How to grow a financial advisory business? | Financial Advisory Business Lead Generation

James Dooley explains how financial advisers grow revenue because SEO builds long term visibility and attracts targeted searches. Kasra Dash argues that PPC creates risk because click fraud inflates costs. Both speakers show how lead generation converts better because qualification filters out weak clients. Their discussion highlights why niching strengthens conversion because focus improves messaging and relevance.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

Kasra Dash:
So if I have a financial advisory business and I want a consistent flow of inquiries to be able to grow my revenue potentially maybe even looking to sell it in a couple years time what would you advise how would you say I get a influx of inquiries.

James Dooley:
So first and foremost if you're looking to grow financial advice or you're a financial adviser and you're looking to grow more leads and obviously try to make more profit financial advice is a very broad kind topic to talk about so is it debt is it pensions is it mortgages there's lots of different types of financial advice so what I'd want to try to do is try to understand let's say it was debt right that even just within debt you've got business debt and corporate debt and you've got personal debt and you need to start understanding even within those you've got CVLs and CVAs yeah you've got liquidation you've got administration in personal debt you've got insolvency IVAs you've got debt management plans youve got bankruptcy you've got trust deeds so these financial advisors need to understand okay where is it that we make our money and what do we convert the best and once they understand that that's when then they can start looking to do potentially do PPC because they know exactly what keywords that they want to do my only issue with PPC is click fraud I know you're not the biggest advocate of saying that paperclick is the best form of marketing but another part is with regards to SEO you can do a broad spectrum of going after all financial advice and then you can then start knuckling down into certain areas where you might make more profit and build more B links to there so if you want to expend a little bit on let's say SEO for financial advisors as a way to grow their business.

Kasra Dash:
Yeah so one one thing to add to what you've just said about the PPC stuff if you are going to go down the road just know that you're going to want to hire somebody that's an expert like the last thing you want to be doing is is actually ringing the leads yourself and also generating the leads and also looking at the ad campaign it's there's just not enough time in in the actual day to do it that being said again I'm not a big massive fan of PPC because again in the finance industry there's a lot of click fraud your competitors are clicking on your ads you just have a lot of issues so unless you've got like a really good negative keyword list or you've even got somebody in house I would probably stay away from it unless I mean some people probably would want leads today and if if you want leads today right now in the next six seven days then go down that route but going back to what you said before SEO SEO is obviously a little bit of a slower win it's probably more of an investment for the next six or 6 to 12 months really even even in some cases depending on if say you might be a wealth management company in New York that's going to be pretty difficult to rank so that might be like a 2-year investment but that being said you are building out an asset you like your website is actually generating you the inquiries so on that front it's definitely well worth doing you don't want to be relying on like a lead generation company or potentially if just a third party so don't have all your Ed eggs in one basket but once you've got your SEO set up I think the next step would probably be lead generation.

James Dooley:
Yeah for sure I mean for anyone who's watching this if you're a financial advisor then SEO is great with regards to getting the organic rankings and getting the clicks and stuff like that it's it is a long-term investment like what kri said but also as part of SEO in my opinion forms branding and reputation management you want to be making certain that you've got these testimonials and case studies there could be videos there could be images of a specific kind of client that you've had which left you a really nice quote and a review they need to be shared everywhere and need to be made certain the part of your case studies and your branding online and once you've got that branding set up properly that's when then you can start looking to potentially go and buy leads from a lead generation company now over at fat rank.com they do a lot of no no wi no fee lead generation you do need to qualify and it's a very very strict stringent onboarding process where they they are checking your testimonials online they're checking your case studies they're checking your branding looks good so that you can convert the leads because if the branding is not good and they're generating your leads and you're not converting them then obviously over at fat rank they don't get paid there is other places where maybe like bar and a few other places that sell financial advice leads I'd be very careful with certain lead generation companies mainly because they don't do exclusive leads so they might be selling that same lead to four five even six different companies so yeah you need to be making certain you're checking the return on investment with any sort of lead generation companies that you might be using but away from potentially using let's say fat rank.com fly generation which guarantees a return on investment that's obviously that's one step that I would definitely be doing but you said don't throw all your eggs in one basket so what about social media like in your opinion do you have any preference with regards to let's say Facebook ads or organic Facebook like what's the difference for you would you wanting to do organic social media as well as paid social media.

Kasra Dash:
I think with um with financial advisory or or anything in that realm I think if you are do have a social presence um on organic Facebook or maybe even organic Twitter and stuff that can definitely help and I wouldn't necessarily be salesy it would be very much a video like this um explaining protection planning or mortgage planning or what whatever the type of planning you're doing it might be even retirement advice and stuff like that so if you can do videos like this on organic so it could be YouTube it could be Facebook it could be Twitter and that can definitely go a long way and then off the back of that I would also be running some form of Facebook advertising whether it's retargeting so for example not everybody that visits your website ends up turning into a customer so the next time they load up Facebook they could be displayed with a retarget an ad some of you guys might have seen it whenever you go on like Asos and stuff and then next time you load up Facebook you say oh those are the shoes that I was just looking at but I've not actually ended up buying them so that that's basically what a retarget ad is and then you can also do potentially some cold ads on Facebook where you're targeting people that are maybe getting into like the retirement age you might say right anybody that's plus 60 I want them to see this ad so you've got a variety of different strategies there but is there anything else that you would recommend is there any traditional marketing let's say.

James Dooley:
Yeah so like we traditional marketing there's quite a few people now that are started going let's say equity release or retirement mortgages so there's a lot of TV ads out there for it now and they've been running it for many years so you would say that they're getting some sort of return an investment on it to keep running it for so many years you've got radio ads you've got billboard ads you've got to remember this industry is absolutely huge so potentially if the money's there traditional marketing could work well for me if I'm being honest with you I if it was my business and I was setting up and even if I had 50 financial advisors I'd go down the route of starting off making certain with regards to SEO I've got my branding perfect online I'd go down the of lead generation I might even try two or three different lead generation companies and then being only present with regards to social media I wouldn't personally do PPC because of the click fraud and I wouldn't personally do traditional marketing that is definitely not to say that those platforms don't work I just don't see the ROI on that in comparison to others there is other things like networking events potentially that people could be going to trying to befriend accountancy practices trying to befriend other like neighboring or shouldering niches that might be able to refer them in for financial and wealth care kind of services so you've got to remember that there is so many different sub niches within finance that they need to dig down and become an expert in something there's no point being a jack of all trades master of none be an expert in something go down into that get your lead generation for it specifically for them leads get the so set up for it good quality back links to power up the website and get that omnes set up for social media.

Kasra Dash:
I think one one thing that's pretty important that you've just mentioned is networking and there's a lot of accountants that actually help their client base sell their businesses and typically speaking after somebody's sold their business for two three four million the next thing that they'd want us to secure some of that money in like a financial plan so they don't just lose it all so that could be another route that you could definitely go down as well is there anything else that you.

James Dooley:
That's really it I mean like you said on the networking side of things like accountants are probably the biggest lead generation company for anyone that's in corporate finance corporate debt because if someone needs a bridging loan for example or someone needs liquidation because a company's gone bust on them and they're having to afford their company the accountants normally know first and they normally pass you on to something with regards to like an insolvency practitioner that then the normal referral comes from there so the networking part of that if you are in insolvency or in business loans getting in with as many different accountants as you can is good practice and that's what a lot of good lead generation companies do as well they understand this and they understand that the goal mine of what an accountant firm is sat on and they will start not only looking to rank specifically for keywords like CVLs or any stuff like that they they're trying to think outside the box to try and make certain they get in a consistent flow of inquiries for financial advisors yeah definitely if you guys do have a financial advisory business and you want more leads a consistent flow of inquiries check out the link down below or head over to fat rank.com