RIA Marketing Compliance: How to Balance Regulatory Risk with Persuasion

Behind every bland RIA LinkedIn post and blog is the campaign their marketing team wishes it had launched.

We’ve talked marketing with 100s of financial advisors over the years; virtually every one of them has:

• Delayed or abandoned content due to compliance bottlenecks
• Wasted hours going back and forth over “promissory” language
• Changed their message to avoid potential violations

And when you know the SEC has issued over $2 million in penalties for Marketing Rule violations, a little caution seems fair.

The problem starts when caution becomes conformity

Advisors believe their marketing can’t be bold, opinionated, or emotive because they’ll end up stuck in compliance purgatory. They see peers playing it safe and assume they have to follow suit.

But that’s exactly why they must do things differently.

When most firms use safe, sanitised language—and let’s be clear: still end up fighting with compliance—the power of a distinctive voice and perspective is immense.

This article explores how you can balance compliance with persuasion. Before we dive into the strategy, though, let’s get straight to what the Marketing Rule actually requires.

The SEC’s Marketing Rule: Everything You Need to Know

The Marketing Rule unites two previous regulations: the Advertising Rule and the Cash Solicitation Rule. Rather than hopping between two complex sets of legislation, it provides regulators and advisors with a single shared point of reference for marketing compliance.

Every advisor who is registered with the SEC must follow the Marketing Rule—and surveys repeatedly find it is advisors’ top compliance concern. Part of that is the Rule’s relative novelty; it only came into effect in 202. But the fear also stems from ongoing confusion about what’s required and the reputational damage non-compliance can cause.

The Marketing Rule applies exclusively to “advertisements”, so let’s start by establishing what that actually means.

Defining “Advertisement”: When Does the Marketing Rule Actually Apply?

The SEC defines “advertisement” as:

1. Any communication an adviser makes to more than one person that offers investment advisory services, including new services to existing clients.
2. Any communication that cites hypothetical performance results
3. Any endorsement or testimonial for which an adviser provides compensation is an advertisement, even if made to a single person.

While one-on-one conversations are largely exempt—except when hypothetical performance figures are discussed—most other communication channels are subject to strict regulatory restrictions.

Social media, email newsletters, and website content all count as “advertisements”. Even pitching new services to an existing client falls under the SEC’s definition. Promissory language or a failure to include proper disclaimers in any of these areas could land you with a hefty compliance fine.

So how exactly do you avoid that fate?

General Prohibitions

The Marketing Rule is built on a foundation of “Truth in Advertising” restrictions that really function as anti-fraud protections.

Advisers cannot make untrue statements, omit material facts, or mislead investors. Every claim must be substantiated. Benefits must be discussed alongside risks. Performance data must be presented fairly.

These restrictions are set out in the seven “general prohibitions”:

1. Include an untrue statement of material fact or omit a material fact necessary to make a statement not misleading;
2. Make a material statement of fact that cannot be easily substantiated;
3. Provide information that would cause an untrue or misleading inference about the investment adviser;
4. Discuss benefits to the client of the investment adviser's services without discussing risks;
5. Reference the adviser's specific investment advice in a manner that is not fair and balanced;
6. Include or exclude performance results in a way that is not fair and balanced; or
7. Mislead in any other way.

What Does That Mean for Your Marketing?

These prohibitions don’t just protect against intentional lies; they limit the use of “promissory” language that might be taken to imply false, misleading, or unprovable claims.

In some contexts, the takeaway is obvious: you can’t claim to be the “Best Advisor” or promise clients you will “Double [their] net worth”. But depending on your compliance department’s interpretation of the regulation and risk tolerance, it might also mean you can’t:

• Use emotive language that could lead to unsubstantiated inferences.
• Ask questions that imply potentially promissory answers.
• Make broad aspirational claims about your services.

How Does the SEC Restrict Performance Marketing?

We all know how easily statistics, client quotes, and ratings can be manipulated to create misleading or false implications. The Marketing Rule addresses this explicitly and sets clear requirements for the use of specific forms of performance marketing:

Testimonials and Endorsements

The Marketing Rule ended a decades-long prohibition on registered advisors using testimonials. Now you can (and should!) use testimonials across your website, socials, and paid ads as long as they contain both a) clear and prominent disclosures within the testimonial itself, and b) detailed disclosures about compensation and conflicts.

The regulation boils down to five clear requirements:

• Client testimonials must disclose whether compensation was provided
• Disclosures must appear directly alongside the testimonial—not in footnotes
• Paid endorsers require written agreements documenting the relationship
• Material conflicts of interest must be disclosed upfront
• You need reasonable assurance that promoters are delivering required disclosures

Note: Some state-level restrictions still don’t align with the SEC’s Rule, meaning RIAs in California, Connecticut, Alabama, and 22 other states are not permitted to use any testimonials or online reviews.

Third-Party Ratings

Pay-to-play rating schemes—where people are compensated for leaving reviews or ratings—are detrimental to trust-based industries like financial advice. But clients want transparent information about advisory services; regulations that prohibit them would negatively impact the industry.

The Marketing Rule, therefore, requires advisors to conduct careful due diligence before using third-party ratings. You must:

• Investigate how winners were selected before using any award
• Disclose if you paid for the rating
• Include the rating date and coverage period
• Avoid ratings designed to produce predetermined winners
• Document your due diligence process

Performance Data

Performance data heavily influences investor decisions, even though past results don't predict future returns. The SEC built guardrails to ensure context accompanies performance claims.

In practice, that means:

• Gross returns must appear alongside net returns, showing fee impact
• You must show one-, five-, and ten-year periods, not just your best year
• All portfolios with similar strategies must be included—no hiding underperformers
• Backtested models require prominent disclaimers about limitations
• Predecessor performance from previous firms faces a strict four-part test

3 Steps to Balance Compliance with Persuasion

These requirements can feel like a straitjacket: surely all effective marketing could be considered somewhat “promissory”. But after working with numerous RIAs to develop more engaging messaging strategies, we believe most firms can break out of the restrictions by following three simple steps:

1. Develop Written Standards

The Marketing Rule has caused advisors a lot of stress, but SEC investigators insist that most failures are “not gray areas—they are process breakdowns.”

Our experience suggests that “breakdown” often stems from a lack of clarity. While Advisors, Marketing, and Compliance all recognize the importance of the Marketing Rule, they often have subtly different interpretations, standards, and risk tolerances.

Approvals become a back-and-forth nightmare; the application of restrictions feels inconsistent and frustrating. But this could all have been avoided with a single official set of written standards that includes:

• Concrete examples to illustrate the firm’s expectations
• Clear guidance about how to adjust marketing language
• Official approval processes with concrete time estimates

This ensures everyone’s singing from the same hymn book. Disagreements about interpretation can be addressed directly, rather than ad hoc. Bottlenecks and compliance issues can be resolved with greater confidence. And approvals can be factored into the marketing process without clouding your timeline.

2. Leverage “Subtle Hedging” to Avoid Promissory Claims

RIAs often soften or genericize their language to maintain compliance. Bold claims and emotive appeals feel too risky, so they retreat into vague and often relatively unengaging promises about “financial goals” and “planning for the future.”

That’s a missed opportunity; instead of softening the message, you can soften the claim.

We often find that promissory language can be made compliant with small adjustments we call “hedges”. But before we explain how that works, let’s think about a “typically” advisory client. They are probably:

• Wary of the industry and suspicious about marketing
• Skeptical or actively distrustful of absolute or outlandish performance claims
• Looking for an advisor who understands their experience, not just the markets

If we accept that the assessment is broadly accurate, the Marketing Rule stops looking so restrictive. Your marketing doesn’t need to make bold claims; it actively shouldn’t if it isn’t backed up by very robust data. And rather than promising outcomes, you are actually better off focusing on creating a connection with prospects.

Our "hedging" method gives you a few ways to do that:

• Quality Your Intent:Talk about your goals, rather than promising outcomes. A phrase like “Fund your ideal retirement” might be considered promissory, but “...designed to help fund your ideal retirement” is unlikely to get flagged.
• Focus on Aspiration: Frame your message around the audience’s psychology, not your services. Rather than promising an outcome, you can simply address the fact that the client wants something. The recognition that you understand their needs is enough to earn trust; you don’t need to claim you can definitely make it happen.
• Ask Questions: Reflect your audience’s uncertainty without actively claiming to have “the” answer. Don’t promise to give them “financial confidence”; point out all the ways they might not currently feel that confidence.

Use any or all of these to rethink your marketing message—and start building it ahead of time.

3. Create Messaging Templates

Don’t develop content ad hoc and feed it to compliance when you’re done. That’s a recipe for delays, miscommunication, and frustration for both parties.

Instead, create messaging templates that can be signed off on by compliance in advance. This not only accelerates the process but also ensures you’re aligned on a clear central theme and message. You invest time up front to get a compliance-approved story, then your campaigns (ads, content—whatever) are much easier to launch.

Let’s say you’re promoting divorce planning services. Your template should distill the core themes of your campaign into a handful of clear, simple messages. That should include:

• Problem statements: What your audience might be feeling—and how you would communicate it
• Solution statements: How your services will be presented—and the exact language you’ll use to describe the benefits
• Data and testimonials: Any real performance information or quotes you will use—and the language you’ll use in the disclaimers

That might sound like a lot of work, but it will almost certainly save time in the long run. You’ll have a more coherent story to tell, fewer compliance hurdles to jump, and an easier time scaling content production.

Tired of Compliance Restricting Your Marketing Impact?

Get a free messaging consultation with our RIA marketing experts. In just 15 minutes, we can quickly review your existing campaigns to find:

• Immediate ways to improve performance
• Gaps you could easily fill with more research
• Opportunities for long-term performance improvements

Don’t let restrictions harm your marketing ROI.