The Practice Doctor is IN

Seven Habits of Target Marketing

Al Depman, CLU, ChFC, CMFC, BH

Practice Management Consultant

One of the questions that recurs regularly in my practice management consultations is, “How do I break into a specific market?” Some advisors have come to this question after years of being a generalist and gradually realizing that there are niches of people they particularly enjoy working with. Others know that members of a particular group have the ideal client profile they are looking for. However you have arrived at the question, there are seven best practice elements to consider in targeting a specific market.

Best Practice 1: Identify the Market. Be as specific as possible. While “architects” is a mega-market, architectural firms in a specific geographical area are more focused. Architectural firms with 20 or fewer employees is more targeted, and those in business more than five years creates a true niche. Joe, an advisor in Minneapolis, has a number of clients in a certain large corporation, but he has focused his attention by targeting executives with stock options and specifically pursuing them.

Best Practice 2: Link to the Market. Find people who know your chosen market intimately and who are willing to help introduce you into that market. These could be Centers of Influence, current clients, or members of your professional network.

Best Practice 3: Understand the Market. Interview your “link” people to get a solid profile of the market’s membership: their communication methods, benefits packages, job levels and duties, opportunities where your products and services would fit. There’s a marketing research questionnaire available for this—let me know if you’d like a copy (al@mitchanthony.com). Once you have done your due diligence, package a presentation addressing the needs and opportunities pertinent to that market.

Best Practice 4: Tactical entry into the Market. Determine how you will spread your message: seminars, referrals, mail, e-mail, texting, LinkedIn, calls. The techniques should reflect what you learned in the research phase. Track the numbers and success ratios, and revise your strategy as necessary.

Best Practice 5: Immersion in the Market. Position yourself as the “go-to” person in that market for financial services. This is a long-range strategy, of course. Joe, the advisor referred to earlier, has been working inside his target company for five years now. This positioning involves a mix of internal politics, competition, confidentiality, and potential personality conflicts.

Best Practice 6: Transfer Maintenance to Someone Else on Your Team.  Once you have established yourself in the market, delegate day-to-day account maintenance to another person. This member of your team acts as your alter-ego and often is a dedicated marketing assistant. Your role transitions to one in which you maintain client relationships at a higher level.

Best Practice 7: Evaluate the Marketing Strategy.  Assess what worked and what didn’t in preparation for entry into another market. Keep track of statistics: contact attempts, contact successes, first meetings scheduled and held, fact-finders, presentations, closes, products sold, average case size, revenue per client, and the like.

There are many additional bits and pieces in each of these steps, as you can imagine. I’m always open to new ideas and approaches to these seven marketing best practices. Send along any thoughts, comments, or resources that you have used successfully and I’ll share them in future columns.

The Doctor is OUT

©Al Depman

Al Depman, CLU, ChFC, CMFC, BH, a.k.a. “The Practice Doctor”, is MitchAnthony.com’s Business Practice Consultant. He is the creator of “The Practice Management Assessment” tool and materials and has authored numerous articles in professional publications on practice management, and author of the book, How to Build Your Financial Advisory Business and Sell It at a Profit, now available from McGraw Hill. Al combined his Liberal Arts studies with 10 years of management experience with McDonald’s Corporation to enter the financial services world 25 years ago. Since then, Al has evolved from an MDRT-level sales rep into a full-time consultant specializing in helping others engineer their business practices to the next level. Contact him at al@mitchanthony.com.