This is a transcript from the Marketing for Advisors Podcast. To listen, please visit mfapodcast.com and every episode is easily available and free to listen.
Don Anders: Hello, my name is Don Anders, welcome to Marketing for Advisors. We're here with Donovan Stull. In this episode, we're going to be talking about how there are riches in niches. You might have heard that before. A lot of times, it's really tempting to just try to be everything to everyone. Because we see how many people are in a certain area. We say, "Well, if we become too niche then you know there we're going to miss these people or these people." But what we found is profitability, sustainability, all of that goes way up when you actually focus on doing a niche kind of target and focus. If you focus on trying to be everything to everyone, you're going to be nothing to nobody.
What we want to talk about now is what kind of niche marketing. I've focused on state employees and public employees for most of my career. We also do events specifically for Disney and for Lockheed Martin. The beautiful thing about these events are people feel like they are created for them, right? If we just take a doctor, for instance, I had this thing on my foot from playing basketball, just a little bump that I needed to go get it checked out. I went to the #1 foot doctor in Orlando who specializes in that one thing. I didn't want to go to just any doctor, right? If somebody had just said doctor, I wouldn't have gone to him. I went to the guy who knows my specific problem. The same thing goes for retirement planning.
Somebody would much rather retire with the person who does Disney, retires Disney people, the person who says, because that's them. Our recommendation is you really want to see what your niche is. Now you might say, "I don't really have a niche," but I would say that your little town or your area is a niche, right? So if you live in Winter Park, Florida, instead of trying to do all of Orlando or every other city, be the niche there. Or if you live in a little town or even a neighborhood, you can be a niche.
Now, people think, "Okay, well I have to rebrand everything." That's not necessarily true. You can have several niches and just run the content to them. Donovan, let's say somebody wants to do Disney and Lockheed, for instance. How would they do that under one company name? How would they have that niche?
Donovan Stull: As far as the target marketing goes?
Don Anders: Yeah. I want to focus on Disney employees that are retiring and then also Lockheed Martin. How would I do that? Do I have to change my entire website? Do I have to switch everything up? Or there easier ways to do that?
Donovan Stull: Absolutely not. The benefit of all of that is that with digital marketing, you can target market very specifically using Facebook or LinkedIn and going after these people that way. Let's say our financial company is running an event for Disney employees for retiring from Disney seminar and we want to invite them, well how are we going to do that? Okay, we go, and let's say we're on Facebook. We can target specifically anyone who lists themselves as a Disney employee on Facebook and point them.
Don Anders: In a certain area. Over a certain age.
Donovan Stull: Let's say we only want 55 and over who say they work for Disney that are within a 30-mile radius of our venue for that matter. Because there are Disney employees all over that will drive to there. Okay, fantastic. You can get as specific as you want in targeting with that on Disney. Now, we don't have to go and change our brand just to be the Disney experts in retirement.
Don Anders: Well, and the other nice thing is you can adjust on Facebook and everything else, LinkedIn, YouTube, you can set it so only those Disney employees see that Disney ad.
Donovan Stull: Exactly. We've talked about this in the past. It's not like a mailer, or a radio spot, or a TV show hoping that these people happen to see it or hear the message. It is going specifically to them and to them only. It's not going to get lost out somewhere and everyone starts seeing it and, "Oh, this doesn't apply to me," but it costs for that impression to show up on their screen. Nothing like that. It is literally just for them and it's showing up in their news feeds and their timelines. I think that's really the benefit of when we are marketing on Facebook and LinkedIn, it goes directly to those people.
Something I really love about LinkedIn is you can send these people who say, and for one sec with LinkedIn, the whole purpose of being on LinkedIn is to showcase what you do for work. If you're going to start going after niche markets or whether it's employers or whatever the case may be, LinkedIn is a great place to really hit the ground on just because of the aspect of, "Hey, I can target someone who is 55 and over that say they specifically work for Disney or Lockheed Martin," and then the benefit of it with their marketing, you do it just similar with Facebook and it goes into their timeline, their news feed, as they scroll they see it. Or you can send them private messages that come directly from you as the business owner of your financial company and inviting them personally to a seminar. And it only goes to those people.
So as a Disney employee, if I'm that Disney employee over the age of 55 on LinkedIn and I happened to get a message from Don saying, "I want to personally invite you to an upcoming retiring from Disney seminar at this particular time, and date, location," you know that you got that because you are a Disney employee. That's really the beauty of targeting on these companies of how specific and how niche you can get without having to change up your whole brand and so forth. And you can run these ads simultaneously.
Don Anders: Yeah. We'll usually have ads running to police officers, to teachers to Lockheed, to Disney, to just the general public, almost all of it.
Donovan Stull: Let's say we're doing two events in one week. On a Tuesday night, we're going to do a retiring from Disney, and on Thursday we're doing retiring from Lockheed Martin lunch and learn. Okay, fantastic. We can run both of those ads at the exact same time.
Don Anders: And they don't see each other.
Donovan Stull: They don't see each other, so you're not going to have people saying, "Oh well they're just running ads to whoever and hope for the best." Or if I'm that Disney employee, I'm not going to see the Lockheed Martin ads. I'm not going to think that. Okay, what's my reason to believe that they aren't a Disney expert for what it's worth.
Don Anders: There's a practical joke that's pretty dangerous, but a lot of people are doing it. You know those dye packs that they put in when you rob a bank and they explode and they permanently dye you? You can take a teaspoon of that and put it in a swimming pool and it permanently dyes the pool blue. But if you take a truckload of it and put it in the ocean, nothing happens. What we usually recommend for our clients is, okay, well let's pick three swimming pools. Instead of trying to dye the ocean blue, let's go ahead and dye three swimming pools. Give me three swimming pools that are in your area, or you want to focus on, or you have focused on, or you know about, and let's focus on dyeing them blue. It takes a lot less money and a lot less energy.
People are interested. You're going to have usually less people because there's not as many, so you might have five. We just ran an ad for somebody who works at Duke. I think he said he had nine people there, but they were all nine of his avatar ideal clients. Granted there weren't 25 people there, but if you just go 25 general public, you might have less than that and it costs you more money of the ideal clients, so that’s just something to think about. I would highly recommend choosing your two or three niches and then focusing on how you become the king of those niches. How do you become the resource that get a reaction like, “Okay, if I'm retiring from Disney, I need to contact these people.” You know?
Donovan Stull: Yeah. Don't just pick a niche because it looks great and that's when you want to go after. For those of you who are the advisers, don't pick a company and just start working with them if you have no idea what their plans are about. If you have a general idea that Disney's pension options or 401ks are very similar to what you already know and understand, that's going to be a big help. Don't just end up doing it where I'm going to pick one out of a hat that looks like a good niche and trying to work with them. If you try to put on a good show for these people, there's a good chance that they'll know that you don't know what you're talking about.
Don Anders: Yeah, you always want to make sure that you're the expert and if you are going to be that niche. All right, well thank you so much and we appreciate it. Talk to you soon.