Client marketing necessitates an "eagle eye," according to one top-ranked financial advisor with whom I recently spoke. "Niche marketing is the key to success."
As trite as that may sound, many advisors fall victim to their general financial planning practice when it comes to marketing. It is one thing to have the knowledge and capability to handle myriad client situations, but it is quite another to market a "specialty" to clients, something that may appeal to them on an instinctual and ethical level, something that draws them in and conveys a theme from which investment programs can be sprung. Read: new business!
Impact Investing may seem like a daunting specialty to hold out to clients-all that education, due diligence, industry knowledge and understanding. But the payoff is grand in a number of ways: It offers something new to existing clients, something "marketable" to potential clients, and puts advisors who choose to partake in impact investing in the league with the wealthiest individuals and institutions in the world all because-and here is the ethical branding part-impact investing does the world good.
Impact investing combines capital profit with social profit. Invest in companies that make the world a better place and make money doing it. For those who aren't aware, the upside is huge. And the community of impact investors is growing exponentially. To exemplify, check out the attendee list for the forthcoming Sustainatopia conference March 31 through April 6 in Miami: more than 1,000 leaders and from 40 countries. Look closely at the list-it's rock star.
Sure there is networking to be had within this group, but holding out to clients this prism through which to view the world portends great power; it empowers clients and makes them a part of something. Nothing is more effectual than a growing movement that creates social change.
Opportunities abound within the impact investing arena. This new asset class provides a different type of education, insight and understanding of world markets. Impact Investing is global.
Take water. Water stocks have largely outperformed the S&P 500 Index for a decade or so. As China, the U.S. and other superpowers begin to dry up (click here to read about it), there is a race for new technologies to solve the crises. New technology = new companies = new investments = big upside.
Impact investors get in first to opportunities like this.
Cocktail chatter, at the very least, but for the very best, impact investing is a niche marketing opportunity not to be passed by.
The Eagle Eye
February 16, 2011
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