Financial advisors have more ways to market themselves than ever.

LinkedIn. Facebook. Podcasts. Webinars. Seminars. Google Reviews. Client referrals. YouTube. Direct mail. Purchased leads. Newsletters. AI prospecting tools.

But which of these actually work?

And perhaps more importantly: Are advisors spending their marketing dollars—and their time—in the right places?

During a recent Financial Experts Network webinar, Mark Tenenbaum, Research Director at Kitces.com, shared findings from the latest Kitces advisor marketing research, which included participation from Financial Experts Network advisors.

Some of the results challenge common assumptions about advisor marketing. Social media isn't necessarily the growth engine many firms expect. Webinars significantly underperformed in-person seminars. Google Reviews appear to be an underused opportunity. And the marketing tactics that help an advisor build a $500,000 practice may not be the same ones that can efficiently grow a $2 million practice.

The research points to a bigger lesson:

Successful marketing may be less about doing more things and more about concentrating your resources on the right things for your stage of growth.

Your Marketing Probably Costs More Than You Think

Ask an advisor what the firm spends on marketing, and the first place they may look is the marketing line on the P&L.

According to the Kitces research, that tells only part of the story.

The typical advisory firm spends approximately 2% to 3% of revenue on hard-dollar marketing expenses. But those costs represent only about one-third of the total.

The bigger expense is time.

When the value of advisor and staff time is included, the typical firm's total marketing cost rises to approximately 8% of revenue.

Think about a prospecting platform, for example.

The cost isn't simply the subscription or lead fee. It's also the hours an advisor or staff member spends reviewing prospects, editing emails, making calls and following up.

That becomes increasingly important as a firm grows because advisor time gets more expensive.

The Marketing That Gets You to $1 Million May Not Get You Beyond It

One of the most useful findings from the research was that marketing economics change as practices grow.

For firms generating less than approximately $1 million in annual revenue, time-intensive marketing strategies can actually be more cost-efficient.

That makes sense.

A younger advisor building a client base may have more available time. Personally networking, writing content, prospecting or doing other hands-on marketing can be a reasonable tradeoff.

But once a firm moves beyond approximately $1 million in revenue, the economics begin to change.

The advisor has more clients, more responsibilities and less available time. Each hour also carries a higher economic value.

At that point, successful firms increasingly shift toward scalable strategies that rely more on fixed costs and less on the advisor's personal time.

That's an important question for established advisors:

Are you still marketing your $2 million practice the same way you marketed your $500,000 practice?

The Best Marketing Strategies Have Something in Common: Trust

Financial advice is an unusual service to market.

You're asking someone to trust you with decisions involving their life savings, retirement and family.

Not surprisingly, one of the strongest themes in the Kitces research was trust.

Consider referrals.

A client tells a friend, "You should talk to my advisor."

That recommendation transfers some of the client's existing trust to the advisor before the first meeting ever occurs.

But the research suggests that the same principle appears across other marketing tactics.

In-Person Seminars Beat Webinars

Webinars became ubiquitous during the pandemic, and many advisors continued using them afterward.

But for prospecting, the results in the Kitces research were striking.

Among advisors who used webinars to attract new clients, approximately 65% failed to gain even one new client from the tactic during the prior 12 months.

For advisors conducting in-person seminars, the failure rate was approximately 25%.

Both formats allow an advisor to demonstrate expertise.

The difference may be the human connection.

A prospect sitting in the same room can see the advisor, hear the presentation, ask a question and have a conversation afterward. That environment may build trust more effectively than watching another presentation on a computer screen.

In-Person Networking Beat Social Media, Too

The social media findings were even more dramatic.

Approximately 80% of advisors who used social media in an effort to gain clients failed to generate even one new client from it during the prior year.

For in-person networking, the failure rate was approximately 30%.

That doesn't mean every advisor should abandon social media.

It does suggest that simply posting regularly on LinkedIn or Facebook shouldn't automatically be considered an effective client-acquisition strategy.

Advisors should measure what actually happens after those posts.

Are prospects reaching out?

Are they scheduling meetings?

Are they becoming clients?

If not, social media may be consuming valuable advisor time without producing corresponding growth.

If You're Creating Content, Let Prospects Hear You

The trust effect also appeared in content marketing.

Writing-based strategies—including blogs, newsletters and articles—experienced relatively high failure rates.

Advisors generally had more success with podcasts and video, where prospects could actually hear them speak.

That doesn't necessarily make written content worthless. An article or newsletter may serve existing clients, reinforce expertise or nurture prospects who discovered the advisor somewhere else.

But if the primary objective is attracting new clients, advisors should think carefully about how the content helps a stranger discover and trust them.

YouTube is particularly interesting for that reason.

Unlike an email newsletter that reaches people already on your list, YouTube can put an advisor's content in front of people who have never encountered the firm.

The potential payoff can be substantial—but so can the failure rate. Kitces found that relatively few advisors achieve major success on YouTube, while those who do can generate extraordinary growth.

Stop Trying to Do Everything

Another surprising finding: more marketing tactics didn't translate into better marketing.

Practices using four or fewer marketing tactics grew faster and more cost-efficiently than firms using five or more.

Mark suggested a more focused model:

Choose an anchor tactic. Support it with one or two complementary tactics. Continue accepting referrals.

Suppose your anchor tactic is seminars.

You might use direct mail to attract new prospects to the seminar. Afterward, attendees who aren't ready to schedule an appointment might receive a newsletter or other ongoing communication.

Instead of six disconnected marketing activities, you now have a system:

Direct Mail → Seminar → Follow-Up → Prospect Meeting

The point isn't to spend less time or money on marketing.

It's to concentrate the investment.

Don't Let Referrals Become a Growth Strategy by Default

Advisors love referrals—and for good reason.

They're inexpensive, prospects arrive with some preexisting trust, and referred prospects often close more easily.

But the research identified a problem with relying too heavily on them.

Over time, established clients can exhaust their personal and professional networks. They may still love their advisor and happily make a referral, but eventually they may simply run out of appropriate people to refer.

Mark described this as the "referral coasting zone."

Interestingly, high-growth firms weren't getting fewer referrals. They simply weren't depending on them as heavily.

Among high-growth practices, referrals accounted for less than 40% of new clients. At least 60% came from other marketing activities.

That suggests referrals can be an important part of a growth strategy—but probably shouldn't be the entire strategy.

Want More Referrals? Don't Constantly Ask for Them

The research also challenged another piece of conventional marketing advice: asking clients for referrals.

Advisors who asked more frequently didn't receive more referrals.

They received fewer.

Instead of putting clients on the spot, Mark suggested simply making sure clients know referrals are welcome.

Advisors can also make it easier by clearly communicating who they serve.

The data showed that advisors with a defined ideal client persona received more referrals. Communicating that persona on the website and in conversations also correlated with additional referrals.

Instead of:

"Do you know anyone who needs a financial advisor?"

Clients may have an easier time recognizing:

"Someone approaching retirement from a local healthcare system who needs help coordinating their pension, Social Security and retirement accounts."

Specificity gives the client someone to picture.

Google Reviews May Be Low-Hanging Fruit

One of the more actionable findings involved Google Reviews.

Only about 13% of advisors in the study were actively using third-party review sites, even though the tactic was associated with favorable marketing outcomes.

Among advisors using review platforms, 89% used Google Reviews.

Practices encouraging clients to leave Google Reviews grew faster than practices not using third-party review sites. Firms that collected reviews and also incorporated them into their websites as testimonials showed the strongest growth within this comparison.

There is an important compliance component.

Mark emphasized that firms shouldn't simply cherry-pick their happiest clients and ask only them for reviews. Advisors considering a review strategy should establish a systematic, compliance-approved process.

But the marketing logic is powerful.

A prospect gets referred to an advisor and immediately Googles the firm.

What does that prospect find?

Third-party reviews provide another layer of social proof before the prospect ever makes contact.

Seminars May Deserve Another Look

If Google Reviews were one underutilized opportunity, seminars were another.

Kitces identified in-person seminars as potentially the most underutilized marketing tactic based on adoption versus potential results.

But execution matters.

The successful seminar marketers didn't hold one event, get mediocre attendance and quit.

They generally conducted seminars consistently—anywhere from quarterly to once or twice per month—and promoted them outside their existing audience using strategies such as direct mail, purchased lists and community organizations.

That's an important distinction.

Sending another invitation to your existing email list isn't necessarily prospecting.

Effective seminar marketers were deliberately finding ways to reach people who didn't already know them.

What About AI Prospecting?

New platforms such as Finny AI and other digital prospecting tools promise to make outreach more efficient.

The Kitces research isn't yet able to declare winners.

Adoption remains too limited to reliably compare individual platforms, and Mark said additional research is planned.

But he offered an important warning: Don't evaluate an AI prospecting tool based solely on its subscription price.

If advisors spend hours reviewing and editing generated emails because they aren't comfortable sending them automatically, that time is part of the marketing cost.

What looks inexpensive on the P&L may be expensive after advisor time is included.

Maybe Your Marketing Is Working Better Than You Think

Perhaps the most interesting disconnect came during the FEN webinar itself.

When attendees were asked whether they were pleased with the results of their marketing investment, 71% said no.

Yet Kitces found that the typical advisor in both its broader research sample and the FEN sample spent approximately $0.70 to acquire $1 of new annual client revenue—even after including advisor and staff time in the calculation.

In other words, advisors may dislike marketing far more than the economics justify.

The solution may not be searching for another tactic.

It may be asking better questions:

What does our marketing really cost?

Which activities actually produce clients?

Which tactic should be the anchor of our strategy?

Are we building trust or simply generating content?

Are we overly dependent on referrals?

Are we still relying on advisor time when the firm has grown large enough to invest in more scalable alternatives?

And finally:

If our marketing is economically working, should we be investing more in it rather than constantly reinventing it?

The Kitces research suggests that standout growth doesn't necessarily come from finding a marketing secret no other advisor knows.

It may come from measuring what works, focusing on fewer strategies, building trust, investing consistently, and allowing the firm's marketing approach to evolve as the practice grows.

Research Note

The findings discussed in this article are based on the Kitces advisor marketing research presented during the Financial Experts Network webinar. They represent observed associations, benchmarks and survey results—not guarantees that any particular marketing strategy will produce similar results for an individual advisory firm. Results can vary based on practice size, target clientele, market, execution, costs and other factors.