Tip #1 - 12 - Segmenting

Do It Yourself

Many new dynamics are affecting your private financial practice now. Consumers and clients are regrouping and retrenching into different patterns of thinking, including the application of some classic traditional values and standards. Demographers constantly try to identify emerging markets. A newer trend for marketers is attempting segmentation by psychographics. Although this is not completely new to us, institutional marketers beginning to pay more attention to psychographics raises awareness.

What you can do.

Marketing is a local issue for private financial practices. National data broadly interpreted means little locally and often misleads local marketers with information that simply is not true for them. Beware planning and acting on broad-brush statements. I just answered a client who understood "consumers do not want and will not trust 'one-stop shopping' sources for financial services" to mean that his impending strategic alliance with a PC broker would suffer because of it. Not so. In this case, the statement loses meaning when the definition of 'one-stop shopping' does not match what certain consumers believe. The interpretation of data should be yours. You can make marketing data locally meaningful for yourself.

Do this to examine your client base. Later, include prospects.

	High Net Worth	High Income & High Net Worth	High Income
Business Owner
Employee -     not owner
Found Money

 

• Think of how the combinations of source of money (employed, ownership, inheritance, lottery, etc.) and nature of wealth (net worth, income) differ in characteristics. What does each category of person want? This is not difficult to imagine, nor is it hard to figure how they regard their money. 
  
  
• Take your best clients (best by your definition) and place them in the appropriate cell. 
  
  
• Begin to think of what needs you can satisfy with your services and products, starting with the cells that you believe will yield you the most (e.g., you have more clients in that cell, younger clients with more potential, stronger ties to more prospects, something you had not seen before).

This thinking exercise will get you started. Expand your thinking by examining how effects on these markets by outside forces offer you opportunities to innovate in marketing your practice. Carefully explore the seven sources of innovation and see what you can do to be First, Best and Different in an Appealing Way. 

If you care to revisit the seven sources of opportunities to innovate in marketing, which you can regularly examine to obtain and hold your strategic marketing advantage, send an email to innovate@melchinger.com for an instant reply.

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