Advisors spend average of $16K a year on marketing: Study

Like any other business, advisory firms mostly rely on marketing strategies to help generate leads and grow. As for marketing strategies themselves, advisors seem to be stuck developing one – or a few – that work best, according to a study released Wednesday.

Broadridge Financial Solutions’ Fifth Annual Financial Advisor Marketing Survey of U.S. and Canadian advisors reveals that very few advisors have a defined marketing strategy. In fact, 85 percent of advisors don’t have a marketing strategy in place because they simply don’t have the time. In addition, advisors spend an average of only $15,908 a year on marketing.

Maggie Spataro, senior marketing manager at Bartlett Wealth Management, said that number isn’t surprising because “marketing is often an afterthought to some of the other activities that advising firms do.”

“There's a lot of emphasis on once that client is in the door, how can we provide them with the best possible experience? Of course, that is something that we want to do but there's less emphasis on how we get them in the door,” Spataro said. “People are starting to realize that marketing is a big driver of that organic growth.”

Kevin Darlington, general manager and head of Broadridge Advisor Solutions, says that if an advisor's “customer acquisition costs are proportionately low enough to the lifetime value of the customer, that's a great formula to have.

“When you divide the average total budget spent to the number of clients acquired, which is somewhere in the ballpark of $600 to $700 spent to acquire each client … If you think about the lifetime value of a client, just in fees alone, that number is easily going to be retrieved within the first year,” he said.

It’s worth mentioning that marketing strategies shouldn’t be measured just in dollar amounts but also in terms of time spent. The study found that 3 percent of advisors spend more than 7 hours each week promoting and handling their own marketing.

“Where a majority of my expenses are, is not on the actual physical products that I'm buying or promoting for ads, it's in time,” says Colin Day, financial advisor at Correct Capital Wealth Management. Day, who’s been using social media tools like Instagram and LinkedIn as part of his marketing strategy since last August, said his niche is focusing on individuals who are starving for financial education and who may not follow other financial advisors.

“Even in those six months, I've been able to acquire some new clients,” Day adds. “I think my total is up to four right now.”

Eric Roberge, CEO and founder of Beyond Your Hammock, grew his firm from zero to 90 clients in the last 10 years – all through organic growth.

“Starting out with no money, there wasn't even an option of paying or not paying, it was creating something for free,” Roberge says. “That's where it was content, content, content because I could write, I could gain access to various publications, and I could get my words out there for no money. It was a very slow grind but it's a compound effect.”

According to the survey, the number of US advisors who have a defined marketing strategy is at the lowest level since 2019, at 20 percent in 2023 compared to 28 percent in 2019. However, 70 percent of advisors with a defined marketing strategy saw an increase in inbound requests in the past 12 months, compared to just 44 percent of advisors without a defined marketing strategy. 

The study found that websites are the most popular marketing investment among advisors, even though 62 percent say they find their website ineffective at generating leads.

Broadridge said advisors generate an average of 2½ leads per month from their websites. “Advisors with a defined marketing plan generated 168 percent more leads per month from their website compared to those without a defined marketing plan,” according to the report.

Joe Anthony, president of Gregory FCA, said that to have a comprehensive marketing strategy, advisors should be focusing on questions like, who do you want to work with? Where are you helping them solve problems, and what are the issues that they're coming in asking you about?

“Having that strategy allows you to layer on not just the happenstance of your referral network, but also really creates an opportunity for advisors to have a program that's geared around the problems they're solving, and connecting and being more empathetic to their audience, which yields more opportunities to grow their business,” Anthony said.

Having a robust organic growth structure, Spataro says, should essentially be a pipeline: “[It] moves from marketing to a business development entity that really lets advisors shine where they are great at doing so, which is in serving the client and onboarding them, and giving them that care that we can provide to our clientele.”

The five marketing channels advisors currently invest the most in are websites; word of mouth, or referrals; social media; newsletters; and events or seminars.