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:
And when you know the SEC has issued over $2 million in penalties for Marketing Rule violations, a little caution seems fair.
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 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.
The SEC defines “advertisement” as:
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?
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”:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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:
Use any or all of these to rethink your marketing message—and start building it ahead of time.
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:
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.
Get a free messaging consultation with our RIA marketing experts. In just 15 minutes, we can quickly review your existing campaigns to find:
Don’t let restrictions harm your marketing ROI.