Financial Advisor Lead Magnets – How to Convert Prospects

Financial advising is an industry that relies heavily on relationship building. As a financial advisor, you want clients to trust you and your expertise as you plan their financial futures. Those types of relationships take time to build, and it all starts with finding leads (also known as lead generation) to turn into future clients. 

Instead of focusing your efforts on finding these prospects yourself, try a strategy that literally brings them to you and away from your competition: creating financial advisor lead magnets. 

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is a free piece of high-quality content created to attract users and, ideally, get them to exchange their email address or other types of contact information. Examples of lead magnets include newsletters, webinars, and white pages. 

How lead magnets help financial advisors

Leads magnets help financial advisors grow their email lists and, therefore, increases the number of potential clients. Financial advising is a profession that requires advisors to have crucial relationship building skills, and financial advisor lead magnets are great building blocks for creating trustworthy relationships.

Lead magnets also help financial advisors stand apart from the competition. That bonus free value offer shows that you understand users’ problems and want to help solve them quickly and effectively.

What makes a high-performing financial advisor lead magnet? 

A good lead magnet has the potential to take your inbound marketing strategy to a new level, but what exactly does a good lead magnet look like? A high-quality and high-performing financial advisor lead magnet will do three key things: 

• Target a specific customer persona—This helps you craft your entire lead magnet, as you’ll know exactly who you’re speaking to.
• Help solve a specific customer problem—This shows your value to prospective clients and builds trust. 
• Link to your services—This directly shows people where they can find information about you and what you do. 

The benefits of lead magnets for financial advisors 

There are numerous benefits to creating financial advisor lead magnets, but these four benefits can provide the best return on investment (ROI) and lead to sustainable growth. 

Benefit #1: They grow your email list 

The biggest benefit of using lead magnets is that they grow your email list, which increases your pool of potential clients. The key is to nurture them with email marketing tactics that prove your value and build meaningful, trustworthy relationships. 

Benefit #2: They develop customer relationships 

Lead magnets help build meaningful and trustworthy relationships with prospective clients because they provide something of value for free. In return, you get their contact information. It’s a win-win relationship where both parties get something of value. 

Benefit #3: They educate potential customers 

As a financial advisor, part of your job is to educate clients about their money and assets and the best ways to maximize them. Sharing some of that knowledge with prospective clients helps them more than you realize. The more you teach them, the more authority and trust you gain. 

Benefit #4: They demonstrate your business’s expertise

Lead magnets are great tools to use for building authority in the financial advising industry. Sharing your knowledge about financial advising and the industry’s trends can elevate your reputation and, therefore, increase your position as a trustworthy financial advisor. 

The 10 Best Financial Advisor Lead Magnets To Use in 2022

1. Checklist 

A checklist is a great lead magnet for attracting financial advising clients. Pick a situation that your clients need to take clear steps in, like opening a retirement account, and list out the steps in a downloadable checklist. 

Checklist example: Delivering Value to Your New Client checklist from Covisum

2. Calculator 

There’s a lot of math and budgeting that goes into financial advising, so help users out by creating an easy-to-use calculator. It could calculate how much someone needs to invest to be a millionaire by age 50, for instance. 

Calculator example: 401k Calculator from Coastal Wealth Management 

3. Toolkit 

Think of a toolkit as a one-stop shop for users to get everything they need to know about a certain subject. It’s typically filled with tips and key insights that can’t be found easily online in formats like white papers, calendars, and reports. 

Toolkit example: Money Toolkit from Modernist Financial 

4. Webinar 

A webinar is a video event where you share your industry knowledge and best tips with others. It’s often accompanied with a presentation and can feature bonus activities, such as worksheets. Webinars can be live or pre-recorded. 

Webinar example: Staying Profitable While Expanding Your Service Offering webinar on wealthmanagement.com 

5. Worksheet

A worksheet is exactly as it sounds: it’s a lead magnet people download to help them work through something, like a current problem or obstacle. This is a good lead magnet to use if you want to help users through a problem with critical thinking skills. 

Worksheet example: Your Ideal Financial Advisor Worksheet from Econologics

6. Spreadsheet 

Spreadsheets have the potential to be high-converting lead magnets for financial advisors. Create spreadsheets that help people track their budgets or assets so you can establish trust and provide a helpful tool for potential clients. 

Spreadsheet example: Free College Budget Spreadsheet from Her First $100K

7. eBook/white paper

eBooks and white papers are reports packed with relevant information for users. They can be guides, manuals, or reports. These types of financial advisor lead magnets work particularly well for consumer education and reputation elevation. 

eBook/white paper example: 18 Essential Lessons from a Self-Made Millionaire on financialmentor.com 

8. Quiz 

Quizzes are engaging lead magnets that reveal useful information to users based on a series of questions they answer. A valuable thing about using quizzes as financial advisor lead magnets is you can target multiple personas with the answers. 

Quiz example: Advisor Match Quiz from SmartAsset

9. Fact sheet 

A fact sheet is just as it sounds. It’s a sheet of helpful facts that provides some form of service. It helps users understand a topic with concrete statistics and industry insights. This type of lead magnet educates customers and helps you build credibility. 

Fact sheet example: Free Retirement Planning Reports and Fact Sheets from Wealth Guardians

10. Calendar 

A well-thought out calendar can be one of the most effective financial advisor lead magnets. Create a comprehensive calendar that people can use to plan deposits and check in on their investments. 

Bonus tip: Create an email marketing drip campaign that coincides with the calendar. When an important date comes up, send an automated email reminder. This will help you build meaningful relationships with potential clients through a low-cost, high-converting marketing channel. 

Calendar example: Budget Calendar from MacUpdate—this calendar is behind a paywall, but you can create a calendar and use it as an email lead magnet instead. 

Financial Advisor Lead Magnet Tactics 

Offer free value through your lead magnet

People love free stuff, especially free stuff that actually provides a service. Creating downloadable content is an effective strategy that marketers continue to use and see success with. Statistics show that companies that automated their lead management saw a 10% increase in revenue after six to nine months, and creating lead magnets is an essential step in lead management and acquisition automation. 

Offer a solution to a problem 

Put yourself in the user’s shoes when thinking about your lead magnet. What would it take for them to give you a piece of personal information? The answer: something valuable that solves a problem they’re having. 

By helping users solve a problem, you establish trust with them right away and pique their interest. If you’re giving away that valuable information for free, then you must have more valuable information to share with actual clients. 

Personalize your lead magnet 

Personalization is essential when creating lead magnets. You want users to believe this piece of content was hand-made specifically for them and their needs. Speak directly to their needs in your lead magnet’s messaging, from the landing page to the lead magnet itself. The more targeted you get, the better your chances of getting conversions. 

Create an email automation for each lead magnet 

Once you get a user’s email address, it’s time to nurture your relationship with them. Create an email marketing automated series that triggers once an email address is captured. Here are some key things to remember when creating that automation: 

• Create a welcome series—An automated welcome series is a series of emails that welcomes users to your email list and introduces yourself to them. This type of series generates results; statistics show that welcome emails have an open rate of more than 91% and, on average, have five times the click-through rate of a typical email series.  

• Make the series personal—Personalization is essential in email marketing. Use data and the features of your email service provider to customize your messages as much as possible, like using a user’s name in the copy. 

• The goal is to nurture—It’s tempting to jump right in and promote your services as a financial advisor, but the goal of a welcome series is to introduce yourself to the user and nurture your relationship with them. Send emails that aim to delight and educate as opposed to selling your services. 

Promote your lead magnets on other channels 

Use social media, paid advertising, content marketing, and your other distribution channels to promote your lead magnets. Tailor your message for each channel and encourage sign ups. 

Write great landing page copy 

Your lead magnet’s landing page should have a user-friendly design and engaging copy. This copy should: 

• Have a strong call-to-action 
• Be short, sweet, and to the point (say more with less) 
• Reiterate users’ pain points and reinforce how your lead magnet alleves it 

A/B test your opt-in form

Your opt-in form is an essential part of your lead magnet’s packaging. Since it’s so important, it’s wise to A/B test it, meaning you display two different forms to your audience and track which one has a higher opt-in rate. Depending on the technology you have, you could A/B test: 

• The number of fields the opt-in has (name, email, phone number, etc.) 
• The call-to-action on the submit button 
• The overall design of the opt-in, including colors and fonts 

The more you test, the better you’ll understand what works best for your lead magnet’s opt-in form and, ideally, increase conversions. 

Give people what they want 

The most important tactic for creating great financial advisor lead magnets is to give people what they want. Hone in on what your target audience needs and how exactly they want to receive it. As a financial advisor, you provide a service that’s essential for your clients’ futures. Show these prospective clients you not only know what you’re doing, but truly care about their financial wellbeing. 

Want the help of a financial advisor lead magnet agency? 

When executed properly, lead magnets attract new users that you can build lasting relationships with. Creating them is a labor of love that requires time, expertise, and keen attention to detail—all of which Mediaboom has. We’ll help you with all your financial advisor lead magnets needs, from content conception to promotion strategy. Contact us today to elevate your inbound strategy and make more people come to you.