In setting up your financial planning business you have a unique opportunity to focus on a very, VERY specific group of people - Seth Godin calls it your ‘tribe’ - where your knowledge base and personal passion or affinity lies.
HYPERTARGETING. What do we mean by that? Generally speaking, hypertargeting is a marketing strategy where you clearly identify a target customer and deliver extremely relevant messages in the places where they will be most likely to see it. For financial planning practices that steps up another level in that you develop financial knowledge specific to your target market – for instance if your target market is medical professionals you may become an expert in how medical practices are bought and sold, specific legislation pertaining to financial transactions in medical practices, relevant professional and personal insurances, how their equipment is financed and how the cashflow cycle effects family finances.
On the other hand, your niche may be those seeking an adventurous lifestyle – you may develop special strategies to always be investing and funding upcoming trips and challenges, search out the best insurance policies to suit that lifestyle, or get insider knowledge on how to create passive or secondary incomes to support the lifestyle and stay on track with a wealth plan.
Hypertargeting is extremely powerful because it helps you:
know and understand your customer better than anyone else
to develop a deeper personal relationship and trust
to tailor your ongoing communication and content in a very specific and relevant way. You only need to talk about issues that are going to be relevant to your subset of clients.
get qualified leads from people who are likely to become clients and avoid filling your funnel with uninterested audiences.
gain more clients by marketing the right offerings to the right customers on the right platforms.
deliver better quality advice for those particular clients
Your biggest opportunity in financial advice is taking advantage of the fact that consumers are becoming used to extremely personalised service and information. Highly tailored advice will soon be the low bar for client value. Clients increasingly expect their wealth advisors to have an intuitive understanding of their financial and personal situations and want advice customized to their preferences and goals. Too often, financial advisers are afraid if they pick a niche and speak to one target audience, they will lose out on opportunities. They get nervous about pigeonholing themselves, so they keep their options open, and do not commit to the type of client they serve.
A significant portion of your success will be determined by how much your clients like you, connect with you and trust you. These metrics will be greatly enhanced if you can relate to them on a very granular level about their needs, their lifestyle, their problems and their goals. Not only that, when you know exactly who your target clients are and how to reach them, building and growing your business becomes much easier. Marketing messages and communications are streamlined, it can also improve efficiencies in your business processes.
To fully understand hypertargeting, it helps to also understand the following definitions:
Client persona: an in depth customer profile that outlines who your target customer is by defining their demographics, sociographics, professional roles, values, goals, challenges, influences and buying habits.
Segmentation : the act of dividing an audience into smaller group based on their interactions with your brand or their demographics, sociographics, professional roles, values, goals, challenges, influences and buying habits.
Geo-targeting : The act of targeting a customer based on their location. This could be as broad as targeting people in Australia, or as narrow as targeting by postcode or kilmetre around your business.
Retargeting : The act of sending messages to audiences who have already engaged with your brand. This could include remarketing to people who have visited your website, made an enquiry, followed your brand on social, signed up for your newsletter or had any other interaction with your brand.
We are going to help you narrow in on your very own hypertargeted market. Before we do, here a few awesome examples of the hypertargeted niches forged by other members of The Wealth Network.
Helping tech millionaires, business owners and the soon-to-be rich create a life not limited by money by investing smarter
One of Australia's most experienced private wealth managers for high net wealth families and individuals. Specialising in helping clients through the financial complexities of divorce and inheritance.
Helping millennial professionals get their financial world sorted.
Wealth management for business owners. Sydney and the Lower North Shore.
Making money work harder for Sydney’s professional gay and lesbian community.
We’re committed to helping you live your boldest life. Play you’re A game. It’s about spirit and adventure. And the wealth to get you there. Aimed at Victoria’s cycling community.
You can see how in each case the planning issues, money needs and priorities would be quite different for each group. But the messaging is very focussed.
Now, you are going to pick your own high value hyper target. Here’s how:
1. LIST OF TICKS. Get very clear about your areas of interest. Your passions, past times, professional areas of expertise, your faith (if you have one), your challenges, your cultural identity, your social network, your age, your personality, your strengths and your own investment philosophy. Can you relate to people with specific challenges? All of these things will influence who you can identify with most and who will be your unique target market. When it comes to clients, think about the ways in which you prefer to work - investment preferences, ethical beliefs, life goals, and risk profiles.
2. LIST OF CROSSES. Remember to think about the clients you don't want to work with. If you’ve been working as a financial planner for a while, chances are you’ve come across certain types of clients you have found difficult to deal with – put them on the list. If you are starting out you may not want to deal with ultra-high net wealth people, or complex investments until your confidence builds, or you may not like the specific challenges in dealing with retirees for example.
3. Ask yourself what kind of clients can pay the fees your desire? What is the annual revenue per client that you want to earn? Consider all of the clients you have worked with past and present. Who will appreciate the value of your service at the fee you want to earn?
4. Using your list of TICKS and CROSSES create two to five detailed personas that clearly outline the top types of customers you want to attract. As you dive deeper, slice and dice audience attributes and attitudes to get even more exact.
Here’s an example:
Who do I want to help? Professional Sportspeople.
Can you narrow it down further? Football players and coaches – AFL, NRL and A League soccer with first grade contracts.
Where are these people? Eastern Suburbs of Sydney
Do I want to target men or women? Both
Of these people, for what stage of life will I focus? Bring onboard during their career in order to financially educate them as they accumulate wealth.
Specific problems to address? How to make sporting career earnings last a lifetime.
That hypertarget market may give you a field of approximately 400-500 potential clients. If your goal is to bring on 15 new clients for the year at a minimum revenue of $10,000 each it means that you need to have around a 3% strike rate – which will be more successful if you are able to build trust through personal connections and expert messaging.
Still not sure? Download our list of Hypertarget Markets for Financial Planners.
This is not an exhaustive list, but you get the picture. Circle 3-5 areas or traits that resonate with you and there you have the makings of a hypertarget.
Once you have narrowed things down your target personas, you’ll find it much easier to brainstorm ideas or get googling to find marketing channels through which to share content, advertise, and host training. You will be able to find opportunities to immerse yourself into that particular community and as you start to address very specific financial concerns, you will begin to develop your profile as an expert in this area which will help to attract more new clients over time.