RIA Marketing 101: 7 Basics Every Financial Advisory Firm Should Be Doing Consistently

Written by: Joel Crampton

At the Future Proof conference, I spoke with many RIA firm leaders, even ones with $1B+, who weren't consistently doing some of the basics — nurturing prospects through email, publishing original content, or keeping a regular communication schedule.

Those conversations reinforced something I see in my work. A firm's size doesn't necessarily tell you how developed its marketing is.

For firms willing to put those fundamentals in place, that leaves significant room to stand out.

ONE BIG IDEA — Consistent Marketing Is A Competitive Advantage

The 2026 Kitces Research study, How Financial Planners Actually Market Their Services, shows how unevenly advisors have adopted common marketing tactics:

88% use client referrals
36% use social media
31% use newsletters
27% use blogging

That means fewer than 4 in 10 respondents use each of those BASIC digital marketing tactics. These are adoption figures, BEFORE even considering how consistently or effectively firms execute them.

My takeaway: there's still a SIGNIFICANT opportunity to become a familiar, useful presence for the prospective clients you want to reach.

When your firm regularly answers their questions, shares relevant ideas, and follows up thoughtfully, you give prospects more opportunities to discover you, understand your value, and start a conversation.

That's how I think about connecting marketing activity to growth: build awareness with the right audience, turn interest into leads, nurture those relationships, and help qualified prospects become clients who bring new AUM and revenue.

ONE FRAMEWORK — Marketing 101: Build The Foundation

These are the basics I'm implementing with the firms I work with. The cadence below is my starting recommendation, tailored to each firm's audience, resources, and growth goals.

1. Define who you want to reach

Get specific about your ideal clients, the decisions they're facing, and why they would choose your firm. That should guide your website, topics, emails, and calls to action.

2. Nurture prospects through a dedicated marketing CRM

Build a system to capture prospects, track where they came from, segment them by interest, and send relevant follow-up emails. Someone who downloads a guide or attends a webinar should have a clear path to continued communication.

3. Send a client newsletter at least monthly

Share useful planning ideas, firm updates, and timely reminders. Help clients understand the work you do and give them something worth forwarding to a friend or family member.

4. Publish on social media at least 2x per week

Share your team's perspective, answer questions your audience asks, and put people from your firm on screen. This helps with your SEO/AEO search visibility as well.

5. Publish at least 1 featured article each month

Address a specific question or decision your ideal client faces. Publish it on your website, feature it in your newsletter, and turn its key points into social posts so the work reaches more people. Structure it in a Q&A format to help AI search visibility.

6. Give interested people a next step

Make it easy to subscribe, download a useful resource, register for an event, or schedule a conversation. Offer a way to stay connected for people who are still getting to know you.

7. Assign ownership and track results

Someone needs to own the calendar, coordinate approvals, and make sure the work happens. Review qualified inquiries, meetings, new clients, new AUM, and revenue alongside the activity that helped produce them to ascertain a relative ROI on your marketing spend.

**These pieces should work together. **An article gives you something useful to share, social posts help people discover it, and email keeps the relationship moving after that 1st interaction.

ONE RESOURCE — Take It A Step Further With A Podcast

Once your foundation is running consistently, a podcast is an easy way to give prospective clients more time to hear how you think, explain ideas, and approach the decisions they're facing. It helps show your authenticity, your company culture, and what makes you different from other advisor firms.

RiversideFM brings recording, editing, hosting, and distribution into one platform. It supports publishing to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube, with podcast hosting included in paid plans. You can also create short clips from your recordings for social media.

Start with questions you already answer in client meetings. A focused conversation about one useful topic can become an episode, several clips, a newsletter feature, and the basis for an article.

Pick a schedule your team can sustain, and build promotion into the process from the beginning.

ONE NEXT STEP — Audit What Your Firm Is Actually Doing

Set aside 30 minutes and compare your firm's last 90 days of marketing against the Marketing 101 list above.

Mark each item:

Consistent: It's happening on schedule, with someone accountable
Inconsistent: It happens occasionally or depends on someone finding time
Missing: There's no process in place

Then look at the experience from a prospect's perspective. If someone discovered your firm today but wasn't ready to schedule a meeting, what would help them stay connected over the next 6 months?

Choose the most meaningful gap, assign an owner, and set a deadline to address it. Your next growth opportunity may be in the basics you haven't made consistent yet.

Need help putting this into practice?

I work with financial firms that need senior-level marketing leadership without hiring a full-time CMO and marketing team. If you're looking for help building the strategy, systems, and execution behind your growth, let's chat.