In this blog I’m going to describe what a financial advisor marketing consultant does, much financial advisor marketing services cost and how to determine if you need the help of a financial marketing expert or not.
Key takeaways:
- What is a financial advisor marketing consultant
- How much marketing support usually costs in the field of financial advice
- The importance of getting a compliance-friendly marketing consultant who knows the laws governing wealth managers
- How to know if you even need to hire a marketing consultant in the first place
- Where to find a good one
And more – let’s go!
But first –
For those of you who are new here, my name is Sara.
- I myself am a financial advisor marketing consultant.
- I’ve been helping financial advisors get new clients for over 10 years now.
- They appreciate my blunt and clear take on things. Here are some reviews of my financial advisor marketing services.
What is a financial advisor marketing consultant?
A financial advisor marketing consultant is an expert who helps financial advisors, financial planners, Investment Advisor Representatives (IARs) of RIA firms, and broker-dealer reps to grow their practices.
This is accomplished by:
- Writing financial advisor specific marketing content such as email newsletters, market outlook pieces, social media postings about markets and the economy,
- Creating graphics and images that help the financial advisor attract attention and get leads
- Sending out prospecting messages on behalf of the financial advisor through social media, text messaging and emails
- Managing the financial advisor or RIA firm’s pipeline
- Crafting a strong financial advisor value proposition
- Helping to set the financial advisor apart by forming a catchy brand
- Setting up and maintaining a website that allows the financial advisor to get leads through SEO, AEO, GEO and direct traffic from other sites
- Designing a strategy to help the financial advisor foster strong ties with CPAs, attorneys, and other centers of influence
- Executing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for the RIA firm or financial advisor, which may include online ads, website, social media, etc.
- Assisting with the management of financial advisor seminars and webinars
- Engineering a strong content calendar that allows the financial advisor to follow a routine publishing schedule
- Teaching how to sell to and close high net worth and ultra high net worth people
- Helping the financial advisor get testimonials from their clients
Some financial advisor marketing consultants work on their own – like me – I’m a solopreneur! I have a broad skill set that I apply to deliver the set of marketing services I put together for each of the financial advisors that I work with. Others work for a financial advisor marketing firm and are part of a larger team.
It’s important that you hire a marketing consultant who is familiar with the laws governing financial advisor compliance. There are specific regulations that you must follow and certain things you are prevented from saying in your marketing if you are in the field of wealth management. Make sure whatever marketing consultant you hire knows the SEC and FINRA compliance rules, especially regarding investment performance, testimonials, and financial advisor awards!
What kind of skills and knowledge do they tend to have?
Financial advisor marketing consultants tend to be experts in the following areas:
- SEC, FINRA and state compliance regulations for marketing content
- Economics
- Stock market
- Writing
- Graphic design
- Video production
- Social media
- Digital marketing for financial advisors
- High net worth sales tactics
- The psychology of luxury good buyers
Now that we’ve covered what they are, let’s get to the next point – how do you know if this is for you?
How do I know if I even NEED a financial advisor marketing consultant?
That is a great question – how can you be sure that you even need to hire a financial marketing expert?
In my experience, there are three ways that financial advisors tend to go when it comes to marketing their practices.
- Hire a marketing consultant
- Do it yourself
- Do nothing
Hiring a financial advisor marketing consultant
This is for the wealth manager who just doesn’t have the time or attention to do it on their own because they have a ton of clients whose wealth they are managing. These tend to be established businesses. The type of marketing support they opt for is usually full outsourcing. They hire a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) who will take over and execute the marketing of the financial advisor’s practice – content calendar creation, writing and publishing all the content, updating the website, running team meetings, and maintaining the sales pipeline.
A Fractional CMO goes for at least $2,000 a month plus any additional software or ancillary costs that come with the work. The time load for a fractional CMO in financial services is usually 2-3 hours a week. They are hired as a 1099 worker.
If you hire a financial advisor marketing agency, it usually costs $4,000 or more a month. The services are comprehensive, covering all aspects of marketing the practice. Usually a marketing agency will assign the financial advisor or RIA firm a team of specialists with certain skills (graphic design, copywriting, etc.)
Do it yourself
Some financial advisors prefer to grow their businesses on their own. Usually these are cases where they are operating a lifestyle practice and have modest growth needs and light client workloads, or they are just starting out.
Often these financial advisors are well served by hiring a marketing consultant on a one-time or episodic basis. Financial advisor marketing consultants go for $200 to $500 an hour, or might negotiate a flat fee for services provided.
In this case, the consultant will guide and coach the financial advisor, but is not usually the one executing the marketing plan. For example, a financial advisor may hire a marketing consultant to write their website copy or coach them through a difficult meeting with a prospect.
Do Nothing
Believe it or not, many wealth managers built large RIA firms just by delivering stellar service and getting referrals from clients. In a high net worth sales situation, word of mouth is going to carry the most weight.
If you decide to actively do nothing when it comes to growing your firm, at the very least you should write a quarterly newsletter in which you discuss your most intriguing client case for the quarter. This helps clients be reminded of what you do and the value you provide, and it also helps the centers of influence such as CPAs and attorneys to understand as well. This can generate referrals and warm leads for your RIA firm.
I would also suggest paying close attention to your most enthusiastic clients. If you simply took your best fit clients out to lunch every six months and go to know them better, that probably would be enough to prompt them to tell their friends about you.
Financial advisor marketing coach vs. consultant: what’s the difference?
This is a great question. There’s a clear distinction between financial advisor marketing consultant and financial advisor marketing coach.
- A marketing consultant is going to fix a problem the financial advisor is having, through analyzing data. People call a financial advisor business development consultants when they need someone to identify the problem and create a solution, recommeding a strategy for the financial advisor to follow. This work tends to be more theoretical and analytical in nature.
- Financial advisors hire a marketing coach when they need someone to guide them, step by step, through a specific set of actions. For example, a wealth manager may be struggling with closing sales with high net worth prospects. The marketing coach will meet with the financial advisor and run a set of mock meetings, teaching the advisor how to question the prospect appropriately. A marketing coach is going to assist the advisor with executing a specific set of actions. This work tends to be more pragmatic and action-based.
There is a litany of titles that marketing experts for financial advisors tend to go by. Here is a brief primer:
- Fractional CMO for financial advisors – an outsourced marketing expert who runs all the financial advisor marketing tasks
- Chief marketing officer for financial advisors. See above.
- Marketing coach for financial advisors. Provides advice but does not actually execute the deliverables.
- Financial advisor business development consultant. Provides anaysis and strategic guidance.
- Financial advisor marketing consultant. See above.
- Financial advisor marketing agency – a team of experts who execute the marketing plan in a robust and usually higher cost way
- Financial advisor growth consultant – see “financial advisor business development consultant”
- RIA marketing consultant – a marketing consultant who focuses on SEC or state registered investment advisory firms.
- Wealth management marketing consultant – provides marketing support to either SEC, state, or FINRA registered financial advisors
- Fiduciary marketing consultant – works with fee-only advisors and not broker dealer firms
How do I find a good one?
You can find a good financial advisor marketing consultant through the following venues:
- Social media
- Google search
- ChatGPT
- Word of mouth – ask your friends at the FPA or your local NAPFA group
- Michael Kitces Services Map – here’s the 2026 version
How much does good marketing support cost an RIA firm?
We’ve already covered the cost of marketing support for financial advisors, but I’ll summarize it here:
- $2,500 to $4,000 if hiring a fractional CMO or marketing agency specifically trained to work with RIA firms or wealth managers
- $200 to $500 per hour if hiring a financial advisor marketing consultant
How can I grow my financial advisor practice and get new clients?
A marketing consultant can help you grow your RIA firm, or you might actually be able to do it on your own. Either way, there is a three step process all financial advisors must follow if they want to succeed at marketing.
I’ve been helping financial advisors get new clients for 10 years. There are alot of fancy schmancy shiny objects that are involved along the way, but it boils down to these three basic steps. If you are putting time into marketing and not getting new clients, you are messing something up in this sequence.
- It starts with finding qualified people. Alot of you wind up putting alot of time and energy into people and you have no idea whether or not they are actually qualified high net worth prospects who would have enough wealth where they would be able to become a client of your practice.
- Next is attention. You have to somehow get the prospects’ attention.
- You have to show them something impressive.
BOOM there you go.
Now, marketing consultants in wealth management (and in every other industry, by the way), just loooove to dress this all up with shiny objects (that they try to convince you to pay alot for).
It comes down to high net worth psychology, If you understand how wealthy people think you can execute this process quite easily.
The tangible methods that financial advisor marketing consultants use to help their clients grow their businesses are usually some permutation of these:
- Email newsletters are still a viable form of financial advisor marketing. Baby Boomers still check email regularly and in fact this method is probably more popular with them than social media.
- YouTube videos and blogs allow you to be found in Google searches which are becoming increasingly popular.
- Chat GPT and other AI engines often are used by wealthy people to find financial advisors in their area.
- Social media can be a way to develop a community of followers, which may lead to new relationships.
- Seminars, webinars, and dinner events are a bit more intense and can be costly, however there is opportunity to make a big impression and it can lead you to close relationships faster.
And many more. These are some of the major ways, to get the wheels turning.
How do I get a good return on my marketing dollars spent?
The answer to the question of how to successfully market a financial advisory firm comes in several parts.
- Figure out who the best financial advisor marketing consultant is for you and your firm. You have to find the right marketing support, both in level and type, someone who knows your specific type of wealth management and how the high net worth buyers you want think. Do you need a financial advisor website specialist? Financial advisor marketing consultant who specializes in email? Or is it more a general wealth management marketing coach that you need? What they offer has to be a fit for what you are seeking. Get this straight first because I have seen advisor waste a ton of time and money on the wrong person and they come up with nothing in the end.
- Figure out the right way to engage with your marketing consultant. You may need only a consultant or coach for some guidance, or you may need a full blown CMO for 10 hours a month. You have to figure out what skills you need your marketing specialist to have, and the best way to engage with them.
- Know thyself. Think about what you see as the best possible growth marketing path for your RIA firm. There is no generic marketing strategy that works for 100% of financial advisors. In the past, how have you gotten clients for your financial advisory firm? Are you a good writer? Are you good at presenting? Or are you more the one-on-one networking type? Are you even an active marketer at all? Like I said, some RIA firms grow by referral only and reach billions of dollars in AUM this way.
- Go into the engagement with a sense of what you would like your ROI to be. How are you going to measure success? What performance indicators matter to you? Is it leads or new clients gained from your marketing efforts, or is it more just the act of getting a high net worth person’s attention and having them know what you do as a financial advisor? Return on investment isn’t just monetary.
- The best financial advisor marketing consultant for you is the one who understands you the best. Make sure they ask questions that help them uncover who you are, who your firm is, and what you want to accomplish. Make sure they get it right.
How can a financial advisor marketing consultant help me?
I am a financial advisor marketing consultant. For over 10 years I’ve been helping financial advisors get new clients by expressing their value and presenting it to the world in a variety of ways.
Here are what a few more of my clients had to say about me:
I have worked with Sara Grillo over the last few years and she did an amazing job with our Linked-In platform. In the short period of time she took my followers from roughly 5000 to nearly 15000 and helped me grow my newsletter to over 30,000 subscribers. If you are needing help growing you social media and your business, Sara is a great resource. (five stars, highly recommend.)
– Lance Roberts, Chief Investment Strategist, RIA Advisors
If you’d like, you can read more testimonials about my financial advisor marketing services.
Alright let’s wrap it up!
- I am an outsourced CMO for financial advisors who need regular, full service marketing – blogging, social media posts, newsletters, etc.
- I am a financial advisor marketing consultant for those who just need one-time or recurring guidance
- If you are not looking to engage at the moment, please at least join my newsletter list and receive one actionable financial advisor marketing tip per day.
If you would like to discuss how I can help, please send me a note.
See you in the next one!
-Sara G
