Financial Advisor Marketing Plans That Work

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of running a successful advisory business. Without a clear strategy for promoting your advisory services, you may find yourself treading water instead of pushing ahead with your growth goals. It’s important to take the time to develop a workable financial advisor marketing plan before diving into any marketing activities.

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What Is a Financial Advisor Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan for financial advisors is exactly what it sounds like: a documented plan for marketing and advertising your services to prospective and existing clients.

Having a clear-cut marketing plan to follow can be critical to your business development. In fact, a Broadridge survey of over 400 advisors found that advisors with a defined marketing plan added 50% more clients in 2023 than advisors who lacked a cohesive marketing strategy. ¹

When you take the time to devise a plan for marketing, it becomes easier to:

• Identify your ideal client and audience
• Determine how to position yourself in the market
• Clarify your messaging to ensure that it’s delivering the appropriate message
• Outline your goals and objectives for marketing
• Gauge your potential return on investment for different marketing activities
• Develop your marketing budget
• Allocate your time and energy efficiently to produce results

You shouldn’t launch an advisory business without first drafting a detailed business plan. And it makes sense to approach your marketing efforts with a cohesive plan in place so you’re not wasting time and money on tactics or strategies that are destined to fail.

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What to Include in a Financial Advisor Marketing Plan

Every financial advisor is different, so it stands to reason that every advisor’s marketing plan will be unique. But it can be helpful to have a general financial advisor marketing plan template to follow that outlines the basics of what to include. As you create your individual marketing plan, here are some of the key areas to cover:

1. Marketing Goals

Before you begin marketing your advisory services, it’s important to assess your reasons and objectives for doing so. For example, you may be hoping to:

• Increase your brand visibility
• Build authority
• Attract new prospects
• Generate referrals from existing clients

As you develop your marketing plan, consider the specific goals you have for doing so. If these goals are broad, consider how you can distill them to quantifiable measures.

For example, gaining new clients is broad, while gaining 10 new clients in a six-month period is specific. Building authority is a general goal; being featured as a guest on three personal finance podcasts is measurable.

The more you can clarify your goals, the more equipped you will be to develop an action plan for achieving them. Again, this is an area where the more specific you can be, the better. If you can break each large goal down into smaller goals and individual action steps, you can create a clear roadmap to follow.

2. Target Audience and Clientele

The foundation of any marketing plan is identifying the target audience. Financial advisors need to understand their ideal clients’ demographics, financial goals and preferences. Key factors to consider include age, income level, occupation and financial aspirations. By segmenting your audience, you can tailor your marketing strategies to resonate more effectively with specific groups, thereby boosting engagement and conversion rates.

What do investors want from their advisors? A 2025 Capintel survey of 1,000 investors sheds some light on what prospects prefer. ²  

• 72% want an advisor they can trust
• 50% say they value investing experience
• 46% want an advisor who offers comprehensive financial planning
• 23% value proactive communication
• 21% seek an exceptional client experience

Tech tools and digital capabilities are also critical for attracting new clients through your marketing. Positioning yourself as a technology-forward firm could prove particularly beneficial if you’re hoping to attract a younger generation of investors. 

3. Marketing Strategies and Channels

Goals can only take you so far in marketing. You also need to determine which techniques you’ll use to promote your services. At this stage in your financial advisor marketing plan, it can be helpful to brainstorm a list of all the tactics you’re interested in, which may include:

• Creating a website or blog
• Cold calling or cold emailing
• Attending in-person networking events
• Participating in virtual networking events
• Launching a podcast
• Being a guest on a podcast or radio show
• Offering in-person or digital workshops or seminars
• Enrolling the help of a lead generation service
• Social media and video marketing

The marketing strategies you choose should be designed to put your advisory business at eye level with prospects. For instance, if you know that your ideal client spends most of their time on a particular social media channel then it might make sense to target your marketing efforts to that channel versus other ones.

The same Broadridge survey mentioned earlier found that four in 10 advisors reported converting at least one lead into a new client using social media, and that LinkedIn and Facebook were the most impactful marketing channels.

When choosing strategies and techniques to use, consider whether you’ll prioritize some more than others. This can help with the next step in creating a financial advisor marketing plan.

4. Marketing Budget

A business plan is incomplete without a budget and it’s the same for a financial advisor marketing plan. So, how much does the typical advisor spend on marketing? 

According to a 2024 advisor marketing report from Kitces, the typical practice spent $41,429 on marketing in 2023, representing 11% of revenue. That amount was split between expenditures for marketing goods and services, and the value of each advisor’s time devoted to marketing. The overall trend among larger advisors was to invest in more expensive marketing tactics. 

For example, advisors are spending more money on:

• Client appreciation events
• Seminars, both virtual and in-person
• Webinars

While these firms had a higher acquisition cost on average, this was balanced by an influx of higher revenue clients. Firms with less than $250,000 in revenue had a client acquisition cost (CAC) of $1,064, while firms with more than $5 million in annual revenue had a CAC of $10,408, according to the Kitces study. 

When developing your marketing budget, consider how much you can realistically afford to spend, how that money will be allocated and the anticipated ROI from each marketing activity you engage in. 

It may help to revisit  your list of strategies. Consider whether you want to spread your marketing dollars across each one you plan to pursue or prioritize some activities over others. Again, this can all tie in to what type of return you hope to get from the various marketing techniques you plan to use.

5. Plan Execution

Once you’ve determined your goals and the individual action steps that need to be taken, you’ll need to determine who’s accountable for the plan itself.

If you’re running your advisory business solo, without a team, then you bear full responsibility for seeing the plan through. On the other hand, if you operate your advisory practice as part of a team, consider how you’ll divide marketing tasks.

Either way, this step is important because having a plan for marketing isn’t enough by itself. You also have to ensure that the plan is going to be carried out. So consider how and when you’ll put your plan to work.

That’s where it may help to enlist the services of a third-party marketing system like SmartAsset AMP. This subscription-based service not only delivers validated leads of investors who are in the market for a financial advisor, it also comes equipped with outreach automation tools to help you work those leads and turn them into long-term clients. For example, the platform allows fiduciary advisors to build custom email and text messaging nurture campaigns that can trigger automatically and run at desired intervals.

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Assessing Your Plan’s Results

It’s possible that you may begin to see results from your marketing efforts right away, though it’s more likely that it will take time to gain traction. As you wrap up your plan, consider how and when you’ll assess results. For example, you may want to measure your progress at the 30-day, 60-day and 90-day marks. Again, if you’ve created specific goals from the start, then measuring them at this stage should be relatively easy.

Establish metrics to measure the success of your marketing efforts, which may include:

• Lead generation: Number of new leads generated through various channels.
• Conversion rates: Percentage of leads that become clients.
• Client retention rates: Percentage of clients who continue to use your services.
• Website traffic: Monitor website visits, page views, and time spent on your site.
• Social media engagement: Track likes, shares, comments, and followers on social media platforms.

And if you find that your marketing efforts are not producing the results you’re looking for, consider what you may need to improve to get your plan to work.

Bottom Line

Marketing is a skill that can take time to develop and refine. While you may be more interested in dedicating time to helping your existing clients, it’s important to balance that with attracting new prospects. Having a financial advisor marketing plan in place can help you scale your business more efficiently.

Tips for Attracting More Clients With Marketing

• SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
• Embrace the possibilities of digital marketing. In an increasingly digital age, there’s no room to shy away from new technologies or digital marketing challenges. By broadening your scope to include new digital innovations, you may be able to similarly broaden your client base.

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