BLOG
Thoughts
&
Musings
Aligning Your Multiple Niches with the Firm’s Fee Structure
Think carefully before adopting a new fee structure for a niche.
Our theme for Q1 2025 is how to implement a multi-niche approach. We’d love for you to join the conversation in our Public Square.
When pursuing a multi-niche approach, it’s important to select niches that align with the firm’s existing fee structure. For example, if the firm charges a percentage of AUM, chosen niches should typically include clients with assets that meet the firm’s minimum account size. Similarly, if the firm charges a minimum fee, the niche should include clients with sufficient income to meet that threshold.
Adopting a new fee structure to accommodate a single niche can be complex and may not be profitable. Unless the firm has thoroughly evaluated and successfully implemented a new fee structure across all clients, it’s generally unwise to create an exception for one niche. If the firm is interested in testing alternative fee structures, it’s recommended to pilot the model with a small group of clients first. This allows the firm to confirm profitability and long-term viability before committing resources to a niche that may not sustain the fees under a traditional structure. Many firms that experiment with alternative fee models eventually decide to revert to their original structure.
To ensure sustainability and simplicity, it’s best for firms to maintain a standardized fee structure that accommodates all clients and to ensure that chosen niches fit seamlessly within this framework.
We Want Your Take! What unique fee structures have you used or observed working effectively with various niches? Share your thoughts in the OnNiche® Public Square!
Aligning Your Multiple Niches with Your Advisors’ Fit
Align niches with your advisors’ strengths.
Our theme for Q1 2025 is how to implement a multi-niche approach. We’d love for you to join the conversation in our Public Square.
While your firm’s niches should align with the overall mission, you’re even more likely to succeed when each advisor is matched to a niche that fits their unique strengths, interests, and resources. A strong fit ensures advisors can effectively serve the niche and remain committed to its long-term success. Use the following criteria to assess alignment:
Expertise: Advisors thrive when they bring specialized knowledge or experience to the niche. For example, an advisor who is also a CPA with a tax background may be well-equipped to work with small business owners.
Credibility: Advisors are more successful in niches where they can naturally establish authority through credentials, experience, or personal connection. For instance, a military veteran advising other veterans has built-in credibility that fosters trust.
Access: Success also depends on an advisor’s ability to engage with the niche. Advisors who have networks, relationships, or shared experiences—such as being part of the niche themselves—are positioned to build trust and connections.
Advisors are more likely to stay committed and succeed when they see quick wins due to their strengths, passion, and ability to access the niche. Matching advisors to niches they genuinely care about increases their engagement and long-term success.
We Want Your Take! If you already have a niche, what unique strengths, interests, or experiences contribute to your ability to serve it effectively? Share your thoughts in the OnNiche® Public Square!
Building a Cohesive Multi-Niche Strategy with an Overarching Theme
Align niches with your firm’s mission.
This year, we’re mixing things up! Our weekly tips follow a quarterly theme, and for Q1 2025, we’re diving into implementing a multi-niche approach. Each week’s tip wraps up with a question, and we’d love for you to join the conversation in our Public Square.
When adopting a multi-niche approach, it’s important that each niche is a good fit for the company. The way to achieve this is by setting the firm’s overarching theme or mission and ensuring that each niche aligns with it. For example, the central theme could focus on areas such as:
Retirement Planning: Target pre-retiree employees at specific companies (e.g., AT&T, Boeing) or industries (e.g., healthcare, technology).
Life Transitions: Specialize in niches such as divorce, inheritance, the sale of a business, or the loss of a spouse.
Service-Oriented Professionals: Serve individuals in service-oriented roles, such as teachers, firefighters, and military personnel.
Establishing a cohesive theme allows your firm to maintain a unified message at the firm level while enabling niche specialization. This structure ensures consistency across all niche specialties. A firm focused on community-oriented individuals achieves greater cohesion than one juggling unrelated niches, like special needs planning and startup founders.
Alignment is key to an effective multi-niche strategy. By ensuring that each niche reflects your firm’s brand, mission, and messaging, you can create a cohesive structure. With intentional planning, your niches can complement one another, positioning your advisors as trusted experts within their respective niches across the firm’s diverse client areas.
We Want Your Take! If you are considering a multi-niche approach, what overarching theme or mission will unify your niches and ensure they align with your firm’s brand and values? Share your thoughts in the OnNiche® Public Square!
Planning Your Multi-Niche Specializations
Steps to launching multiple niches.
If you are a generalist firm planning to implement a multi-niche approach, careful planning of your areas of specialization is essential. Each niche should be distinct enough to avoid overlap with other specializations and will generally be broader than the niches recommended for a single-niche approach.
Target Distinct Groups
Your specializations should target different groups of people who would not be reached through the same marketing efforts. For example, you could focus on niches such as:
Medical industry
Business exit planning
Women in transition
Each of these niche specializations requires unique marketing strategies tailored to its audience. This might involve specific centers of influence (COIs), events, campaigns, or social media channels.
Avoid Overlapping Niches
It’s important to avoid creating specializations that are too similar and might overlap. For instance, rather than having separate niches for doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators, you could consolidate them into a broader "medical industry" niche. This approach is effective because these groups often share networks and resources.
The only scenario where closely aligned niches might work is within an already specialized company—such as one exclusively focused on the medical industry—where segmentation into smaller groups (e.g., doctors, nurses, administrators) makes strategic sense.
Conduct a Client Base Analysis
Identifying potential niches begins with a thorough analysis of your client base. Categorize your clients into buckets based on:
Profession
Financial situation
Stage of life
Other defining characteristics
This analysis can reveal opportunities for segmentation and provide valuable insights into which niches to pursue.
Start Small and Expand
As a rule of thumb, I recommend starting with at least three areas of specialization to build a strong foundation for your multi-niche strategy. This approach allows for expansion as the firm grows, enabling you to add more niches over time.
We Want Your Take! If you are considering a multi-niche approach, which specialty areas would you choose to segment your clients into, and why? Share your thoughts in the OnNiche® Public Square!
Reasons to Adopt a Multi-Niche Strategy
A multi-niche approach should be intentional, not fear-driven.
This year, we’re mixing things up! Our weekly tips will follow a quarterly theme, and for Q1 2025, we’re diving into implementing a multi-niche approach. Each week’s tip will wrap up with a question, and we’d love for you to join the conversation in our Public Square.
Many firms gravitate toward a multi-niche strategy out of fear—fear that narrowing their focus too much will alienate potential clients and lead to lost business. Fear-based decisions, however, almost always lead to mediocre results. If you’re going to adopt a multi-niche approach, do it because your current strategy is already successful and you’re ready to tap into new opportunities.
You’ve Achieved Organic Growth and Are Ready to Segment Strategically. Once your firm has grown organically (e.g., surpassing $1 billion in AUM), a multi-niche approach allows you to refine your focus. Segmenting your existing client base into specialty areas fosters deeper connections and more tailored services, naturally driving further organic growth.
You’re Cultivating the Next Generation of Advisors. Empowering your next-generation advisors with specific niches provides them with a clear, structured path to grow as business developers—not just service advisors. A niche-focused strategy allows them to quickly establish credibility and build their own client base, independent of the existing leadership team’s network.
You’ve Hired Advisors with Unique Expertise. Career changers often bring deep networks and specialized knowledge from their previous industries. Leverage these built-in advantages by developing a niche strategy that enhances their connections and positions your firm as the go-to expert for those audiences.
You Have Outgrown Your Current Niche. Growth goals sometimes require expanding into new markets when you’ve exhausted opportunities in your current niche. A strategic multi-niche approach allows you to broaden your reach and achieve new levels of growth.
The power of a multi-niche strategy lies in its intentionality. Each niche should have its own dedicated champion, a clear marketing plan, and measurable goals. Done right, multi-niching positions your firm not as a generalist trying to appeal to everyone, but as a collection of uncomparable experts uniquely suited to meet diverse client needs.
We Want Your Take! Do you agree that a multi-niche approach works best when built on success rather than fear? What other reasons might inspire you to adopt this strategy? Share your thoughts in the OnNiche® Public Square!
Year-End Roundup: My Top Business Book Picks of 2024
My top business book picks of 2024.
Admittedly, I didn’t read as many business books as I would have liked this year. After discovering Libby, I found myself more drawn to books for entertainment. However, it’s a tradition to share my favorite business books in the final edition of The 52 each year, so I’m highlighting the two I recommend.
The Visible Expert Revolution: How to Turn Ordinary Experts into Thought Leaders, Rainmakers and Industry Superstars by Lee Frederiksen, Elizabeth Harr, and Karl Feldman
This book provides actionable steps to help you become a true thought leader in your niche.
Scorecard Marketing: The Four-Step Playbook for Getting Better Leads and Bigger Profits by Daniel Priestley and Glen Carlson
While this book was written primarily to promote their software, ScoreApp, the authors’ marketing insights will inspire fresh approaches to building your campaigns.
Wishing you all a happy new year filled with great reads and even greater successes!
Create, Curate, and Collaborate
A simple content framework for niche marketing.
This tip was adapted from a tip from May 2021.
Content strategy can be overwhelming, but boiling it down to three components—Create, Curate, and Collaborate—makes it far more approachable.
1. Create
This is your chance to showcase your unique voice and expertise. Original content positions you as a trusted authority within your niche. Examples include:
Writing blogs or white papers
Recording podcasts or videos
Designing infographics
Focus on topics that resonate with your niche and solve their specific challenges.
2. Curate
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Sharing high-quality, relevant content from others adds value to your niche while saving you time. For instance:
Sharing an insightful article or research report
Highlighting industry trends or statistics that are particularly relevant to your niche
Curated content demonstrates that you’re in tune with your niche’s interests and keeps your content mix diverse.
3. Collaborate
Team up with other experts who serve the same audience. Collaboration builds credibility and expands your reach. Examples include:
Guest appearances on podcasts
Co-hosting webinars with centers of influence (COIs)
Partnering on articles or joint projects
By blending these three approaches, you can develop a well-rounded content strategy that engages, informs, and builds trust with your niche audience. Where will you start—creating, curating, or collaborating?
Want Quick Marketing Results? Focus on Volume
Do a full-court press when you want fast results.
This encore tip was adapted from a tip originally posted in December 2022.
If you want to get your marketing to work quickly, focus on volume. Can you have 10 conversations with leads, networking contacts, or centers of influence every day? Can you create original content multiple times a week? Can you interact with your niche on social media for one hour each day? Can you host a workshop twice a week? Can you do a podcast weekly?
Quick results require getting in front of a lot of people frequently and consistently. Don’t believe me? Look at the marketing of professionals you notice and make a note of how often you see their marketing.
You don’t have to keep up this pace forever. Once you get your marketing flywheel going, you’ll generate new prospects with less effort. But to achieve results quickly, you have to do a full-court press.
Stand Out by Doing What Others Aren’t
Look for low competition and underutilized strategies.
In my nearly 20-year career in marketing for financial advisors, one trend stands out: The greatest opportunities often lie in doing what others aren’t. In 2008, advisors who embraced social media stood out and thrived. Then came SEO, followed by Google reviews. Once these tools became mainstream, the competitive edge faded.
So, where’s the next untapped opportunity? It might involve leveraging lesser-used technologies or platforms that others are overlooking. Or, in my opinion, it could mean revisiting older, underutilized tactics like direct mail or live events—tactics that have been set aside in favor of digital alternatives.
Staying ahead requires creativity and a willingness to experiment. Look for areas where competition is low, and don’t shy away from exploring strategies others may dismiss. The key to standing out in a crowded market is doing what others aren’t.
10 Key Marketing Lessons Financial Advisors Can Learn from the 2024 Election
Apply election strategies to your marketing.
The 2024 election revealed key marketing strategies that financial advisors can apply to their own practices. Like politicians, advisors face the challenge of engaging people who may not naturally gravitate toward their area of expertise. By examining what worked—and what didn’t—advisors can refine their efforts to connect with their audience and achieve meaningful results. Here are 10 key lessons:
Strategic Spending: Money alone won’t drive results. Focus on targeted, thoughtful campaigns rather than large, unfocused efforts.
Leverage Influencers: Use trusted voices like podcast hosts or community influencers to gain awareness with audiences who may not naturally gravitate toward financial topics.
Diversify Channels: Relying solely on traditional media isn’t enough anymore. Spread your message across platforms your audience uses.
Focus on Action-Takers: Prioritize efforts toward those most likely to take action, such as hiring you, rather than measuring success by social media likes or comments.
Tailor Content: Use AI or data to customize your message to your audience’s pain points.
Test and Iterate: Continuously refine your message and tactics based on what performs best.
Localize Messaging: Customize your content for clients in different locations to make it more relevant.
Avoid Overtexting: While inexpensive and easy to deploy, excessive or unnecessary text messaging can damage your reputation with your audience.
Engage Authentically: Build trust through meaningful, genuine interactions rather than aiming for viral moments.
Consistency Over Virality: Sustainable relationships with your audience matter more than fleeting attention.