Ready to market your practice with AI?

Most advisors are not short on insight. They know their clients, understand the planning issues that matter, and have years of market perspective to share. 

The challenge is turning that knowledge and expertise into timely, relevant marketing consistently and at scale. That is where artificial intelligence (AI) can help. AI runs on data. And the data-driven financial advice business actually puts you, the advisor, in the sweet spot to leverage AI. 

AI can help you uncover insights from the client data already in your CRM—turning that data into action. Thanks to AI automation, analyzing the often underutilized data in your CRM to uncover insights, identify opportunities, improve communications, personalize outreach, and target your marketing messages can now be done more quickly. Think of AI as your marketing assistant, a tool to help you prospect, engage, and retain clients.

The good news? You don’t have to be an AI expert or marketing guru to harness the power of AI. AI enables you to craft marketing messages in a way that makes the recipient feel like you’re talking to them and nobody else. 

Here are five ways AI can help make your marketing more targeted, efficient, and effective.

1. Personalize client communications  

There’s a meaningful difference between sending generic content like, “What’s a Roth IRA?” and sending “Why a Roth conversion makes sense for you now.” AI makes it possible for you to get the right message  to the right client (or future client) at precisely the right time.

By analyzing CRM data, digital engagement, meeting notes, and lifestage indicators, AI can help create targeted, tailored communications that address the financial planning needs of a specific client. For example, a client approaching retirement who has been reading about long-term care may be a strong candidate for a follow-up email, planning checklist, or webinar invitation on health care costs in retirement. 

AI can also help turn a 30-minute meeting into a trove of next-step actions. A meeting summary could surface follow-up items, identify planning opportunities, and suggest relevant content to share after the conversation. The result is not just more communication—it is more timely communication. 

2. Identify prospects more likely to convert  

AI working in concert with your CRM can help identify which prospects may be more likely to engage—as well as less-engaged clients who may need more attention. 

For example, AI can analyze patterns and trends from emails, meeting transcripts, social media posts, and CRM data found among your most engaged clients. These behaviors could include frequent website logins, types of online queries, the language they use, and family dynamics and demographics. You can then compare those attributes with profiles of less engaged clients or ones that recently switched to another advisor or are at risk of leaving your book of business. And then use that AI-infused intelligence to help prioritize outreach.  

3. Turn one insight into an entire marketing campaign

With AI, a single client communication or market insight can become emails, social posts, blog articles, and more, making it easier to scale your marketing with less effort.

For example, consider quarterly market commentaries. Before AI, you could spend eight to 12 hours recording a commentary, writing a newsletter story, creating webinar slides, drafting social posts, building a follow-up email list, and tweaking language and takeaways for different audiences. 

In the AI world, after you record the 10-minute quarterly commentary, AI goes to work. It summarizes key themes, drafts a blog post, creates LinkedIn content, builds webinar talking points, and tailors content to investors with different goals. With AI automation, you could spend just one to two hours.

Has your marketing been missing the mark; not prompting clients and prospects to action? AI can troubleshoot for you. You can add past campaign performance data, client responses, and prospect behaviors into AI to diagnose marketing issues and boost return on investment (ROI). 

AI can then help to enhance content, remove off-putting jargon, fine-tune tone, and add engaging subject lines. Think of AI as a freelance editor, or a second set of eyes. For example, if a webinar underperforms, AI can test and rework subject lines, copy, and visuals. 

4. Segment clients by unique planning needs 

No two clients are alike. Each one has different needs depending on where they are in their lifecycle and the state of their finances. Your marketing needs to reflect that. And AI can help.

Young Gen Zers, for example, are just as interested in retirement planning as aging baby boomers in or nearing retirement. And with the help of AI, you can tailor different messages to each client based on their needs. For example, a younger investor may need content that connects retirement saving to competing priorities such as student debt, homeownership, or building an emergency fund. A recently retired client may need guidance on turning retirement savings into income, managing taxes, or navigating required minimum distributions. AI can help you tailor the same broad topic—retirement planning—to very different client needs. 

AI algorithms can also analyze your client base, letting you know which age groups are underrepresented and require more marketing outreach. A practice lacking in next-gen clients, for example, could prove damaging if it means missing out on younger clients set to inherit wealth as a result of the great wealth transfer. 

5. Brainstorm timely content ideas

AI can help you find relevant and timely topics based on your book of clients. You might ask AI the following: “I’m looking to create a monthly newsletter and a related six-part social media series that will run bi-weekly over three months. Based on what you know of my clients and practice, what are some topics you’d recommend? Give me five ideas for the series.” A single prompt can unlock all sorts of ideas you might not have thought of.

Leveraging AI is an effective way to help drive client engagement, better target potential new clients, and boost overall business results. By using AI to analyze client data, personalize outreach, prioritize opportunities, and repurpose existing insights, you can spend less time starting from scratch and more time engaging clients and prospects with specific and personal messages that matter.