“Should we hire in-house or outsource our marketing?”
That’s a common question from financial services firms. It’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete. This framing assumes marketing is one job. In reality, a modern growth engine spans strategy, content, SEO, AI search visibility, demand generation, CRM, automation, analytics, web dev, design, events, and communications.
No single hire can cover all that ground, and building an in-house team across the full spectrum of required skills is really hard and prohibitively expensive.
We ask a slightly different question of the firms we talk to: what capabilities does your growth strategy require, and what’s the smartest way to access them?
We’re Not in 2002 Anymore: Unpacking Today’s Growth Roadblocks
A decade or two ago, most advisory firms grew through ad hoc referrals and a handful of guerrilla marketing tactics that are no longer sustainable in today’s landscape:
Financial services is more sophisticated. Less lifestyle practices, more major institutions with large teams, multiple business lines and revenue goals that look more like a consumer brand’s than a cottage service industry’s. The uptick in sophistication has transformed marketing into a legitimate business function at these firms, demanding the strategic leadership to match.
The client is more educated. Prospects have access to more financial information now than they ever have, and they’re more comfortable using it. They research firms and advisors independently, increasingly turning to AI tools to compare options and get quick answers before they ever pick up the phone. What used to be a simple client journey now runs through more touchpoints, each with its own expectations: visible without being aggressive, present without being pushy, educational without a sales agenda.
Advisors can’t double as their own marketers anymore. Growth at scale demands expertise in branding, content, digital, SEO, demand generation, CRM, automation and analytics, often all at once. Those aren’t skills many advisors possess in addition to their wealth management expertise, and few firms can justify building every one of those disciplines to expert depth internally.
One Hire vs. One Agency Is an Oversimplification
Comparing a single internal hire to an outsourced agency on retainer, dollar for dollar, misses the important context that a modern growth engine can’t be run by one person.
A more realistic comparison looks at the difference between a small internal team and an outsourced partner delivering the same range of specialized skills.
Industry benchmarking shows a single competent marketing hire, before benefits and overhead, commonly runs $80,000 to $120,000 in salary alone. Add benefits and payroll taxes and that figure climbs roughly 20%, putting one fully loaded hire well beyond $90,000 a year, before adding software licenses and subscriptions.
Build out a team that covers content, design, SEO/PPC, web and CRM at the depth a modern agency provides, and the combined salaries can easily clear $500,000 a year.
By comparison, a full-service agency retainer typically runs $6,000 to $10,000 a month, or roughly $72,000 to $120,000 annually, often less than the cost of a single full-time mid-level hire.
The Industry’s Underinvestment in Marketing Is A Clear Opportunity
Cerulli’s latest research on the RIA channel found that marketing typically receives just 5% of a firm’s total operating budget, and only 14% of RIAs have a dedicated marketing resource at all. Meanwhile, 56% of firms point to a lack of a cohesive marketing plan as a major or moderate obstacle to growth, and 83% cite limited resources and advisor time constraints as a barrier.
New client acquisition ranks as a top RIA challenge, yet marketing budgets are projected to stay flat through 2027, representing a real opportunity for firms exploring the question of how to hire to drive growth.
While competitors stay underinvested, you can identify the smartest way to fill growth capability gaps and create an accelerated advantage.
Capacity Is a Capability
Even firms with existing internal teams can experience capacity constraints. Small teams are often simultaneously responsible for strategy, campaign execution, events, content, sales requests and reporting.
Internal marketers also frequently get pulled into meetings, administrative work and cross-functional projects that eat into the time they have for output. A capable team with too little bandwidth can fall behind just as easily as a single marketer or an advisor trying to balance financial planning work with business development.
Outside support shouldn’t always be framed as filling a knowledge gap. Sometimes the most valuable thing an outsourced partner provides is capacity, freeing a strong internal team to focus on the work only they can do.
Why Outsourced Agencies Are More Accountable
In an outsourced partnership, both sides have a real financial stake in the results. It’s much easier to fire an agency for not producing ROI than it is to let go of an employee or an internal team.
Outsourcing comes with built-in accountability tied directly to performance.
Industry Expertise Changes the Outsourcing Equation
“Outsource” doesn’t mean “hire any agency.” Choosing a partner with real financial services experience matters as much as the decision to outsource in the first place.
A partner who already understands the audience, the regulatory environment, the sales cycle and industry-specific language starts well ahead of the learning curve, translating into faster execution, fewer missteps and a lower overall cost, since the firm isn’t paying for a generalist agency’s education on your industry’s basics.
Why Growing Firms Should Consider a Hybrid Marketing Model
For most growing firms, the best answer may be an intentional combination of hiring in-house and outsourcing: own what creates lasting institutional advantage, and access specialized expertise where you need depth, scale and flexibility.
A common hybrid model can break down this way:
- Keep in-house: the people closest to your brand voice, client relationships and day-to-day sales alignment.
- Access externally: specialized skill sets like SEO, AI search optimization, paid media, web development, design and CRM automation, where the learning curve and tooling investment are steep and constantly shifting.
- Combine intentionally: build a model where internal and external teams operate as one growth engine instead of two disconnected workstreams.
For firms whose growth needs have outpaced what a lean internal team can realistically cover, a hybrid model often produces the best results, without requiring a firm to hire a large department before it’s ready for one.
At Intention.ly, we act as an extension of our clients’ internal marketing teams, backing in-house expertise with the full horsepower of our growth engine across strategy and execution. See what that could look like for your firm. Set up a complimentary strategy call here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should RIAs outsource marketing or hire in-house? The decision to outsource marketing or hire in-house depends on the capabilities you need. Most growing firms benefit from a hybrid model: an internal team that owns brand, client relationships and sales alignment, paired with outside specialists for skills like SEO, paid media, web and CRM automation.
What marketing roles should stay in-house? Roles that require deep, ongoing knowledge of your firm’s clients, culture and sales process, including brand stewardship, internal stakeholder alignment and day-to-day coordination with advisors or sales teams.
When does outsourcing marketing make sense for a financial services firm? Outsourcing makes sense when a capability requires specialized expertise your internal team doesn’t have, when internal capacity is the bottleneck rather than skill, or when a function needs scale and flexibility that’s expensive to build and maintain internally.
Why does industry expertise matter when choosing a marketing partner? A partner with financial services experience already understands your audience, the regulatory environment and the advisor sales cycle, reducing ramp-up time and lowering the risk of compliance or messaging missteps that a generalist agency is more likely to make.
What is a hybrid marketing model? A hybrid marketing model combines an internal team that owns brand and client-facing work with external specialists who provide expertise, capacity or scale in specific disciplines like content, digital, SEO and automation. Rather than choosing between building and buying, firms build what creates lasting advantage and access the rest.