The optical plasmonic properties of metallic nanodiscs and nanocones have been characterized here—with a view to applying them to high performance tip enhanced spectroscopic methods. The characterization used a setup based on the coupling of an achromatic inverted microscope equipped with a total internal reflection objective and an atomic force microscopy (AFM). Tunable transverse electric and transverse magnetic plasmonic resonances are identified and observations are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations. The modelled and measured plasmonic response of the nanostructures suggests possible applications in a new generation of probes for tip-enhanced optical spectroscopy in which plasmonic nanostructures are designed at the apex of a non-metallic AFM tips. Such tips would enable a spectral tunability as a function of the specific material, the size, shape and topography, together with high electric field enhancement factors. Tip performances better than those commonly used in tip-enhanced optical spectroscopy experiments such as tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) are anticipated