Your Niche is More than Who You Serve

Why Self-publishing a Nonfiction Book Is So Dang Expensive

This is a guest post by best-selling author, coach, and speaker Stacy Ennis.

Writing a book is a lifelong dream for many. Part of what keeps it in the "dream" category is the sheer amount of effort, time, and cost.

That said, for those looking to write a nonfiction book to help them reach the next level of their business and impact, the investment is worth it. While the investment of time is substantial—and powerful!—I'll keep this discussion focused on what publishing a book might look like in terms of money.

On average, my clients spend anywhere from $15,000 to $100,000+ publishing their books. Many spend around $20,000 to $60,000. Yes, you read that right: tens of thousands of dollars to publish a book.

Say whaaaat?

I know it sounds crazy. But in certain situations, that kind of dollar amount makes sense. For them, a book is a marketing spend for their business or a catalyst for their next level of impact. Their investment includes world-class design, strategic marketing (including PR), and other smart spending.

You might be thinking, “But even $15,000 sounds wildly steep!”

I get that too. Spending the equivalent of a used car on a book sounds . . . well, ridiculous. But if you have the funds and a clear purpose behind the investment (and path to ROI), let me assure you it’s not.

Here’s the thing: you can spend almost nothing to publish a book. If you totally DIY everything, you can get by with a few hundred dollars.

But if you want to publish a best-seller quality book, it requires an investment. Just consider this short list of some of the support you may need to hire:

• Book coaching or education

• Substantive/content editing

• Copyediting

• Proofreading

• Cover design

• Interior book design

• Copywriting for book jacket and marketing materials

• ISBN (the unique numbers that identify your book for sale)

• E-book conversion

• Audiobook production

• Website design (and copywriting, proofreading, etc.)

• Marketing and publicity

• . . . and the list goes on

Each of these tasks are performed by humans who earn their living doing the thing you hire them for. Editors edit for a living. Designers design for a living. So just as you’d expect to pay a doctor for her expertise in medicine, expect to pay an expert for her expertise in books.

The thing is, for most of my clients, they will make back their investment many times over. Not through book sales but through the many doors a book opens for them: speaking engagements, new clients, and more. A client once said to me, “A book is worth a million dollars in revenue.” I have seen that to be true time and again.

(A side note: publishing a novel is a different discussion entirely, so please know I am speaking specifically to nonfiction books that have a tie to a bigger purpose—a catalyst to your impact.)

Let me encourage you with this: that investment doesn’t happen all at once. On average, when done efficiently and with excellence, a book takes nearly two years from start to publication. So don’t expect to plop down $20,000 today. Take it one step at a time and at the pace of cash, with a clear view of how that book will return your investment.

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About Stacy Ennis, M.A.

Stacy Ennis is a best-selling author, coach, and speaker on a mission to help leaders clarify their ideas and harness their unique story to make an impact. She’s written or ghostwritten 17 books, coached dozens of authors, and impacted thousands of people through her work. Learn more at stacyennis.com.

Design Your Business Model Around Your Niche

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.

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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.

The 52: “Marketing Is Far Too Important to Be Left to the Marketing Department”

“Marketing Is Far Too Important to Be Left to the Marketing Department”

This quote from David Packard, Co-Founder of HP, sums up the importance of marketing in your business.

The most successful financial advisory firms I have worked with over my career have been highly engaged in their marketing. While they hired marketing professionals or internal staff to help guide and implement their strategy, the companies’ leadership always took ownership.

Many advisors don’t like marketing and would prefer to outsource it and forget it. But marketing is the lifeblood of your business. It’s how you bring in revenue and grow your business. While you should hire experts to help you, always be engaged in your marketing. That is the best way to guarantee marketing success.

The 52: Plant Seeds in Your Content

Plant Seeds in Your Content

When writing blogs, creating videos, presenting to groups, or recording podcasts, lay the groundwork to encourage your audience to hire you. Do this by planting seeds throughout your content that help your audience envision working with you.

For example, when presenting, you can drop phrases like:

“When I implement this cash management strategy for my clients …”

“If we were to work together, we would create a cash management plan for you.”

“A new client hired us just last week to solve this exact problem.”

You’d be surprised how many people who consume your content don’t know that you are accepting clients. Overcome this by planting seeds throughout your content to make it clear you work with people just like them and are accepting new clients.

Marketing Funnels are Ineffective for Advisors

Should You Build a Marketing Funnel?

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.

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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.

The 52: Don’t Bad-Mouth Other Advisors

Don’t Bad-Mouth Other Advisors

You probably don’t bad-mouth your competitors by name, but have you ever said something to the effect of “Some advisors will sell you an annuity you don’t need,” or “Widows are vulnerable to predatory financial advisors"?

When you disparage other advisors, you plant a seed of doubt for all advisors, including yourself. How does the prospect know you aren’t a predatory advisor? They don’t, and you may end up scaring them into inaction.

Instead of painting your competition in a negative light, paint yourself in a positive light. For example: “We find that 9 times out of 10, there are better, less expensive options for our clients than annuities, which is why we don’t recommend them.” Or: “Our clients choose us because they want a financial advisor they can trust to look out for them during this vulnerable time.”

The 52: "Never Confuse Movement with Action"

"Never Confuse Movement with Action"

This quote from Ernest Hemingway serves as a warning for how to spend your marketing time. Action is the process of doing something to achieve an aim,[1] while movement is the process of moving.[2]

In marketing, action comprises activities with clear outcomes, like calling a center of influence, pitching a topic to present to an association, or following up with a prospect. Deliberate action takes you closer to your goal and produces tangible results.

Movement, on the other hand, is going through the motion of low-impact activities such as changing minor wording on your website or writing superficial comments on social media posts. Because movement fills your time, it can deceive you into feeling satisfied that you took action, but the truth comes out when you don’t see results.

If you aren’t getting the marketing results you hope for, ask yourself, are you confusing movement with action?

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Sources:

1. https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/

2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/movement

The 52: How to Generate Content Marketing Topics

How to Generate Content Marketing Topics

Struggling to come up with topics for your blogs or videos? Take notes after you meet with prospects about the situations they face. This information will direct what to address in your content. Specifically, make note of:

• Triggering events. What life event triggered them to reach out to you in the first place?

• Primary financial concerns. What is their primary financial concern or frustration?

• Goals and aspirations. What is their ultimate goal or aspiration?

• Services and solutions. What services or solutions do they say they need, even if you don’t offer them?

• Words and phrases. What specific words and phrases do they use to describe their situation?