Marketing for RIAs: What I'd Build First If the Goal Is Better-Fit Inbound
If you gave me an established RIA with a solid website, years of referrals, a blog that’s been around for a while, advisors who post when they have something to say, and an actual marketing budget…
then tell me leadership wants more inbound from the kinds of clients the firm wants more of,
I’m probably not opening a blank editorial calendar first.
I want to know what happens when the right prospect encounters the firm. Can they quickly see that the firm works with people in their situation? Is there enough substance for them to keep researching? If they search for the problem they’re dealing with, does the firm have a chance of showing up?
That’s what gives me the order of operations for literally everything that comes next. Start with what the right prospect needs to recognize. Then build the pages, content, and distribution around that.
If you’re responsible for the marketing for an RIA and better-fit inbound is the goal, this is the sequence I’d build first before I decide to hit the pedal to the metal and add more content.
First, I’d Make It Obvious Who The Firm Is For
If leadership within the firm says the growth priority is executives with equity compensation, business owners approaching a sale, or $5MM+ families nearing retirement, I should be able to see that in the marketing pretty quickly.
Hot take: “Comprehensive wealth management for individuals and families” gives me almost nothing to work with.
A prospect with $8 million tied up in company stock is looking for a reason to believe that the firm understands the decisions that come with that situation. If those signs are buried three pages deep, they’re going to keep looking until another firm makes that clear.
That’s why I don’t think it makes sense to start by trying to get more traffic onto the site. If the firm wants more of a specific audience but the marketing is still built to reach anyone with money to invest, we’re scaling the wrong thing.
For me, better-fit inbound starts with making it easy for the right person to recognize themselves in the firm’s work.
I want the right person to get to the site and think, “They work with people dealing with exactly this.” Once that’s true, the rest of the marketing has something solid to build around.
Then I’d Give That Audience a Place to Go
Once I know which business the firm wants more of, I want to see what substantial path they’ve built for those people.
I’ve seen firms with years of blog content and almost no real page dedicated to a priority audience.
Say widows are a major growth focus, but the website mentions them once on a general wealth management page. That leaves very little for a referred prospect to dig into and very little for Google to connect with searches around the situations those clients are actually living.
Before adding another long list of blog topics, I’d build out the parts of the site that should already exist: an audience page designed to convert, the service pages tied to that work, and pages around the financial situations that tend to bring those prospects in.
We want to prioritize having the right coverage over having a huge content library.
If leadership wants the firm known for a certain kind of work, the website should have enough depth around it that both prospects and search engines can actually see it.
I’d Go After the Questions that Come Up Before They Find You
Once the site has a real place for the firm’s priority audiences to enter, I’d build content around the questions that tend to show up right before someone needs advice.
Not broad topics like “What is a Roth IRA?” More like:
Should I convert to Roth before RMDs begin?
What do I do with company stock before I retire?
How should I prepare financially before selling my business?
Those questions tell me someone’s already dealing with a decision the firm gets paid to help with; that’s where I’d rather spend the content budget.
An article that brings in 60 people wrestling with a problem the firm handles every week makes more sense to me than one that brings in 2,000 visitors looking for a definition. It also gives the firm something worth using outside of search. An advisor can send it after a conversation, or marketing can pull from it for email or LinkedIn.
I get curious when the search itself tells me something about the person behind it. “What is a Roth IRA?” could come from almost any firm. “Should I convert to Roth before RMDs?” tells me we’re reaching someone dealing with a specific planning decision right now.
I’d Want the Call to Start Further Along
If the first 20 minutes of every prospect call are spent explaining that yes, the firm works with executives, yes, the advisors understand concentrated stock, and yes, they help think through retirement timing, the marketing left way too much work for the advisor.
I’d rather have that prospect come in asking about their decision. Questions about things like: whether retiring before the next vest changes the plan, how much company stock they’re comfortable carrying, or what happens tax-wise if a bunch of things hit in the same year.
Advisor time is expensive. A calendar full of calls is not a good thing when it’s going to senior advisors running through the brochure-level details that should’ve been elsewhere on the site. If your site covers the basics, those calls can get to the actual planning problem way sooner.
That’s what I’d want the marketing to accomplish before I spend more money driving people toward it: help the right prospects arrive ready to talk about the work they may actually hire the firm to do.
Then I’d Get More Mileage From the Content We Already Paid to Create
One of the biggest mistakes I see firms make is that they’ll finally create the resources that their prospects need, and then they let it sit around waiting for Google.
Don’t let that idea disappear after it’s published.
Say the firm wants more business owners approaching a sale and has an article on the financial decisions that need attention 12-24 months beforehand. That article can keep earning search traffic, but it can also become the source material for a newsletter, give an advisor something substantive to discuss on LinkedIn, and give a CPA a link to share when a client mentions an upcoming exit.
Each use puts the same expertise in front of the market from a different direction without needing another asset.
Now, the advisor input and compliance review behind that article can keep working beyond the blog. Reusing the idea across the firm’s existing channels keeps more of the marketing centered on pre-sale planning, so business owner prospects and referral partners can find the same expertise often enough for the firm to become known for it.
I’d Let the Sales Conversations Tell Me What to Build Next
Once prospects start booking, at this stage I’d want to learn from what keeps coming up on those calls.
Those calls tell you what was happening in someone’s life when they finally started looking for help and how they described the problem in their own words. You also get to hear what they needed to understand about the firm before they felt ready to reach out, along with the questions they were still trying to answer once they got on the call.
That’s your raw material gold mine for attracting more people in similar situations.
Over time, you start seeing the decision points that keep showing up among the clients the firm actually wants. Those patterns should shape the next round of content, the language on the website, and the searches you decide are worth pursuing.
I’d want to build the next quarter’s marketing around what good-fit prospects were actually thinking and looking for. Client calls are where many of those naturally come up.
Final Thoughts
If I were working with a firm who wanted better-fit inbound, I’d base the strategy around who the firm wants to work with. That’s what should inform the pages to build, searches to care about, questions to turn into content, and how the rest of the marketing gets used. Otherwise, it’s easy to keep yourself busy without changing what sales calendars look like.
Start with the clients your firm wants, then make sure the marketing gives that person plenty of reasons to find the firm and keep building a relationship with it.
I work with RIAs to build that kind of system: website messaging, SEO content, and the strategy connecting it all to the business the firm wants to grow. If your firm already has marketing in motion but wants a better path to the clients you actually want more of, book a call to talk about working together.
