Welcome back to my blog and today’s post: Financial advisors working with or marketing to small business owners.
This blog post is part of the Ideal Client Blog Post Series which I announced last month.
In today’s post, you’ll learn about a target market that you may have overlooked, why small business owners make great clients, and how you can reach them.
1. Business owners: A target market for financial advisors
In a previous post, I wrote about a financial advisor’s target market. Identifying a target market is an important step in a financial advisor’s marketing strategy. After you read the post, if you’d like additional advice, get in touch with me and we can talk about how I can help with marketing and business coaching.
One category of clients that you should be targeting is small business owners. Business owners have a number of attributes that can make them great potential clients for financial advisors.
2. Small business owners can be wealthy
Wealthy clients are a great target market for financial advisors. They have wealth they want to grow and accomplish goals with, and financial advisors can provide them the assistance they need.
When looking for wealthy clients, you should consider business owners.
Although not all business owners are wealthy, many of them can have significant income and assets and could benefit from your advice. A small business owner, could be making a lot more money than you might expect, and a medium sized business owner could have significant income and assets.
3. Small businesses can have tremendous cash flow
In addition to business owners themselves having significant income and assets, their businesses can as well.
You may not have not considered corporations or LLCs as clients, but businesses have assets and goals. A business wants to grow, expand, and invest, and has goals it wants to achieve. They can sometimes have significant assets and income, and you should consider how you can help them.
4. Small business owners have unique needs
Depending on the structure of their business, a business owner may be a sole proprietor, in a partnership, a member of an LCC, an owner of a corporation, or an employee of a corporation.
These different statuses can mean that business owners have unique needs. For example, a sole proprietor may need help setting up and managing a retirement account.
These unique needs can make business owners an excellent target market. They need specific experience and expertise that you can provide.
5. Small business owners may have a need for participant education for their 401k plans
Many financial advisors want to take on retirement plan assets, but what about the participants? Business owners face challenges when educating their 401k plan participants regarding the investments in the plan as well as options for retirement. THIS is where small business owners need help. They receive many investment questions from staff, which keeps them busier than they’d like to be. Not only that, they legally cannot answer questions about investment options.
This is where working with and marketing to small business owners really pays off!
6. Business owners have a unique perspective
A business owner can have a different perspective when it comes to investments and goals than someone who is an employee.
They may have more knowledge of investment principals. They might also have a different perspective on investment risk. Because they are knowledgeable about business, and have seen it at different stages and from different angles, they can see investments and investment strategies in a way that someone simply working for a company might not.
This unique perspective can make business owners an interesting target market. They might consider different types of investments and strategies. They might be more willing to think outside the box. They also may be better able to understand complex investments.
7. Financial advisors can relate to small business owners
As a financial advisor, you may be a business owner. Because of this, you can share in the unique perspectives, special needs, and considerations business owners might have. This shared perspective can be an asset in helping business owners achieve their goals. You can understand them and their goals and this can help you to advise them and can help them feel more confident in your abilities.
8. Business owners can be centers of influence
In the first post of this series I wrote about leveraging centers of influence. Business owners can be centers of influence and can be a great resource to gain other potential clients.
In addition to being centers of influence generally, business owners can also be centers of influence within their companies.
Depending on the size of the company, a business owner can influence their employees in regards to who they go to for financial advice.
9. How financial advisors can market to business owners
Now that you know that business owners a worthwhile target market, you need to know how to market to them.
10. Target specific business owners
Don’t just target business owners. Business owners are too large a group to market to effectively. You need to segment the group to make it smaller and more manageable.
There are a number of ways you could segment business owners. Some include segmenting businesses by the size, industry, age, stage, geographic location, and target market of the business.
You can combine these attributes together to get very specific business segments to focus on. Read this article about good target markets for financial advisors.
11. Emphasize connections, expertise, and services
Business owners have unique needs and perspectives that you can relate to. When marketing to business owners you need to emphasize the connection you have with them, the expertise you have related to their needs, and how your services can benefit them and their businesses.
***12. Individual wealth and business wealth – 7 ways to help!
When working with and marketing to small businesses owners, remember that you are marketing to them, as well as their businesses.
You should be sure and emphasize how you can benefit both the owners and the small business and how your services can help them achieve their goals.
Small business owners have their personal assets and their business assets!
The points below need to go into a prospecting brochure and on your website landing page to attract clients online. See below.
a. Financial Planning for the owners: You are a one stop shop available to help small business owners create Financial Plans for their personal wealth.
b. Investment Management of their personal assets: Highly compensated small business owners need help with asset allocation according to their risk tolerance and time horizon.
c. Manage their business assets: Where do they keep their business cash? How about loans for acquiring new buildings and machinery.
d. Workplace retirement plans: You can help them with their 401k plans, defined benefit plans, and executive compensation plans.
e. You can work with their 401k participants: Providing plan education, investment options, and company plan match information, this takes the pressure off HR and helps to get participants to invest more in the plan.
f. Key person insurance: You can help secure insurance in the event that one of the business owners passes away unexpectedly. This can be done for owners and key people in the organization.
g. Succession planning: You can work with small business owners helping them plan for the next generation to take over the business.
13. Explore options
When marketing to business owners, you have the added benefit that they may need and be willing to consider investment options and services that other individuals might not. Be sure and explore all of the options and how you can help meet their needs.
14. Marketing to small business owners -tactics
When marketing to business owners there are a number of marketing tactics that can work well.
15. Trade publications
One tactic is marketing through trade publications. By marketing through them you can reach a very specific group within an industry.
For example, you could become the financial advisor for Tech, in which case you could select trade publications especially for the Tech industry.
When selecting trade publications to market through, take into account the market for the publication, the number of impressions it receives, the costs of marketing, the different marketing options, and competitors that market through the publication.
When you market through a trade publication it is important to remember that frequency is more important than flash. In other words, twelve small advertisements spaced throughout the year can be more effective in terms of cost and impact, than one large advertisement.
Potential clients need to see your advertisement and they need to see it frequently so that you will be top of mind when they consider a financial advisor. Accomplishing this can be done more effectively through many small ads, rather than one large one.
16. Trade shows
Trade shows aren’t for every financial advisor. They can be expensive to attend and it can be hard to stand out. That being said, if you do your research, make preparations, and can market there effectively, trade shows can be a good option to consider because of the number of potential clients there.
In the Tech example above, you could penetrate Tech trade shows and position your offering as unique to their needs.
17. Visit businesses
Visiting places of business can be an effective marketing tool. It is important though to take steps in advance. You don’t just want to show up or show up without a plan.
Before visiting a business, you should have made some contact with them before. Maybe you sent them a direct mail piece or someone referred them to you. Maybe you saw them at a trade show or a business event. Maybe they contacted you through an online advertisement. You need to have some connection to them. You have some reason why you are there and why they are expecting you.
In addition, you need to know what you are going to say. You want to have your talking points and materials prepared so that you can convey how you can benefit the business owner.
It’s also a good idea to have a “leave-behind” marketing piece like a postcard or brochure about your services and the benefits of working with you.
18. Direct mail
One way to effectively market to business owners is through direct mail. When marketing through direct mail, there are four things to keep in mind.
The first is, who you send the direct mail to. You can get very segmented lists for direct mail. You should utilize this and make sure you send your direct mail to the right target market.
Second, you need to focus on an offer. You need to give the business owner something. It might be a free consultation or portfolio review. You need to have something special that you are offering.
Third, you need to design the direct mail in the right way. It needs to look nice and effectively convey the information you want. It needs to reflect the brand you have for your business.
Fourth, you need to make sure you send direct mail with the appropriate frequency. You don’t want to send something too often, but you need to send something often enough that potential clients remember you when they think about financial advisors.
19. Online marketing to attract small business owners
Online marketing can be an effective tool for reaching business owners. When marketing to them, keep in mind how you can reach your target market and how you can convey your benefits to them. You want to keep in mind the principles of SEO, reputation management, and good web design. You want to make sure business owners find your practice, see what is good about it, and can easily interact with your practice online.
20. Reaching out to small business owners
In the first post in this series, there was some information about lead generation. One of the ideas in it was reaching out to potential clients on a regular basis throughout the year.
This can be a great way to market your financial advisor practice. If you reach out to potential clients on a regular basis, when they or someone they know needs your services, they will think of you.
Because business owners are used to receiving business communications and having business discussions, interacting with them regularly in these ways can be natural. You can utilize a number of opportunities to reach out to potential clients and get their business or get referrals.
Final thoughts on financial advisors working with or marketing to small business owners
Business owners can be a great target market for financial advisors. Business owners (and the business they own) can be wealthy, they have unique needs and perspectives that financial advisors can help with and relate to, and they can be centers of influence.
When marketing to business owners, keep in mind to define your target market, emphasize the connections, expertise, and services you have, focus on the business owner and their business, and help them explore options.
You can use a number of marketing tactics to reach out to business owners. Be sure and do your research and preparation, specifically target a market, and market with the right amount of frequency.
If you’d like help marketing to businesses owners, get in touch with me and together we can come up with a plan.
