One of the most effective ways to grow your advisory practice is by focusing on niche markets. In our white paper, Building Your Niche Market: Thinking Small to Grow Bigger, we explored the benefits of niche marketing, the range of niche market opportunities, and how to create and execute on a niche-marketing plan.

If you’re seeking to identify a particular niche market that’s right for you, you’re in luck; we’ve developed this “Identifying Promising Niche Markets Checklist.”

Identifying Promising Niche Markets Checklist

1. Profile Your Current Client Book
   Analyze your client base on different attributes to determine if you already have clusters of similar-type clients. For instance, dissect your clients by age, sex, occupation and education. How wide and granular you go in profiling your clients is up to you.Financial advisors often unknowingly build a market niche due to the nature of their network or subconscious inclinations. You may find, for instance, that many of your clients are graduates of your alma mater or are medical professionals. This may have developed organically by your involvement with alumni issues or, in the latter instance, the fact that you have family connections to the medical profession.

2. Inventory Your Skill Set and Interests
   Take stock of your skills and interests to identify market niches where they may be particularly relevant. For example, your first career in engineering may make you uniquely able to talk the language of engineers and understand their needs better than most advisors. Other examples of leveraging a network or skill set may include:

• • Connection to sports agents that may open entrée to learning the needs and challenges of professional athletes
  • Stock option planning
  • Retirement income expertise

3. Identify Values and Affinities that Matter to You
   Values and affinities can be far ranging, from religious affiliation to environmental and other social issue involvement. When values and associations are shared, the trust level is automatically elevated, easing the process of establishing new client relationships.

4. Identify the Most Profitable or Underserved Markets
   Of course, all advisors seek to attract the most profitable clients (e.g., tech executives, doctors), but the search for wealth should be expanded to less explored places, like the owner of a construction company, the franchisee or the small business owner. And don’t forget to consider gig economy workers as a new niche market.Consider populations that may be underserved in your community: ethnic populations, socially-conscious investors, millennials or the LGBTQIA+ community.

Many financial advisors harbor a fear of limiting their pool of prospective clients by pursuing a niche business, but the reality is that the most successful advisors are those that specialize in a market niche.

Please reference disclosures: https://blog.americanportfolios.com/disclosures/