Attracting new clients to your business is essential for its continued growth. That means you’re likely to spend a decent amount of time scouting out prospects. However, the key is knowing where to focus your energy, which can help you to get the best return on investment. To that end, let’s review which prospecting techniques for financial advisors are the most effective.
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7 Proven Prospecting Techniques for Financial Advisors
How you approach prospecting typically hinges on your niche and the type of clients you’re hoping to attract. Testing a variety of prospecting ideas can help you zero in on which strategies are likely to produce optimal results.
Here are seven prospecting techniques financial advisors can use to grow.
1. Referrals
Referrals are often an invaluable part of an advisor’s prospecting plan. When someone refers a prospect to your business, it’s a sign of both trust and belief in your abilities.
How do you get more referrals as a financial advisor? It depends on where you’re sourcing them from.
Top referral sources for advisors include:
- Current clients
- Other advisors
- Accountants, attorneys and other financial professionals
- Advisor marketing platforms
There are a few ways to generate more referrals from current clients. Delivering top-tier service is obvious, but you could offer incentives through a referral program or simply ask. You could also host client appreciation events to show that you value their business, which may spur them to recommend you to friends and family.
Gaining referrals from other advisors or financial professionals starts with building a solid network and cultivating spheres of influence. Remember that these types of relationships are intended to be reciprocal, with referrals moving both ways.
Advisor marketing platforms simplify prospecting by connecting you with leads. You can then reach out to initiate a conversation and, depending on the platform, you may have access to automated tools to nurture the relationship.
2. Social Media
Social media is an excellent prospecting tool for learning more about what your ideal clients need and fostering engagement. Prospecting techniques for social media include:
- Ensuring that your branding is consistent and reflects who you are
- Creating content that is valuable to your intended audience and shareable
- Using hashtags to increase your visibility
- Experimenting with different content formats to determine what your ideal clients are most likely to engage with
- Initiating conversations using polls, surveys, quizzes, or open-ended questions
As you create social media content, consider the intent or goal. Each post should be framed to encourage some type of next-step action on the reader’s part, whether it’s visiting your website to sign up for your email list or responding to a question you’ve asked.
3. Email Marketing
Email is a powerful prospecting tool, allowing you to make a direct connection with potential clients. How do you build an email list? Offering a valuable lead magnet is one way. Lead magnets are a great incentive to encourage prospects to join.
Once prospects are on your email list, you can use email drip marketing campaigns to establish and build a rapport. A drip campaign is simply a series of scheduled messages that build upon one another and encourage the reader to take a specific action, such as scheduling a call with you.
Email is also a fantastic way to stay connected with current clients and potentially drive more referrals. Sending out a weekly or monthly email newsletter is an opportunity to check in with clients to see how they’re doing and mention that if they know someone who needs an advisor, you’re available to chat.
4. Seminars
Seminars are an incredibly useful prospecting tool for advisors who want to share their expertise with their ideal clients either in person or virtually. You can develop a seminar on a topic that’s relevant to your target audience and market it via email and social media to attract your target audience.
Optimizing seminars as a prospecting tool is all about choosing the right topic to discuss at the right time. This goes back to knowing who your ideal clients are, and the pain points they most likely struggle with.
Your CRM platform may offer built-in tools to help you track the seminars you host. You may also be able to use your CRM to track metrics for which prospects respond to the seminar invitation and which ones actually attend, which can help you decide how to follow up.
5. Volunteer Work
Doing pro bono or volunteer work as an advisor can bring you into contact with individuals who could turn into clients or refer clients to you.
For instance, you may volunteer with a local organization that’s supported by wealthy individuals in the community. You might have an opportunity to meet the donors through fundraising events, which could open the door to a conversation about what you do as a volunteer and as an advisor.
6. Collaborations
Collaborations and strategic partnerships can help you cast a wider net and tap into a wider pool of potential prospects.
Numerous possibilities exist for how to collaborate with other advisors, financial professionals and financial influencers to gain exposure to a new audience. Building spheres of influence is important, as mentioned, but you could consider other opportunities such as:
- Setting up an affiliate program to drive referrals
- Cross-promoting services with another advisor or financial advisor
- Offering to share your expertise on a financial influencer’s podcast, radio show, YouTube channel or blog
This prospecting strategy can be particularly effective if you’re trying to expand into a new niche. You can get access to a built-in audience of potential clients who are already interested in what you have to say.
7. Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail campaigns may seem outdated, but they can still be a useful part of your prospecting outreach strategy. A prospect who receives a letter, brochure or flyer may be more inclined to read it out of curiosity, versus an email that may go unopened.
If you need help creating direct mail marketing campaigns, there are third-party companies that will do it for you. You’ll need to provide them with some details about the prospects you’re trying to reach and the message you want to deliver, and the marketing company does the rest.
You can try some A/B testing to see how effective direct mail marketing proves to be for your firm. As with any other prospecting technique, it’s important to keep track of how many responses you’re getting and who’s responding to gauge how well the campaign is working.
Bottom Line
Prospecting can sometimes feel like a chore, but it’s an integral part of growing your business. The prospecting techniques shared here represent just a few creative ways you can attract more clients to your practice.
Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business
- Digital tools can simplify some of your marketing efforts so that you can spend more time serving your clients. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service that financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
- Before you launch into prospecting, it’s helpful to first create a buyer persona. This is a detailed description of the ideal person you want to help, including who they are demographically, their net worth and goals, and the biggest financial challenges they face. Developing ideal client profiles can help you target your prospecting activities so that you’re connecting with investors who could most benefit from your help.
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