Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Financial Advisors in 2024

Key takeaways

• Base-level financial planning is fully commoditized; digital marketing exists to create more “at bats” for advisors willing to differentiate on something other than beating the market.
• A simple three-part framework, connect, cultivate, and create, covers most of what a digital marketing strategy needs: finding the right audience and centers of influence, nurturing them through lead magnets and email, and showing up consistently with content and SEO.
• Email remains one of the most effective channels for advisors despite spam filtering, especially when subscribers are told why they’re receiving a message and re-engaged with a clear, predictable cadence.
• Video and audio lead magnets are converting significantly better than text right now, and don’t require professional production to work.
• Naming and even trademarking a firm’s planning process, rather than describing generic steps, gives advisors something concrete to build content, case studies, and differentiation around.

Why advisors need more “at bats” (0:00–5:52)

Every advisor needs more at bats to win new clients, since base-level financial planning is now fully commoditized and no advisor should be promising to beat the market. He pointed to the estate review that Vanilla builds as one example of a differentiated value proposition, since it connects to what matters most to a prospect, their family and their goals, rather than competing purely on investment performance.

A quick audience poll set the stage for the rest of the session: roughly 40% of attendees said they do nothing with digital marketing today, another third said they’ve tried it but couldn’t attribute much business to it, and LinkedIn and email were by far the most-used channels. Nobody on the call used TikTok.

The three C’s: connect, cultivate, create (5:52–19:16)

Simona Ondrejkova, a certified financial planner turned marketing copywriter, framed the rest of the session around what she calls the three C’s: connect, cultivate, and create. Connect starts with identifying a niche, since messaging that tries to speak to everyone tends to reach no one, and extends to finding centers of influence, like CPAs and estate planning attorneys, who already have clients that fit an advisor’s target market.

Cultivate is about nurturing a connection once it’s made, typically through a lead magnet, a piece of free, specific value like a short ebook or video, that gets a prospect onto an email list in exchange for something more compelling than a generic newsletter signup. Ondrejkova also pointed to an advisor’s website as a kind of storefront, one that should speak directly to a target audience’s specific pain points rather than describing services in generic terms.

Create: consistent content and SEO (19:16–25:08)

The third C, create, is about showing up consistently, since inconsistent posting gets lost in social media algorithms that only show a given post to a fraction of an advisor’s followers at any one time. Ondrejkova explained SEO, or search engine optimization, as Google ranking a website based on the quality, relevance, and frequency of its content: an advisor targeting retired executive women in Chicago, for instance, can use that specific combination of audience and location as the keywords that draw organic search traffic.

She also encouraged advisors to repurpose a single piece of content across channels, turning one blog post into a LinkedIn article, several social posts, an email, and potentially a podcast appearance, since the same idea can meet a prospect wherever they happen to be looking.

How to build an email campaign as an advisor (25:08–33:22)

Olivia Luper, founder of Lexicon Advisor Marketing, said advisors starting an email program from scratch should open with a short re-engagement sequence to their existing list, explaining what’s changing and how often they’ll hear from the firm going forward, rather than emailing an old list cold. She also recommended simply asking subscribers what financial problem is top of mind for them right now, both to spark replies from otherwise dormant contacts and to surface ideas for future content and lead magnets.

Sinai added that giving subscribers context for why they’re receiving a given email, because they downloaded a specific guide or attended a specific event, does more to keep a message out of spam than any technical fix, since a recipient who understands why they’re hearing from an advisor is far less likely to flag the email or unsubscribe.

Video lead magnets and standing out from the noise (33:22–45:31)

Luper said video and audio lead magnets have outperformed text this year, with video converting up to 30% higher in her experience, and don’t require professional production, just decent lighting and a clear script. A short bridge video that names a specific problem, she said, tends to work better than a wall of text at getting a prospect to opt in before they ever see the full explainer.

Christopher Smith, founder of The Campfire Effect, argued the deeper issue is positioning: advice can be commoditized because anyone can give it, he said, but leadership, meaning helping a client see a bigger vision for their life than they could see for themselves, is what actually differentiates an advisor. His advice for every piece of content, from an email to a video, was to ask whether it looks and sounds like everyone else’s.

Trademarking as a differentiator (45:31–51:29)

Sinai drew a parallel to product marketing in software, arguing that advisors need to market not just their credentials but their process, since prospects considering a move to a new advisor want to understand what working together actually looks like. Smith said naming and even trademarking a planning process, broken into a small number of pillars, such as discover, plan, and lead, gives advisors something concrete and ownable to build content and success stories around, rather than describing generic steps like discover, plan, invest, and monitor that every firm claims to follow.

Q&A highlights

Will spam filters make email marketing less effective?
No. Deliverability depends on following best practices. Avoid spammy links and excessive frequency to maintain a healthy sender reputation. Email remains an essential component of advisor marketing, especially when paired with text messaging.

What are the most effective lead magnets for financial advisors right now?
Video and audio formats are currently the leaders. Use a short “bridge” video to frame a specific problem before offering a deeper explainer.

How should advisors get started with digital marketing?

Start with the medium you are most comfortable with—whether that is writing, video, or audio. Set a specific client-acquisition goal and work backward into quarterly objectives. Consider outsourcing marketing tasks to make the plan sustainable.

About the speakers

Jim Sinai, Chief Marketing Officer, Vanilla
Jim Sinai is Chief Marketing Officer at Vanilla, with more than a decade of marketing leadership experience, including roles at Salesforce and Procore.

Simona Ondrejkova, Founder, Mindful Copy Agency
Simona Ondrejkova is a certified financial planner and former financial advisor who managed more than half a billion dollars in assets before founding Mindful Copy Agency, where she writes marketing content for financial advisors.

Olivia Luper, Founder, Lexicon Advisor Marketing
Olivia Luper is founder of Lexicon Advisor Marketing, an outsourced digital marketing agency for financial advisors that started in 2018 as a content-only company.

Christopher Smith, Founder, The Campfire Effect
Christopher Smith is founder of The Campfire Effect, where he coaches financial advisors on storytelling, positioning, and leadership-driven marketing.

The information provided here does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice. It is provided for general informational purposes only. This information may not be updated or reflect changes in law. Please consult with an estate attorney, financial advisor, or tax professional who can advise as to your particular situation.