7 Prospecting Ideas Financial Advisors Should Try

Growth-oriented financial advisors need a steady pipeline of new prospects, but spending more time prospecting does not necessarily produce better results. The key is knowing where to focus your efforts so you can make better use of your time and marketing budget. How you approach prospecting typically hinges on your niche and the type of clients you’re hoping to attract. Testing different prospecting strategies can help you identify which methods generate the strongest response from your target audience.

SmartAsset’s Advisor Marketing Platform (AMP) can offer financial advisors services like client lead generation, automated marketing and more. Learn about SmartAsset AMP today.

1. Encourage Client Referrals

Referrals are often an invaluable part of an advisor’s prospecting strategy. When someone refers a prospect to your firm, it can signal trust in your abilities and confidence in the services you provide. Fifty-two percent of top-performing firms have a documented plan for driving referrals, according to Schwab’s 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study. ¹ If you’d like to join their ranks, consider how you can encourage your clients to tell others about your firm.

Some techniques are obvious. Delivering top-tier service and a superior client experience, for example, can generate referrals organically. You can also ask clients for referrals if you feel comfortable doing so. For instance, you may close each client meeting by mentioning that you’re looking to expand your book of business if they know someone who could benefit from your services.

Hosting client events is another opportunity to encourage referrals if you’re making your clients feel valued and appreciated. A structured referral program is another possibility. To create your program, decide what will constitute a referral and what incentive you’d like to offer to clients. Talk to your chief compliance officer about how to build a compliant program if you plan to offer some type of reward for qualifying referrals.

Client Acquisition Simplified: For RIAs

• Ideal for RIAs looking to scale.
• Validated referrals to help build your pipeline efficiently.
• Save time + optimize your close rate with high-touch, pre-built campaigns.

CFP®, CEO

Joe Anderson

Pure Financial Advisors

We have seen a remarkable return on investment and comparatively low client acquisition costs even as we’ve multiplied our spend over the years.

Pure Financial Advisors reports $1B in new AUM from SmartAsset investor referrals.

Target New Clients This Year

I am a registered fiduciary*

Book Your Free DemoNot sure? Learn more about AMP.

2. Cultivate Centers of Influence

Your clients are not the only source of referrals; you may also acquire new clients through other professionals in your network. Centers of influence (COIs) are individuals who work within or adjacent to the financial services industry and serve a clientele that’s similar to yours. Think other advisors, financial planners, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, insurance agents, CPAs, tax attorneys and estate planning attorneys.

These individuals may be willing to refer their clients to you for services they can’t provide if you’ve taken the time to build a solid relationship and demonstrate your value. In turn, you can refer your clients to them so that your relationship is mutually beneficial. In terms of how much value COIs can provide, the Schwab study found that RIAs with an established business referral plan gained 1.6x more new clients and 1.7x more new client assets compared to advisors with no such plan.

How do you identify centers of influence and connect with them? You can use online and offline strategies to build your prospecting network. For example, you might build your network on LinkedIn while also interacting with advisors in the real world through local meetups, financial planning or advisory conferences, seminars and other events. Charity or pro bono work can also create opportunities to connect with other financial and legal professionals.

Outsource Your RIA Marketing

Automate your marketing with a proven system. Automated outreach, nurture campaigns and more.

Get Started

3. Use Drip Campaigns to Nurture Leads

Email is a powerful prospecting tool, allowing you to make a direct connection with potential clients. Drip campaigns are an opportunity to build rapport with prospects in a pressure-free environment. 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.

If you’re new to email marketing, the first step is getting prospects onto your list. Offering a valuable lead magnet is one way to accomplish that. A lead magnet is a free resource you offer in exchange for someone’s email address. You can set up your drip campaign to automatically begin sending messages at specific intervals once someone joins your list.

The length of your sequence typically depends on the types of messages you want to send. For example, you might send a brief introductory message on day one, followed by a message that directly addresses a financial pain point the prospect might be dealing with. On day three, you revisit the pain point, framing yourself as a credible and knowledgeable expert who can provide solutions. Day four’s message asks the prospect to envision what might be possible financially, while day five summarizes what you’ve shared so far and invites them to take the next step to book a call.

The upside of drip campaigns is that you can create the messages and schedule them to send automatically to each new prospect who joins your list. This allows you to nurture relationships without being continuously tied to your device. If you’re interested in doing the same with text messaging, SmartAsset AMP can help. This dedicated advisor marketing platform bridges the gap between advisors and prospects, while giving them the tools they need to make real connections.

4. Share Your Expertise Through 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 around a topic that’s relevant to your target audience, then promote it through email and social media to attract prospective attendees.

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.

For example, if your primary audience is physicians, you might host a seminar on the challenges of balancing retirement planning with paying down medical school debt. Or if you cater to women, you might focus your seminar on specific challenges they face in retirement planning: the gender pay gap, lost time in the workplace due to caregiving, divorce or the premature death of a spouse.

Your CRM platform may offer built-in tools to help you track the seminars you host. For example, you might 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. Redtail CRM specifically offers a seminar management feature.

5. Engage on Social Media

Social media can be a critical bridge between advisors and prospects. While 32% of Americans say they look to financial advisors for guidance on money questions, 26% rely on social media for answers, according to a 2025 Gallup Poll. Gen Z is most likely to turn to social media, followed by millennials, Gen X and Boomers. That’s important to note if you’re hoping to attract a younger generation of clients. ²

Creating content for social media that’s designed to drive engagement can help you get closer to those prospects. For example, posting short-form videos to answer commonly asked financial questions is a chance to show off both your knowledge and your personality. You might share polls or quizzes, ask your followers a question or repost timely content to spark discussion.

Once you begin to build a following, don’t leave them hanging. Reply to comments and/or direct messages on the platforms you use promptly. Replies offer another chance to share some of your knowledge and make a personal connection with prospects.

6. Collaborate and Form Partnerships

Collaborations and strategic partnerships can help you expand your reach and connect with a broader pool of prospects. The idea is that by joining forces, you can both gain exposure with one another’s audience. If that audience is interested in what you have to say, that’s a chance to grab their attention and eventually convert them to clients.

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 professional
• Offering to share your expertise on a financial influencer’s podcast, radio show, YouTube channel or blog
• Co-writing a book
• Jointly hosting or sponsoring an event, such as a Q&A livestream, webinar or roundtable discussion

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.

Look at your network and who you know first to identify candidates who might be a good fit for collaboration. Then, expand the circle outward to include financial influencers, advisors and other financial services professionals you’d like to connect with.

7. Try Old School Tactics

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 than 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 details about the prospects you want to reach and the message you want to deliver, and the marketing company can handle 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.

Don’t give up on cold calling either. Some prospects may appreciate a phone call moreso than an email, text or letter. If you’re unsure what to say, consider developing some cold calling scripts so the conversation flows smoothly.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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.

Photo credit: ©iStock.com/shapecharge, ©iStock.com/Natee Meepian, ©iStock.com/kate_sept2004