Ellis Communications, L.L.C.

Target Marketing 101:  Identify Who You Want to Work With
And Move Forward  With Informed Communication

Advisors who struggle with the concept of target marketing will find it easier if they start with a simple premise - who do they want to work with?

"The more advisors I meet and talk with, the more clear it becomes that the idea of a highly defined target market is a real problem for many of them," says Martin R. Baird, president of Annapolis, Md.-based Advisor Marketing and author of The 7 Deadly Sins of Advisor Marketing.  "To make it easier, they should identify who they want as clients and move forward from there."

Baird offers the following 10 tips on target marketing.

No. 1.  Don’t focus just on an age group or gender or income level.  "Really think about who you want to help have a better financial future," Baird says.  "You can choose to identify your target market in any number of ways."

No. 2.  The more characteristics of your target market you can identify the better.  "Don’t be judgmental," Baird notes.  "Get as many characteristics as you can down on paper."

No. 3.  Knowing who you don’t want to work with also is important.  "As you go through this process, you may have some emotions come up about people that you don’t want to work

with," Baird says.  "That’s OK.  Keep a list of those people, too, so you can compare the two lists and make sure they don’t clash anywhere."

No. 4.  Let the list of characteristics sit for a few days.  "Read it a couple of times a day," Bird suggests.  "Add any characteristics you missed.  Drop any that suddenly don’t look as important as they did at first."

No. 5.  The list becomes your guide.  "This list will be used as a rudder to guide your business going forward," Baird says "You are the only person who can decide if these factors represent the people you want to seek and help."

No. 6.  Does the list suggest groups or strata that it falls within?  "Can you look at the list and see occupations that may have similar characteristics?" Baird asks.  "Can you look at the list and see a particular geographic area?  You should start to see a picture of the people you like working with."

No. 7.  Learn more about them.  "Where do they work?  What do they read?  What do they do for fun?  Do they have a family?  What are their fears and frustrations?  By now, you should have good information that you can use to communicate to your target market through your marketing."

No. 8.  Look at the dollars and sense of your defined target market.  "Does this highly targeted market have a need for your services and do they have the ability to pay for them?" Baird asks.

No. 9.  Don’t think about the money at the start of the process.  "If you start out looking

at the money, you will often fail to pursue opportunities because of your limiting beliefs," Baird says.  "For years, I’ve been saying advisors should target Hispanic communities but there’s a misconception that they don’t have money to invest.  Hispanics have money, spend money and often save money."

No. 10.  Size doesn’t matter.  "Most advisors don’t need 10,000 people in a target market to make a living." Baird says.  "The universe of your highly targeted market could be a thousand people.  For many specialized financial professionals, that’s large enough a group to launch a very successful business.  Identify your market and the money will follow."

Advisor Marketing provides a variety of services to financial advisors to help them improve their marketing methods and increase revenues, including seminars and conference speaking engagements on such topics as referrals, marketing, client communication and transitioning to fee.  The company also provides a service that tests multiple variables of a marketing campaign simultaneously so advisors will quickly know which elements of a marketing effort offer the best opportunity for success before they launch the campaign.

The company’s Web site, www.advisormarketing.com,  is the premiere Internet-based source for marketing advice, information and tools for self-driven, success-oriented financial advisors who are demanding information that helps them market their practice, meet the needs of their clients and increase sales.  It offers such services as a free weekly electronic newsletter and reports on how to conduct different kinds of marketing. 

Advisor Marketing may be reached at 480-991-6421.