Digital Marketing for Financial Advisors: 8 Strategies

Whether you're an investment advisor, a certified financial planner, a wealth advisor, or a financial coach, you need a steady stream of clients for your practice. Yet for many financial advisors, it isn't easy to find the right audience or turn prospects into new clients.

With the right strategy, acquiring clients can be more straightforward than you might think. In this article, we'll cover digital marketing for financial advisors, including eight strategies you can start using today and common challenges (and how to overcome them).

8 Digital marketing strategies for financial advisors

While there's no single solution that works for all finance professionals, these eight strategies are helpful starting points for marketing as a financial advisor.

1. Start an email newsletter

For most financial advisors, there's never a shortage of problems to solve, regulations to know about, and strategies to develop. Instead of keeping this information to yourself or sharing it only with clients, turn it into an email newsletter for clients and prospects alike.

By sharing your insights and approaches in a newsletter, you have a chance to educate subscribers on a weekly or monthly basis. Not only does this provide value to readers, but it may also help them decide to hire you.

For example, Milk Road shares cryptocurrency insights and news in a daily email.

One of the biggest perks of email marketing is that it lets you connect with prospects in their inboxes, where they're likely to open and read your message. Across industries, email has an average open rate of over 35%.

2. Cultivate a following on social media

To reach an even wider audience, establish a presence on social media and cultivate a following. Most social media platforms have discovery-based algorithms that allow people with an interest in your topic to find you.

For example, certified financial planner Rachael Camp has attracted more than 25,000 followers on X by sharing frequent tips and educational posts. She also uses social media marketing to share links to her newsletter to grow her subscriber base.

3. Optimize your website for search

Before prospects ever connect with you on social media or sign up for your email newsletter, they may start with a search for a local financial advisor. As a result, optimizing your website for search helps you get on prospects' radar when they're first seeking information.

For example, firms like Black Swan Financial Planning and First Wealth appear near the top of the search results for financial advisors in London.

To achieve goals like this, you need to know search engine optimization (SEO) basics. The first step is identifying keywords that people who fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) might use to search for your business.

Then, you can start creating relevant content on these topics. Over time, you can improve your firm's online visibility and attract more website traffic.

4. Develop landing pages for your service offerings

Once you build trust and establish relationships with prospects, ideally, they'll want to hire you. But do they understand the services you offer? And do their needs align with your offerings?

By creating landing pages for each service offering, you clarify exactly how you can help clients. To help clients find these pages, share them on social media, link to them in email newsletters, and optimize them for search.

For example, the financial advisory firm Harrison Brook has multiple service pages that each speak to a potential client concern, such as managing finances for expats in France.

5. Host webinars to discuss trending topics

As helpful as the tactics above can be, they all develop asynchronous relationships with prospects. As a result, they don't allow you to interact with followers or potential clients in real time.

Webinars work a little differently. As live events, they let you educate prospects, discuss trends, and share your experience in real time.

When you use Livestorm to host webinars, you can also interact with viewers directly via Q&A sessions or live chat. As a result, webinars are ideal for building trust with potential clients.

For example, Tanager Wealth Management used Livestorm to host a webinar (available on demand) covering the financial implications of moving from the U.S. to the UK.

Webinars can also support partnership marketing efforts, as they allow speakers from multiple firms to host joint events. For example, Caribou Wealth and Bento Engine used Livestorm to host an event for financial advisors.

6. Use video marketing to connect with clients

You don't necessarily have to deliver all of your video content in real time. With video marketing, you record updates and insights in video format. Then, you share the content on social media or on your website.

Video marketing is a popular demand generation tactic because it can help you build authority and establish yourself as a thought leader in the financial services space.

Plus, video marketing allows plenty of flexibility. You can produce long-form videos with lengthy takeaways, or you can upload bite-size short-form videos that offer quick tips.

For example, See the Forest Through the Trees discusses financial planning and investment strategies through a mix of long- and short-form videos.

7. Create lead magnets to build your client list

When you focus on demand generation efforts like video marketing, you can significantly increase awareness of your firm and your services. But when you want to guide prospects to make a purchase decision, lead generation tactics are more effective.

With lead magnets, you offer prospects something with unique value—like a financial planning checklist or a series of wealth management tips that potential clients can't find elsewhere.

In exchange, they provide their contact details and allow you to either add them to your email list or contact them directly. Lead generation tools like Pipedrive can help with customer relationship management (CRM), while Zapier can add automation and simplify your follow-up process.

8. Run pay-per-click or social media ads

Not every marketing strategy for financial services has to rely on organic efforts. With pay-per-click (PPC) or social media ads, you use paid campaigns to target specific types of customers and audience segments. Ad campaigns are ideal for expanding your reach.

Plus, ads have the potential to reach prospects at various stages of their customer journey. Ads can share basic information to introduce your firm to a wider client base or feature time-sensitive information to inspire action.

For example, these PPC ads appeared at the top of Google search results for a financial advisor. Each ad shares the firm's unique selling proposition to appeal to potential customers.

Challenges with digital marketing for financial advisors

Financial advisors have plenty of options for both demand generation and lead generation. But before you invest in any of these strategies, it's important to know about the challenges you might face.

Maintaining compliance

When financial advisors post on social media, produce content marketing, or send an email newsletter, all marketing materials must comply with relevant regulations. These regulations vary depending on where you're based, but as a general rule, they must be balanced and avoid misleading information.

For regulatory purposes, you'll also need to retain any marketing materials you produce for a set period of time. Again, specifics can vary, but the time frame can be as much as seven years. This means you need a reliable system for securely storing all your marketing assets.

Measuring and optimizing ROI

With digital marketing, financial services professionals often want a simple way to measure and improve return on investment (ROI). But the reality is that measuring ROI and attributing conversions can be difficult if you use multiple marketing channels.

After all, it's tricky to know how much those 100 social media posts affected your new client's decision to hire you—or if subscribing to your email list sealed the deal. While you should certainly use each channel's analytics to measure results, it's also a good idea to directly ask clients what prompted them to want to work with you.

Building trust with clients

For many people, choosing a financial advisor requires a tremendous amount of trust. After all, financial advisors often have a substantial impact on clients' wealth management and retirement planning.

However, building trust isn't easy, and it tends to take time. To speed up the process, create a marketing plan that cultivates trust. For example, focus on initiatives like:

• Hosting real-time webinars that let you connect with prospective customers
• Developing customer stories that reveal what you've helped others achieve
• Sharing insights that reflect deep knowledge of the financial industry and your customers' needs

Livestorm for marketing financial advisor services

When you want to connect with potential clients in real time or create on-demand webinars to use as lead magnets, Livestorm can be a key component of your digital marketing efforts. With Livestorm, you can:

• Host webinars for small or large groups
• Record live events for on-demand viewing
• Engage with attendees via Q&As or live chat
• Connect with prospects or clients 1:1 via video conferencing
• Use Livestorm integrations to sync with your CRM or marketing automation software

Curious how our webinar platform could work for your financial advisory firm? Sign up for a free Livestorm account and set up your first event for prospective clients in minutes.