5 Financial Advisor Marketing Tips to Follow

Maintaining a consistent flow of prospects is essential to growing a financial advisory business, but reaching the right audience can be challenging without a clear marketing strategy. Whether you’re building your practice from the ground up or refining an existing approach, these five marketing tips can help broaden your reach and deepen client relationships.

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Tip #1: Clarify Your Value

Being good at what you do as an advisor matters. But if that’s not being communicated to prospective clients, you could be missing out on opportunities.

“A marketing strategy can single-handedly make or break an advisor’s practice,” says Dan Biagini, chief distribution officer at Foundations Investment Advisors. ¹ “A lot of advisors may think because they’re good at what they do, their phone will ring off the hook with people wanting to work with them. The reality is most advisors don’t know how to articulate their value to customers and often struggle to get in front of new prospects.”

Clearly communicating how you serve your current clients, and the clients you want to attract, is essential. Crafting a mission statement that defines who you help and how you deliver value can be an effective first step in refining your financial advisor marketing strategy.

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Tip #2: Keep It Simple

Like any business, effective marketing for financial advisors centers on clearly communicating value. That starts with understanding two fundamentals:

• Who you serve
• What you offer them

Keeping your messaging client-focused is essential. Overemphasizing awards, credentials or designations can distract from what matters most to prospective clients, and may even dilute your message.

“Advisors must communicate about how they help their clients survive and thrive,” Biagini says.

Too much additional detail can lead to information overload. Revisit your marketing mission statement and focus on the core message you want clients to understand about how you help them meet their goals.

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Tip #3: Share Your Message in the Right Places

Financial advisory services are a highly competitive landscape. The more you’re able to target your marketing, the better your chances are of finding the people you want to reach.

There are two dimensions to financial advisor marketing: online and offline channels.

Let’s start by looking at your digital footprint. That may include:

• Your website or blog
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email marketing

Now, evaluate how effective each channel is for driving the leads that you want to reach. Specifically, consider how likely your target client is to use those channels.

If you want to market your advisory services to retirees, for example, you’re more likely to find them on Facebook than on Twitter or TikTok. In fact, a Broadridge survey of more than 400 financial advisors found that LinkedIn and Facebook are the two most popular social media channels for financial advisors to invest in. ²

Then again, if you want to market to a younger client base of 30-somethings who are ready to begin financial planning, you might find that video marketing is more effective.

The goal is to identify the marketing pathways that are working best. From there, you can work on improving your marketing strategy to increase conversions. And if you realize that a particular channel is not producing results, that could be a sign that your target client is spending time elsewhere online.

Tip #4: Be Ready to Adapt

Relying on a single marketing funnel can limit your growth and leave your business vulnerable. In-person workshops and seminars, for example, have long been a popular way for advisors to meet prospective clients. When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted that approach, many advisors were forced to quickly adapt.

The takeaway is clear: Spreading your marketing efforts across multiple channels can help protect your pipeline and expand your reach.

“If you’re only running one marketing funnel, you are automatically hiding from a population of prospects who would never be in that funnel,” Biagini says. “For example, a prospect you get in front of via radio or a podcast typically is someone who would not attend an in-person workshop.”

While it’s important to be strategic when adding new channels, effective financial advisor marketing often requires stepping beyond familiar tactics to connect with a broader audience.

Tip #5: Think Beyond the Basics

From a client perspective, it’s easy to view financial advisors as all doing the same thing: helping people manage money. But if you want to improve your marketing, you have to get prospects and existing clients to rethink that assumption.

“Advisors need to be thinking about how to add services to their practice that help them become a customer’s personal CFO and not just a stock trader or money manager,” Biagini says.

Consider the range of services you currently offer, then ask yourself where there might be room to improve or expand, possibly by developing a new service offering. The more you can set yourself apart from other financial advisors, the better results you might see from your marketing strategy.

How to Automate Marketing and Lead Prospecting

Marketing on your own can be challenging, but hiring an outside agency often comes with a hefty price tag.

A more scalable approach is to automate your lead generation, giving you a steady stream of qualified prospects each month. SmartAsset AMP is an end-to-end marketing platform designed to connect financial advisors with investors actively seeking professional guidance.

AMP matches leads based on location and asset level, so you’re only spending time with prospects who fit your ideal client profile. The platform helps automate email and text campaigns to keep leads engaged, allowing you to focus on closing new business.

Additionally, the Next Call feature of AMP seamlessly tracks your contacts with prospective clients and updates them in real time. The tool automatically logs each call or message sent to referrals, giving advisors a clear picture of which leads to call and when. Schedule a free demo here.

Bottom Line

The right marketing strategy can generate a consistent stream of leads and support long-term business growth. A poorly executed approach, however, can leave advisors struggling to stand out in a crowded market. Building a successful advisory practice starts with a marketing plan that increases visibility while clearly communicating your value to clients. While there are many ways to market an advisory business, these strategies are among the most effective for capturing the attention of both prospects and existing clients.

Tips for Financial Advisor Marketing

• Automating some of your marketing efforts can help you spend more time implementing other marketing strategies. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service 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.
• Increase your visibility online. When people need a financial advisor, they typically go to one of two places: friends and family or an online search engine. If you haven’t searched for yourself, take time to do so and see what comes up. How easy is it to find your website or social media profiles, for instance? How quickly and clearly does your online presence convey what you’re about?

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