How to Get Estate Planning Clients as a Financial Advisor

Adding estate planning to your slate of services can be an effective way to scale your business. Not only is it possible to provide more value to your existing clients, you may attract new ones to your firm, as well. A variety of possibilities exist when it comes to how to get estate planning clients to flock to your firm.

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How to Get Estate Planning Clients: 5 Strategies for Advisors

Client acquisition is a challenge for many advisors. You may know who you want to attract, but might run into hurdles when it comes to making connections. Finding new clients for estate planning services may take some trial and error. Here are five methods you can consider trying to build out your book of business.

1. Encourage Referrals

Referrals are a powerful client acquisition tool for advisors. Word-of-mouth marketing can potentially yield a higher return on investment and result in more conversions than the most meticulously planned marketing campaign.

Some of the top referral sources for estate planning clients include:

Estate planning attorneys
Certified public accountants
Other advisors
Existing clients

Networking and improving the client experience can help increase referrals to your firm. You can boost your networking efforts by reaching out to other professionals through social media, attending estate planning conferences and getting involved in the local community. Strategic partnerships can also open your business up to an entirely new audience.

Driving client referrals is all about delivering top-tier service that exceeds their expectations and genuinely showing appreciation. Hosting a client event, for instance, could persuade your existing clients to tell friends and family about your estate planning services. You could also ask clients for referrals directly if you feel comfortable doing so.

2. Host a Seminar or Workshop

Financial advisors review a strategy for estate planning clients.

Seminar marketing can bring prospective estate planning clients to you if you’re choosing the right topic and promoting the event for maximum reach. A seminar offers a chance to talk to prospects either face-to-face or virtually, and answer some of their questions about the estate planning process.

Your choice of topic depends on your ideal clients and their needs. For example, if you’re trying to add more physicians to your client list, you may host a seminar on succession planning and share tips on how doctors can successfully transition their practices when they’re ready to retire.

Once you’ve chosen a topic, you can work out the remaining details:

Format: Will your seminar be held in person or virtually?
Time: What time and date work best for hosting your seminar? And will you offer a recording for people who may want to attend, but can’t accommodate your chosen date?
Guests: How many spots will you offer to people who are interested in signing up?

You may be able to manage those details in your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. That’s a capability that Salesforce CRM offers.

You’ll also need to work out how and where you want to market your seminar. Marketing ideas include:

Sharing details on social media with a link to the seminar sign-up page.
Sending email blasts to prospects who have signed up for your newsletter.
Doing cross-promotion with another advisor or financial influencer.
Sending save-the-date flyers or letters to prospects via direct mail.
Posting an announcement on your firm’s website or blog.

When crafting your marketing messages, focus on piquing interest while creating a sense of urgency. Tailor the wording so that it resonates with your prospects’ pain points regarding estate planning, and include a strong call to action so they’re moved to secure their spot right away.

3. Invest in SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO is a set of strategies designed to help websites increase their visibility in searches. If you have an advisor website and it doesn’t get much traffic, your SEO practices could be the culprit.

So how do you use SEO to get estate planning clients?

It starts with incorporating relevant keywords into your site’s content. For example, if you have an About or Services page on your site, it makes sense to add keywords related to estate planning to those sections.

You can also create content around those keywords for your firm’s blog, if you have one. For example, you might write a series of articles, with each article highlighting a different step in the estate planning process. Adding estate planning keywords that prospective clients are searching for, then linking those articles together, can signal to search engines what your content is about.

If you’re looking for a way to save time with content creation, you may consider using AI writing tools. But you can’t simply hit publish on any content an AI tool cranks out. You first need to review it for typos or inaccuracies, then read it from a client’s perspective to ensure that it provides value.

4. Consider Digital Ads

Digital ad campaigns can help you attract estate planning clients if you’re placing them where they’re likely to be seen by prospects. Potential placements include:

Google
YouTube
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn

If you’re working with a limited budget for digital advertising, ask yourself where you’re likely to see the biggest impact. Google search ads, for instance, may not be necessary if your SEO efforts are already bringing in plenty of traffic to your website. Likewise, you may not get much traction from LinkedIn ads if that isn’t where your target audience spends their time.

5. Market to Your List

A financial advisor connecting with an estate planning client on a video call.

Email marketing puts you in a prospect’s mailbox, providing an opportunity to nurture leads slowly and with purpose. Drip campaigns, for instance, let you feed prospects a series of emails without subjecting them to a hard sales pitch.

An uncomplicated way to generate email marketing content is to repurpose content you’ve created elsewhere. For example, you might condense the key points of an estate planning seminar you’ve hosted or a series of blog posts you’ve written and reformat them as emails.

You’re still getting the same message out to prospects, without having to create content from scratch. You can include a CTA directing prospects to schedule a free consultation, which opens the door to a more in-depth conversation about how you can help with their estate planning needs.

Bottom Line

There’s no insider secret regarding how to get estate planning clients. It all goes back to developing a client acquisition strategy that’s effective for your business. The tips shared here are designed to give you a few ideas to consider as you approach marketing to estate planning clients.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

Marketing can feel overwhelming at times, especially as new trends and technologies are always emerging. If you’re looking for a way to streamline your promotion efforts, 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.
Adding testimonials to your website is another way to market your estate planning services and show prospects a little of what you’re about. If you plan to add testimonials to your site, consider the SEC’s marketing rule. The rule requires that you add the appropriate disclosures when using testimonials to advertise your business and services.