The five decisions a marketing plan has to make
You don't need 20 pages. You need one page you'll still be following in March.
A marketing plan for a financial advisor is a short list of decisions you're willing to be held to:
- Who you want more of. One client type, described well enough that a CPA could pick them out of a room.
- How much new revenue you want this year, turned into discovery calls per month.
- Which channels get your effort, two or three at most, and which ones you've decided to ignore.
- How many hours a week you'll give it, and who does the hours that aren't yours.
- Who approves what goes out, before it goes out.
Many templates also ask for an executive summary and a competitor analysis. Those are worth writing if a partner or a lender will read the plan. If you're the only reader, leave them out.
Start with the arithmetic
Say you run a two-advisor, fee-only practice in Raleigh (a made-up firm, used through this post). An average new client pays you $6,000 a year, and you'd like $60,000 in new annual revenue next year. That's 10 clients. If about one in three discovery calls turns into a client, you need 30 calls, or a little under three a month.
Three calls a month is a number you can check on the first of every month. "Grow the practice" isn't.
Now price it. The 2026 Kitces report, as covered by Financial Planning in September 2026, put the typical cost of winning a client at $2,551 and the typical cost of each new dollar of client revenue at 70 cents. On those figures, our Raleigh firm's $60,000 would take about $42,000 of time and money.
That number surprises people because most of it never shows up as an invoice. Kitces counts advisor time as a cost, and in its 2024 report staff labor made up 71% of marketing spending, with total marketing costs at 11% of practice revenue. So the question in your plan is less "what's the budget?" than "whose hours, and what would they be doing otherwise?"
Choose channels with cost data, not habit
Your financial advisor marketing strategy comes down to where the hours go. Here are the 10 most-used tactics from that 2026 survey, with what each one cost per dollar of new client revenue:
| Tactic | Practices using it | Cost per $1 of new revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Online advisor directories | 18% | $0.28 |
| Client referrals | 88% | $0.34 |
| SEO | 32% | $0.45 |
| Referrals from centers of influence (CPAs, attorneys) | 64% | $0.72 |
| In-person networking | 46% | $1.45 |
| Blogging | 27% | $1.64 |
| Seminars | 23% | $1.76 |
| Newsletters | 31% | $4.14 |
| Client appreciation events | 30% | $4.54 |
| Social media | 36% | $4.88 |
Treat this as a guide, not a law. It comes from a survey of 506 advisors, mostly Kitces readers, and the report itself says they lean more planning-centric than the wider industry. It also only counts new client revenue, so it says nothing about what a newsletter does for the clients you already have.
Referrals. Keep asking, but don't build the plan on them alone. High-growth practices got only about a third of new client revenue from referrals, while their slower peers got 80%. The report's explanation is simple: clients run out of people to refer.
Centers of influence. This means professionals who already advise your target clients. CPAs and estate attorneys are the usual pair, but what set high-growth firms apart was using people tied to their niche, like an influential doctor at the hospital they're targeting. An older Kitces study found these referrals brought some of the most affluent clients, at the price of a lot of meetings.
Directories and reviews. They're cheap and take little of your time, which is why they suit newer practices. The report names the CFP Board, NAPFA, the Fee-Only Network and XY Planning as examples, and notes these tactics tend to bring less profitable clients. Only 13% of practices used third-party review sites in their marketing.
SEO. Search engine optimization means getting your site to show up when someone searches Google for what you do. It's cheap per dollar over time and slow at the start, so read how long SEO takes before you promise yourself anything. The same older study warned that SEO often brings less affluent clients, because most advisor sites aren't aimed at anyone in particular. The fix is pages built around a client type, so the person reading is the person you want.
Social media. If you're posting on LinkedIn because someone told you to, this is the one to drop. The report calls its economics "exceptionally poor", mainly because of advisor time, and says fully outsourcing it cost far less ($0.45) than doing it yourself ($1.77) or half-outsourcing it ($4.17). If you enjoy it and it brings conversations, keep going. Just don't count it as free.
What the one page looks like
Here's the plan for our made-up Raleigh practice. Every figure is invented, so swap in your own. Pay attention to the last row, because old habits take the hours back if you don't name them.
| Line | What it says |
|---|---|
| Client | Physicians within 10 years of retirement, Raleigh area |
| Goal | 10 new clients, $60,000 new annual revenue, 30 discovery calls |
| Channel 1 | Two meetings a month with CPAs and practice managers who work with physicians |
| Channel 2 | Website: one page for physicians, one fees page, one guide a month |
| Channel 3 | Directory profiles we qualify for, plus a Google Business Profile. Set up once, checked each quarter |
| Hours | Lead advisor 4 hours a week, operations 3 hours a week |
| Review | Compliance reviews everything on Tuesdays. Copies saved to one folder |
| Measure | Calls by source monthly. Clients and revenue by source quarterly |
| Not doing | Daily social posting, client events before Q3 |
Put the compliance step in the plan
Which rules apply depends on how you're registered. This isn't legal advice, so run the specifics past your chief compliance officer or counsel.
- SEC-registered advisers follow the Marketing Rule, Rule 206(4)-1. The registration line generally sits at $100 million in assets under management, with a buffer zone up to $110 million.
- State-registered advisers follow their state's rules. On May 4, 2026, NASAA adopted model amendments that give states a framework to allow testimonials, endorsements, ratings and performance reporting. They're a model, so check what your own state has actually adopted before assuming anything.
- Broker-dealer reps answer to FINRA Rule 2210 and their firm. A written communication that reaches more than 25 retail investors within 30 days is a retail communication, and a registered principal has to approve it before use.
Under the Marketing Rule, an advertisement is any direct or indirect communication to more than one person that offers your advisory services. That can take in your service pages, your directory profile and your email campaigns. Here's what tends to trip up a website:
- Claims you can't back up. You need a reasonable basis to substantiate any material fact if the SEC asks. In September 2024 nine advisers settled for $1.24 million combined, including over "conflict-free" claims they couldn't substantiate and ratings, some more than five years old, shown without dates. Read your About page with that in mind before you send more traffic to it.
- Testimonials and endorsements. They're allowed if you disclose, clearly and prominently, whether the person is a client, whether they were paid and any material conflict. A written agreement is required once compensation goes past $1,000 in 12 months. The SEC's December 2025 risk alert flagged disclosures hidden behind hyperlinks or set in smaller or lighter type, reviews copied onto advisers' sites without disclosure, and gift cards given to clients for third-party reviews with no reasonable basis to think the paid-testimonial disclosures were made.
- Ratings and "best advisor" badges. You must show the date, the period it covers and who produced it, and disclose any payment. The same alert describes advisers who paid for the logo, the reprint or a better placement and didn't say so.
- Performance and projections. Gross returns need net returns beside them, and most performance needs one-, five- and ten-year periods. Targeted or projected returns count as hypothetical performance, which needs its own policies and disclosures, so they rarely belong on a public page.
- "SEC-approved." You can say you're registered if that's true, but you can't imply the government has approved you or judged your abilities.
Your plan also needs a place for records. The books and records rule requires a copy of each advertisement, kept for at least five years from the end of the fiscal year you last used it. For a website that changes, that means someone has to save versions. SEC staff also keep adding to their Marketing Rule FAQ, last updated in January 2026 as of November 2026, so have someone check it each year.
This is the part of the plan where Sojig, our product, might fit. It drafts site fixes, articles and new pages each week, and in Manual mode nothing ships until someone you've chosen approves it, so your compliance officer can be that person. It doesn't handle referrals, directories or social media, and it doesn't replace your archive. If a referral list already fills your calendar, or your broker-dealer won't let you change your site, you don't need it.
Review it once a quarter
Add one question to your intake form: "How did you first hear about us?" Most clients read several pages before they call, so also ask what they read.
Each quarter, compare calls, clients and revenue by source against your goal. For the website, use Search Console's Performance report, Google's free view of how often your pages appear in results (impressions) and get clicked. Weekly rank tracking can show which pages moved, but calls are what you're paying for.
Give each channel a fair run before you judge it. Six months is reasonable for a referral relationship, and longer for pages that have to start ranking. If a channel has had its time and brought nothing, move its hours somewhere else.