Are You Marketing to the Wrong Audience?

Mass affluent individuals might make up 15% of consumers, but they hold a much higher share of the possible investable wealth — which is what most advisors who want to immediately grow their AUM care about most. In fact, the mass affluent hold 43% of all investable assets.

Advisors may think of mass affluent as the HENRY (High Earner, Not Rich Yet) population, but the numbers above clearly show there is immediate wealth that needs advice.

Forward-looking advisory firms should try to capture a high earner as early as possible. And as that person grows in earning power, your firm grows with them.

Two Mass Affluent Marketing Strategies

The mass affluent client can be described as:

• Making around $100,000 a year in income.
• Having anywhere between $100,000 to $1 million in investable assets.
• Still accumulating more assets.

Here are two ways to provide these clients what they value: quality, convenience and experience-based interactions:

1. Invest in your digital client experience.

Document your client experience so you can identify which parts can be improved with digital interactions. It may mean that you focus on implementing a remote meeting process or that you use your client portal more heavily to add content they can download. By augmenting your advice with digital interactions, you'll not only create an experience favored by the mass affluent, you also will increase the efficiency of delivering your advice.

2. Create personalized interactions.

Mass affluent clients want high-quality professional relationships and personalized experiences as well. By investing in your digital experience, create opportunities to personalize meetings, communications, and messages and keep scaling your business.

More important, though, is to identify these clients' unique needs and offer them educational information that provides real value.

The mass affluent demographic is key to your growth. As more high net worth individuals consolidate around some of the largest RIAs, and then refer their network to those large firms, the average advisor has to identify where the opportunities for growth can be found.

To reach this important group, you need to build your firm's digital and personalized client service and marketing efforts. By doing that, you position yourself to win with these types of clients in the years ahead.