Tag: Blog

The overlooked connection between referral-driven growth and marketing, and how wealth management firms can make both more effective.

The other day, my friend Molly made a comment I’ve been thinking about ever since.

Molly, a fellow wealth management marketer, mentioned she’s seen instances at RIAs where referrals are treated as marketing competition.  

Think about that for a second.

On one side, you have referrals: organic, trusted, relationship-driven, and perhaps most importantly in the minds of many firm leaders, free.

On the other side, you have marketing work that requires a budget for campaigns, content, technology, people, and agencies. It’s an expense that needs justification.

At some point, marketing and referrals became seen as opposing forces by some wealth management executives.

But in my experience, referrals and marketing have never been separate growth engines. They’ve always worked together, and firms that understand that relationship will have a significant advantage over those that don’t.

H2: The real cost of referrals

First, let’s talk about the notion that referrals are free.

I understand why people think this way: when a client introduces a friend to their financial advisor, there’s no obvious acquisition cost attached to that introduction. No one clicked on a paid ad or filled out a lead-generation form. No campaign attributes the opportunity.

But what made that referral possible?

Years of building a reputation. Delivering an exceptional client experience. Establishing credibility. Creating a brand that people feel comfortable recommending. Investing in relationships. Showing up consistently.

None of that is free.

Your advisors’ time isn’t free. Your client experience isn’t free. Your events aren’t free. Your communications aren’t free. The reputation you’ve spent years building certainly isn’t free.

Even when a referral happens organically, an entire ecosystem of experiences and impressions drove someone to put their own reputation on the line to recommend you.

A referral might not have a direct acquisition cost, but that doesn’t mean it has no cost. More importantly, it doesn’t mean marketing had nothing to do with it.

Marketing is an always-on engine

Marketing is often doing its best work before anyone realizes it’s working.

Let’s imagine one of your clients is having dinner with a friend. The friend mentions they’re frustrated with their current financial advisor. Your client says, “You should talk to my firm. They’ve been great.”

That’s the referral moment.

Now think about everything that might happen next.

The friend Googles your firm. They visit your website. They read about your team. They look at your LinkedIn presence. Maybe they find an article one of your advisors wrote. Maybe they’ve seen your firm’s name before because you’ve been active in the community or have a recognizable presence in your market.

Each of those interactions either reinforces the referral or undermines it.

If your website looks outdated, your messaging is generic, and your digital presence offers nothing compelling, the referral may never turn into a conversation.

On the flip side, if your firm has a strong brand, a clear value proposition, credible thought leadership, and an easy path to connect, you’ve just made that referral significantly more valuable.

The referral created the introduction. Marketing helped turn the introduction into an opportunity.

Perhaps even more importantly, marketing may have helped generate the referral in the first place. Your marketing gives people a reason to talk about you.

We tend to believe that referrals happen exclusively because of a great client relationship, and of course that’s an enormous part of it.

But people also refer businesses because those businesses are top of mind.

Think about the firms that consistently communicate with their clients, publish useful insights, host events, share relevant perspectives, and create experiences worth talking about.

They give clients more opportunities to think about them, more reasons to bring them up in conversations, and more confidence to explain what makes them different.

Consider two advisors who both deliver an excellent client experience.

One communicates primarily during scheduled review meetings.

The other delivers that same great service but also shares thoughtful market commentary, hosts educational events, provides useful resources for clients’ families, and regularly reinforces the firm’s expertise and value.

Which advisor is creating more natural opportunities for a client to say, “Actually, my advisor was just talking about that”?

That’s how marketing supports referrals. It doesn’t replace or compete with them; it makes them more likely to happen. And marketing can make your referrals better, not just more frequent.

Not all referrals are created equal

There’s another piece of this conversation that I think gets overlooked. An advisor might receive 20 referrals in a year, but how many are a good fit for the firm?

How many meet the firm’s asset minimums? How many need the services the firm is best equipped to deliver? How many understand the value proposition before they ever walk through the door?

Positioning and messaging do a lot of heavy lifting here. When you’re clear about who you serve, what you specialize in, and why clients choose you, they’re better equipped to make the right introductions.

Instead of saying, “My advisor is great,” they can say, “My advisor specializes in helping business owners prepare for a liquidity event. You should really talk to them.”

That’s a very different referral, and the specificity doesn’t happen by accident.

It happens when a firm has invested in defining its ideal client, articulating its differentiation, and consistently communicating both.

In other words, it happens through marketing.

Rethinking the value of marketing

One of the biggest mistakes I see wealth management firms make is evaluating marketing exclusively on the number of leads it generates directly.

How many form fills did we get? How many appointments came from the campaign? How many new clients can we attribute to our marketing spend?

Those are important questions; I’m certainly not suggesting we stop asking them. But they’re also incomplete.

What if your marketing is increasing the percentage of referrals that turn into meetings?

What if it’s helping referred prospects make decisions faster?

What if it’s keeping your firm top of mind with clients who otherwise wouldn’t think to introduce you?

What if it’s giving your advisors better tools to explain your value and convert the opportunities already in front of them?

What if it’s helping your firm attract more of the right referrals?

Those are meaningful business outcomes, even if they don’t show up as a marketing-sourced lead in your CRM.

When we only measure marketing by the opportunities it originates, we risk dramatically undervaluing the role it plays in converting and expanding opportunities that originate elsewhere.

Marketing doesn’t have to be the first touch to have a meaningful impact on the outcome.

The dual marketing and referral strategy

Instead of thinking of marketing and referrals as opposing forces, the clearest opportunity I see is to build a growth strategy where the two work together intentionally.

Imagine what happens when a firm stops asking, “Should we invest in marketing, or should we focus on referrals?” and starts asking, “How can our marketing make our referral engine more productive?”

Now we’re talking about creating content that clients want to share, building referral-friendly experiences and communications, and equipping advisors with clear messaging and useful resources that make introductions easier.

We’re talking about creating a digital presence that validates the trust someone has already placed in your firm.

We’re talking about nurturing referred prospects who aren’t ready to schedule a meeting today but might be six months from now.

And we’re talking about using data to understand how referrals move through the pipeline, where they stall, and how marketing can help improve conversion.

Suddenly, marketing isn’t a competing investment.

It’s an investment in making one of your most valuable sources of growth work even harder.

Here’s what I’d encourage RIA leaders to consider.

If referrals are your firm’s primary source of new business, that’s a wonderful position to be in. It means you’ve built relationships worth recommending. Your clients trust you, and you’ve created something people value.

But it shouldn’t be an argument against investing in marketing.

It should be one of the strongest arguments for it.

If referrals are already working, imagine what happens when you intentionally build the brand, communications, content, technology, and conversion infrastructure around them.

You don’t have to choose between relationship-driven growth and marketing-driven growth. In an increasingly competitive industry, where prospective clients have more choices and more information available to them than ever before, relationships are only becoming more important.

So the next time someone says, “We don’t really need marketing. Most of our business comes from referrals,” I’d encourage them to ask a different question:

How much more valuable could those referrals become if we invested in making them work better?

The goal of marketing was never to replace the relationships that built your business.

It’s to help those relationships take your business further.

 

I’ve designed, built, and helped run many advisory boards throughout my career. It’s a service we offer at Intention.ly, and it’s genuinely one of my favorite parts of the work we do.

There’s something incredibly rewarding about connecting smart, accomplished people with businesses that can benefit from their experience, relationships, and perspectives. Finding the right combination of advisors, advocates, connectors, and promoters can create tremendous value for an organization.

And after working with so many different boards, certain patterns have become clear.

The most successful advisory boards share a handful of characteristics that make them valuable not only to the businesses they support, but also to the people who serve on them.

If you’re thinking about building an advisory board for your firm, run through this checklist first.

1. Define What You Want Your Board to Accomplish

The most effective advisory boards are designed around specific business objectives.

Before you start identifying potential members, be clear about what you hope to accomplish.

Your checklist:

• Identify the primary objectives of your advisory board, whether that’s strategic guidance, industry intelligence, introductions, product feedback, or growth opportunities.
• Define what success looks like for your organization.
• Determine the types of expertise and relationships that will help you achieve those objectives.
• Establish a process for revisiting your board’s priorities as your business evolves.

A board designed to help a fintech company expand into wealth management might look very different from one designed to help an established firm strengthen its distribution strategy.

The clearer you are about what you want to accomplish, the easier it becomes to identify the people who can help you get there.

2. Choose People You Genuinely Respect

When you invite someone to serve on an advisory board, you’re inviting them to provide ongoing guidance on your business, making mutual respect incredibly important.

The strongest boards are made up of people whose experience, judgment, and perspectives are genuinely valued by the leadership team.

Your checklist:

• Identify individuals whose experience and judgment you respect.
• Look for people whose advice you’d genuinely welcome when making important decisions.
• Prioritize people who can challenge assumptions and introduce new ways of thinking.
• Consider whether you can build strong, trusting relationships with each potential member.

Some of the most valuable advisory board conversations happen when members offer perspectives leadership hadn’t previously considered.

Ideally, your board members become people you look forward to calling when you’re considering a new opportunity, navigating a challenge, or making a big decision.

3. Build a Board With Diverse Perspectives

One of the most important parts of designing an advisory board is getting the mix of people right.

Different professional backgrounds, areas of expertise, career experiences, and industry perspectives can make the group significantly more valuable.

The size of the board matters, too. You want enough people to bring different perspectives and relationships to the table while maintaining an environment where everyone can meaningfully contribute.

Your checklist:

• Identify the different areas of expertise your business would benefit from.
• Include people with varied professional backgrounds and career experiences.
• Consider generational diversity and the perspectives different generations bring to the industry.
• Look for individuals who understand different segments of your market.
• Determine the ideal number of members based on your objectives and meeting format.
• Make sure the size of the group allows for meaningful participation and relationship-building.

For many firms, five to eight members can be a reasonable starting point, although the right number depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

That might mean bringing together someone with deep institutional experience, an entrepreneur who has built and scaled a business, a technology leader, a distribution expert, and someone who understands your target customer exceptionally well.

Financial services is evolving, and the people shaping its future represent different generations with different experiences, expectations, and ways of thinking.

Your group should bring a variety of perspectives to the table while working toward a common purpose.

4. Make Sure Your Values Align

Different perspectives strengthen an advisory board. Shared values help make it work.

Every organization has a particular culture, leadership style, and approach to doing business. Understanding those characteristics helps you identify advisory board members who are a natural fit.

Your checklist:

• Define the core values that guide your organization.
• Look for people whose working styles complement your leadership team.
• Prioritize individuals who share your approach to collaboration, accountability, and problem-solving.
• Seek people who can challenge your thinking while supporting your broader vision.

For example, a company with an entrepreneurial, fast-moving, figure-it-out mentality may benefit from advisors who share that sense of possibility and resourcefulness.

Those advisors can still bring different opinions, identify risks, and challenge decisions. In fact, that’s part of their value.

The strongest boards bring together people who think differently while remaining aligned on what matters most.

5. Build Relationships Beyond Quarterly Meetings

Good advisory boards operate as an extension of the organization, and that trust is built over time.

Board members who know the leadership team, understand the company’s ambitions, and feel connected to its success are naturally more engaged.

But you should also create opportunities that help board members build relationships with one another.

You’re bringing together a group of accomplished, connected people. The relationships they develop can become one of the most valuable parts of the experience.

Your checklist:

• Establish regular opportunities to connect outside formal meetings.
• Invite advisory board members to company events and important milestones.
• Introduce members to relevant people across your organization.
• Engage individual members for advice and feedback between meetings.
• Create opportunities for board members to get to know one another.
• Facilitate introductions among members based on shared interests and complementary expertise.
• Consider occasional in-person gatherings or experiences that strengthen the group’s relationships.
• Find opportunities to support your board members and their professional goals.

The more connected members feel to the organization and to one another, the more naturally they become invested in its success.

The most valuable relationships are reciprocal. Understanding what your board members are working on and where you can be helpful creates a much stronger foundation for long-term collaboration.

A great advisory board should be just as valuable to the people serving on it as it is to the organization that created it.

6. Give Your Board the Information They Need to Advocate for You

One of the greatest benefits of an advisory board is the chance to extend your organization’s reach through people who genuinely believe in what you’re building.

Advisory board members can become some of your most valuable advocates.

They can introduce you to prospective clients, identify potential partners, share industry intelligence, promote new offerings, and talk about your business in rooms you might never otherwise access.

In many ways, they can serve as extensions of your sales, marketing, and business development teams.

Your checklist:

• Keep members informed about company priorities and strategic initiatives.
• Share new offerings, important hires, company milestones, and growth opportunities.
• Communicate the markets, audiences, and types of relationships you’re trying to reach.
• Make it easy for members to share appropriate company news and developments.
• Establish clear guidelines around confidential information and external communications.

When board members know what’s happening inside the business, they’re better positioned to recognize opportunities and make valuable connections.

And when they feel genuinely invested in the company’s success, advocacy often happens organically.

7. Understand Outside Relationships and Potential Conflicts

Financial services is an incredibly interconnected industry.

Many people who make exceptional advisory board members also serve on other boards, advise multiple businesses, invest in companies, or maintain deep industry relationships.

Those connections can create tremendous value. Understanding them upfront helps establish a strong foundation for the relationship.

Your checklist:

• Ask prospective members what other boards they serve on.
• Understand their advisory, investment, and professional relationships.
• Discuss any potential conflicts of interest or competing commitments.
• Establish clear expectations around confidentiality and disclosures.
• Revisit outside commitments periodically as relationships and business interests evolve.

Transparency lets everyone contribute confidently, and visibility into those relationships can also uncover new opportunities for collaboration, introductions, and strategic partnerships.

8. Design Meetings Around Meaningful Conversations

The most effective advisory board meetings create space for strategic discussion, collaboration, and problem-solving.

Thoughtful preparation can make a tremendous difference in the quality of conversations

It’s also important to establish clear leadership and ownership of the board experience. The responsibility can sit with someone inside the organization, or you can appoint a board leader to help guide the group, facilitate discussions, coordinate activities, and maintain momentum between meetings.

In fact, having a strong board leader can be especially valuable for creating an environment where members feel connected, engaged, and comfortable contributing.

Your checklist:

• Establish a consistent meeting cadence.
• Appoint a board leader or designate someone responsible for coordinating the board’s activities and overall experience.
• Define who will manage communications, agendas, meeting preparation, and follow-up.
• Share company updates and relevant materials in advance.
• Identify a handful of strategic topics where outside perspectives would be especially valuable.
• Prepare specific questions to guide discussion.
• Allow plenty of time for open conversation and collaboration.
• Document recommendations, next steps, and follow-up responsibilities.
• Establish accountability for acting on recommendations and pursuing opportunities that emerge from board discussions.

Perhaps the business is evaluating a new market, considering a product launch, refining its positioning, or exploring a new distribution strategy.

Whatever the topic, thoughtful preparation and specific questions tend to produce the most valuable conversations.

Some of the best ideas emerge when board members begin building on one another’s experiences and perspectives.

9. Show Members the Impact They’re Making

Advisory board members contribute their time, expertise, relationships, and judgment.

Helping them see the impact of those contributions is an important part of maintaining engagement.

Your checklist:

• Share how board recommendations have influenced company decisions.
• Provide updates on opportunities that resulted from introductions or advice.
• Recognize individual contributions and celebrate shared successes.
• Create opportunities for members to provide feedback on their board experience.
• Regularly communicate the progress the organization is making toward its objectives.

Build a consistent feedback loop that shows how conversations turn into action and how individual contributions move the business forward. A sense of impact creates greater ownership, enthusiasm, and long-term engagement.

10. Set Clear Expectations and Allow the Board to Evolve

As organizations grow, their needs change.

New markets emerge, strategic priorities shift, and different growth stages require different kinds of expertise.

An advisory board should be flexible enough to evolve with the business, starting with clear expectations around participation, responsibilities, and compensation.

Some organizations compensate advisory board members financially. Others may offer equity, professional visibility, valuable relationships, or a combination of benefits. The right arrangement depends on the organization, the individuals involved, and the commitments being made.

In financial services, also consider any regulatory or compliance implications related to compensation, endorsements, and referrals.

Your checklist:

• Establish clear terms, time commitments, and responsibilities upfront.
• Determine whether members will receive cash compensation, equity, or other benefits.
• Communicate compensation arrangements and expectations before members join.
• Review any applicable legal, regulatory, and compliance requirements.
• Define a process for evaluating the board’s effectiveness.
• Regularly revisit the expertise and perspectives your business needs.
• Identify opportunities to introduce new members or expand existing members’ involvement.
• Make sure the board continues to align with the organization’s evolving goals.

The most successful advisory boards are dynamic, continually adapting to create value as the business evolves.

The Real Value of a Great Advisory Board

A well-designed advisory board can become one of the most valuable assets your business has, and its impact extends far beyond the advice shared during quarterly meetings.

It’s the introduction someone makes because your company came to mind during a conversation. It’s the industry insight someone shares over coffee. It’s the opportunity someone identifies before it becomes obvious to everyone else. It’s the perspective that helps a leadership team see something in an entirely new way.

It’s having a group of smart, connected, engaged people who are genuinely invested in helping your business succeed.

And it’s creating an experience where those individuals feel equally valued, connected, and excited to participate.

The best advisory boards are communities of advocates who become part of a company’s growth story.

When they’re designed thoughtfully, supported consistently, and built around meaningful relationships, the value they create can extend throughout the entire organization.

Thinking About Building an Advisory Board?

At Intention.ly, we help financial services firms design, build, and run advisory boards that become meaningful extensions of their businesses.

From defining the right objectives and identifying the right people to facilitating meetings and keeping members engaged, we help turn a great group of individuals into a powerful network of advisors and advocates.

If you’re considering building an advisory board or looking to get more value from one you already have, we’d love to help.

Let’s talk.

And now, I think it’s time to take my own advice.

Despite designing, building, and helping run so many advisory boards for other businesses, I haven’t yet built one for Intention.ly.

But writing this article made me realize that it’s time. I know firsthand how valuable the right group of people can be to a business, and I’m excited to bring that same thinking to my own.

So, here goes. I’ll let you know how it goes!

 

Most financial services firms have no shortage of marketing data. They can tell you how many people opened an email, clicked an ad, visited the website, attended a webinar or engaged with a social post.

But did any of that activity contribute to growth?

Impressions, clicks, and website traffic can be useful indicators, but on their own, they do not tell you whether your marketing is creating qualified opportunities, influencing pipeline, or helping bring in new business.

For financial services firms, measuring marketing ROI means connecting marketing activity to the outcomes that matter to the business.

What should financial services firms measure instead of vanity metrics?

The most useful marketing KPIs are tied to business outcomes. Depending on the firm, those might include qualified leads, booked meetings, created opportunities, influenced pipeline, new clients, assets under management, revenue, retention, or customer acquisition cost.

That doesn’t mean you should ignore engagement metrics. They can still help you understand whether a message, channel, or campaign is gaining traction or driving engagement. But those numbers can’t tell the whole story. 

A campaign with strong click-through rates may look successful, but did those clicks turn into qualified prospects? A webinar with a smaller audience might seem like a flop until three-quarters of the attendees enter the pipeline.

Look beyond lead volume

Lead generation is another area where firms can get caught up in numbers that look good on a report but don’t necessarily translate into growth.

A campaign that produces hundreds of leads is not automatically more successful than one that generates far fewer but more highly qualified prospects. What matters is whether those leads are the right fit and whether they continue moving through the sales process.

That means looking at conversion from lead to meeting, meeting to opportunity, and opportunity to client. It also means understanding which campaigns and channels consistently produce the types of prospects your firm actually wants to work with.

When marketing and sales teams share that visibility, the conversation shifts from “How many leads did we generate?” to “Which activities are producing meaningful business opportunities?”

That is a much more useful measure of performance.

Connect marketing activity to your CRM

For many firms, the biggest challenge is not a lack of data but that the data lives in different places.

Marketing may track campaign engagement in one system while business development or sales activity is tracked somewhere else. If those systems are not connected, it becomes difficult to see the full path from initial engagement to closed business.

Ideally, your CRM should give you a clear view of how a prospect interacted with your firm over time. Maybe they first came across an article, later attended a webinar, opened several emails, and eventually scheduled a consultation. Those interactions should not exist as isolated data points.

Connecting marketing activity to individual contacts and opportunities makes it much easier to understand which channels and content are contributing to pipeline.

It also gives marketing teams better information. Instead of optimizing solely for clicks or conversions, they can identify campaigns that attract stronger prospects and drive real business development activity.

Choose an attribution model that gives you useful information

Marketing attribution can get complicated quickly, but it doesn’t need to be perfect to be useful.

First-touch attribution shows how someone first found your firm. Last-touch attribution focuses on the interaction closest to conversion. Multi-touch attribution looks at several interactions across the buyer journey.

Each model answers a slightly different question.

In financial services, where sales cycles can be long and prospects may interact with a firm many times before taking action, focusing only on the final touchpoint can miss a large part of the story. The webinar registration or contact form may be the conversion event, but a prospect may have been reading your content, seeing your brand on LinkedIn, and receiving your emails for months beforehand.

The right approach helps your team make better decisions. Start with a model you can use consistently, then add sophistication as your data and systems improve.

Give marketing enough time to work

Another common measurement problem is evaluating marketing against a timeline that doesn’t reflect how financial services buyers actually make decisions.

A campaign may launch this quarter, but the resulting opportunity may not close until much later. For firms with long sales cycles, judging marketing only on immediate revenue can distort performance.

That doesn’t mean waiting a year to decide whether something is working. It means measuring progress along the way.

Early indicators may include engagement from the right audience, qualified conversions, and meetings. From there, firms can look at opportunity creation, pipeline progression, and sales velocity. Longer-term measurement can then focus on new clients, assets, revenue, and retention.

Looking at the full progression gives leadership a much more realistic view of marketing’s contribution to growth.

Start with the questions you need answered

One of the easiest ways to overcomplicate marketing measurement is to start with the dashboard instead of the business questions.

Most firms do not need more reports. They need better answers.

Which channels are generating our best prospects? What content tends to show up in the journey before someone schedules a meeting? Which campaigns are creating or influencing opportunities? How long does it typically take a marketing-generated lead to move through the pipeline? What does it cost us to acquire a new client?

Those questions should shape what you track.

If a metric does not help your team understand performance, make a decision or improve the way you allocate resources, it may not need to be on the dashboard at all.

Which marketing metrics matter most for financial services firms?

No single set of KPIs works for every organization, but the strongest measurement frameworks eventually connect marketing to qualified leads, meetings, opportunities, pipeline, conversion rates, acquisition costs, new clients, assets, and revenue.

Metrics like impressions, traffic, clicks, and engagement still have value. They help explain what is happening earlier in the buyer journey and can help teams improve campaign performance.

They just should not be mistaken for business results.

The real value comes from understanding how those early indicators connect to what happens next.

Marketing measurement should help you make better decisions

Marketing attribution isn’t meant to prove that marketing deserves credit for every new client. It is to create enough visibility to understand what is working, what is not, and where the firm should invest next.

When firms can connect marketing activity to pipeline and revenue, they can make better decisions about channels, content, technology, and budget. They can identify which efforts create real momentum and which may generate activity without meaningful results.

That is ultimately what better marketing measurement should do: give your team a clearer picture of how marketing contributes to growth.

Need a clearer view of what’s really driving growth? Intention.ly helps financial services firms connect strategy, marketing, technology, and data so they can make smarter decisions about where to invest. Schedule a complimentary consultation with our team.

The Problem With “Just Start Creating Content” 

One of the biggest mistakes companies make with content marketing is starting at the wrong end.

They start writing blog posts. Then another blog post. Then a social post about the blog post. Then an email promoting the blog post. Months later, they have dozens of pieces of content and very little to show for it.

The problem usually isn’t the quality of the content but the strategy behind it.

Blog posts tend to cover broad industry trends, general best practices and big-picture ideas meant to appeal to everyone – the kind of content that’s great at building awareness but rarely helps someone who is ready to buy.

Every prospect sits somewhere on the path to a decision. Some have never heard of your firm and haven’t even started thinking about the problem you solve. Some understand they need to make a change and have started researching answers. Others know the problem, know what they need to solve it, and are actively searching for who to hire to help them. 

Each group asks different questions, so each group needs different content. A thought-leadership piece that sparks curiosity in a newcomer does little for a buyer comparing providers. A pricing breakdown means nothing to someone who doesn’t know they have a problem yet.

If you want your marketing to drive business, map your content to where people are in their decision-making journey. Then build it in the right order: start with the people closest to buying and work backward.

Start With the People Who Are Ready to Buy

When your marketing budget is limited, you don’t have the luxury of spending all your time building awareness with people who may or may not ever become customers.

Start with the people who already know they have a problem, know they need a solution, and are actively considering their options.

These are your hot prospects.

They may be searching for a specific service, pricing information, a comparison between providers, answers to a time-sensitive problem, reviews or proof, an explanation of how your process works, or information about what happens if they choose to work with you.

Building content for this audience can have an immediate business impact.

Instead of asking, “What should we write about this month?” ask: “What questions does someone ask right before they decide to buy?”

Those questions should become content.

Then Move to the Warm Audience

Once you’ve addressed the people who are ready to buy, move backward to the people who are problem-aware but not decision-ready.

These prospects know something isn’t working. They may even know they need help, but they’re not ready to choose a provider yet.

They need nurturing.

Your marketing should help them understand the problem they’re trying to solve, their options, what mistakes to avoid, what the process looks like, what questions they should be asking, how to evaluate potential providers, and what results they should realistically expect.

The goal isn’t to constantly tell them to buy. The goal is to give them the information they need to feel confident enough to decide.

Good nurturing doesn’t force someone down the funnel. It helps them move through it.

Finally, Go After the Colder Audience

Only after you’ve built content for your hot and warm audiences should you spend significant energy creating content for people who aren’t actively looking for you.

This is your cold audience.

They may have never heard of your company. They may not even realize they have a problem you can solve.

This is where educational, thought-leadership, and awareness content can play a powerful role.

But cold-audience content usually takes longer to turn into revenue, which is why companies with limited budgets can get frustrated when they start here. They create content designed to build awareness, but they haven’t built the infrastructure to convert people who are already interested. They’re filling the top of the funnel but leaving those prospects with nowhere further to go.

The Key Is to Work Backward

Think of your marketing strategy as at least three audiences.

Hot: “I’m ready to solve this.” Your marketing should help them decide.

Warm: “I have a problem, and I’m researching solutions.” Your marketing should educate and nurture.

Cold: “I’ve never heard of you, and I’m not thinking about this yet.” Your marketing should create awareness and interest.

The mistake is assuming you have to start with the cold audience. You don’t.

Work backward.

Start with the decision. Then identify what someone needs to know before they’re ready to make that decision. Then identify what they need to understand before they even begin evaluating solutions.

Now you have a content strategy.

Your Content Should Compound

A strong marketing engine is a connected system.

A hot-audience article might answer: “Do I need this service?” 

That article can lead to: “How much does [service] cost?” 

Then: “What should I know before starting this process?”

Then: “How do I choose the right provider?”  

Now you’ve created a path.

One piece of content supports another. Your website starts answering the questions prospects have at different stages of the buying journey.

Your sales team can send prospects useful resources instead of recreating the same explanations over and over. Your email marketing has something valuable to distribute. Your social content has something substantive to point toward.

And, increasingly, your content can help search engines and AI platforms understand exactly what your company knows and what problems you solve.

That’s a marketing engine.

Don’t Ask, “What Should We Post?” Ask Better Questions.

Instead of sitting down every month and brainstorming random topics, start with your customers.

Ask: What are people asking right before they hire us? Those are your hot topics.

Ask: What questions do people ask while they’re researching their options? Those are your warm topics.

Ask: What does someone need to understand before they even realize they need us? Those are your cold topics.

This approach creates content with a purpose.

Every article has a job. Every resource fits somewhere in the customer journey. And every piece of content has a reason for existing.

The Long-Term Payoff

Working backward isn’t necessarily the fastest way to produce a mountain of content, but it’s the fastest way to build useful content.

Over time, those resources begin to compound.

Your website becomes more authoritative. Your sales team has better resources. Your prospects become more educated before they ever talk to you. Your marketing becomes less dependent on constantly creating something new.

And eventually, you can go after colder audiences with much more confidence because you have an entire system waiting for them when they’re ready.

That’s the real goal of content marketing.

Not more blog posts. Not more traffic for the sake of traffic. Not a bigger content calendar.

A marketing engine that moves people from “I’ve never heard of you” to “You’re exactly who I need.”

And the smartest way to build that engine? Start at the end. Then work backward.

 

 

There are plenty of places to hear predictions about the future of financial services marketing.

The CMO Collective is different.

We created it to give senior marketing leaders across wealth management and fintech a place to talk candidly about what’s actually working, where new challenges are popping up, and where they’re investing next.

At Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, that conversation continued with a packed room of more than 120 marketing leaders discussing some of the issues shaping growth right now: how brands build credibility, the growing role of reviews and third-party validation, the changing economics of video, AI-driven discovery, marketing talent, and the pressure to prove ROI.

This year, the Collective took an important step forward.

The CMO Collective Is Becoming More Than an Event

Since launching the CMO Collective, our goal has been simple: create a community where financial services marketing leaders can learn from each other.The conversations at Future Proof reinforced why that matters.

Marketing leaders are being asked to do more than ever. They’re responsible for brand, demand, client experience, recruiting, AI adoption, technology, growth strategy, and, increasingly, proving how all of it connects to business results.

Those are hard problems to solve alone.

That’s why we were excited to announce the next evolution of the community at Future Proof: the new CMO Collective app.

Apple | Google Play

The app gives members a place to continue the conversations that happen at events throughout the year, connect directly with peers, ask questions, share ideas and tap into a community of marketers who understand the unique challenges of growing financial services firms.

The goal isn’t to create another place to scroll.

It’s to create a place to solve problems.

Visibility Is No Longer Enough

One of the strongest themes from our conversations was the difference between being visible and being believable.

Financial services firms have more ways than ever to get in front of prospects. The harder challenge is giving people a reason to trust what they see.

That means reviews, client stories, earned media, executive thought leadership, and third-party validation are becoming increasingly important parts of the marketing mix.

This matters even more as AI changes how people research firms.

Prospects aren’t necessarily moving neatly from a Google search to a website anymore. They’re reading reviews, consuming content, checking social profiles, seeing media coverage, and asking AI platforms to help them make sense of it all.

Marketing leaders have to think about the full body of evidence their brand creates.

Video Keeps Moving From “Nice to Have” to Core Infrastructure

Video was another major part of the conversation.

For years, many firms treated video as a special project: something produced occasionally for a campaign, executive message or product launch.

That model is changing.

Marketing teams increasingly need to produce video consistently and at scale, while still protecting quality, brand standards and authenticity.

And as AI makes content creation easier, the human side of video may become even more important.

People want to hear from real advisors, executives and subject matter experts. The technology should make those voices easier to capture and distribute, not replace them.

Reviews Are Becoming Part of the Growth Engine

Client reviews and testimonials also played a major role in the discussion.

Their value goes well beyond reputation management.

Reviews can help prospects validate a firm, reinforce positioning, strengthen conversion and give search engines and AI platforms more independent evidence about who a company serves and what it does well.

That changes the way firms should think about review programs.

The question is no longer simply, “Should we ask clients for reviews?”

It’s: How do reviews fit into our broader growth, content, search and credibility strategy?

Our Sponsors Help Make This Community Possible

The CMO Collective would not be what it is without partners who believe in the value of bringing financial services marketing leaders together.

We were proud to have the support of Amplify Reviews, StreetCred PR, Allspring Global Investments, WiserAdvisor/Indyfin and YT Era for this year’s Future Proof experience. Intention.ly highlighted all five as CMO Collective sponsors ahead of the event.

Each brings a different perspective to the challenges marketers are navigating, from reputation and earned media to advisor discovery, content and investment management.

More importantly, their support helps us create the kind of environment the Collective was designed for: candid conversation, useful ideas and relationships that extend well beyond a single conference.

Thank you to all of our sponsors for helping us continue to grow the CMO Collective. We couldn’t have made this possible without their support!

The Conversation Doesn’t End in Huntington Beach

The best part of the CMO Collective has never been a single panel or event.

It’s what happens when smart marketers who face similar challenges start sharing what they know.

That’s why the launch of the CMO Collective app is such an important next step for us.

Future Proof gave us the opportunity to get everyone together in one room.

Now we have a way to keep that room open all year.

If you lead marketing, growth or communications for a wealth management, fintech or financial services organization and want to be part of the conversation, we’d love to have you.

Join the CMO Collective by applying through the app.

Apple | Google Play

Future Proof has always been a useful snapshot of where wealth management is headed. This year, the signal felt especially clear. Marketing is becoming more central to growth. AI is forcing firms to rethink how work gets done and how trust gets built. The technology landscape is becoming simultaneously more capable and more overwhelming. 

And as more firms adopt the same tools, channels and language, differentiation is becoming harder, and more valuable. After several days of conversations with CMOs, CEOs, advisors, fintech leaders and growth executives in Huntington Beach, a few themes kept resurfacing. 

 

Marketing’s role inside the firm is getting much bigger 

One of the clearest takeaways from Future Proof was how rapidly the definition of “marketing” is expanding. That was especially evident on day three at our CMO Collective event, where we brought together marketing leaders from across wealth management to talk about what’s driving growth right now. The conversations ranged from credibility and client reviews to segmentation, video, AI and the challenge of deciding which opportunities deserve attention in the first place.

A few themes stood out. Visibility alone isn’t enough anymore. Brands need to be believable, which means building a clear point of view, creating strong client experiences and giving clients, partners and other third parties reasons to advocate for them. At the same time, more activity doesn’t automatically mean more growth. Several leaders emphasized the importance of narrowing the audience, choosing the channels and priorities that matter most, and having the discipline to say no to everything else.

AI added another layer to that conversation. Giving a marketing team access to AI tools is very different from building the skills, processes and judgment required to use them effectively. As the technology becomes embedded across the organization, marketers are increasingly helping determine not only how AI is used in campaigns, but how it affects search, reputation, personalization, content and the overall client journey.

That reflects a much broader change we’re seeing. The strongest marketing leaders aren’t simply responsible for campaigns, content and brand anymore. They’re increasingly involved in business development, organic growth, advisor recruiting, client experience, retention, technology decisions and AI adoption.

In many organizations, marketing is becoming one of the connective functions between what the business wants to accomplish and how the firm actually gets there.

That changes the profile of the modern marketing leader. The job increasingly requires someone who understands the business model, client journey, technology, data, sales and operations, not simply communications.

For growing RIAs and fintechs, marketing is moving closer to the center of enterprise strategy. And the firms that recognize that shift are likely to expect much more from the function than a full content calendar.

AI is everywhere, and it’s making the human advantage clearer. 

AI was an undercurrent of almost every panel, keynote and conversation we encountered. Its ability to reshape productivity, search, content creation, client service and operational efficiency is no longer theoretical. Every firm in the industry is going to have to determine how AI changes its growth model and how its people work.

We got to experience some of that momentum firsthand on day one. Our Advisor Brand Builder was selected from more than 200 submissions as one of just seven companies featured in Future Proof’s opening AI Demo Drop. We were grateful for the opportunity to share what we’ve been building with a packed crowd and show how AI can help advisors get to a stronger, more strategic brand foundation faster.

What surprised us most was what happened afterward. Throughout the rest of the event, people continued seeking us out to ask questions, learn more and talk about how the technology could fit into their own growth efforts. For us, that interest reinforced something bigger than the demo itself: firms are actively looking for practical ways to use AI that make their people more effective, not less important.

Because something else is happening at the same time. The more AI becomes capable of producing information, the more valuable distinctly human capabilities become: judgment, contextual understanding, empathy, experience and wisdom. Financial advice has never simply been about having access to information. It’s about knowing what information matters, what it means for a specific person and what someone should do about it. AI will dramatically expand what advisors and marketers can accomplish. But it may also make the human elements of great advice, and great marketing, even more important.

The technology problem is shifting from access to overwhelm 

There has never been more technology available to wealth management firms. That’s exciting,  and exhausting. Walking through Future Proof, you could see hundreds of companies solving legitimate problems across prospecting, data, AI, portfolio management, client experience, marketing, compliance and operations. 

The challenge is no longer finding technology. It’s deciding what deserves your attention. CEOs and CMOs are being asked to evaluate an increasingly crowded landscape while simultaneously integrating those tools into workflows, proving ROI and avoiding the operational drag that comes from adding technology without a clear strategy. The firms that win won’t necessarily be the ones with the most technology. They’ll be the ones that know what they’re trying to accomplish before they start buying it. 

Differentiation is becoming a business requirement 

The crowded technology landscape points to a larger challenge across financial services: sameness. As firms adopt similar technology, offer similar services and communicate using similar language, it becomes increasingly difficult for a prospective client or advisor to understand why one company is meaningfully different from another. That makes positioning and brand strategy even more important. 

Differentiation isn’t about manufacturing a clever tagline. It starts by understanding what is legitimately distinctive about your firm: your people, expertise, capabilities, philosophy, client experience or way of solving a problem. Then marketing has to make those differences visible. If you don’t decide what you want the market to remember about you, the market will usually default to seeing you as another version of everyone else. In a more crowded industry, blending in becomes increasingly expensive. 

Marketing needs change as firms grow 

Another theme reinforced throughout the week: there is no universal marketing playbook for RIAs. That came through clearly during day two’s The New Playbook for RIA Growth panel, where we joined other marketing leaders to talk about what’s driving growth now, what’s becoming less effective and where firms should be placing their bets as AI, changing referral patterns and increased competition reshape the market. One takeaway was especially clear: the right marketing model depends heavily on where a firm is in its growth journey.

A smaller firm below roughly $100 million in AUM rarely needs an elaborate omnichannel strategy. A few channels executed consistently around a clear audience and proposition can accomplish a lot. As firms move into the $200 million to $800 million range, the equation starts to change. Marketing becomes a more formal business function. Firms begin hiring internal talent, investing in technology and building more sophisticated, multichannel programs.

Closer to $500 million and approaching $1 billion, another challenge appears: one marketer can rarely execute everything the organization now expects marketing to accomplish. Content. Social. PR. Events. Digital. Lead generation. Automation. Advisor recruiting. Analytics. Brand. Client communications. That is where we increasingly see successful firms combining internal leadership with specialized outside execution. The goal isn’t simply to do more marketing. It’s to build the right mix of strategy, talent, technology and execution for the firm’s next stage of growth.

And the mandate can run in two directions: organic growth focused on attracting investors, and inorganic growth focused on attracting advisors, teams and additional AUM to the platform. Some of the fastest-growing firms are now building both engines simultaneously. The broader lesson from the panel was that the old playbook of relying heavily on referrals, occasional campaigns and a handful of disconnected tactics is becoming harder to sustain. Growth increasingly requires a marketing model that evolves with the business itself.

In an AI search world, belief matters as much as visibility 

For years, digital marketing emphasized being discoverable. The next challenge is being believable. Prospective clients rarely evaluate a financial firm based on one interaction. They search, compare, read reviews, visit social profiles, consume articles, encounter media coverage and increasingly ask AI platforms to help them synthesize what they find. That means firms need a broader credibility footprint. 

Client testimonials, reviews, earned media, executive thought leadership, third-party validation and authoritative content all help prospects answer an increasingly important question: 

Can I believe what this company says about itself? 

This also changes how we should think about top-of-funnel marketing. PR, reviews and thought leadership aren’t simply awareness tactics anymore. They help build the body of evidence that both humans and emerging AI-driven discovery experiences can use to understand who your firm is and whether it appears credible. Brand building and demand generation are becoming harder to separate. 

Growth ambitions and marketing investment remain disconnected 

One tension we heard repeatedly at Future Proof was the gap between how aggressively firms want to grow and how much they’re willing to invest in creating that growth. Many firms we spoke with are spending only a small percentage of revenue on marketing, even while setting aggressive growth objectives. You cannot consistently ask marketing to become a growth engine while funding it like a support department. 

Firms serious about growth need to determine what level of investment is actually required to build the people, technology, media, content, events and infrastructure necessary to create demand. There isn’t one percentage that makes sense for every firm. But there is a fundamental question every leadership team should answer: Does our marketing investment match our growth ambition? 

Too often, the answer is no. 

Experiences still matter, maybe more than ever 

For all the discussion about AI and digital transformation, one of the strongest marketing channels at Future Proof was sitting directly in front of us: the event itself.

Sponsors weren’t simply setting up booths. Many were building experiences designed to pull people in, keep them there and give them something worth remembering. That showed up everywhere, from happy hours like Zocks on the Rocks, along with booth activations featuring graffiti wine tumblers, monogrammed flip-flops, custom hat presses and, yes, puppies.

Those details may sound small, but they’re part of what made certain brands more memorable. They gave attendees a reason to stop, talk, participate and spend time with the people behind the logo. A booth tells people what you sell. An experience gives them a reason to engage with your brand.

Whether the audience is investors or advisors, events remain one of the few channels capable of creating concentrated attention, human interaction and emotional connection at the same time. And in an environment where everyone is competing for visibility, those moments can be far more powerful than another piece of collateral or another product pitch.

The best brands at Future Proof seemed to understand that. Their physical presence wasn’t treated as rented square footage. It was an extension of their positioning, personality and overall brand experience.

Twelve months from now will look very different 

Perhaps the most striking takeaway came from looking backward. Think about the technologies that have become routine in just the last year. AI notetakers are an obvious example. Many of us now rely on tools every day that would have felt novel only a short time ago. They help us remember more, move faster, create better work and spend less time on administrative tasks. The version of ourselves working without those tools would already struggle to compete with the version working today. Now project that same rate of change forward another twelve months. 

We don’t know exactly what the marketing function inside a wealth management firm will look like by Future Proof 2027. But we can be reasonably confident about one thing: Marketing, communications and brand will play a larger role in determining which companies grow and which companies disappear into the noise. The technology will keep changing. The channels will keep changing. The tools will keep changing. The firms that succeed won’t be the ones that perfectly predict what comes next. They’ll be the ones capable of adapting quickly while remaining very clear about who they are, who they serve and why someone should believe in them. That may ultimately be the biggest lesson from Future Proof this year. The future of marketing isn’t about doing more marketing. It’s about becoming a more important part of how the business grows.

“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.

 

You know those things that happen over and over again—so often that you should no longer be surprised by them—but somehow, the shock never quite wears off?

For me, it’s watching smart people with great companies convince themselves that a basic organic content program will generate millions of dollars in new revenue.

They plan a webinar once a month. They promote it with several emails. They publish a handful of organic social posts. Maybe they write a blog or produce a quarterly report. Then they turn to their marketing team or agency and ask: How is this going to generate millions in new business?

It probably isn’t.

That doesn’t mean those activities are unimportant. It means they’re being asked to do a job they weren’t designed to do on their own.

Content Creation Has Never Been Easier, and That’s the Problem

We’re operating in a world where content creation has been simplified by a factor of a thousand. Anyone can create content. Anyone can mass-produce it. With AI, even a very small company can generate blogs, emails, social posts, videos and webinar materials at a volume that once required an entire marketing department.

Traditional roadblocks to content creation have effectively disappeared.

But when the barrier to entry disappears, merely showing up stops being a differentiator.

Your prospects aren’t struggling to find another webinar to attend. They don’t need more emails in their inboxes or more generic insights in their LinkedIn feeds. They are surrounded by content, much of it saying essentially the same thing.

Producing content, even good content, is no longer enough to guarantee that the right people will see it, engage with it or ultimately buy from you.

And yet, many companies are still building growth projections around the assumption that they can publish consistently, distribute organically and generate millions of dollars in revenue without making a meaningful investment in audience acquisition.

The math doesn’t work.

Organic Marketing Is the Baseline, Not the Entire Growth Strategy

To be clear, I still believe in organic marketing.

Companies need a credible website. They need a clear point of view. They need thoughtful content, consistent communication, strong social channels and programs that keep them visible to clients and prospects. Organic marketing efforts establish credibility, support the sales process and help people understand what the company stands for.

But they aren’t a complete client-acquisition strategy.

For Intention.ly’s first five years, we worked with many companies that wanted to build a stronger organic presence. We helped smaller firms develop a bigger voice. We improved the caliber of their ideas, their creative, and the way they showed up in the market.

That work mattered, and it still does.

But the market has changed. The tactics that once helped a firm stand out are now being used by everyone. What worked when relatively few companies were publishing thoughtful content will not produce the same results in a world where every company can publish something every day.

I’m not suggesting firms should abandon organic marketing, but they do need to stop assuming organic marketing alone is a scalable revenue engine.

Every Business Has a Cost to Acquire a Client

No matter what you sell, there is a cost to acquiring a client.

That cost might include paid media, events, sponsorships, partnerships, technology, data, salespeople, outbound programs, content production or the time of the people responsible for building relationships. It will look different for every business, but it exists.

Companies need to understand that cost, model it honestly and determine whether the economics of the business can support it.

If your firm can’t afford to acquire customers, your business-model problem is more significant than any potential marketing problem.

You can’t build a long-term growth strategy around the hope that enough people will happen to find your content, join your webinar, open your emails and eventually request a meeting.

Hope is not a distribution strategy.

At Intention.ly, I would never assume that we can invest no meaningful time, money or resources into acquiring clients and still produce predictable growth simply by sending emails and posting on social media. We invest in our brand, our relationships, our partnerships, our visibility, our sales team, our marketing infrastructure and the experiences that bring us closer to the companies we want to serve.

Why would we expect a different economic reality for our clients?

Even Influence Is Not a Free Pass

There are exceptions. A company with a true category-defining personality or major industry influencer may be able to generate significant demand through organic channels because that person has already built an audience.

But even that advantage is becoming harder to sustain.

Audience reach is less predictable. Algorithms change constantly. Organic distribution continues to decline. People are overwhelmed with information. Even well-known experts increasingly need paid distribution, partnerships, events, and coordinated campaigns to reach beyond the audience they already have, and most companies don’t have a top industry influencer sitting inside their business.

They have smart executives with valuable ideas, but those ideas still need a strategy, creative differentiation, and investment behind them if they’re going to reach enough of the right people to affect revenue.

Stop Asking Marketing to Manufacture Revenue Without Investment

If you’re asking your internal marketing team or your agency to generate millions of dollars in revenue without providing an acquisition budget, it’s time to take several steps back and analyze the expectation from a metrics standpoint.

How many qualified prospects need to see your message? How much will it cost to reach them? How long is the buying cycle? What percentage will convert? What is an acquired client worth? Which channels can create sufficient volume, and which ones primarily build credibility or support conversion?

Those are the questions behind a real growth strategy.

The next era of marketing will require more creativity, not less. Companies will need stronger ideas, more distinctive experiences, and more compelling reasons for people to pay attention, but creativity doesn’t eliminate the need for investment. Great creative that no one sees is still invisible.

Keep producing the content. Keep hosting the webinars. Keep sending the emails and publishing the organic social posts. Those channels remain essential parts of a credible, connected growth engine.

Just stop expecting them to generate millions of dollars on their own.

You can’t demand extraordinary revenue from an ordinary level of investment.

 

There was a time when marketers needed to remind executives that their brand was more than their logo. I don’t think that’s the most interesting conversation anymore.

Most sophisticated financial services execs understand that brand includes positioning, messaging, experience, reputation, and plenty of other elements beyond colors and typography.

But is any of it creating the intended meaning in the minds of the people you’re trying to reach?

Your biggest branding problem probably isn’t whether people recognize you. It’s whether they know what to remember you for.

A prospect can recognize your company name, see your advertising, follow your team on LinkedIn and even visit your website without developing a particularly strong idea about why your company matters. That’s just awareness.

Your brand has to do more. It should give people a shortcut for understanding who you are, what you stand for, and why they should choose you over the alternatives.

In other words, the job of a brand isn’t simply to make your company recognizable. It’s to make something recognizable about your company. In financial services, that’s harder than it sounds.

Observation 1: Most Financial Services Brands Suffer From Sameness, Not Ugliness

Spend enough time on wealth management, asset management, and fintech websites, and you’ll encounter a familiar collection of words.Trust me, I know them by heart. 

Independent. Fiduciary. Comprehensive. Personalized. Holistic. Client-first. Sophisticated.

None of those are bad things. In fact, many firms using those words to describe themselves can prove exactly how they live up to the definitions. But truth and differentiation aren’t the same thing. That’s where I think many financial services companies misdiagnose their branding problem.

They don’t have an aesthetics problem. Their websites look professional enough. Their logos are contemporary. Their presentations have been polished. Their executives photograph well.

They have a sameness problem.

The language sounds like everyone else’s language. The claims sound like everyone else’s claims. And when a buyer encounters five firms making some variation of the same argument, they have no reason to remember one over another.

Professionalism can get you into the consideration set, but it rarely tells someone why you should win it.

Observation 2: Differentiation Doesn’t Mean Nobody Else Can Say It

I’ve watched executives dismiss potentially strong positioning with some version of the same objection:

“But couldn’t one of our competitors say that too?”

Probably, but that’s not necessarily a problem.True differentiation doesn’t require finding a sentence that would be impossible for another company to claim too. It requires choosing an idea you can credibly own and then reinforcing it so consistently that the market begins associating that idea with you.

A current financial services example illustrates this well. Consider Altruist. The firm entered an RIA custody market dominated by enormous incumbents. Advisors already understood what a custodian was. Altruist didn’t have to invent a new category from scratch; the firm just had to get advisors to consider it in a different mental bucket.

For years, Altruist has consistently positioned itself around the idea of the modern custodian: technology-forward, purpose-built for independent RIAs and deliberately contrasted with legacy custodial infrastructure.

When it overhauled its brand identity in 2025, Altruist explicitly said it wanted the visual and verbal expression of the company to feel distinct from legacy competitors and represent what the custodial experience should look and feel like for modern advisors.

Then, on August 26th, Vanguard announced an agreement to acquire Altruist, with Altruist continuing to operate as a standalone business. I’m not suggesting branding caused a transaction of that magnitude. Acquisitions happen because of businesses, economics, technology, distribution, talent, strategic fit, and many other factors. However, the moment provides an interesting illustration of brand equity.

Altruist doesn’t simply identify as another custodial platform. For many advisors, the name represents an idea about what modern custody should become. That’s what a brand is supposed to do. Jason Wenk knew it early on, and so did his team. 

Schwab and Fidelity are significantly more recognizable names. But Altruist didn’t need to beat them at recognition; it needed the right audience to think:

Altruist? That’s the modern one.

That’s a mental shortcut. It’s brilliant, especially in an age where we burn too many mental calories absorbing a ridiculous amount of new information every day.

Observation 3: A Strong Brand Reduces How Much Selling You Have to Do

At a certain point, branding stops being a marketing exercise and becomes a commercial one. When your positioning isn’t clear, every interaction starts from zero. 

• Your salesperson explains the company.
• Your CEO explains the company’s vision.
• Your website explains the company’s ideal clients.
• Your PR firm explains the company’s thought leaders.
• Your ads explain the company’s value proposition.
• Your content explains the company’s point of view and process.

And every explanation sounds slightly different because nobody has a sufficiently strong idea around which everything else can organize. That’s inefficient and expensive.

When you’ve already established a strong brand, people enter those interactions with useful context that saves time and energy.

They’ve encountered the same perspective in an article. They’ve heard it from your executives. They’ve seen it reflected in your product. They’ve heard someone else describe you that way.

Now, your salesperson isn’t introducing an entirely new idea. They’re reinforcing one, and that has implications far beyond branding.

PR makes a bigger impact because reporters understand the story. Content compounds because each piece strengthens the same association. Referrals become easier because clients can easily explain what distinguishes the firm. Advertising becomes cumulative rather than a collection of disconnected campaigns. Sales conversations start further down the funnel.

Marketing creates exposure. Brand determines what survives the exposure.

Observation 4: Every Additional Sentence Creates Friction

Financial services suffers from another particular branding affliction: we confuse complexity with sophistication.

As companies grow, they accumulate: new capabilities, new audiences, new service models, new technology, acquisition, specialists, the list goes on. And because every one of those things matters internally, companies inevitably try to communicate all of them externally.

The homepage becomes a catalog. The pitch becomes a paragraph. The positioning becomes a list. The buyer gets handed the complexity and told to sort it out. Unlike the marketing efforts for advisors two decades ago, buyers don’t experience your company through your organizational chart.

They experience fragments of it. A headline. A recommendation. A conference conversation. A LinkedIn post. A Google search. A fifteen-minute introductory call.

They will never remember everything you want them to know. Which is why I increasingly think about brand as compression.

Your organization may consist of hundreds of people, capabilities, beliefs, products and proof points. Your market might retain three ideas. Brand strategy determines which three.

The best companies don’t make their businesses simpler just for the sake of marketing. They make complex businesses easier to understand.

That’s different, and in today’s RIA and fintech space, it’s enormously valuable.

Observation 5: The Real Test of Brand Is Recall

Most companies measure brand using things they can easily see.

Did awareness increase? Do people recognize our name? Does our website feel premium? Is our visual identity consistent?

Those are useful questions, but I’d add a much harder one:

When your ideal client encounters the problem you solve, do they think of you? And do they know why?

That’s the standard. Ask a client what you’re particularly good at. Ask a prospect what they believe differentiates you. Ask an employee to describe the company in one sentence or what they feel about working for the firm. Ask a referral partner when they would recommend you instead of somebody else.

If every answer is different, or the answers are generic, you’ve learned something important.

You might have recognition, but you haven’t created enough meaning, and recognition without meaning is a fragile advantage.

Make Yourself Easier to Choose

Financial services will always involve thorough decision-making.

People aren’t selecting wealth managers, custodians, asset managers, or enterprise technology platforms on the strength of a tagline. They’ll evaluate capabilities, look at performance, conduct due diligence, and look for evidence that they’re selecting the right partner.

A strong brand presence doesn’t eliminate any of that, but it does help someone move from:

I’ve heard of them.

to

I understand them.

to

I believe them.

to

I should consider them.

Brand is a shortcut to belief. That’s why I’d recommend starting your next brand conversation by asking: What do we want someone to remember about us after they’ve forgotten everything else?

Oftentimes, it’s also why I encourage our clients to name an emotion someone feels after engaging with them. Emotions and feelings stick with you and serve as shortcuts. 

Every company already has a brand. The strategic question is whether yours is making the buying decision easier or forcing your prospects to do the work of figuring you out.

People ask me fairly often why we call Intention.ly a growth engine design firm. 

Why not a marketing agency? We do marketing. Why not a growth agency? We certainly help companies grow. Why not a digital, creative, demand generation, or marketing technology firm? We have expertise across all of those areas too.

The answer goes all the way back to why I started Intention.ly in the first place.

Before founding this company, I sat in the CMO seat. And not just any CMO seat. I was fortunate enough to serve as CMO at two of the fastest-growing fintech companies in our industry. When you serve in that role during periods of tremendous growth, you learn something very quickly: growth is never the product of one great marketing tactic.

Your job isn’t to make one part work. Your job is to make everything work together.

At any given time, I had internal teams, agencies, specialist partners, technology partners, sales teams, leadership teams, budgets, revenue targets, campaigns, content, events, websites, CRM systems, data, and about a thousand other competing priorities. Any individual partner could be doing an excellent job and we could still have a growth problem.

My paid media team could show me fantastic campaign results. My creative partners could be producing exceptional work. My technology vendors could demonstrate all the valuable things their platforms were capable of doing. My internal team could be working incredibly hard. 

But from my seat, I had to answer the bigger question:: Is all of this working together to grow the business?

That broader perspective set the foundation for Intention.ly.

I Didn’t Need Another Silo. I Needed Someone Who Could See the Whole Thing.

As CMO, nearly everyone around me was looking at the business through the lens of their particular responsibility, and that’s exactly what they should be doing. 

The paid media team should obsess over paid performance. The creative team should care deeply about the quality of the brand. The demand generation partner should be focused on creating opportunities. The CRM provider should know its technology inside and out.

But CMOs don’t have the luxury of optimizing one piece at a time. If you’ve been in that role, you know your job is to sit above it all, trying to figure out how those pieces come together to produce business outcomes. I call that process growth engine design.

What Is Growth Engine Design?

Growth engine design is the process of designing, connecting, executing on, and continuously improving all of the components responsible for producing growth. It starts with the business outcome and works backward.

Simple to say, but a fundamental game-changer in practice.

Let’s say you’re behind your revenue goal. You could go to a marketing agency and say, “We need more leads.” And they may say, “Let’s put more money into paid media.” That isn’t a bad recommendation. More leads may be exactly what you need.

But if you came to Intention.ly, the question we ask would be different: “You have a $5 million revenue gap. What’s the fastest, smartest, most efficient way to close it?”

Maybe the answer is more leads. But what if you already have thousands of leads sitting in your database that nobody is effectively nurturing? 

What if you’re generating plenty of opportunities, but your conversion rate is terrible?

What if the sales cycle is unnecessarily long? 

What if your positioning isn’t resonating? 

What if your sales team isn’t telling the story effectively? 

What if your best growth opportunity is increasing share of wallet with the clients you already have? 

What if referrals are your highest-converting source of business, but you’ve never built an intentional strategy around generating more of them?

Looking at the goal through a more holistic lens, “spend more on paid media” may turn out to be the slowest and most expensive answer.

That’s growth engine design. We don’t start with the tactic we’re capable of selling you. We start with the growth problem you’re trying to solve.

20 Different Ways to Solve the Pitch Deck Problem

Imagine you come to us and say, “Our pitch deck needs to be redesigned to match our new brand.” 

We can absolutely do that. We have an incredible creative team. We build pitch decks all the time.

But I don’t want us to stop there. I want to know: Why aren’t you getting the outcome you want when you use this deck?

Maybe it is the design. Or maybe the messaging isn’t strong enough. Maybe the story takes 25 meandering slides to get to what your prospect cares about. Maybe your differentiation isn’t clear. Maybe the person delivering the presentation isn’t telling the story effectively. Maybe sales is using the deck inconsistently. Maybe prospects are receiving it after meetings and you have no idea whether they’re opening it, sharing it, or engaging with it.

The deliverable might still be a new pitch deck. But we’re solving a completely different problem. We’re not trying to make the deck prettier. We’re trying to make the sales process perform better. And because we understand the role that deck plays inside the larger growth engine, the work itself should be better.

The Same Thing Happens With Paid Media

You can ask a paid media partner, “How did the campaign perform?” That’s a perfectly reasonable question, and great paid media can be an incredibly powerful growth lever.

But from the CMO seat, I always had another set of questions. What happened after someone clicked? Did we attract the right people? Did they convert? What happened to the people who didn’t convert immediately? Did they enter an effective nurture journey? Did sales follow up? Did the message that generated the click carry through to the landing page and sales conversation? Did those leads ultimately become opportunities and revenue?

In other words: How did that campaign perform across the entire growth engine, not just inside the advertising platform?

That’s not a criticism of paid media specialists. A great specialist should be exceptional at what you’ve hired them to do. Our job is different. Our job is to make sure what they do connects to everything that comes before and after it.

Technology Isn’t the Answer on its Own

I feel the same way about marketing technology. I love technology. We use it extensively, implement it for clients, and partner with some fantastic technology companies.

But I’ve also seen firms spend extraordinary amounts of money building sophisticated tech stacks that aren’t producing anywhere near the value they should. Often, the technology works just fine. The system around it doesn’t.

Maybe nobody owns it. Maybe the data is bad. Maybe sales doesn’t use it. Maybe the right automation was never built. Maybe the strategy changed but the technology didn’t. Maybe the company bought five platforms that each solve a problem nobody had clearly defined in the first place.

A powerful marketing technology platform without the right strategy, processes, integrations, and people running it only causes more problems. So we don’t start by asking, “What tool should you buy?” We start by asking, “What does the growth engine need to do?” Then we determine the right combination of people, processes, technology, and execution to make that happen.

Agency Execution Is Still Part of the Growth Engine

I want to be very clear about this because calling ourselves a growth engine design firm does not mean we’ve somehow graduated beyond execution. Quite the opposite.

We run the campaigns. We create the content. We build the websites. We design the pitch decks. We create sales enablement materials. We develop messaging. We build automation. We execute digital strategies.

Because another thing I learned from sitting in the CMO seat is that strategy without execution is worthless.

Most firms are not sitting around with an abundance of time and people wondering what everyone should work on next. They’re short on hours in the day. They’re short on execution capacity. Their leaders and their marketing teams are stretched thin. Their salespeople need to sell. And there are always more good ideas than there are people available to execute them.

So yes, we absolutely do the agency work. The difference is that we’re doing it in the context of the broader system we’re building.

If we’re creating your content, we understand the demand strategy it supports. If we’re building your sales enablement collateral, we understand where conversion is breaking down. If we’re running your paid media, we understand what happens to prospects after they click. If we’re implementing your technology, we understand who needs to use it and what business process it is supposed to improve.

The execution isn’t separate from growth engine design. The execution is part of growth engine design.

So What Does Intention.ly Compete With?

Honestly, I don’t think our biggest competition is another agency. It’s fragmentation.

It’s the firm with seven smart partners, 14 pieces of technology, an internal marketing team, a sales organization, a long list of initiatives, and no one responsible for making the entire thing work as one system. It’s the company producing a tremendous amount of marketing activity but struggling to connect that activity to revenue. It’s the company that has a good strategy but can’t execute it, or great execution capabilities without a clear strategy.

It’s marketing handing a lead to sales and calling the job done. It’s tech that gets purchased but never operationalized. It’s the broken handoff process letting growth fall through the cracks.

That’s what we’re trying to fix.

What Should You Expect From a Growth Engine Design Firm?

Expect us to ask different questions. If you tell us you need more leads, we’re going to want to understand why. If you tell us you need a new website, we’re going to ask what the website needs to accomplish. If you tell us you need a campaign, we’re going to ask what business problem that campaign is supposed to solve. If you tell us your marketing isn’t working, we’re probably going to look beyond marketing.

You should also expect us to get our hands dirty. We’re not going to hand you a beautiful strategy deck and wish you luck. We can design the engine, help build the engine, and execute the work required to make the engine run.

And then we’re going to measure it, because the point isn’t to create more marketing. The point is to create more growth.

Why “Growth Engine Design”?

When I think back to my years as a CMO, the firm I needed wasn’t another company trying to sell me its particular hammer. I needed people who could look at the entire business with me. People who could understand the revenue goal, diagnose what was standing in the way, figure out which levers mattered most, connect the right people and technology, and then help execute the work.

That’s the company we’ve built.

That’s why “marketing agency” has never felt big enough to describe Intention.ly. We do marketing. We do strategy. We do technology. We do sales enablement. We do execution. But none of those things, individually, is the point.

The point is making them work together to create measurable, repeatable, scalable growth.

That’s growth engine design. And that’s why Intention.ly is a growth engine design firm.