You know there are people who need your financial services. The trouble is, you don’t know how to find them. And considering leads cost a whopping $761 each, you want a cost-effective way to grow your business without shrinking your wallet.
The good news is that there are plenty of other strategies for generating leads as a financial advisor. We’re listing the five best methods (plus their pros, cons, and ideas) so you know what to expect before implementing them yourself.
Let’s dive in.
- First: Understanding Your Ideal Financial Advising Client
- 5 Best Lead Generation Tactics as a Financial Advising Company
- The Bottom Line on Lead Generation Strategies for Financial Advisors
First: Understanding Your Ideal Financial Advising Client
Around one in three people now work with financial advisors, so there’s no shortage of people who could use your expertise. That said, getting them through the door can be challenging, and if you’re taking a catch-all approach, you might not appeal to the right audience.
The truth is that trying to appeal to everyone as a financial advisor might make it more difficult to scale your company. You might spend money on strategies that don’t work, attract low-paying clients, or people who aren’t a fit for your firm.
The solution? Niche down and understand exactly who and how you serve. This makes it easier to create content, appear as an authority, and reduce competition for leads.
So, how do you niche down without losing the soul of your business?
There are a few different angles, as you can see below:
| Niche | Best For | Market Size | Competition Level | Client Retention Potential |
| Occupation Niche | Advisors with industry expertise | 🟡 Moderate (varies by profession) | 🟡 Moderate (depends on the niche’s financial awareness) | 🟢 High (trust through shared experience or expertise) |
| Company Niche | Advisors in cities with major employers or strong company networks | 🟢 Large (if targeting major corporations like Google or Amazon) | 🟢 Low to Moderate (few advisors specialize in company-specific planning) | 🟢 High (referrals and word-of-mouth drive client acquisition) |
| Product Niche | Advisors specializing in specific products (annuities, IRAs, tax strategies) | 🟡 Moderate (depends on demand for product) | 🟢 Low (may be easier to differentiate yourself) | 🟡 Moderate (depends on product relevance) |
| Life Transition Niche | Advisors focused on key life events (marriage, divorce, retirement) | 🟢 Large (constant demand as life changes occur) | 🟡 Moderate (many advisors offer general transition planning) | 🟢 High (changing needs create long-term relationships) |
| Financial Shift Niche | Advisors monitoring job changes, business sales, and inheritances for prospecting | 🟢 Large (constant financial shifts create opportunities) | 🔴 High (many advisors ready to jump on the bandwagon) | 🟡 Moderate (may depend on market volatility) |
Still not sure which angle is right for you? It might be helpful to get better acquainted with who you serve as a financial advisor. This might mean:
- Creating detailed client personas. What do they look like? How much do they make? Are they single or married? Do they own small businesses? Creating a profile of your company’s ‘perfect’ candidate can help you get inside their heads and think about ways to attract them to your business.
- Segmentation for different financial needs. If you do serve more than one type of client, be sure to create a persona for each one (plus each of your services). For example, you might have a financial planning service specifically for retirees, such as estate planning. Or perhaps you offer real estate advising to agents, brokers, or investors.
- Identifying pain points and financial goals. You should understand what clients expect from you to position your services for lead generation effectively. If you serve couples and families with retirement planning, for example, write a list of pain points that they usually have (like ‘saving enough’ or ‘Roth vs IRA?’). A good rule of thumb is to think about past client conversations. What are the most common questions or problems that come up in conversation?
- Mapping the client journey for financial services. How have past clients made their way to your business? If you can’t ask them directly, consider collecting data with a short survey. Knowing if more clients come from word-of-mouth referrals, online ads, or dinner seminars can help you build a more efficient strategy.
Keep in mind that niching down probably won’t happen overnight. It could take several days (or even several weeks) before you feel confident in your audience selection.
But once you know exactly who you serve, you can generate up to 168% more leads every month. That’s because you’ll know how to attract them with the right lead generation strategy, as you’ll see below.
5 Best Lead Generation Tactics as a Financial Advising Company
Here are five strategies to help attract qualified prospects, nurture relationships, and convert leads into clients.
1. Content Marketing: Best for Passive Lead Generation
| Pros | Cons |
| Can be low-cost or free | May require time to develop |
| Generates inbound leads | Requires a writer, in-house professional, or generative AI tool |
| Can double for search engine optimization (or SEO) | Often requires a lot of content before seeing results |
You’ve probably heard of content marketing before: it’s the art and science of creating information that surprises, entertains, or informs readers (and makes them want to hand over their details). This could be a well-designed infographic, a pithy LinkedIn article, or a wealth-planning guide sent through your email newsletter, which we’ll cover later on.
For the purposes of our list, we’re focusing on content marketing writing, including blog posts, case studies, and research articles. This is the foundation of digital marketing for financial services, especially when it comes to generating inbound leads.
The good news is, content marketing is extremely effective. In fact, 49% of advisors with a marketing plan saw an increase in inbound clients in 2024.
The bad news is, it isn’t automatic. It might take several months until website traffic starts generating. If you’re using content as an email-generating lead magnet, you might have to test, measure, and try again to get the results you want.
All that said, however, content marketing is an excellent option for generating leads as a financial advisor. Here’s a quick list of best practices to help you get started:
- Encourage your readers and clients to read and share your blog posts. This leads to even better social signals and makes other strategies much easier to manage (as you’ll see below).
- Apart from your content ‘freebies,’ you might want to generate gated content that asks for your email address. This could be checklists, spreadsheets, or even past webinars that may be useful to listeners.
- Don’t stress about creating all content from scratch. Instead, focus on repurposing your content to create a more manageable ecosystem. You might turn testimonials into financial case studies and success stories, turn podcasts into blog posts, or turn newsletters into social media posts. This makes it easier to keep the system humming while you scale.
Wondering how to use content marketing, such as video, to drive leads? Skip down to strategy #5 below.
Lead Gen Content Marketing Ideas for Financial Advisors
- Client Case Studies: Require email opt-in to access full breakdowns of anonymized client wins.
- Financial Tools: Offer calculators, checklists, or glossary PDFs as gated lead magnets.
- Market and Economic Trend Reports: Publish surface-level insights publicly but reserve full data for subscribers.
- Niche-Specific How-To Articles: Convert articles into step-by-step workbooks available only via opt-in.
- Evergreen Financial Planning Checklists: Offer seasonal tax prep or investment checklists behind an email gate.
- Legislative and Policy Updates: Subscribers get first access to analysis and action steps when new financial regulations roll out.
- In-Depth Niche Guides: Long-form guides like Financial Planning for Physicians are gated behind an email sign-up
2. Email Nurturing Sequences: Best for Building Long-Term Relationships
| Pros | Cons |
| Direct access to possible leads | Email marketing tools cost money |
| Segmented touchpoints | May require expert email support |
| Built-in personalization | May require pre-planning |
Email nurturing sequences are designed to ‘nurture’ possible leads by regularly providing value and offering a call-to-action (CTA). There are typically two ways to get email addresses: with a lead magnet or with cold emails. Using both at the same time gives you direct access to leads so you can share information, create personalized sequences, and get better insights on which emails are getting opened (and which ones are not).
There’s a lot to say about email marketing: it’s relatively straightforward even for people unfamiliar with digital marketing. It also has a high average conversion rate — anywhere from 4.3% on average to 23% for high performers.
The downside is that email nurturing sequences aren’t as cheap, since you’ll need to purchase tools for automations (and possibly people to help set up these automations). They’ll also require a fair bit of planning, plus adjustments and pivoting if you need to refine your approach.
Here are a couple of best practices to help you get started:
- Use segmentation to your advantage. Have a set of leads that came from a webinar? You can get acquainted with a custom email sequence. What about people who randomly subscribe online? You might want to walk them through a separate ‘onboarding’ sequence.
- Nurture your prospects with both cold and warm emails. Warm emails are much easier: you’re keeping tabs on how customers feel. Cold emails can be a little harder to master, and depending on your niche, they may not be attractive to your audience. The best solution here is to A/B test and benchmark your numbers against common goals. For context, this is
- Use automation to your advantage. Sure, you might have to write more emails in advance, but the right email marketing tool can help you send them out on autopilot. You can also create custom triggers depending on what your recipient does. For example, if they click through an email to listen to a podcast episode, you might send an email three days later.
Just keep in mind you don’t want to spam leads with dozens of emails per month. The rule of thumb is two to three times per week max, although weekly or biweekly messages are often appreciated by readers who are often bombarded with hundreds of emails per week.
Lead Gen Email Nurturing Sequence Ideas for Financial Advisors
- Welcome and Personal Finance Starter Kit: Introduce yourself and offer a free, high-value resource like a ‘New Client Financial Roadmap.’
- Financial Red Flags Series: Walk subscribers through warning signs of poor financial health, leading to a call-to-action for a consultation. For more customization, use segmentation in ActiveCampaign to tailor based on user behavior.
- Wealth Acceleration Mini-Course: Offer a structured email series on growing wealth, budgeting, or retirement planning.
- Tax Savings Deep Dive: Provide a breakdown of tax strategies across multiple emails (like ‘3 Overlooked Tax Deductions You Might Be Missing’). You could even schedule reminders for tax deadlines with Constant Contact.
- Retirement Readiness Self-Assessment: Send a quiz or checklist, then trigger a follow-up email based on responses. For automation, use Typeform and Keap.
- Countdown to a Major Financial Event: Lead up to tax season, open enrollment, or year-end financial planning with a multi-step sequence.
- Investment Strategy Spotlight: Explain a financial strategy over several emails. You could also plug your podcast here and let listeners know what you’ve been covering.
- ‘What’s New in Finance’ Monthly Insights: Offer exclusive updates on trends, legislation, and investment strategies. For a newsletter-style approach, you might want to consider tools like Substack or Revue.
- Exclusive Client Perks and Limited-Time Offers: Create urgency with limited free consultations, portfolio reviews, or financial planning discounts. Want to create a countdown timer? Try something like Moosend.
- Final Call-to-Action Email: Develop personalized messages based on past engagement, then nudge your prospects toward booking a consultation.
3. Webinars and Virtual Events: Best for B2B Brands
| Pros | Cons |
| Easily repurposable | Resource intensive |
| Cost-effective software | Prone to technical issues |
| Speak directly to leads | May not attract ready-to-convert customers |
Webinars and virtual events allow you to provide live value to attendees while guiding them toward an eventual consultation. This is a particularly powerful strategy for B2B brands, since 73% of attendees may become leads (compared to just 20 to 40% of B2C attendees).
Just keep in mind that webinars and virtual events require a fairly heavy lift on your part. You’ll need to rehearse the event, create PowerPoints and visual assets, test the technology, and otherwise coordinate with your team. Even after all that, it may not attract ready-to-convert customers — or, in a worst-case scenario, not attract attendees at all.
Here are some suggestions to help avoid that possibility (plus a few other things to keep in mind):
- Give yourself ample runtime with a pre-launch warmup. You’ll probably want at least 30 days of marketing notice, and possibly longer if you’re trying to start up webinars for the first time. You can send out messages via email, social media posts, and even promote webinars in podcasts to drum up interest from followers.
- Think about the angle and presentation of your webinar. Depending on your audience, you may want to refer to it as a ‘live workshop’ or an ‘interactive session.’ Then, be sure to tease interest with behind-the-scenes content. This could be screenshots, videos, or sign-up perks — like the first 10 attendants get a free 1:1 session with your team.
- Make it easy to convert webinar attendees into free or paid consultations. You could use buttons in your webinar, offer freebies to attendees, provide a resource page with resources, or invite them to another upcoming event. Be sure to get in touch after the fact with a follow-up sequence via email, podcasting, content, or social media.
Not sure how to get started with social media? We cover the specifics in strategy #4 below.
Lead Gen Webinar and Virtual Event Ideas for Financial Advisors
- Live Q&A: Ask a Financial Advisor Anything: Answer common money questions and debunk myths (bonus points for hosting well-known or famous guests). You can use Zoom Webinars or Demio to do this on the cheap.
- Interactive Tax Planning Workshop: Walk attendees through strategies for deductions and tax efficiency. You could even choose a few lucky attendants to work with in real time.
- Retirement Readiness Bootcamp: Consider creating a multi-day event on savings, investments, Social Security, and other common topics. Don’t forget to lean into recent events or cover trending topics if you have the authority to do so.
- Financial Planning for High Earners: A great niche-down for high-income professionals like doctors, lawyers, or tech employees.
Economic Outlook and Investment Strategy Panel: Discuss market trends and portfolio strategies with guest experts. If you want to do this live, consider StreamYard. - Live Case Study Breakdown: Show a real-life (anonymous) financial planning success story. To keep things interesting, you might want to try using interactive slides on ClickMeeting.
Financial Goal-Setting Workshop: Teach goal setting for financial freedom with a downloadable workbook. - Debt-Free in 5 Years Challenge: Educate on paying off debt with live worksheets and Q&A.
- Retirement Income Masterclass: Consider teaching how to maximize savings for a reliable income post-retirement (then automate sign-ups using a tool like Kajabi Webinars).
4. Social Media: Best for Finding High Net-Worth Individuals
| Pros | Cons |
| 100% free (unless using ads) | Easy to make ‘unhelpful’ content |
| Can drive financial service inquiries | Organic reach may be low |
| Often directed toward high-net-worth individuals | Requires heavy thought leadership |
Social media is one of the cheapest ways to get the word out about your business. You can make company pages, write promotional content, and even advertise to prospects within relevant groups.
You can also segment your social media platforms to focus on where your audience is most likely to be. If you lean heavily into Bitcoin, for example, TikTok might be the place to get seen. More traditional financial planning (like succession planning and retirement) would suit audiences better on platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook.
The downside is that social media has changed dramatically over the past few years. Organic reach is no longer what it once was — roughly 5.2% according to recent audits.
This means you cannot rely on just posting for the sake of posting.. Instead, you need high-level, high-drive content that speaks to your audiences’ needs. Only then can you create social media content that truly generates leads.
A few thoughts as you get on your way:
- Focus on the platforms where your audience is. LinkedIn, for example, has users with some of the highest income potential in the US. X (formerly Twitter) is another popular option. For a more niche audience, consider forums like Reddit.
- Create quality content that genuinely drives financial service inquiries. This means AI-generated writing and the occasional ‘happy holidays’ post aren’t enough to move the needle. Instead, focus on creating high-quality content.
- Use your podcast to create additional assets. For example, you can create podcast marketing assets like audiograms, video clips, and collateral to help ‘feed the beast’ of social media algorithms.
Struggling to produce podcast assets on your own? You can find software solutions that help to repurpose your podcast, or outsource to professionals if you don’t have time to DIY.
Lead Gen Social Media Ideas for Financial Advisors
- 30-Day Finance Challenge: Create social media groups or private pages where you can run social media challenges and offer free services to the winners.
- Financial Checklist Download: Offer a free checklist through a gated landing page. Keep in mind, this may perform better with sponsored posts rather than organic reach.
- ‘Ask Me Anything’ Instagram Q&A: Then, you can offer sign-ups for a private (free) follow-up session for participants.
- Free Budget Template Giveaway: Ask users to comment for a resource that’s sent through direct messages (DMs). This also opens the door to more conversations in the future.
- Financial Quiz: Create an interactive quiz where results are emailed (and advertise it on your social media).
- Social Media Referral Giveaway: Offer a free financial checkup for referrals or other interested parties.
- LinkedIn Lead Magnet Carousel: You might share a visual guide with a CTA leading to a gated resource.
- Personalized Financial Roadmap: Users submit financial goals in exchange for a roadmap.
- LinkedIn Outreach: If you’re a Sales Navigator user, you can set up cold outreach InMail messages. The conversion rate may not be high, but it still opens the door to partnerships, freebies, market research calls, and more.
5. Podcasting: Best for Passive Lead Generation
| Pros | Cons |
| Requires little equipment to get started | Requires significant time investment (unless handing off to professionals) |
| Creates audio/video content for other digital marketing strategies | No video (unless upgrading with a camera or remote interviews) |
| Generates interest even while you sleep | Requires good content to stand out from the crowd |
We might be biased, but we genuinely believe that podcasting is one of the easiest ways to build authority in the finance industry. Not only does it easily convert listeners into prospects, but it also makes it easier to establish yourself in a niche. You can build interest, establish equity, and ultimately welcome conversions down the line.
Take the Invest Like the Best podcast as an example. This Colossus Collective show focuses on interviewing leading investors and collecting their stories and insights on balancing business with investing. Since 2016, the show has published more than 475 episodes, with a whopping 10,000,000+ downloads and hundreds of new leads as a result.
The best part about podcasting is that you can get started today. You simply need a good microphone, a laptop, and basic editing software. Alternatively, you can aim for a higher-quality show with video production, remote interviews, interfaces and mixers, and more.
Just keep in mind that podcasting is still a significant time investment, even if you do end up outsourcing to a team like The Podcast Consultant. You cannot expect to publish anything you want, either. If your target market isn’t interested, you’re not likely to get any leads.
Here are some notes to help turn podcasting into a lead generation machine:
- Leveraging guest appearances on industry podcasts. This works both ways: hosting other people who may drive traffic and interest, and getting yourself spotlighted on another industry podcast. This also builds connections and a possible referral network. Bonus points for not paying to either host or be hosted.
- Repurpose your content as much as possible. Blog posts and audiograms and social media assets, oh my! You can use recorded podcasts for pretty much every other part of your digital marketing strategy.
- Don’t forget monetization. You can use your podcast for lead generation, of course, but you can also use your show to generate income on the side. Subscriptions, ad revenue, and sponsorships are some of the most common options, but you can also try donations, live stream income, and even merchandise.
Just dipping your toes into the world of podcasting? Learn about more production considerations for financial podcasts below:
Podcast Pro Tips E10: Business Podcasts
Lead Gen Podcasting Ideas for Financial Advisors
- Podcast-Exclusive Freebie (With Opt-In Landing Page): Offer a checklist or worksheet in exchange for an email.
- Listener Q&A Episodes: Require email submissions for Q&A participation.
- Monthly Market Insights (Exclusive Email Recap): Offer full insights only to email subscribers.
- Limited-Time Free Consultation: Listeners sign up using a podcast-exclusive code.
- Podcast Giveaway: Listeners enter by subscribing and leaving a review.
- Guest Speaker ‘Bonus Content’: Offer extended Q&A or bonus clips via email sign-up or Patreon donations.
- Personalized Retirement Plan: Listeners fill out a form in your podcast’s description to receive a custom strategy.
- Niche Financial Report: Offer exclusive monthly financial trends reports to podcast subscribers or top donors.
- Live Podcast Recording: Listeners sign up for a live Q&A episode with guest experts.
💡 Learn more about building a B2B podcast.
The Bottom Line on Lead Generation Strategies for Financial Advisors
Getting more leads as a financial advisor looks very different from other finance-related industries. But while the tactics look different, the core solution does not: putting your services in places where leads can see them, then gently reminding them how your company can help.
The Podcast Consultant has supported dozens of financial advisors with podcast production services that attract, maintain, and convert audiences. We’ve helped clients achieve more than 100,000,000 downloads with audio and video production services, social media assets, and much more.
Learn more about podcasting for digital lead generation by booking a call with The Podcast Consultant.