It mainly depends on what you mean by "potential".

True potential requires real utility which altcoins lack. Take bitcoin for example. It has true potential because it has a real utility as "money" (store of value and medium of exchange). That is not true about altcoins. Majority of them were created to be pumped and dumped.
To recognize true potential in any altcoin you need to be an expert at a technical level to go through the project, check their paper, their protocol, look at the code, run their main client, etc. Something that most people are not capable of doing. But if you find one, then you are in for real treat (imagine finding bitcoin back in 2009).

But another definition of "potential" which you probably you have in mind could be short term profit gained from a quick pump aka market manipulation. This is difficult because as I said you would be trying to predict market manipulation. Although there are signs but finding such pumpable shitcoins at early stages is very difficult and risky because if you fall for fake advertisement you can end up losing a lot of money, we are talking about shitcoins after all...

The 4 options you mentioned here are actually very risky (even what you called expert advice) because again we are talking about market manipulation. They will lie if they are paid enough money...