Creative Ways for Financial Advisors to Gain and Retain Clients

Being successful in the financial advisor industry means that your clients are the very lifeblood of the business. Let’s be frank: they’re the source of your assets under management (AUM), and without that, you’ve got no business.

Not only do you have to keep your clients happy, but you’ve got to keep growing your clientele base. Attrition happens. People reassess, people move on, and people change their minds. An astute advisor protects his or her own revenue streams by continually prospecting to offset this effect. The astute advisor also asks him or herself, “What can I do to keep my most loyal clients loyal?”

Today, you’ll learn how to retain your clients by keeping them well-attended and happy and how to keep cultivating a following of new investment-minded clients to ensure that you’re meeting your own financial goals as well. Retaining business and generating business doesn’t have to be difficult – and the two processes have more in common than you might think.

Look to the Future

Financial planner often deal with a mature clientele, and that can lead to sticking with more traditional methods of advertising favoured by their more experienced patrons. However, you shouldn’t overlook the much-discussed Millennial generation when it comes to prospecting.

The oldest Millennials were born in 1981 and are now in their forties, according to the most commonly accepted definition. As surprising (and perhaps unsettling) as that might be, it means that many of them are already generating significant amounts of wealth, saving for retirement, and investing their money.

It’s not a particularly well-kept secret that Millenials spend a significant amount of time on social media apps and sites. According to a 2020 study cited in Forbes, approximately three-quarters of millennials use Facebook and Instagram daily, meaning that those apps are essentially the modern equivalent of the morning newspaper for ‘80s and ‘90s babies. 

Financial advisors can leverage this to effectively and relatively inexpensively advertise to aging millennials, for whom wealth management and investment are only beginning to be considerations. Social media presence and ads are taking the place of the half-page print ads or full-page inserts of yesteryear.

In previous years, this advice would largely only apply to gaining new clients. But the events of the global pandemic have effectively forced virtual, socially distant advisory on most clients at some point in the recent past. With the now-increased online presence of the more senior generations, your current clients and prime marketing demographics can be more readily reached by social media and virtual advertisements as well. 

Platforms like Facebook will allow you to target your ads to certain demographics such as location, age, interests, education. Use this to your advantage to more precisely reach your clientele, whether they’re Millenials, Gen-Xers or Boomers.

Dish out some free education & expertise

Consider creating educational materials and events for your clients and the public. A free, short virtual lecture on any number of investment portfolio topics will help your clients feel engaged and will help them to understand you better during consultations.

In addition, this can direct you new leads from those looking into building their wealth by educating themselves. Make sure to include your website URL, social media accounts and invite attendees to sign up for your newsletter or mailing list, if you already have one.

Page-gating is a more forward strategy that you can also employ to generate new leads directly to your inbox. Create a video, write an article or white paper on your advisory’s

investment tips or services, and “lock” the page so that it can’t be read past the first two paragraphs. 

That is unless the reader (who is already interested in wealth management or perhaps is even already interested in your services) takes a few seconds to fill in his or her name, email address and maybe even tell you what priorities they have when it comes to managing their investment portfolio. 

They’ll fill it out, the prompt disappears, and then they’ll read your enlightening article or watch your video on bucket strategy or the 4% rule and you now have the name and email (or phone number) of someone interested in your services. Reaching out to them is a much better way to boost your lead conversion rate than merely hoping that they’ll dial the phone number at the top of your page when they’re reading your free advice.

Entertain & be Entertaining

Unfortunately, the Banking & Finance world has a bit of a poor reputation when it comes to customer service. Clients often report feeling that their questions and needs are ignored or placed on the back burner by financial advisors, loan officers, and others.

Don’t despair, though: you can take this perception and use it to your advantage by going the extra mile and making yourself known as the advisor who cares. With a little smart money and some extra attention expended on your clients, you can generate new leads, engender loyalty and boost your brand awareness.

Firstly, make sure that you know your clientele’s style and preferences. Would they respond well to a wine tasting? Is a barbecue in the park with fun & games for the kids more up their alley? At any rate, the important thing here is to show that you care for your clients, you appreciate their business, and that you’re the kind of person that they can get along with. 

The social sciences have long established that people prefer to associate with people that they share interests and common experiences with. An afternoon of Bordeaux and brie or brisket and frisbee can go a long way towards establishing the kind of rapport needed to retain their business.

Encourage your guests to bring along a neighbor or friend as well. Think about it: how much more likely would you be to talk to someone who’s treating you to something nice and has a service that you’re interested in, as opposed to someone who offers up their services with all the charm of “please give me your money, thanks”? A healthy supply of business cards for your clients and guests to take and distribute won’t hurt, either.

Simple Courtesy & Communication

It’s so straightforward that it shouldn’t need to be said, but a little extra emphasis here will allow you to stand out from the crowd. Make sure that you and your staff take every extra step to remember names, preferences, and investment goals. Some clients are quite risk-averse and some are perfectly fine with increased risk in favor of maximizing potential returns.

Creating profiles with notes on past discussions, client goals, and even reminders to touch base with more skittish clients more frequently or around unexpected changes in market conditions helps build trust and leaves clients feeling taken care of.

While almost no one wants to answer those dreaded 9 p.m. emails from clients with less-than-urgent questions or requests, a little leeway in the form of a later (unofficial) email-response cutoff time or merely trying to respond to a client in 24 instead of 48 hours is often enough to satisfy most of them. 

As long as you’re not having long phone conversations with clients an hour bedtime, the occasional quick email response or an “I see what you’re saying, I’ll call you tomorrow morning so that we can discuss this more in-depth” can pacify and impress them in a field where being left out to dry is the norm.

Of course, when you do impress your clients (and you will if you sincerely apply even one of these ideas), that’s the best time to stop beating around the bush and directly ask them for referrals. As financial professionals know, timing is everything, and the same is true of referrals. A satisfied client can be your best salesman and will work for free – just don’t forget to ask!

The Big Secret: Retaining & Gaining are Done the Exact Same Way

Ultimately, the financial advisor industry is built on more than just financial investment: you must also invest time, money, and effort into keeping clients and wooing prospects. The most efficient methods will do both at the same time for you.

Creating a feedback loop of happy, paying clients and free lectures, articles and social events will turn into internet-generated leads and word-of-mouth referrals which turn into more new satisfied, paying clients. 

Think of it as being a great return on investment.