Digital Marketing for Financial Advisors: How to Reach Your Ideal Clients

Key Takeaways

Digital marketing for financial advisors can yield some amazing results. I recently helped one advisor in the Midlands (UK) who achieved 12 leads in just one month from their online channels.

Even with a 10% conversion rate, that’s one new client per month!

However, financial advisor marketing rests upon effective communication. You need to know your target audience (or ICP – ideal client persona), address their “pain points” with your content, and talk to them in a language they can understand.

Unfortunately, many advisors are getting stuck on one (or all) of these three points. The result is typical – muddled messaging, dampened authority and falling relevance in the eyes of your ICP.

Below, I’m going to distill my decade of experience working with advisors into 10 minutes, showing you how to go deeper with crafting your ICP and align your marketing to their needs.

Here are the key takeaways from the article:

• Define your ICP by moving beyond demographics. You need more data than just age, income and marital status. You need psychographics, firmographics and more.
• Start by making a list of your best clients and make a list of their common, notable attributes and pain points.
• Align your branding, tone of voice and value proposition to the ICP. Many advisers are too diluted in their positioning. If you identify a viable niche, focus on it.
• Start showing up where your ICPs are – e.g. LinkedIn, Google search, email and even Reddit. 
• Experiment with different content formats to see what lands best, such as authentic stories, live Q&As and guest collaborations.

Understanding Your Ideal Client: The Foundation of Digital Marketing For Financial Advisors

Simon Sinek rose to fame partly through his book, Start With Why. However, it’s arguably just as vital for financial advisors to Start With Who.

Who are you trying to reach with your marketing? After all, without a clear target, how can you aim properly with your content, advertising and outreach?

When advisors are vague about who they serve, it typically makes everything harder. You’re trying to speak to everyone. Unfortunately, this often ends up speaking to no one.

I regularly speak with advisers who are aware of this. They get further than most by defining some initial demographic information, such as:

John, aged 35-55, income of $70K-$80K pa, has started looking at investing

This is a good start. But more is needed to separate different “Johns”. For instance, the above could encompass at least three types of people:

• John at 35 (single, apartment, dabbles in crypto/stocks on Trading212).
• John at 45 (married with kids, five figures held in ISAs, workplace pension).
• John at 55 (kids finishing studies, investments getting increasingly complex and disorganised after years of neglect).

These three people might look quite similar from a demographic perspective. However, their inner mindset is very different. 

Demographics vs. Psychographics

To build a clearer picture, break your audience into two core categories:

• Demographics, such as age, profession and income.
• Psychographics, such as personal values, interests, priorities, worries and drivers.

When you do this, your ICP (ideal client persona) starts to look and feel like a real person – not just a spreadsheet entry. Suddenly, you get a clearer picture of what goes on in their heads:

“I’m a new parent. I feel overwhelmed. My child is totally dependent, so what if something happens to me? How would my partner cope?”

“I’m getting older and can’t put in work like I used to. But how can I get off the career treadmill safely? If I take the leap and things don’t work out in retirement, how would I get back on the treadmill again? Nobody will want to employ me, and I don’t have the energy.”

The best digital marketing for financial advisors labels these fears, pain points and priorities clearly. It puts language on what the ICP is feeling, but might not fully understand or be able to articulate.

When they see a financial advisor doing that, they think: 

“That person gets me. I can talk to them.”

This isn’t about scaring your audience or strong-arming them with emotional manipulation. 

It’s about relating to them as people – coming alongside them as a trusted adviser; not talking down to them from a distance.

Reaching Your Ideal Client: Going Beyond Psychographics

Do this, and you’re already miles ahead of other financial advisors in their digital marketing. 

However, delving into your ICP’s psychographics only helps you know what to say to them. It does not guarantee that your message will actually reach them.

To do that, you need to show up where your ICP is.

The good news? You can figure much of this out by extending your ICP crafting exercise into other key areas, beyond demographics and psychographics:

• Geographic: where do they live or work?
• Technographic: what sorts of devices, platforms or software do they use?
• Firmographic: if they are employed or own a business, what are the traits of that firm?
• Behavioural: what is their typical decision-making process? How do they interact with advisors like yourself?

Geographic Traits

You know a bit about what your audience looks like (age, income etc) and how they think (e.g. personal values), but where are they, exactly?

For instance, I’ve worked with a few expat-focused financial advisors in my time. Their ICP is often highly mobile, moving from country to country and needing to navigate cross-border planning issues. 

That type of client requires a different marketing approach to, say, an advisor who targets a very stationary ICP – perhaps one based in a very suburban or rural area, where local matters affect their livelihoods and attitudes.

These traits can affect your wider digital marketing strategy as a financial advisor.

For instance, a British expat in southeast Asia might be heavily involved with Facebook groups where expats can help each other. They may be less reliant on Google search for local information, since the website listings may not be fully up to date (or safe to browse).

An urban-based ICP, by contrast, might be more active on a platform like LinkedIn as they seek to rub shoulders and network with other ambitious professionals like themselves.

Technographic Traits

Does your ICP prefer face to face meetings? Are they happy with video or self-service apps?

What is their proficiency and habit in other areas of technology? For instance, do they rely on mobile banking, or do they prefer to visit their local branch in person for deposits etc?

Do they use investment apps like eToro or Trading212? Do they regularly log into their workplace pension platform, and do they understand how to adjust their portfolio (if they want to)?

Are they happy to sign and store documents digitally, or does everything have to be done using pen and paper? How much do they trust cloud-based tools, such as client portals?

Again, these questions have a big impact on a digital marketing strategy for a financial advisor. 

In some cases, I’ve recommended more of a “print-based” approach in cases where the ICP is highly traditional (e.g. direct mail). For most advisers, I don’t think this is necessary anymore in 2025. 

But you need to craft a thorough ICP to be sure.

Firmographic Traits

This one can feel awkward for advisors. After all, many of their clients are retired. However, they likely worked in a career at some point – or, they were partnered with someone who did.

Look at your best clients at the moment. Are there any common firmographic traits? For instance, is there a notable presence of sectors like tech, finance, healthcare, engineering or trades? Are most employed in junior/senior roles in SMEs, or do they sit on the boards of large companies?

One UK-based advisor I worked with had a high number of farmer clients. Many of them had run the family farm over the generations, and had a deep connection with their land. 

These ICPs were technically business owners, but in a very different sense to a tech startup owner! They saw the world differently and faced different challenges when it came to regulations, tax and retirement planning. As such, a unique marketing strategy was required.

Behavioural Traits

What triggers your ICP to seek financial advice? What process do they go through to become “problem aware” and later “solution aware”? 

How do they research their options and compare different advisers?

One fascinating case study is a Life & Wealth Strategist called Jill Collins. She tells her story of how she lost her husband and income all in the same day. 

She remade herself and went on to create a financial planning roadmap to help other women avoid the financial difficulties she went through. 

For her, the ICP’s triggers likely  include difficult life events for women such as divorce, bereavement or health problems. The process of going from “problem aware” to “solution aware” is likely to be quite fast and overwhelming for the ICP. 

In this mental state, the ICP has less luxury to spend days or weeks comparing options. It positions Jill to step in as the perfect solution – provided she shows up at the right place, and at the right time.

It’s worth bearing in mind that your ICP may delay alleviating their pain points until they become acute. In which case, what’s your strategy to agitate these pains and present yourself as the solution in your financial advisor marketing?

Building Upon Your ICP

You can see now that crafting an ICP is no simple task. However, it is well worth the effort.

It forms one of the key pillars in your wider digital marketing strategy as a financial advisor – alongside others such as your competitor and positioning analysis.

Here’s how you can start putting these ideas to work, today:

• Define your ideal client with a blend of demographics and psychographics, and tailor every message to them.
• Elevate your online presence so your website, branding, and social profiles build instant trust and tell your story 
• Educate your ICP with great content before you pitch. Share authentic, high-value content that answers real client questions and addresses their pain points.
• Automate smartly, not blindly. Let AI and automation handle routine workflows, but keep your unique voice and compliance front and centre.
• Measure what matters. Track the real-world impact of every campaign so you can double down on what works.

Ready to move from intention to action? Pick one channel (your website, email campaigns or LinkedIn profile) and implement a single improvement this week. 

Then test, measure, tweak and repeat. 

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