Few financial advisory firms can survive without a steady stream of new clients to sustain and grow their practice. Although most advisors receive sales training as part of their education, their marketing training is often outdated—especially when it comes to inbound marketing to an online audience.

Inbound marketing can be one of the most valuable ways for financial advisors to generate leads and convert new clients. This value only increases over time as your investments into building an online presence increase your visibility and grow the number of leads reaching out for more information.

That said, effective inbound marketing starts by identifying a goal. It’s not enough to say you want to market your business; you first need to know what goals you’re trying to achieve. Once you’ve identified those goals, you can create an inbound marketing strategy to achieve those goals.

With that in mind, let’s assume your goal is to attract new leads that will become clients for your financial planningf firm. What’s the best way to pursue this goal through inbound marketing? Here are five proven strategies you’ll want to try.

1. Showcase your expertise through educational resources.

From seminars and webinars to free consultations, one of the most effective inbound marketing strategies for financial advisors is using free educational resources to demonstrate expertise, build trust, and motivate a lead’s conversion to a new client.

These educational resources help validate your business as a resource consumers can trust. Deliver them through inbound channels such as:

  • Your business website
  • Social media
  • Email newsletters
  • Other channels

By demonstrating your expertise and competency with financial matters, you’re essentially making a solid first impression and auditioning for your role as an advisor to those clients.

2. Place webinars and other resources behind online lead-gen forms.

Free webinars and content offers can be simple tools to generate leads. You can qualify all leads from these resources by gating the content on your website.

In exchange for free access to these resources, consumers can fill out a lead-gen form with basic information, including contact info and their investing goals. Your firm can then use it to reach out to prospects with the proper messaging and engagement strategy.


3. Follow up with online leads via email nurturing campaigns.

Once you have their basic contact info, nurture those leads with personalized email campaigns where your business can check in with the prospect periodically. By tailoring emails to their specific circumstances or areas of need, you can:


  • Keep your firm top-of-mind
  • Touch on different pain points
  • Cultivate a sense of trust that may persuade the prospect to become a client

4. Cultivate financial conversations on social media.

Engaged social followers can become loyal customers through consistent interaction and visibility on social platforms. For many advisors, it makes sense to start this social outreach on Facebook, where you’re most likely to find your target audience.

Ask interesting questions and dispense useful financial information that showcases your expertise. After the first three months of this strategy, evaluate your results and determine whether you’re driving value from these efforts or if you need to switch up your approach to improve your social media outreach efforts.

5. Keep creating content to strengthen your online presence.

Blog articles and social media posts are great ways to publish content that can drive organic traffic to your website. Many financial topics offer some evergreen value, which means your financial advisory firm could see an exponential impact and website traffic from blog posts as you publish over time—especially if you pair your publishing with keyword optimization.

One simple tip to improve content relevance and organic search traffic: Frame titles and content around your customers' questions. Think about the types of questions they type into an online search engine and use those search terms in your content creation. Even if you don’t have the resources for full-on search engine optimization, this focus on keyword relevance can increase the value of your inbound marketing.

As you work to build a pipeline of quality prospects for your advisory firm, the right lead generation tactics can make all the difference. Discover more tips and tricks by downloading The Financial Advisor's Guide to Lead Generation today.


Download The Financial Advisor's Guide to Lead Generation