Can AI Lead Generation Ignite Organic Growth for Advisors?

For many advisory firms, organic growth is stagnating. AI lead-generation tools are a promising potential fix.

While more than half of advisory firms grew less than 5% by adding new clients in 2023, roughly a fifth of the industry managed to achieve double-digit organic expansion, according to a recent report from The Ensemble Practice and BlackRock. This group of RIAs sets itself apart by having a growth strategy in place, said Robert Sofia, CEO of Snappy Kraken, adding that AI tools can be a valuable part of that because of their ability to both create tailored marketing content and identify leads using third-party data.

“[AI tools] access these third-party property records and business records and create a profile on the prospect,” Sofia said. “That allows the AI to read a profile on the prospect that’s much more nuanced, and then market to them in a tailored way.”

AI Targeting

One particularly powerful AI tool is the lead-scoring model, which evaluates prospects and shows advisors the ones that are most likely to become clients. Research has shown such models to be particularly effective, said Finny AI CEO Eden Ovadia, who spoke at the annual Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach, California. Companies that use lead scoring have experienced a 77% increase in lead-generation return on investment, according to SuperAGI, a customer relationship management firm that uses AI agents. AI can also help a firm drill down into its niche, locating prospects who fall into target categories. Ovadia described one advisor who used AI to find and identify prospects who just moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, based on property records. “He filters for a minimum property value and [reaches] out to them. It’s just, ‘Hey, I’m a local advisor here. I’ve been here for 20 years. I know all the local hot spots, and I also know some great tax strategies. Let’s grab a coffee,’” she said. “He had an 80% response rate on that one campaign because it was so thoughtful, so deliberate and so personal to that recipient.”

AI-driven lead generation may soon become the norm. According to CPA Growth Advisor:

• 97% of advisors believe AI can help organically grow their business by more than 20%.
• 87% also said they’d use more AI tools on a day-to-day basis — and spend time learning a new AI-based process — if there is a clear benefit to them.

Beyond niches, AI can be helpful in figuring out which marketing strategies work so they can be replicated across a firm’s geographically diverse advisor base. A firm might use several AI-driven strategies, see what works best and then implement that nationwide, Sofia said. “These micro-strategies… when you get them really dialed in, if you’ve got a multi-advisor use case, you can replicate that across your network,” he added.

Clickbait. AI tools can also ingest “behavioral and intent data” — information on who visits a firm’s website, or who clicks on its content — to further narrow the search effort to prospects who show interest, Ovadia said. “It all starts with data, and it all starts with the inputs you’re putting into the models,” she added.