Financial Advisor Guide to Finding Clients for Life Insurance

Expanding your service offerings to include life insurance could help fuel growth in your advisory firm if it allows you to attract new clients. For instance, Gen Zers are least likely to be covered, which may be helpful if you’re hoping to gain a foothold with the next generation of investors.¹ You may also leverage life insurance products to generate additional revenue from your existing book of business. When it comes to how to find clients for life insurance services, there are multiple marketing avenues you might pursue.

Are you looking to expand the marketing of your financial advisor practice? Try SmartAsset AMP, a holistic client prospecting and marketing automation platform.

How to Find Clients for Life Insurance

Life insurance is something most people need, but convincing prospective clients to pursue a policy can be challenging. Offering insurance products that align with the needs of your ideal client base is a step in the right direction. But you’ll still need to do some legwork to connect with prospects who may be looking for insurance but haven’t found the right advisor to work with.

With that in mind, consider how you can leverage these channels to build out the insurance side of your advisory business.

1. Referrals

Referrals are a powerful marketing tool that can help you build a sustainable business for the long term. They can also open up new possibilities for your business by broadening the scope of clients you serve. Encouraging referrals to attract life insurance clients begins with delivering a top-tier experience.

Clients may be more inclined to refer you when they’re fully satisfied with the service they’re receiving. If you’re not generating client referrals organically, consider what you can do to improve the client experience. You may ask them to complete a satisfaction survey to gauge what’s working and what isn’t.

Don’t hesitate to ask for referrals directly if you’re confident in the level of service you provide. Let your clients know that you’re broadening the scope of your business to include insurance services, and explain what that means for them. Then, mention that you’d be happy to discuss insurance planning with anyone they might know who’s looking for expert advice.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO can help prospective life insurance clients find you online. Short for search engine optimization, it focuses on improving your website’s visibility in search engines.

It starts with keywords. SEO keywords reflect the terms that people commonly search for when they’re trying to find information about a particular subject. So, for example, prospective clients might search for:

Life insurance advisor near me
Do I need life insurance?
Life insurance advisor
Life insurance estate planning
Financial advisor life insurance
Types of life insurance

Creating blog posts, landing pages and other content that feature those types of keywords can increase the likelihood that your advisor website will rank higher in searches. A higher ranking can translate to more traffic from prospective clients who are looking for an insurance advisor.

3. Lead Generation Services

Lead generation services can offer a shortcut to finding life insurance clients. These services provide curated lists of contacts, allowing you to decide which leads to follow up on.

You could buy insurance leads through a company that exclusively sells life insurance contacts. You may also consider working with a comprehensive advisor marketing platform like SmartAsset AMP, which is designed for fiduciary advisors who want to grow their assets under management. It connects you with potential clients based on location and asset criteria and offers tools to automate email and text outreach campaigns. Plus, you’ll have support from a dedicated account manager. Learn more here.

Ultimately, what matters most is ensuring that you’re getting quality leads for the money you invest. A poorly constructed list of leads may hold little value if the information you have is outdated or the contacts don’t reflect the ideal clients you’re hoping to reach. You may benefit more from working with a platform that’s focused exclusively on the needs of advisors.

4. Networking

Your network could be another significant source of referrals for your insurance business. Estate planning attorneys, CPAs and other financial professionals can be a bridge between your business and prospective clients who are looking for insurance.

If you need ideas on how to build your network to include more insurance-focused professionals, consider these tips.

Connect with financial professionals who serve clients in the insurance space on LinkedIn or other social media networks.
Attend insurance-focused financial industry conferences or events, either as a guest or as a participant.
Look for opportunities to collaborate that allow you to market your insurance services to a broader audience.
Take advantage of community events that bring financial professionals together.

As you make new connections, clearly communicate what your firm does in the insurance space and whom you serve. Let your contacts know that you’re actively looking for new clients to work with as you grow this side of your business.

5. Email and Direct Mail Marketing

Email and direct mail marketing campaigns could help you find life insurance leads and nurture them so they’re more inclined to respond to your outreach.

Building an email list starts with developing one or more high-value lead magnets. A lead magnet is a free resource you offer in exchange for someone’s email address. Examples of lead magnets you might offer to attract life insurance clients include:

An online quiz that helps them assess their life insurance knowledge (with results sent to their email).
Niche-specific guides (for example, you might offer a PDF guide to life insurance for single parents or small business owners if either one is your target niche).
A free life insurance calculator that helps them gauge how much coverage they might need.

Once someone signs up for your lead magnet, you can market to them through their inbox. And you can use drip campaigns to establish a rapport and build interest in what you have to offer.

Direct mail marketing places your message directly in a prospect’s mailbox. The key to success with direct mail marketing campaigns is making them compelling so that prospects who receive your communications have a reason to follow up with you.

If you’re not sure how to get started, you might consider working with a direct mail marketing service. A professional marketing agency can help you put together campaigns that are likely to resonate with your target client base.

6. Events

Seminars and webinars can be a powerful way to convey your expertise and knowledge of life insurance in a pressure-free setting. You can host a seminar online or in person and cover insurance topics that are relevant to your target audience. For example, if you’re hoping to draw in clients who are on the fence about whether they need life insurance or long-term care insurance, you might host a 90-minute seminar breaking down the basics of each.

As you plan your event, consider what type of topic is most likely to resonate, where you plan to host it and the format. Once you’ve worked out the details, you can promote your event on social media or through your email newsletter. You can also let your current clients know that you’re hosting a life insurance seminar and encourage them to share the details with people in their circle.

7. Social Media

Social media can be an excellent way to market your life insurance services and spark conversations with prospective clients about their insurance needs. For example, you might ask your followers to share their biggest reasons for not buying life insurance yet, or offer a mini-quiz to test their knowledge.

When using social media to market your services, choose the platforms your ideal clients are most likely to use. Set a consistent posting schedule and track which types of posts get the most or least engagement. Use that as a guide to shape your future content calendar. Include a clear call to action in each post directing prospects to visit your website or reach out to schedule a call.

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Pure Financial Advisors

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Pure Financial Advisors reports $1B in new AUM from SmartAsset investor referrals.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Do financial advisors need a life insurance license?

Advisors don’t need a license to offer general advice about life insurance, but they will need to be licensed by their state to sell life insurance products. The same applies if you want to sell insurance-adjacent products, such as annuities.

How can an advisor get a life insurance license?

Life insurance licensing requirements vary by state. Typical requirements include completing a state-approved licensing course, passing an approved exam, completing a background check and paying a licensing fee. Check with your state’s department of insurance to learn more about what’s required.

How do you generate high-intent life insurance leads on social media?

Social media can help you find life insurance clients if you’re creating content that targets that audience and sharing it regularly on the right platforms. Defining your target audience, creating valuable content that prompts engagement and leveraging social proof can help you expand your reach.

Find & Close Ideal Clients

Get regular introductions to retirees, pre-retirees, and high network prospects to grow your business.

Bottom Line

An advisor planning how to find clients for life insurance.

There’s no single formula for finding life insurance clients; the process can take some trial and error to make the right connections. Testing some of the strategies listed above can help you get a better understanding of which marketing paths are most likely to yield the best results.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

Referrals can potentially bring a lot of new clients your way, but it can take time to generate them consistently. If you’re looking for a way to increase referrals, you may consider partnering with an advisor marketing platform. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service that 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.
Digital ads are another possibility you might consider if you’d like to make your firm’s brand more visible in spaces where prospective life insurance clients spend time. For example, you might invest in Google ads, Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads, it all depends on your ideal client’s preferences. When setting an ads budget, you may start small initially, and then increase your spending as you get a better sense of how much website traffic those ads generate.

Article Sources

All articles are reviewed and updated by SmartAsset’s fact-checkers for accuracy. Visit our Editorial Policy for more details on our overall journalistic standards.

The Life Insurance Knowledge Gap: What Americans Want To Know. Western & Southern Financial Group, 5 Feb. 2025, https://www.westernsouthern.com/life-insurance/life-insurance-literacy-in-america.