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Client acquisition is not easy in any industry. But financial advisory might be one of the hardest industries to get new clients through the door.
For most products, even when you sell courses, guides, or books related to finance, there is a low risk even when the product doesn’t work for you.
But that’s not the case with most consulting services, especially financial advisory.
Most people wouldn’t even hand over their email addresses to people they don’t trust. Would you hand over your financial data to someone you don’t trust?
Whether your clients are going for a quick consultation or looking for a long-time partner, the friction that your clients feel would be tremendously bigger than when they buy other products.
This, combined with the amount of competition in the industry, makes client acquisition so much harder for financial advisors. Your competition isn’t only other financial advisors, it’s all other alternatives clients use to achieve their financial goals. Your clients might be doing it themselves, seeking help from forums, or trusting friends who are interested in finance. There are also other alternatives, such as robo-advisor and AI.
The good news is you have the expertise to compete with these competitors. The only thing you need to do is communicate what you bring to the table, especially if it’s something only you can help with.
To do this, you need to know who you’re talking to – your ideal clients. By identifying your ideal client profile, you’ll know their thought process, including what keeps them up at night and what kind of concerns prevent them from consulting an advisor.
Making sure that clients are satisfied with their experience – from acquisition to offboarding – will help you grow your business in many ways.
A good client experience protects your relationship with clients, which builds up a sense of loyalty to your advisory practice.
Consider this: a loyal client is more likely to invest more assets with you, stick with you through market ups and downs, and, most importantly, refer your financial services to their friends and family members.
So by perfecting your client experience, you’ll not only be locking in your clients for life, but you’ll also turn them into ambassadors for your business so you can expand your client base with minimal effort.
Make sure that you can offer an excellent experience in every single touchpoint your client interacts with. This will be hard to realize unless you have an in-house Customer Support team to help with this. Another option is to automate and optimize your routine processes so you can free up time to serve your clients.
Referrals, also called word-of-mouth marketing, are an extremely valuable acquisition tool in this industry. A recommendation from someone you know comes with an extra layer of trust, which will shorten your sales cycle.
While you might be tempted to be straightforward and ask them if they know someone who needs your services, this approach isn’t effective.
You’ll be putting them on the spot. And now, both of you will have to go through the awkward silence as they try to think of a name.
Instead, focus on providing an excellent client experience. Make every interaction with your clients as seamless and pleasant as possible.
And then, go the extra mile to separate your advisory from the alternatives.
Keep track of significant events in your clients’ lives, even those unrelated to their financial matters. Send birthday cards, acknowledge family milestones, and celebrate their successes.
By automating this personalized approach, you can offer a memorable VIP experience to all your clients.
This way, when someone asks for a financial advisor recommendation, you’ll be the first one they think of.
You might realize at this point that in this industry, trust is currency.
Without it, even the most sophisticated investment strategies and the most comprehensive financial plans fall flat. Your clients are entrusting you with their hard-earned money, their future security, and in many cases, their dreams.
Your clients need to be able to trust you before they take this leap. Without a certain degree of trust, they wouldn’t sign up for your services when there are so many other alternatives out there.
Building this trust isn’t easy either.
You need to be able to demonstrate that you have the skills, knowledge, and experience to help clients achieve their financial goals. The quickest way to do this would be by completing certain certifications, creating content to share your knowledge online, or highlighting social proof that shows how your previous clients achieved success.
Aside from skills, clients also look for advisors who genuinely care about their success. You need to show clients that you have this quality by helping them work through their concerns, questions, and needs. Show that you understand what they’re thinking by addressing their needs and taking them into account when you create personalized advice for your clients.
Lastly, you need to demonstrate that you’re a good citizen. This means conducting your business with integrity, transparency, and a commitment to doing what’s best for your clients. You can also show this by being a responsible member of your community – whether that’s through volunteering, sponsoring local events, staying true to your values, or supporting local businesses.
Building relationships with current clients is easier – they can be upfront about their concerns and aspirations. But what do you do when you need to build trust with prospective clients who you haven’t even met yet?
You might try more traditional approaches that are more targeted, such as cold email, cold calling, or going to in-person events to network. However, you need a lot of manpower if you want to make it your main acquisition method.
This is where digital marketing channels come in. Ideally, your digital marketing strategy will help you build trust at scale.
Identify who your target audience is, including their demographics and psychographics so you can create content that’s highly relevant to their situation. Consistently engage with potential clients and build your online presence through these 5 marketing channels.
Social media marketing helps you keep in touch with leads, prospects, existing clients, and past clients. Make sure that you’re active where your target audience is. Find out where they go to spend their time and where they ask questions about their concerns. You don’t even have to give financial advice; just make sure you’re interacting with prospects by commenting, doing outreach to people who might need your help, or posting relevant content. Let’s say that your target market is young professionals or entrepreneurs building SaaS startups. In this case, you can try LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter), knowing that both platforms are where they spend their time.
Build your authority and show your expertise in the industry through content marketing. Make sure that the content you’re creating is relevant to your target market. Most content is educational, for example, you can answer questions they have or guide them through the problem they’re experiencing right now. However, you should also prepare content for prospects at different stages of their buyer’s journey and reuse it to create various formats, such as podcast episodes, blog posts, seminars, or webinars.
Combined with SEO, quality content can help you get discovered through search engines. Most people don’t go past the first page, so make sure your pages rank at least on the first page. People who search for relevant terms in search engines are more likely to buy. They already know that they have a problem, and they’re looking for solutions to this problem.
Content marketing and social media marketing are great ways to let people find out about your business and improve their financial literacy. However, getting discovered through these marketing efforts doesn’t mean they’ll buy from you anytime soon. They might be perfectly happy with how they do things right now, so you need to build trust with clients through your own lead generation channels, such as your website and email newsletter.
Your website is where people go when they want to know more about your advisory firm. This signals interest, so make sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity. Make sure that they can find relevant content straight away. Help them do this by creating a website that’s easy to navigate. For example, put a navigation bar on the top of your page – where most people expect it to be.
Your email marketing campaigns can help you sell more through targeted marketing campaigns and nurture people who are already interested in your advisory business. Regular newsletters help people remember how you can help. You have to keep exceeding their expectations through email as well. Create more specific content by segmenting your email list. You should also make sure that each email you send is relevant and useful to your clients’ needs.
Client acquisition for financial advisors is so much harder to do than other businesses. Since clients need to give you a lot of private information to get personalized advice, clients will only work with people they fully trust.
There are many things you have to set up to complete your client acquisition engine.
We’ve created several guidebooks to help you do all this without trial and error.
While we’re confident these guidebooks will help, all businesses are unique. So when you need some help, contact us for a consultation so you can get personalized advice that works for your business.
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