10 Factors To Determine If Your Potential Niche Is Really Viable (And How To Finetune If Necessary)

Ever since I released my book Uncomparable: The Financial Advisor's Guide to Standing Out Through Niche Marketing last summer, advisors I speak with are quick to tell me they have a niche. "Oh?" I respond. "What is your niche?" And 9 times out of 10, it will be something like business owners, women, executives, or my personal favorite, retirement planning.

While narrowing your client definition down to these broad categories is a step in the right direction away from being all things to all people, these categories are by no means what I would consider true niches. Why is that? Well, let me ask you these questions:

• Is it possible for you to dominate your segment of the market? In other words, can you become one of the most well-known financial advisors for women, business owners, or pre-retirees?
• Is it possible to completely streamline your operations because every client you work with faces the same problem, which you have built a system to solve easily?
• Is it possible to be so embedded into your niche community that you feel more a part of that community than your own financial advisor community?

If you answered no to even just 1 of the questions, you aren't truly focused on a niche. But don't worry. By picking a broad category to narrow down from, you have taken the first step toward becoming a niche advisor. This article will help you take the next steps to get there.

What Is A Niche And What Is A Target Market?

Before narrowing your niche, it is important to understand the difference between a niche and a target market.

A niche is a smaller segment of a larger market, with its own distinct identity. Everyone in a particular niche shares similar characteristics and one unique problem. The problem a niche faces ideally requires a unique or complex financial planning strategy that most other advisors can't profitably service because they lack the business structure and knowledge to execute efficiently. A niche is something a focused advisor can, in time, master, deliver efficiently, and dominate.

Many advisors confuse a niche with a target market. They will say, "I have a LinkedIn campaign focused on the niche of executives." But executives are just their target market for that specific campaign. A target market is the group of consumers a company is trying to reach with its marketing efforts. In this example, the advisors haven't gained years of expertise working with that audience, they haven't designed their business to specifically serve that audience, and they still work with a variety of other clients at the same time. This is not a niche; it is a target market.

What distinguishes a niche from a target market is that a niche requires a deeper level of commitment to your ideal client. It means designing your business to serve the needs of this narrow segment. Your niche dictates the brand you design, the message you communicate, the services you offer, the content you create, the processes you employ, the technology you offer, and the staff you hire.

It also requires ongoing refinement. Choosing a potential niche is only the first step. Refining and redefining your niche to find the perfect match for your business may require several iterations. Moreover, as you gain more years of experience working within your niche, you'll continue to refine its definition, becoming increasingly specialized with each iteration.

This kind of focus can scare off less dedicated advisors. But for those who commit, their work with a niche can pay dividends.

The 3 Steps To Niche Refinement

When I work with advisors in choosing a niche, we follow 3 steps to take them from a broad target market to a narrowly defined niche that they can someday carve out as their own.

Step 1: Define Your Niche. The initial step is to precisely articulate how you define your niche. Defining a niche goes beyond merely identifying a broad category of potential clients, such as business owners or women. It requires a clear description of the specific problem these clients encounter and the unique solution you provide (which I will discuss later). Attaining this level of specificity allows you to realistically and accurately assess a niche for its strengths and weaknesses.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Niche. Following the definition phase, the evaluation phase plays a pivotal role not only in determining the feasibility of your niche but also in identifying areas for further refinement. Although there is no guarantee of success, evaluating your defined niche against 10 specific factors, described later, can significantly reduce the risk of pursuing an unsuitable niche. These factors are categorized into 2 main areas: the viability of the niche itself and your suitability as an advisor within this niche. Additionally, this process uncovers opportunities to further refine your niche definition.

Step 3: Refine Your Niche. Finally, refining and redefining your niche is essential to ensure it stands out as uniquely yours. By using the results from the 10 key assessment factors as a guide, this step allows you to reshape your niche to be more specific and, as a result, more distinctive.

Step 1: Define Your Niche For Clarity Of Concept

Defining your niche involves moving beyond general demographics (e.g., women or pre-retirees) and occupational groups (e.g., business owners and doctors). It requires drilling down to a specific group and understanding and addressing the unique, pressing problem that all members of this group face – a problem that compels them to seek specialized financial advisory services in the first place.

For example, a broad client type like "business owners" is not a niche. A 65-year-old business owner selling a business is a completely different niche from a 28-year-old serial entrepreneur. They each face different problems and require different strategies, solutions, and services.

To truly niche, you need to pinpoint a segment that shares a common, significant problem within a larger group of business owners. For instance, transforming "business owners" into a viable niche could mean focusing on family-owned business owners who wish to transfer their business to the next generation.

The essence of defining a niche lies in understanding and addressing a unique, pressing problem that a well-defined group faces, compelling them to seek specialized financial advisory services.

The formula I use to define a niche is One Client + One Problem.

Let's look at an example:

You have decided that the one client you want to focus on is commercial pilots—not airline pilots, but pilots who have other jobs like flying charter flights, doing medevac flights, flying skydivers up for their jumps, or working as flight instructors.

The one problem they all face is inconsistent income from multiple jobs and self-employed gigs, which makes budgeting for today while saving for the future challenging.

Of course, they have other problems that you will solve, but this is the overarching pain point for commercial pilots.

Having this clear and specific definition of your niche will provide you with clarity for evaluating its viability and suitability in the next step.

Now that you know how the formula works, it's time to pick your one client.

The One Client

When advisors hear the words niche market, they often think about specific types of people centered on a demographic (e.g., retirees, women) or an occupation (e.g., business owners, doctors). In reality, a niche can fall into one of 5 broad categories: career, event, specialty, mindset/values, or affinity. Let's look at each.

1. Career encompasses professions, employers, companies, and industries. Examples of this category are business owners, healthcare workers, and United Airlines pilots.
2. Event refers to money-in-motion events, life transition events, or life stages that require financial guidance. Examples include an inheritance, the death of a spouse, and retirement.
3. Specialty is a service, product, or solution you offer to solve a specific problem. Examples include special needs planning, exercising stock options, and divorce financial planning.
4. Mindset and values include religion, life philosophies, and cultural mindsets. Examples are Christians, socially responsible investors, and philanthropists.
5. Affinity describes common connections people share, such as hobbies, interests, and lifestyles. Examples are golfers, families who homeschool their children, and university alumni.

Client types within these broad categories are not enough on their own to be considered niches. Let's explore a client type from the affinity category: golfers. People who golf can look like the general population at large. They don't share one central problem. Some may be retiring, some may be selling a business, and some may be young professionals thriving in their careers. Working with golfers means you are basically still a generalist who is all things to all people. You just happen to target your marketing efforts to the golf course instead of the local chamber of commerce.

Golfers don't need an expert in their niche to solve their problems since there is not one problem all golfers face. For golfers to be a niche, you would narrow your focus to the segment you want to serve that does have a shared problem. To narrow golfers into a niche, you could focus on newly professional golfers who are finally making enough prize and sponsorship money to cover their $100,000+ in tour expenses and who want to plan their finances around their volatile income and potentially short career.

How do you narrow your broad category client type to a niche? You need to define their shared problem.

The One Problem

With your one client defined, it's time to figure out the one most important problem they all share. This step can be challenging because clients often have many different problems: they need to organize their finances, they need someone to delegate their finances to, and they need to make sure they have enough money in retirement.

But we are not looking for a variety of problems. We are looking for one problem that everyone in your niche faces that is the most painful and urgent for them to solve –the one problem that makes them reach out to a financial advisor in the first place.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to discover this one problem:

• What keeps your niche up at night?
• What situation is your niche actively facing in the 90 days before they hire a financial advisor?
• What hurdle do they need to overcome to reach the ideal outcome they hope to achieve?

Here are some examples of problems a niche may face:

• Being able to plan for irregular income so they aren't living a feast-or-famine lifestyle
  Examples: commercial pilots, salespeople, business owners, professional golfers, the self-employed
• Facing intense career burnout and needing to retire from their high-paying jobs as soon as possible
  Examples: healthcare professionals, tech employees, attorneys
• Facing a significant tax bill in one year
  Examples: selling a business, employees of a company that experienced an IPO, selling investment real estate
• Needing to be solely responsible for managing a significant amount of wealth for the first time and not knowing where to start
  Examples: inheritors, widows, divorcées
• Having highly lucrative but short careers and wanting to ensure their earnings last a lifetime
  Examples: online influencers, professional athletes, college athletes who profit from Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities

The one problem needs to be top of mind for the niche. It needs to be distinct to the niche and not a problem most people face (e.g., planning for retirement). It needs to be painful enough that the niche will take action to solve it. And it is best if that problem needs to be urgently solved (though this is not always the case).

You may have to get creative with defining the problem if your niche does not recognize it as painful or urgent enough to address. In some cases, you may have to frame something positive as a negative. For example, suppose your clients have more money than they'll ever need and want to optimize their wealth. You can turn around the aspirational goal to instead solve a problem, such as "stop fearing you are missing out on opportunities to further grow your wealth."

Of course, your clients will have more than the one problem you identify here, but your marketing should not target every potential problem your niche faces. That will just confuse your niche. Your marketing simply needs to say the one thing that nags at your prospect most.

Going back to the 5 categories previously discussed, let's look at how adding a problem to the client type makes your niche definition more specific.

Career

• Attorneys who feel trapped in their careers and want to quit
• Business owners who wish to sell their business as tax efficiently as possible
• Federal employees who don't understand the complexity of their government benefits
• Employees of a hot tech company with a recent IPO who don't know whether to hold or sell their stock options

Event

• Heirs who inherited appreciated real estate
• The death of a spouse who managed all the finances
• Getting remarried and blending family finances

Specialty

• Parents who need to provide for a child with special needs after their death
• Employees of tech companies exercising stock options post-IPO
• Women who have recently divorced and need to readjust their lifestyle

Mindset and Values

• Christians who want to invest and gift money in a way that aligns with their values
• Foreign-born citizens and residents who need to plan not only for their finances but also for the finances of their family back in their home country
• Philanthropists who want to give in a way that is most tax efficient and offers them the most recognition

Affinity

• Private pilots who want to find ways to write off their hobby of flying as a legitimate business expense
• Van-life people who face tax issues in multiple states
• Parents who started families in their 40s or 50s and face retiring and paying for college at the same time

The One Solution

This next section is written for advisors who have several years of experience working within their niche and wish to continue fine-tuning their business. Advisors new to a niche should not consider this concept until their niche is proven. I don't recommend altering your business model until your niche demonstrates success.

Advisors who have been focused on working with one niche for several years can benefit from delving one level deeper into defining their niche. This is achieved by describing the unique solution that solves the problem.

For advisors in this scenario, you define your niche using this formula: One Client + One Problem + One Solution.

To be truly 'niche', you should design all aspects of your business to serve that specific group. Your entire business model must be constructed with the ideal niche client in mind. The way you serve your client will become an integral part of the niche itself. This encompasses the processes you employ, the services you provide, the technology you utilize, the staff you recruit, the client experience you create, and how you price your services.

Let's look at 2 examples for comparison.

Example 1: Firm A describes its ideal clients as business owners, 55 to 65 years old, within 5 years of retirement, who are delegators, and who have at least $1 million in investable assets, with more assets coming in after the sale of their business.

Firm A offers the standard retirement planning and investment management services to these business owners that they do for their other clients.

In this example, Firm A does not offer unique value to business owners, as they receive the same services and similar retirement planning advice as any other pre-retiree client of the firm.

Example 2: Firm B works with the same ideal client as Firm A.

However, in addition to financial planning and investment management, they offer business valuation services and exit strategies. They have intentionally designed their process and services to address the unique financial and psychological challenges that a business owner faces when selling a business.

Firm B has curated a network of business brokers and attorneys who can help list their business. They subscribe to software that allows them to calculate a basic business valuation each year to see how the business owner client is progressing toward their goals. And they hire staff who are passionate about small business.

Business owners derive greater value from the advisors in the second scenario because the solutions are tailored to their needs and concerns. This firm has built its entire business model around its niche, making it unique from other advisory firms. They may be the only advisors in their area serving this type of client in such a distinct manner.

So, how do you develop a business model tailored to the exact needs of your niche? You do it by focusing on 4 elements:

1. Proprietary process: The unique path your company follows to achieve transformative results for clients
2. Client experience: Your office setting, staff, provided deliverables, and the technology you use – all contribute to the client experience
3. Services: Standard financial planning and investment management tailored for your niche's needs, plus specialized services not commonly offered by generalist advisors
4. Pricing: How you charge for services, designed to match your niche's financial resources and their preferred way of engaging with an advisor

An excellent example of a firm that uses the "solution" as part of its niche definition is Dentist Advisors' Elements Financial Planning System™ as described in episode 184 of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast.

Now that you have defined your one client, your one problem, and optionally, your one solution, it's time to evaluate whether the niche has the opportunity to succeed and how you can tweak it to increase its chances of success.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Niche For Viability And Suitability

I often get the question, "Which niches are most successful?" There is no such thing as a perfect niche market that any advisor can jump into. Only you can decide which option is right for you based on the characteristics of your niche and your passion and aptitude to serve them.

While there is no guarantee that the niche you pursue will be a success, you can assess your risk and opportunity based on 10 key factors. These factors fall into 2 categories: 1) the viability of the niche itself and 2) the fit of the advisor.

Although you do not need to be strong in all 10 factors, the more areas you feel confident in, the less likely your niche will be a bust. That being said, in my experience, the strongest niches will have purchasing power, be easy to target, and have complex financial needs. Plus, you will need to have a high degree of access to the niche either through being a member yourself or through a conduit like a Center Of Influence (COI).

If you have experience with the niche, you may have a gut feeling about rating each of the 10 factors. If you have little to no experience with the niche, I recommend interviewing people included in or serving your niche to gain insights.

Niche Viability

The first thing when evaluating your niche is to consider if it presents a viable opportunity. This does not take into consideration the suitability of the financial advisor. Do this step by assessing 7 criteria:

1. Pain: Is your niche feeling significant mental or emotional pain regarding their problem? The more pain a prospect feels about their specific financial problem, the more likely they will act to solve it.
2. Urgency: Is it urgent for clients in your niche to have their problem solved? The more urgent it is for those in your niche to solve their problem, the easier it is for you to attract them.
3. Complexity: Is the niche’s primary financial problem complex enough that most other financial advisors can’t address it adequately or profitably? Is it something that takes a lot of time and research to solve for the first client but is easy to replicate once you have developed the expertise and a process?
4. Purchasing power: Is your niche willing and able to pay your fees if you structure them to match the niche’s financial realities?
5. Growing: Is your niche market expanding? You will want to assess whether there is sufficient future or sustainable growth to justify investing your time and resources into the niche.
6. Easy to target: Is your niche easy to find for marketing purposes? Can you easily find or purchase a marketing list of people in your niche (e.g., through LinkedIn or as a direct mailing list)? Can you easily identify where members of your niche gather (e.g., conferences, associations, or Facebook groups)?
7. Dominance: Is it possible for you to dominate this space due to a lack of competition? How much other competition is there in the narrow specialty of your niche?

Advisor Fit

In addition to determining if the niche presents a viable opportunity, the next thing to analyze is whether you, the advisor, are well-suited for this niche. This is accomplished using 3 criteria:

1. Expertise: Do you have the basic skills and knowledge necessary to begin serving this niche?
2. Credibility: Do you have a minimum amount of credibility working with clients in this niche? Have you worked with other clients in this niche? Have you had personal experience with the same shared problem the niche faces?
3. Access: Can you access the niche through your existing network and opportunities? Do you have a close relationship with a gatekeeper who can get you access to your niche if you don’t have direct access?

I invite you to take the OnNiche® Niche Assessment online at OnNiche.com/assessment. In the final step of the process, "Refining Your Niche," the results of the assessment will help you identify where adjustments are needed.

Market Size

Most advisors are concerned about whether the niche market they are considering is large enough to sustain a business. In my experience, advisors are more likely to choose a niche that is too broad than one that is too limited. I rarely worry that a niche is too narrow because the advisor can always expand it. You may even find that your niche naturally broadens as you dominate your market.

Let's say your niche is Boeing employees, and your clients start leaving Boeing for other jobs due to recent company issues. While your initial niche may have been Boeing, as clients move to other jobs in the aerospace/defense industry, they still want to work with you. This leads you to learn the ins and outs of equity compensation and benefits at other companies. And because your clients appreciate the work you do for them, they refer colleagues from their new companies to you. While you started with a niche at the company level (Boeing), you ended up with a niche at the industry level (aerospace/defense). The expansion is natural.

There is no hard and fast rule to know if your niche will be large enough, as many factors come into play. For example, how many other advisors are serving this niche? What is your close rate? However, if you want to perform a basic calculation to get some idea of whether a niche market is sufficiently large, you will need to begin by making some decisions and assumptions.

Decision: The first decision is how many clients you want. Do you want 100 clients, 1,000 clients, or 10,000 clients? Most advisors serve between 50 and 150 clients, so let's use 100 clients per advisor for this calculation, assuming you don't have a more accurate number in mind. Multiply 100 by the number of lead advisors you have.

Assumption: For this calculation, you'll have to make an assumption about how much market share – the number of people in your niche who will hire a financial advisor – you can capture. Do you think 1% or 10% of potential clients in the niche market will hire your firm? While this number is difficult to guess, in his book The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insights to Impact + Wealth, author David C. Baker claims, “If your firm is pretty good but maybe not quite amazing, you can safely assume that you’ll wrap up 1% of the opportunity.”

Now, let's do the calculation. To make this calculation easy, I will assume there is 1 advisor who wants to work with 100 clients. Market share is very hard to guess, so I'll assume 1% just to be conservative.

Clients needed: 100

Percentage of market share captured: 1%

100 clients ÷ 1% market share = 10,000 people needed in target niche

Let's say you live in Seattle and your niche is Boeing employees who need help with their equity compensation decisions. A quick LinkedIn search for senior-level employees who have been with the company for over 10 years and are located in the Greater Seattle area yields 13,000 people. However, this number might be an underestimate since not everyone uses LinkedIn. According to The Seattle Times, there are 66,792 Boeing employees in Washington state. Therefore, the market size of potential clients you might want to work with lies somewhere between 13,000 and 66,792, as not all employees will require financial advisory services at this stage in their life. Is this market large enough for a solo practitioner? Assuming there are not dozens of other financial advisors focused on this niche, the answer, based on the calculation, would be yes.

But what if your firm had 10 advisors and needed 100,000 potential clients? You would have to make the decision of whether the market was large enough for the firm based on what you know about the niche and your confidence in your advisors’ business development and sales skills. You should also consider expanding this niche by targeting other locations. Finally, the more well-known you become in the niche, the more likely you will increase your market share, meaning you might not need the market to be as large as you initially assumed.

Sources Of Research

Where can you research how big your market is? If your niche falls under the broad category of "Career," this is fairly easy to figure out. Plenty of databases are out there to help you, such as LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and Apollo. You can drill down to the exact people you want to reach.

Other categories can be more challenging. You can hire a market research firm to get this information or look for academic studies. You can also use the U.S. Census website. You can do a Google search or ask AI tools such as ChatGPT and cite their sources. You can also look for online groups and forums for your niche and see how many people are members. Similarly, you can look at associations and see how many members they have. You can also reach out to a direct mail provider to build a list of people that fall into your niche criteria.

Step 3: Refine And Redefine Your Niche For Greater Success

The final step of fine-tuning your niche involves reexamining the areas of the assessment that need improvement. If you scored 80% or higher on the online niche assessment, you're likely in good shape and may not need to refine your niche. However, if you scored below 80%, some refinement is necessary. This process begins by addressing the areas where you scored a 3 or lower (on a scale of 1–5).

In these areas, ask yourself the corresponding questions for each category listed below. By answering these questions, you can further narrow and refine your niche. Even if you haven't taken the official assessment, simply identifying the areas where you feel your niche would score a 3 or lower can offer valuable insight and direction.

Niche Viability

• Pain: Is there a way to refine your niche to focus on those who experience significant pain regarding their problem? For example, can you narrow your niche to include those facing a triggering event that presents a significant pain point?
• Urgency: Is there a way to refine your niche to focus on those who feel a heightened urgency to solve their problem? Similar to pain, can you narrow your niche to those facing a triggering event that presents significant urgency?
• Complexity: Can you redefine your niche to target those with a special need or requirement that other advisors aren't addressing?
• Purchasing power: How can you define your client to target those who are willing and able to pay your fees? How can you adjust your solution to make it more affordable for your niche?
• Growth: How can you alter the definition of your niche to include a segment that is growing or at least maintaining its size?
• Ease of targeting: What are some ways you can rethink the definition of your niche to make ideal prospects easier to find and target?
• Dominance: How can you narrow down your niche to make it more specialized and something you can potentially dominate?"

Advisor Suitability

• Expertise: What can you do to learn everything you need to feel competent in understanding and solving the needs of your niche?
• Credibility: Who or what can you leverage to increase your credibility?
• Access: Who or what can you leverage to provide access to the niche?

To demonstrate how the assessment can provide guidance in refining your niche, let's look at 3 niches: business exit planning, women in transition, and retirement planning.

Business Exit Planning

As previously discussed, the category of business owners does not qualify as a niche due to the diverse challenges they face. For instance, a 65-year-old business owner selling a family-owned business represents a completely different niche from a 28-year-old serial entrepreneur. Similarly, a 5-person professional services firm varies significantly from a 200-employee manufacturing company in terms of goals, financial needs, and the professional and social circles where they congregate.

Given the lack of a clear, unified set of pain points and urgencies among business owners as a category, I will focus on the popular segment of business owners planning for an exit. For the purposes of this article, let's assume that the advisor is perfectly suited for this niche, rating themselves with scores of 5 in expertise, credibility, and access.

As a whole, business exit planning can be an incredibly lucrative niche. Business owners who successfully sell their businesses will likely experience a significant money-in-motion event, leading to the management of many millions of dollars in investable assets.

Despite the potential upside, though, the challenges in serving this group are numerous. It's estimated that only 30% to 40% of businesses will sell. Additionally, the vast majority of businesses generate less than $1 million in revenue, which means relatively few business owners experience the substantial windfall advisors are looking for. On top of that, the niche is extremely competitive, with many advisors targeting this same small group. Furthermore, proper planning can take many years, during which time the client may not have significant assets for the advisor to manage. In addition, business owners are incredibly busy, and they can be difficult to reach and engage through traditional marketing channels.

Running business exit planning as a niche through the online niche assessment yields a score of 75%, which indicates a need for refinement. The assessment points to the areas of growth, ease of targeting, and dominance for possible improvement.

Let's look at how we can improve each area:

Growing: How can you change the definition of your niche to include a growing segment? One way would be to look at industries with the fastest-growing small businesses, such as residential remodeling, home healthcare, and cybersecurity.

Easy to target: What are some ways you can rethink how you define your niche to make target prospects easier to find? Again, this is a good time to look at types of businesses or industries where they read the same publications or congregate online or at live events.

Dominance: How can you narrow your niche to make it more specialized and something you can dominate? By narrowing in on an industry, business type, business size, or specialty, you are seen as unique and can be better positioned to dominate your niche.

Here are some ways to make your business exit planning niche more specific:

• Specializing in specific industries or business types (e.g., manufacturing, franchises)
• Choosing a particular type of sale (e.g., internal succession, external sale)
• Specializing in business size (e.g., over $30 million in revenue, less than $1 million in revenue)

By undergoing this refinement process, you can identify narrower segments within the business exit planning niche, such as:

• Owners of home healthcare franchises with at least 3 franchises
• Owners of businesses in and supporting residential remodeling, with revenues ranging from $10 million to $50 million
• Family-owned businesses undergoing internal succession

Any of these niches would raise the assessment score from the initial 75% to the high 80%s or 90%s.

Women In Transition

Women are often assumed to be a niche, even though they constitute half the population. Similar to business owners, "women" as a niche is too broad a definition to serve as a meaningful category for assessment. A popular segment for advisors to target within this group is "women in transition." While this represents a significant narrowing from the general category of women, it can still be quite broad. Women in transition may encompass a variety of life events, such as widowhood, divorce, becoming an empty nester, career changes, marriage, retirement, childbirth or adoption, caring for aging parents, facing health challenges, and receiving an inheritance.

Just by reading this list, you can see many immediate and obvious ways to refine your niche. To show you how to refine it even further, let's select a popular subsegment of women in transition: widows.

Widows are an attractive niche for advisors because they often urgently need help and are ready to take proactive steps to address their financial issues, a contrast to the typical procrastination seen in other types of clients. Working with this group can be extremely rewarding. Additionally, it's a growing market since most married women will become widows if they live to at least 75, though the average age of widows is 59. However, due to this niche's popularity, standing out can be difficult.

Applying the assessment to the widow niche yields a score of 72%, which indicates a need for refinement. The assessment points to the need for improvement in the areas of complexity, ease of targeting, and dominance.

Let's look at how you can refine each area:

Complexity: Can you identify some special need or service that other advisors aren't solving that you could address? For example, can you work with widows who have inherited the ownership of a business they were not previously involved in? Can you work with widows dealing with the dynamics of the deceased spouse's children?

Easy to target: What are some ways you can rethink how you define your niche to make target prospects easier to find? Choosing a specific stage may help. Are you working with them right after the death of a spouse, in which case you work closely with estate planning attorneys and insurance agents? Or is it down the road where you get involved in support groups?

Dominance: How can you narrow your niche to make it more specialized and something you dominate? Again, identifying complexity or some specialty area will help.

When it comes to refining the widow planning niche, here are some points to consider:

• Selecting a specific stage of their journey (e.g., immediately after the spouse has passed, when 2 years have passed and it's time to start re-envisioning a new life)
• Choosing a particular life stage (e.g., young widows with young families, widows who are retirees)
• Specializing in specific areas of complexity (e.g., widows of business owners, widows with substantial investment in real estate assets).

By undergoing this refinement process, you can identify narrower segments within the widow niche, such as:

• Young widows with young families and significant life insurance benefits
• Widows with blended families facing complicated family dynamics
• Widows who have inherited significant real estate assets and need to turn them into income

Any of these niches would raise the assessment score from 72% to the high 80%s or 90%s.

Retirement Planning

Retirement planning is probably the specialty area that financial advisors focus on the most. This makes sense since this is generally the period of life when clients have accumulated the most wealth, have the most pain points of how to live off their savings for the rest of their lives, and have an urgency to get advice as retirement day approaches.

The biggest issue with the category of retirement planning is that it is nearly impossible to stand out since most advisors focus on the same market.

This segment can be difficult to assess because the needs vary greatly. A 55-year-old has a lot less pain and urgency than a 65-year-old. Someone with assets in an IRA or brokerage account has a lot more purchasing power than someone with a pension. Applying the assessment to pre-retirees, 10 years from retirement with investable assets of $1 million yields a score of 78%, which indicates a need for refinement. The assessment points to the areas of improvement as pain, urgency, complexity, and dominance. Let's look at each:

Pain: Is there a way to refine your niche so that you are focused on clients who feel significant pain about their problem? This can often be solved by considering specific triggering events that may happen, such as an unplanned layoff or a life-changing inheritance.

Urgency: Is there a way to refine your niche so that you are focused on those who feel more urgency to solve their problem? This can be solved by finding a niche with a shortened timeline for retirement, similar to the ones mentioned in the example above.

Complexity: Can you identify a special need or service that other advisors aren't solving that you can address? Examples could include understanding equity compensation or pension plans for specific employers or seniority levels.

Dominance: How can you narrow your niche to make it more specialized and something you dominate? By narrowing in on an industry, scenario, or employment benefits, you are seen as unique and can dominate your niche.

When it comes to refining the retirement planning category, here are some ideas to consider:

• Specializing in a specific industry (e.g., tech, biopharma, oil and gas, defense contractors)
• Choosing a particular type of position (e.g., C-level, engineers, attorneys)
• Focusing on specific specialties (e.g., equity compensation, government benefits, single retirees)
• Specializing in specific scenarios (e.g., early retirement before Medicare kicks in, one year before retirement, couples with more than a 10-year age difference, unplanned layoff late in a career)

By undergoing this refinement process, you can identify narrower segments within the business-exit-planning niche, such as:

• Couples retiring simultaneously with a significant age gap and requiring extended planning
• Employees nearing retirement within the Federal Employees Retirement System
• Executives in the defense contractor industry

Any of these niches would raise the assessment score from 78% to the high 80%s or 90%s.

Final Thoughts

Refining your niche is more than just an exercise; it's a strategic endeavor that positions you to stand out in a crowded marketplace. As we've explored, moving from a broad target market to a narrowly defined niche isn't about excluding potential clients. It's about aligning your business with the unique needs, pain points, and aspirations of your ideal clients. This process of fine-tuning your focus is ongoing and iterative, and it requires introspection, adaptability, and an understanding of your market.

For advisors ready to refine their niche beyond a target market, the benefits are clear. You'll gain deep expertise, build stronger connections, and provide unmatched value to your clients. Here are the key advantages:

• Financial gains: According to results from Kitces Research on Advisor Marketing (2019) and Advisor Productivity (2020), niche advisors have 14% more clients, charge higher fees, and earn significantly more than generalist advisors.
• Specialization: You'll gain deep knowledge about your clients' specific challenges, offering better solutions than broader-focused advisors.
• Less competition: Focusing on a niche reduces your competition. You'll offer unique services that few others can.
• Better marketing: By targeting only your ideal clients, you'll spend marketing dollars more effectively and avoid wasted efforts.
• More referrals: Specializing makes word-of-mouth marketing more effective. You'll become the go-to expert in your niche.
• Operational efficiency: Catering to one type of client lets you streamline your operations with tailored processes and systems.
• Personal satisfaction: Working with clients you're passionate about goes beyond just financial success to bring you more joy and fulfillment.

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Ultimately, refining your niche is not a one-off effort; it's a continuous process of evolution. Listening to your market and adapting your strategy is key to long-term success.

This article is not just about providing guidance; it's a call to adopt a niche-focused philosophy. Being a niche advisor means becoming a trusted ally for your clients and understanding their needs better than anyone else. And niche refinement doesn't mean narrowing your options; instead, you can consider it as an opportunity to free yourself from being generic. It's about creating a unique position for yourself in a broad market.

The journey is as rewarding as the destination, offering growth and the chance to make a real difference in your clients' lives. Embrace this journey, refine your niche, and transform your business into a beacon for those you're here to serve!