5 Prospecting Tools for Financial Advisors

Developing new business is a priority for most advisors, but it can drain your time and interfere with your ability to serve your existing clients. If you’re ready to streamline client acquisition, there are several prospecting tools for financial advisors that can help. These digital tools can help you build systems to save time and operate more efficiently while growing your practice.

SmartAsset’s Advisor Marketing Platform (AMP) can help you add new clients and assets under management (AUM) at your desired pace. Sign up for a free demo today.

5 Types of Prospecting Tools for Financial Advisors

Prospecting is not something you do once and forget about. It’s an ongoing process that ideally helps you inject new blood into your business. When evaluating prospecting tools for advisors, it’s helpful to break them into categories based on what they’re designed to do for you.

With that in mind, here are some of the tools you may find most useful for elevating your prospecting game.

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

A customer relationship management platform or CRM is an essential tech tool for advisors. These platforms allow you to collect and organize prospects’ information, track your interactions and schedule timely follow-ups to keep leads warm.

The data you collect for prospects can help you better understand what they need so you can begin nurturing relationships from day one. You can segment prospect lists based on priority, demographics or other factors, and track engagement through your CRM.

If you’re looking for recommendations, learn more about these popular CRM platforms for advisors.

2. Email Marketing

Email marketing programs can help you build a list of loyal subscribers who are eager to read your latest updates. Email can be a valuable marketing tool for advisors for several reasons:

Lead generation: Lead magnets can help you capture contact details using lead magnets that grow your email list. Email marketing platforms can allow you to create sign-up forms and landing pages that you can use to promote your lead magnet on your website or social media accounts.
Automation: Email drip marketing campaigns can nurture leads and build relationships. Email marketing tools make it easy to draft and schedule messages to send, without having to be hands-on all the time.
Customization: Branding is an important part of marketing, as you want prospects to cultivate a positive brand image of your firm. Email platforms offer branding customization options like fonts, colors and logos.
Tracking: Email marketing tools can help you better understand certain key performance indicators (KPIs), such as your email open rates, click rates and unsubscribe rates. That data is useful for fine-tuning your email campaigns.
Cost: Marketing campaigns can get expensive if you’re running digital ads or advertising locally. Email, by comparison, is relatively inexpensive and can potentially generate a much higher return on investment.

SmartAsset AMP is an automated marketing and lead generation solution that can help fiduciary advisors streamline their email marketing efforts. As you match with leads using the platform, you’ll have access to automated email and text messaging tools you can use to stay in touch with those prospects. Personalized drip campaigns can begin as soon as you match with a lead.

Which other email marketing tools for advisors are worth considering? Here are a few options.

Drip
Click Funnels
HubSpot
Outbound Engine
Levitate

3. Lead Generation

Advisors compiling a list of prospecting tools for financial advisors.

Lead generation tools help you find qualified leads, initiate contact and manage engagement in one place. Some lead generation platforms are exclusive to financial advisors, meaning they provide you with curated lists of prospects who may be looking for a professional to work with.

Comparing features, functionality and cost can help you decide if lead generation tools are worth the investment for your business. Here are several tools for financial advisors:

SmartAsset AMP
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Wealthbox
Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
Advisor Stream

4. Content Creation

Content creation involves producing video, image or written materials that you publish on your website, social media accounts and other online platforms. Content marketing can support client outreach and visibility through:

SEO traffic: SEO-optimized content can increase website traffic, creating opportunities to capture prospect contact info.
Engagement: Social media content can spark engagement and conversation with prospects. For instance, you might share a poll and ask your followers to respond. Or you could host a 15-minute livestream Q&A to answer financial planning questions.
Visibility: Well-crafted, shareable content can expand your reach when reposted or linked by others.

What kind of tools can advisors use for content creation? It depends on the type of content you’re generating.

Artificial intelligence can save time and generate content ideas. Here are some AI tools that many advisors rely on for content creation:

ChatGPT (for creating video scripts, blog post outlines and brainstorming ideas)
Canva (for infographics, presentations, social media graphics, YouTube videos and AI-generated images)
Copy.ai (for creating marketing copy and social media content)
Jasper (for writing search engine optimized content)

5. Seminars

Seminar marketing, whether you’re meeting with prospects in person or virtually, can help leads put a face to a name and make a connection with you that may convert into a client relationship.. Online seminars may be easier to schedule and arrange, and that’s where virtual meeting tools come in.

These tools help you build online spaces to organize workshops and seminars, market them to your target audience, and conduct them seamlessly on schedule. Many of the top online meeting tools integrate with advisor CRMs so you can easily track data and engagement to see which prospects are responding to your seminar invitations.

Tools for organizing and hosting seminars include:

Salesforce
Redtail
Zoom
Miro
Slack

Bottom Line

A financial advisor sitting down with a new client.

The prospecting tools for financial advisors mentioned here are just some of the options you might weigh as you develop your marketing plan. Analyzing which area or areas of prospecting you need the most help with can help you narrow down which tools are the best fit for your prospecting goals.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

How large is your digital footprint? Having an online presence is more important than ever as investors increasingly turn to search engines for financial advice. 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 could help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
As you develop your marketing plan and incorporate prospecting tools, remember to keep compliance firmly in sight. The SEC’s marketing rule offers guidance on what advisors can and cannot do to promote their businesses. As you add prospecting tools to your tech suite, consider how they align with your firm’s compliance policy.