Drumming up new business is a priority for most advisors, but it can drain your time and interfere with your ability to serve your existing clients. If you’re ready to streamline client acquisition, there are several prospecting tools for financial advisors that can help. These digital tools can help you develop systems to save time and operate more efficiently, all while still growing your practice.
SmartAsset’s Advisor Marketing Platform (AMP) can help you add new clients and assets under management (AUM) at your desired pace. Sign up for a free demo today.
5 Types of Prospecting Tools for Financial Advisors
Prospecting is not something you do once and forget about. It’s an ongoing process that ideally helps you inject new blood into your business. When evaluating prospecting tools for advisors, it’s helpful to break them into categories based on what they’re designed to do for you.
With that in mind, here are some of the tools you may find most useful for elevating your prospecting game.
1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A customer relationship management platform or CRM is an essential tech tool for advisors. These platforms allow you to collect and organize prospects’ information, keep track of your interactions and schedule follow-ups at appropriate intervals to keep leads warm.
The data you collect for prospects can help you better understand what they need so you can begin nurturing relationships from day one. You can segment prospect lists based on priority, demographics or other factors, and track engagement through your CRM.
If you’re looking for recommendations, learn more about these popular CRM platforms for advisors.
2. Email Marketing
Email marketing programs can help you build a list of loyal subscribers who are eager to read your latest updates. Email is a genius marketing tool for advisors for several reasons:
- Lead generation. Lead magnets can help you capture contact details and get more prospects on your email list. Email marketing platforms can allow you to create sign-up forms and landing pages that you can use to promote your lead magnet on your website or social media accounts.
- Automation. Email drip marketing campaigns are a fantastic way to nurture leads and build relationships. Email marketing tools make it easy to draft and schedule messages to send, without having to be hands-on all the time.
- Customization. Branding is an important part of marketing, as you want prospects to cultivate a positive brand image of your firm. Email marketing tools can offer customization by allowing you to choose specific fonts or colors, set up a preferred signature and include a logo or branded header image.
- Tracking. Email marketing tools can help you better understand certain key performance indicators (KPIs), such as your email open rates, click rates and unsubscribe rates. That data is useful for fine-tuning your email campaigns.
- Cost. Marketing campaigns can get expensive if you’re running digital ads or advertising locally. Email, by comparison, is relatively inexpensive and can potentially generate a much higher return on investment.
Which email marketing tools for advisors are worth considering? Here are a few options.
- Drip
- Click Funnels
- HubSpot
- Outbound Engine
- Levitate
SmartAsset AMP is another digital tool that can help with streamlining your email marketing efforts. As you match with leads through the platform, you’ll have access to automated messaging tools you can use to stay in touch with prospects.
3. Content Creation
Content creation simply means creating video, image or text content that you publish on your website, social media accounts and other online platforms. Content marketing offers several benefits to advisors:
- SEO traffic. Content that’s optimized using SEO techniques can drive more visitors to your firm’s website, which is an opportunity to collect prospect email addresses using your lead magnet.
- Engagement. Social media content can spark engagement and conversation with prospects. For instance, you might share a poll and ask your followers to respond. Or you could host a 15-minute livestream Q&A to answer financial planning questions.
- Visibility. Creating content that’s noteworthy and shareable can help you expand your reach beyond your following, if other people repost it or link to it from their websites or social media accounts.
What kind of tools can advisors use for content creation? It depends on the type of content you’re generating.
Artificial intelligence can be a time-saver and help inspire ideas for new content. Here are some AI tools that many advisors rely on for content creation:
- ChatGPT (for creating video scripts, blog post outlines and brainstorming ideas)
- Canva (for infographics, presentations, social media graphics, YouTube videos and AI-generated images)
- Copy.ai (for creating marketing copy and social media content)
- Jasper (for writing search engine optimized content)
4. Seminars
Seminar marketing, whether you’re meeting with prospects in person or virtually, can help leads put a face to a name, and make a connection with you that could lead to a new client relationship. Online seminars may be easier to schedule and arrange, and that’s where virtual meeting tools come in.
These tools help you build online spaces to organize workshops and seminars, market them to your target audience, and conduct them seamlessly on schedule. Many of the top online meeting tools integrate with advisor CRMs so you can easily track data and engagement to see which prospects are responding to your seminar invitations.
Some of the tools you may use to plan your next seminar include:
- Salesforce
- Redtail
- Zoom
- Miro
- Slack
5. Lead Generation
Lead generation tools help you find right-fit leads, make connections and foster them all in one place. Some lead generation platforms are exclusive to financial advisors, meaning they provide you with curated lists of prospects who may be looking for a professional to work with.
Comparing features, functionality and cost can help you decide if lead generation tools are worth the investment for your business. Here are a few options to consider that have a track record of providing results for advisors:
- SmartAsset AMP
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Wealthbox
- Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
- Advisor Stream
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.
Bottom Line
The prospecting tools for financial advisors mentioned here are just some of the options you might weigh as you develop your marketing plan. Analyzing which area or areas of prospecting you need the most help with can help you narrow down which tools are most likely to prove beneficial.
Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business
- How large is your digital footprint? Having an online presence is more important than ever as investors increasingly turn to search engines for financial advice. 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 could help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
- As you develop your marketing plan and incorporate prospecting tools, remember to keep compliance firmly in sight. The SEC’s marketing rule offers guidance on what advisors can and cannot do to promote their businesses. As you add prospecting tools to your tech suite, consider how they align with your firm’s compliance policy.
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