Financial Planning tapped Ficomm's expertise in a deep-dive guide on how RIAs can build a marketing plan designed to drive new business momentum. The piece cuts through the noise on digital channels, driving home that shiny tactics often distract firms from the most effective growth strategies. The secret ingredient? A documented plan.
Most advisory firms aren't struggling because they're doing too little marketing. They're struggling because what they're doing doesn't connect.
A LinkedIn post here, a newsletter there, a website refresh whenever someone has bandwidth. It's activity; but not a strategy. And without a strategy, you're spending real time and money on work that doesn't compound.
Financial Planning explored this problem in a recent guide on how RIAs should approach building a marketing plan. The piece draws on perspectives from across the industry and makes a point that sounds obvious until you look at how most firms actually operate: the ones that grow have a documented strategy. The ones that don't are busy but not moving.
Why tactics keep failing
Channels are seductive. Advisors get pulled into debates about platforms, SEO scores, and whether they should be on YouTube — before they've answered a single foundational question about who they're trying to reach. Those channel decisions matter eventually. They just shouldn't come first.
Effective marketing in wealth management starts with clarity on three things: who you're trying to reach, what you want to be known for, and what specific action you want a prospect to take. Without that foundation, even polished execution produces inconsistent results. There's nothing tying activity to actual growth goals.
What Ficomm sees across client engagements tracks with what the Financial Planning piece describes: firms that invest in documenting a marketing strategy before investing in execution see faster, more durable growth. The strategy itself isn't the magic. It makes every downstream decision easier and faster because the hard thinking has already been done.
The plan is the differentiator
The advisory firms that look like they have marketing figured out rarely have more resources than their peers. They have more clarity. They know what they're building toward, they've made deliberate choices about where to show up, and they hold themselves to a roadmap.
That discipline is what separates firms that grow from firms that stay busy.
If you can't articulate your marketing strategy in one clear sentence, that's the first thing to fix.
Read the full Financial Planning article here.