing message for your niche, you want to articulate the one unique problem your niche faces. Here are questions to help you understand that overriding problem.

What is the one common problem your niche all shares?

Take a moment to think about your answer because it will dictate how you differentiate yourself to clients and prospects.

Answering this question is a challenge because clients often have many different problems. They need to organize their finances; they want to delegate their finances to someone they trust; they want to pay less in taxes; they need to know they have enough money to retire.

But these are common problems that most people are looking to solve. And they are problems that most financial advisors solve. They don’t help you stand out as an expert in your niche. They don’t help you become uncomparable.

Ask yourself: “What is the one unique problem everyone in my niche faces—the one that is the most painful and urgent for them to solve? The one that makes them seek out my services in the first place?”

To discover this one problem, ask yourself these questions:

What keeps your niche up at night?
What situation is your niche facing in the 90 days before they hire a financial advisor?
What hurdle do they need to overcome to reach the outcome they hope to achieve (e.g., financial independence, financial stability, retirement)?

Here are some problems a niche may face:

Irregular income leading to a lack of financial security despite having a successful career (salespeople, business owners, the self-employed)
Intense career burnout driving a desire to retire from their career ASAP (e.g., health care professionals, tech employees, attorneys)
A significant windfall creating tax implications (e.g., selling a business, being an employee of a company that experienced an IPO, selling investment real estate)
Being solely responsible for a significant amount of wealth for the first time and not knowing where to start (inheritors, widows, divorcees)

The problem you identify needs to be top of mind for the niche. It needs to be distinct to the niche and not a problem most people face (e.g., planning for retirement). It needs to be painful. And it is best if the problem needs to be urgently solved (though this is often not the case).

You want to avoid the following types of problems:

Aspirational goals. While I don’t believe in marketing on fear, clients hire you to solve a problem. “Having more money than I’ll ever need and wanting to optimize my wealth” is not a problem most people feel an urgent need to solve. Instead, turn the perspective around to solve a problem, such as “Make sure your kids don’t squander your hard-earned wealth after you are gone.”
Organizational problems. Unless you will position yourself as the Marie Kondo of wealth management, getting organized doesn’t drive most people to take action in hiring a financial advisor. Organization is an unforeseen benefit they end up enjoying, but it isn’t compelling enough for most people to seek out financial advice.
Retirement planning. Literally, everyone has this problem except for the top 1%. If you help plan for retirement, you need a unique slant specific to your niche. For example, planning for retirement by navigating the complex Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). Or planning for retirement when you are single and have no spousal or family support system.

Here are some examples of messages that highlight the one problem each of these niches faces:

Helping the Self-Employed Stabilize Volatile Income
Helping Health Care Workers Quit Their Jobs and Live Their Lives
Helping Real Estate Investors Make Tax-Smart Decisions on When and How to Sell Property
Helping Single Women Know They Are Taking Care of Themselves Financially

Of course, your clients will have more than one problem. Self-employed people have issues beyond volatile income. They also have insurance issues and retirement savings issues. But your overall marketing message does not need to say everything you do. That will just confuse your niche. Your message only needs to state the one problem that has nagged at your prospect the most.

Final Thoughts

You need a distinct, clear message to be an uncomparable financial advisor. And that message should focus on the one primary problem you solve for your niche. It will require some time on your part to come up with the one problem that resonates with prospects. But expressing the problem that keeps your prospects up at night will help them realize that you are the financial advisor to help them overcome their problem and succeed.

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke 7/14/22 Kristen Luke 7/14/22

How Financial Advisors Can Make Their Marketing Message Stand Out

To be an uncomparable financial advisor, you need a marketing message that is simple, clear, and repeated often. Here’s a framework for creating your message.

Most financial advisors look and sound the same. To a prospect, you offer the same basic services, such as financial planning, investment management, and retirement planning. You work with the same typical client: high-net-worth pre-retirees. And you charge a similar fee, around 1% of AUM plus or minus, depending on the portfolio size.

So how do you communicate a message that clearly differentiates you from the competition, making it easier for prospects to know you are the right advisor for them (i.e., become uncomparable)? You develop a marketing message that is simple, clear, and easy to remember. And you communicate this message consistently.

The best marketers in the world repeat one simple message over and over again. Geico has promoted the message that “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance” for decades. Its simplicity and repetition make the message memorable.

Financial advisors struggle with messaging because they get bored with their message and want to change it. Or they want to address all the different ways they can help a client because what they do is not simple. Even though what you do is not simple, it is your job to make it simple so people can understand.

In 1998, Steve Jobs shared his mantra of focus and simplicity with BusinessWeek: “Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”[1]

When it comes to communicating a marketing message that people remember, clear and simple always win.

The Messaging Formula

Developing an easy-to-remember message can be constructed using a simple formula:

One Client + One Problem + One Solution + One Outcome

For example:

One client: Commercial pilots.

One problem: Inconsistent income from multiple jobs and self-employed gigs makes budgeting for both today and the future almost impossible.

One solution: We have a system to help pilots stabilize their income.

One outcome: Live like a normal 9-to-5 person, knowing how much you can spend and save each month.

With this formula, your simple message is:

For commercial pilots, inconsistent income from having multiple gigs is stressful. At Aviation Capital Management, our system helps pilots stabilize their monthly income so that they live more like a normal 9-to-5 person.

That’s it! Going forward, all marketing communications (advertising, direct marketing, social media, website, printed materials, public relations, sales presentations, sponsorships, trade show appearances, etc.) reinforce this message.

For example, say an advisor at Aviation Capital Management was hanging out at the local pilots bar. The conversation would go something like this:

Pilot: What do you do?

Advisor: I’m a financial planner who works exclusively with commercial pilots.

Pilot: Oh? What do you do for commercial pilots?

Advisor: So you know how commercial pilots are always stressed out because they have at least three jobs and never know how much money they have each month to spend? Well, I help them with a process that stabilizes their income so they can live more like a 9-to-5 worker.

Meanwhile, the banner image on the advisor’s website would say:

Stabilize Inconsistent Income
Financial Planning for Commercial Pilots

And her company description on her LinkedIn profile would read, “For commercial pilots, inconsistent income from having multiple jobs is stressful. At Aviation Capital Management, our system helps pilots stabilize their monthly income so that they live more like a normal 9-to-5 person.”

Of course, when working one-on-one with clients, this advisor would address the other common problems commercial pilots face, such as:

Lack of access to retirement plan accounts by employers
Underinsured from both a liability and disability standpoint
Dealing with both self-employment and W-2 income issues

But if this advisor tried to communicate these other messages every time she told someone what she did, prospects and centers of influence would forget what she does. It’s too much information to retain for someone not intimately involved in her business.

Instead, she would address these topics in her content marketing (e.g., blogs, videos, podcasts, ebooks, webinars, and presentations). But, even then, she would make sure she always brought her content back to the core message of “stabilizing your income to live like a 9-to-5 worker.”

For example, she would develop a presentation for aviation organizations on the five steps commercial pilots need to take to stabilize their income. She would include details such as “dealing with both self-employment and W-2 income” as one of the steps to stop their feast-or-famine lifestyle and instead live like a normal 9-to-5 person.

Final Thoughts

Everyone knows Geico’s “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.” You know it because it effectively conveys the problem Geico solves for consumers. And it has been repeated for years without variation. So ask yourself, what is the problem you solve? And how can you repeat it memorably?

When creating your message, follow these three rules:

Keep it clear and simple.
Limit the number of messages you communicate to one.
Repeat this one message consistently to the point of oversaturation.

Follow these three steps to create a marketing message that makes you uncomparable and attracts your niche client.

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-15195448

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke 7/7/22 Kristen Luke 7/7/22

How to Become an Uncomparable Advisor

Here are the five components for becoming an uncomparable financial advisor.

Incomparable or uncomparable, which are you? That was the question I posed in my last article. It is impossible for a small business to be better than all the competition (incomparable), so the better way to stand out is to be so different no one can compare with you (uncomparable).

When you try to be incomparable, you get stuck in an endless race that you can never win. When you are uncomparable, you win because there’s no one else to race against you. In marketing, when given a choice between being incomparable and uncomparable, you want to be uncomparable.

I have found that the best way to become uncomparable is to own a niche. When you work with a niche, you become an expert in the one problem all the members of your niche face. And everything you create, from your business model to your marketing, revolves around solving that problem.

Because few other advisors, if any, are serving that niche, you become uncomparable. The word about you gets out, and niche members want to work with you. They’re not worried about whether you’re better than other advisors. They know you are the advisor who can help them. This gives them comfort and confidence.

And it gives you success.

Specifically, there are five components that a firm can address to make them uncomparable. These areas are:

Niche: The narrow set of clients who all share one specific problem that you solve.
Position: The simple message that communicates the problem you solve and the transformation that prospective clients can anticipate.
Expertise: The breadth of knowledge and experience you develop that shows you know how to solve your niche’s problem and lead them to transformation.
Community: The people, groups, and places where your niche interacts.
Business model: The services, process, experience, and pricing you specifically design to solve your niche’s problem.

Using this framework, let’s look at two examples—a generalist advisor and an uncomparable advisor focused on a niche.

Generalist Advisor

Company name: San Diego Financial Partners.

Target client (we can’t call it a niche in this case): Anyone with $1 million+ AUM within 30 miles of our office.

Position: We are a fee-only, fiduciary advisor helping individuals and families achieve financial peace of mind.

Expertise: We have a team of CFP® professionals to help you achieve your financial goals.

Community: The greater San Diego County region.

Business model: We employ a team-based approach to implement comprehensive wealth management services following the seven-step financial planning process. We charge fees based on AUM.

Uncomparable Advisor

Company name: Aviation Capital Management.

Niche: Commercial pilots who have irregular income streams.

Position: We help commercial pilots stabilize inconsistent income from having multiple jobs and self-employed gigs so that they can stop stressing about money and live more like a normal 9-to-5 person.

Expertise: Not only have we spent 20 years serving more than 500 pilots, but our founder is a former airline pilot herself.

Community: Airports, flight schools, and aviation organizations across the country.

Business model: We offer guidance on the following: funding flight training, minimizing taxes as a 1099 contractor, choosing the right disability insurance, creating cash flow strategies for fluctuating income, and investing in the right retirement accounts. We charge an annual fee of $5,000, paid monthly, which includes managing up to your first $500,000 in investments. We then offer low-fee investment services beyond $500,000.

As you can see, each of these five areas clearly differentiates the second advisor from the first. When you combine the unique offerings in all five areas of the framework, it becomes nearly impossible for another advisor to replicate, thus making the second advisor uncomparable.

You don’t have to complete the entire framework to start seeing success with your niche. Executing on just a combination of the components will get you there. And you will see more success as you implement each additional component and become clearly differentiated from other advisors.

Final Thoughts

By adopting the framework in this article, you move away from being a generalist advisor trying to be “better” than every other generalist advisor. Instead, use this framework to become uncomparable. Establish your company name, niche, position, expertise, community, and business model so that you stand in a field of one. Your marketing will become effortless over time as your ideal clients seek you out. Such is the power of being uncomparable.

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke 7/5/22 Kristen Luke 7/5/22

Incomparable or Uncomparable, Which Are You?

Financial advisors usually seek to be incomparable, or better than the competition. This marketing tactic creates a neck-and-neck race that they can’t win. Instead of being incomparable, advisors should choose to be uncomparable.

You are certainly familiar with the commonly used word “incomparable.” Google’s English dictionary defines it as “without an equal in quality or extent; matchless.”

But you are probably less familiar with the uncommonly used word “uncomparable.” Though your spell check and most popular dictionaries may fail to recognize the word, Vocabulary.com defines it as “such that comparison is impossible; unsuitable for comparison or lacking features that can be compared.” [1]

What's the difference, and why is it important to you? Because the difference can make or break your marketing strategy.

The easiest way to think about the difference between these two words is: “Two or more things that can’t be compared with each other are uncomparable. Something that is so good that it is beyond comparison is incomparable.” [The Grammarist]

This distinction is key as you think about the way you differentiate your business. Are you incomparable (the "best"), or are you uncomparable (so different no one can compare with you)?

I find most financial advisors think they are incomparable … the best, or at least better than their competition. When I ask how their firm is different, I get the answer of how they are better than other advisors. Usually, it sounds something like “We actually provide comprehensive financial planning” or “We get to know our clients personally.”

That sounds great, but the "we do it better" marketing approach has problems such as:

A prospect can’t determine that you are better. Whether a prospective client decides to work with you or someone else, they lose any point of comparison. They can never feel absolutely certain that they have picked the "best" advisor.

You can’t maintain being better. Let’s say you are better than other advisors, maybe even the best. What will it take for the competition to surpass you? One additional service? One more meeting per year? Being the best becomes a neck-and-neck horse race. You are under the constant stress of needing to improve to stay ahead of the competition.

The movie Something About Mary demonstrates the exact problem with trying to be better. In this scene, Ted, played by Ben Stiller, picks up a hitchhiker, and they talk about the hitchhiker’s business idea:

Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?

Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the exercise video.

Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7 ... Minute ... Abs.

Ted: Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you’re going.

Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin’ there, there’s 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?

Ted: I would go for the 7.

Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.

Ted: You guarantee it? That’s—how do you do that?

Hitchhiker: If you’re not happy with the first 7 minutes, we’re gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That’s it. That’s our motto. That’s where we’re comin’ from. That’s from “A” to “B.”

Ted: That’s right. That’s—that’s good. That’s good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you’re in trouble, huh?[2]

When you compete on “better,” you are essentially 7-Minute Abs just waiting for 6-Minute Abs to be introduced to the market.

When you position yourself as better, you have decided to play your competitors’ game. You are saying, we are just like them, only better (for now).

No small business can expect to be better than everyone (i.e., the best). The better way to stand out is to be different. When you position yourself as unique, prospects can’t compare you to any other advisor. You claim leadership in your space because there is no one else to compare you to. In other words, you become uncomparable.

How do you become truly different from your competition? How do you become uncomparable? The short answer is you own a niche.

You become an expert in solving one problem for one type of client, and you build your business model to uniquely service the needs of those people.

You focus on developing and promoting your in-depth expertise with a narrow set of clients—an expertise that is not offered by most other advisors. As a result, prospects seek you out because you specialize in solving problems for people just like them.

When given a choice between being incomparable and uncomparable, you want to be uncomparable. The first option keeps you in an endless race against the competition that you can never win. With the second option, you take the victory because there's no one else to race against you. When it comes to marketing, be different. Be uncomparable.

Sources:

[1] https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/uncomparable.

[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129387/characters/nm0005558.

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke 6/15/22 Kristen Luke 6/15/22

Year 3 Niche Marketing Plan for Financial Advisors

Financial advisors can expect their efforts to gain traction in year three of their niche marketing strategy. Here are 4 steps to keep the momentum going.

In a previous blog, I discussed the fact that it can take three years of a focused niche marketing strategy before an advisor will reach the level of exponential growth.

In year one, you talk to everyone you know in your niche and establish credibility through content marketing. In year two, you increase your content marketing, establish lead capture mechanisms, and use online strategies to drive leads.

Year three is typically when your efforts finally gain traction. Here is what to focus on in your year-three marketing plan:

1. Host Live or Virtual Events

Hosting your own events, whether in person or online, requires a large mailing list to get people to attend. By year three, you should have been building your list long enough to have enough people that you can host an event.

If your niche is primarily made up of local people, host live events. If your niche is nationwide, then do webinars or other virtual events.

The key to these events is to make them specific to your niche and their interests. Avoid generic topics that would appeal to any audience.

2. Write a Book

Writing a book is a huge undertaking, but it can be the piece that finally propels you to the status of expert. By year three, you should have two years of experience working with your niche and enough content to write a book. If writing is not your thing, you can hire ghostwriters or a service like Scribe Media to write it for you.

Once you have your book, give it away for free to everyone in your niche. You’ll never sell enough books to make up for the time and money you invested, but it takes only a handful of new clients resulting from the book to get the ROI you are looking for.

3. Sponsor Events

If there are events such as conferences or trade shows that attract your niche, this is the time to sponsor them or reserve a booth.

This step is by no means a requirement. In fact, if you are getting speaking engagements, you probably can skip this step altogether. But event sponsorships can be a good way to show your niche you are committed, engaged, and invested in their community.

4. Niche Down

After two years of working with your niche, you may find a subset within the niche that is an even better fit for you.

For example, if you work with divorcing women, you may prefer divorcing women who still have kids in the house and want to keep the home until they are off to college. Or maybe you work with business owners, but you really add value to business owners in professional services.

This is where you niche down and become more specific. This added specificity will help you stand out even more. Once you niche down, refine your website, marketing materials, and content to reflect this new subset of clients.

Final Thoughts

The first year lays the foundation for a successful niche marketing strategy, and the second year builds the framing. In year three, you begin to reap the rewards of your efforts and propel your business forward while making refinements along the way.

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke is the President of Kaleido Creative Studio, a marketing agency that helps transform Registered Investment Advisors and their employees into experts in a niche, making it easier for them to stand out from the competition and attract ideal clients. Over the past 16 years, Kristen has consulted with hundreds of financial advisory firms and shared her marketing expertise via industry conferences and publications nationwide.

Kristen Luke 5/18/22 Kristen Luke 5/18/22

Year 2 Niche Marketing Plan for Financial Advisors

In year 2 of a focused niche marketing strategy, financial advisors should consider the 6 tactics covered in this article.

In my last blog, I discussed the fact that it can take three years of a focused niche marketing strategy before an advisor will reach the level of exponential growth. In year one, you talk to everyone you know in your niche and establish credibility through content marketing. In year two, you continue those efforts and layer on additional ones:

1. Develop an Ebook or Other Lead Capture Resource

After you consistently blog for a year, you’ll find you are generating more traffic to your website. Since not all those visitors will be ready to do business with you, you’ll want a way to capture their names and email addresses so you can nurture that relationship until they are ready.

The simplest way to do this is through a PDF resource like an ebook or checklist. You can also consider an on-demand webinar. The important thing is that the resource is something that your niche will value and that you offer it in exchange for their email address.

2. Expand Your Content

Once you are in the habit of consistently creating blogs, you want to expand your content. If you like to write, you can continue writing blogs but add longer, more in-depth content. If that is not an option, increase the number of blogs you write each month (say from two to four).

This is also the time to consider developing videos to enhance your blogs or as a standalone. You can also consider hosting a podcast and inviting people associated with your niche community to be guests. Or you can start designing interesting infographics for your niche.

Only expand your content if you can consistently execute it. If blogging is already enough for you, stick to that one thing.

3. Guest Everywhere

In both years one and two, it is important to get in front of your niche as much as possible. This means looking for opportunities to be a guest speaker at live or virtual events, be a guest on podcasts, and contribute guest articles to websites or publications.

When you have an opportunity to leverage someone else’s network, you take it, no matter how insignificant. These opportunities not only build your credibility but also lead to additional opportunities.

4. Optimize Content for Search Engines

If you consistently write blogs in year one, your website will probably start to rank for some keywords your niche is searching for. In year two, you can make a more deliberate effort to optimize your content and overall website to drive more search traffic.

Search engine optimization is a pretty technical concept, so I would recommend you hire a company like Advisor Rankings to help you with your SEO efforts.

5. Utilize Ads

Year two is when you may want to use ads to expand the reach of your content. For example, you might promote your lead capture resource or the content you are already posting on social media to a wider audience using paid advertisements, usually called “promoted” or “boosted” posts.

You may want to advertise in highly targeted niche publications and websites. And if enough people are searching for your service on Google (e.g., financial advisor for dentists), you might consider using Google search ads.

Ads can complement your SEO efforts. The key to success is that your ads must be highly targeted to your market with a message that resonates with your niche.

6. Build Your Center of Influence (COI) Network

In your first year, you talk to anyone you can think of associated with your niche. In year two, it’s time to implement a deliberate and systemized effort to meet new centers of influence and nurture those relationships for referrals. It can take years of relationship-building to gain the trust required for COIs to provide a referral. Starting these efforts in year two will pay dividends in future years.

Final Thoughts

If the first year lays the foundation for a successful niche marketing strategy, the second year builds the framing. In year two, your efforts get more sophisticated as you expand your reach through a lead capture resource, new content formats, guest opportunities, search engine optimization, ads, and COI networking.

Your diligence may already be paying off as you gain traction with your niche market, which increasingly looks to you for guidance on their financial problems.

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke 5/12/22 Kristen Luke 5/12/22

Year 1 Niche Marketing Plan for Financial Advisors

It can take three years before a niche focus takes off for your financial advisory business. This article covers seven marketing steps for year one to ensure you lay a solid foundation for success.

In his 2014 article “Building a Niche Advisory Business: It Takes 3 Years for People to Know, Like, and Trust,” Michael Kitces presents the idea that it “takes about 3 years for the exponential growth of a niche to really start to take off.” That has been my experience when working with financial advisors as well.

Why does it take so long to build a niche advisory business? Kitces says that it takes “time to be known, liked, and trusted in the first place, especially as a financial advisor in our low-trust industry of financial services.” But once you gain this trust and become the go-to person in a niche, the business takes off, and marketing becomes much easier.

How fast you will grow depends on your current engagement with a niche. Kitces states that businesses that already have some connection to or presence with a niche can grow faster, while firms brand new to a niche will grow slower.

If you are committed to mastering a niche, how should you spend your marketing efforts over those three years? In this first part of a three-part series, we’ll look at what to do in year one.

The first year of building a niche business should be spent creating a marketing foundation. In his article, Kitces says this is the year you should focus on becoming known and do business with anyone in your niche you can.

So what does marketing in that first year look like? It means solidifying your message, establishing your expertise, and talking to everyone you can in your niche. Specifically, here are the steps you should take in your first year:

1. Define Your Niche

This step may seem obvious, but it is critical to get clear on who you serve. The more you “niche down” and become specific, the better. For example, “executives” is too broad. Niching down to “director-level and higher in the STEM field with equity compensation issues” will serve you better in the long run.

2. Craft Your Message

Next, you need to develop a clear and specific message that resonates with your niche. Your message should directly address their greatest financial concern or highest financial aspiration. This message needs to be simple and consistently communicated on your website and in your elevator pitch, marketing materials, and online profiles.

3. Build a Landing Page

Once you have your message, you need to develop a webpage dedicated to your niche on your existing website. If you are ready to go all-in from the start, then focus your entire site on the niche. This will serve as the hub for your future marketing efforts. It will also house all content that positions you as an expert. Finally, it provides a way for people to schedule appointments with you.

4. Blog

You’ll want to position yourself as an expert as quickly as possible. I find the best way to do this is through a blog. Not only does writing force you to learn what you need to know to be an expert in a niche, but it’s also the best way to showcase the expertise you are learning.

Having this content on your website gives you credibility with anyone researching you online. You can also submit blogs to other publications or websites as guest posts to help get you in front of more people. Finally, if optimized for search engines, blogs can drive significant traffic to your website.

5. Build your Network

Networking in the early days of your niche strategy will accelerate the timeline for results. Tell everyone you know in or associated with your niche what you are doing. Ask them to make introductions to other people in the niche—not for referral purposes, but just to expand your network. And then add all those people to your email marketing list.

The goal is to meet as many people as possible as quickly as you can. You will learn so much and start to get opportunities you can’t even imagine exist. And hopefully, your efforts will help you get your first few niche clients.

6. Nurture your Network

Staying top of mind with your niche community will yield enormous benefits in future years. To stay top of mind, create an email newsletter featuring content specific to your niche (usually your blog). Continuously build a list of every contact, prospect, and client who fits into your niche community, and send the newsletter at least once a month (more often is better).

7. Present to Groups

Try to find as many groups as you can to present to during your first year in a niche. Presenting to groups early on will open up more speaking opportunities in the future.

Develop one presentation that addresses your niche’s primary financial concern or highest aspiration, and give them the steps to solving their problem or achieving their goal. Use this same presentation for the entire year, making tweaks along the way.

The groups you speak to don’t have to be formal. You can start by presenting to a handful of clients you already work with. Or maybe you just present to friends who fit your niche. Smaller groups are better in the beginning because they allow you time to work through and perfect your material.

Final Thoughts

The first year of a niche focus will probably be the slowest and most frustrating, but stick with it. By staying on top of your year-one marketing plan, you lay a solid foundation for your niche advisory business. With your dedication and a solid niche, your efforts will be rewarded in year three and beyond, when your marketing becomes effortless because your ideal clients seek you out.