Behind the positive headline numbers lurks a troubling truth for RIAs: most firms are not actually growing much at all.
The top 6% of firms soak up 77% of net new assets; when we remove those firms from the equation, the average RIA is actually shrinking—and many feel helpless to stop that trend.
This article explores how digital marketing can solve that problem and help firms drive proactive growth. By finding and fixing common blind spots, we’ll help you build a proactive growth engine that ensures your marketing actually drives revenue.
Beyond Networking: Why Marketing Matters for RIAs
Most RIA growth—organic and inorganic—is driven through networking. From M&A stemming from industry connections to COI referrals driven by in-person events, many RIAs have built multi-billion-dollar AUMs with relatively limited marketing.
The problem is that traditional networking is no longer enough for most ambitious RIAs. Talk to even a few leaders in the industry, and you’ll hear about the same challenges:
- Referrals are unsustainable (Dr. Joshua Wilson has written about this in detail)
- Advisor recruitment is highly competitive
- AUM growth is difficult to forecast and hard to generate proactively
That explains why key industry commentators say digital marketing is the future of RIA growth. With the capacity to proactively drive new client acquisition and build a brand that makes advisor recruitment easier, an effective marketing program could unlock an unprecedented competitive advantage.
But given the complexity of digital marketing, many RIAs struggle to identify how exactly to deliver ROI—and where they are missing the biggest opportunities.
6 Common blind spots Within RIA Marketing
While every RIA faces unique challenges, six common problems crop up repeatedly—and severely limit digital marketing ROI:
1. Weak Messaging
RIA marketing is built around clear, persuasive messaging. Your website, social media presence, ads, and content should also have a clear centralized message that captures what you do, why it matters, and how it is different.
Take inorganic growth as an example: advisors that engage with your digital content don’t just need to be interested; they need to understand why joining your firm is their best choice. But many firms miss this opportunity by focusing on generic messages that might sound nice—but don’t actually differentiate them from every other RIA in their niche.
This is a particularly common blind spot in RIA marketing for a few reasons:
- RIA services and business models are complex, making it easy to fall back on jargon
- RIAs face heavy compliance constraints that govern the language you can use
- RIAs often lack clarity about whether they are marketing the firm or the advisor
However, with the right approach, you can develop messaging that stands out and makes your firm more memorable—and the first step is realizing that this should be a major priority.
Signs your messaging is weak:
- You could swap your logo for another firm’s—and nobody would know the difference
- Your leads often ask for clarification about your specific services or business model
- Your content uses a lot of industry jargon or clichés
2. Poor Funnel Visibility
One of the great benefits of digital marketing is that you can track almost everything. From email open rates to how long users spend looking at your website, performance data can help RIAs optimize content, allocate budget to the channels that deliver the greatest return, and demonstrate the ROI of their marketing efforts.
Many RIAs lack this visibility into their performance. Their marketing initiatives are fragmented; their data is siloed between multiple systems; and they lack proper analytics to understand how their marketing actually influences meetings booked or AUM growth.
Even one of these problems will severely limit your funnel visibility—and lead you to miss out on valuable opportunities to improve your digital marketing.
Signs you lack proper funnel visibility:
- Your leadership are unsure what marketing is doing
- You often struggle to justify marketing spend or unlock budget
- You discover major errors or blind spots in your campaigns too late
3. Missing Marketing Channels
The average B2B buyer uses 10 or more different digital channels—and the same is true for both advisory clients and advisors. Your target audience likely spends several hours online each week, at a minimum, and that time is spread across numerous channels, from LinkedIn and email to watching webinars or reading blogs.
The problem is that RIAs often become overreliant on a handful of digital channels they are familiar with. Email marketing and organic social form the foundation of their strategies—and other key channels like paid ads and SEO might get overlooked or underinvested in.
If you’re not on these channels, your competitors will be. The more clients and advisors see other RIAs across Facebook, Google, and other channels, the stronger their presence will become.
Signs you’re missing key digital marketing channels:
- Your marketing is focused on a handful of channels
- You have never run a webinar or full-scale ad campaign
- You often visit digital platforms that your firm doesn’t use for marketing
4. Lack of Advisor Enablement
Digital marketing should be empowering for advisors, but many RIAs find that their advisors actually avoid or undervalue marketing. Content is created; campaigns are prepared, but individual advisors lack the time or desire to focus energy on promoting their services.
This is another easy blind spot to develop because advisors don’t advertise their lack of marketing activity. Overworked RIA marketing teams might themselves lack the time or resources to “check in” and ensure their advisors are actually using the marketing tools they provide.
But it is also a very costly blind spot, as your budget is being sunk into content that doesn’t get utilized. Many RIA marketing agencies—especially those without active advisor enablement services—simply add to this problem by producing more unused content.
Signs you need better advisor enablement:
- You frequently find that marketing materials are underutilized by advisors
- Your marketing team avoids assigning a budget to organic growth
- Your organic growth is flat or underperforming
5. Compliance Bottlenecks
Roughly 36% of RIAs cite the SEC’s Marketing Rule as their biggest compliance concern—and with good reason. One firm was hit with a $2 million fine for marketing violations earlier this year, highlighting how seriously the SEC takes non-compliance.
In practice, this often means RIA marketers face torturous compliance checks that can either delay or completely derail their campaigns. But this need not be the case; a truly effective digital marketing program should have built-in processes—including AI checks, compliance templates, and more—that accelerate compliance.
Many firms don’t realize this is possible, or simply lack the resources to make it a reality. But allowing that blindspot to remain means fewer campaigns launch and less growth is achieved.
Signs you need better compliance processes:
- You have a growing backlog of marketing initiatives and campaigns due to compliance
- Your marketing agency or team often struggles to identify compliance issues ahead of time
- Your leadership expresses a lack of confidence in marketing compliance
6. Disconnected Digital Systems
While digital marketing is important for future RIA growth, it does not exist in a bubble. Marketing must work together with sales and client services to deliver an end-to-end experience for clients and new advisor acquisitions.
Advisor recruitment is the perfect example: An advisor might be persuaded to join your firm by marketing, but their transition experience will immediately shade their long-term prospects within the firm. If marketing doesn’t effectively work with service to set the right expectations and understand the advisors, you’ll end up with disgruntled new acquisitions.
The problem is that most RIAs have a large and ever-growing tech stack. They have multiple tools for sales, marketing, and services—not to mention compliance, investment management, and all the rest.
Using a system like HubSpot that consolidates these tools into a single centralized platform can reduce friction, accelerate collaboration, and save everybody a lot of time and effort.
Signs you need unified digital systems:
- You have consistent data silos and communication gaps
- Your marketing, sales, and service teams struggle to collaborate effectively
- Your teams often complain about switching between tools or integrating new platforms
RIA Marketing Without blind spots: How Effective Digital Marketing Drives RIA Growth
Identifying and eliminating these blind spots can unlock a new level of growth for RIAs—and our recent experience with a leading RIA platform illustrates that point.
While the firm was growing well, they knew their digital marketing foundations needed to be overhauled. Our team helped them introduce a new CRM, enhance their paid ads, improve their website, and deploy RevOps to turn more leads into active opportunities.
The result was a 1700% increase in inbound lead generation—and $2B+ AUM in new pipeline across a single year.
Want to explore how we could produce similar results for your firm?
