How to get clients as a financial advisor, by the numbers.

Most advice on getting clients as a financial advisor is a list of opinions. Fortunately, this is one of the few professions with good public data on what actually works, thanks to Kitces Research and its studies of how advisors market their services.

This guide uses that data, mainly from The Kitces Report marketing study published in 2024, to answer the practical questions: where clients come from, what they cost, which tactics to add when referrals stop being enough, and how to stay inside the SEC and FINRA rules while you do it.

Where do financial advisors' clients actually come from?

From referrals, overwhelmingly. In the Kitces 2024 study, 88% of advisors used client referrals and 62% marketed through centres of influence, such as accountants and attorneys. Looked at from the client's side, almost two-thirds of clients found their advisor through a referral, either from someone already using the advisor or from a third party they trusted. That third party could be their attorney, their accountant or a website they saw as a credible place to "find an advisor".

Of the rest, about 20% of the total met the advisor first at an educational or networking event. Barely 10% came through all of the advisor's other marketing tactics combined.

That doesn't mean other tactics are pointless. It means most prospects want a trusted signal before they call, and good marketing either creates that signal or strengthens it.

Why do referrals stop being enough?

Referrals have three limits that show up as a practice grows:

• They depend on your time. Kitces found referral generation took the greatest share of advisor time of any tactic group, and that time gets more expensive as you grow.
• They don't scale. Larger practices reported diminishing returns from asking the same clients for introductions year after year.
• They're unpredictable. You can't easily turn up referrals in a month when you need them.

Kitces also found that a heavy reliance on referrals didn't correlate with sustained growth, and that high-growth practices generated more of their new client revenue from non-referral tactics. The lesson isn't to stop asking for referrals. It's to add channels that keep working when you're busy.

What does it cost to get a new client?

The Kitces study defines client acquisition cost (CAC) as all marketing spending in a year, including the value of advisor and staff time, divided by the new clients won that year. The median was $3,800 per client in 2023, up 75% since 2021. Soft dollars, mostly advisor time, made up 71% of marketing expenditure. High-growth practices spent 12.5% of revenue on marketing, compared with 9.7% for their peers.

Here's a worked example of the calculation with illustrative numbers. Use your own.

• An advisor spends $9,000 a year on hard costs: a directory listing, a website, a few events.
• They spend about 150 hours a year on marketing. Valued at $200 an hour, that's $30,000.
• Total marketing cost: $39,000.
• They win 10 new clients. CAC: $3,900.
• If a typical new client generates $6,000 a year in fees and stays for many years, that CAC is easy to justify. If they generate $2,000, it's a problem.

The useful part is the split. Most of this advisor's marketing cost is their own time. Any tactic that saves time, or works without them in the room, changes the maths fastest. Our guide to calculating marketing ROI goes further.

Which tactics should you add after referrals?

Kitces groups tactics by how they perform. Here's a simplified view, with the findings from the 2024 study.

A sensible mix for most practices is one time-based tactic you already do well, usually referrals or centres of influence, plus one or two tactics that run without you in the room, such as a directory listing or a steady stream of niche content. Add one tactic at a time and give it long enough to judge. Kitces found the typical advisor used five tactics in 2024, up from four in 2022, so more isn't automatically better. Doing fewer things consistently tends to beat sampling everything once.

How do you turn content and search into clients?

This is where many advisors go wrong. They build a website, publish a few general posts about "the importance of diversification", and wonder why nobody calls.

The Kitces data points to a better model. Content works when it is aimed at a specific group and when something helps people find it. In practice:

1. Pick a niche you can describe in one sentence. For example, physicians in their first ten years of practice, or business owners planning a sale.
2. Write about their decisions, not your services. Student loan repayment for residents. What happens to your 401(k) when you sell the company.
3. Make it findable. That's SEO's job: pages structured around the questions people search, a fast site, a solid Google Business Profile and links from credible sources.
4. Use it in referrals. Send a centre of influence your guide on the exact issue their client faces. Kitces found most content tactics had a 40% or greater chance of success when supported by distribution tactics.
5. Measure meetings, not traffic. Track which pages lead to booked discovery meetings.

Content also feeds AI assistants. When someone asks a chatbot how Roth conversions work, the answer draws on clear, well-sourced pages. Our guide to generative engine optimisation explains how that works.

If search is the gap in your marketing, our financial advisor SEO service builds niche pages and educational content with a compliance review step built in.

What compliance rules shape advisor marketing?

Whatever tactic you choose, the rules travel with it. For registered investment advisers, the SEC Marketing Rule (Rule 206(4)-1) is the main one:

• No untrue statements of material fact, and no material claims you can't substantiate on request.
• Any potential benefit you mention needs fair and balanced treatment of the material risks.
• Testimonials and endorsements need clear and prominent disclosures about client status, compensation and material conflicts. Paid promoters above a de minimis $1,000 in 12 months need a written agreement.
• Performance in an advertisement generally has to show net alongside gross, and one, five and ten-year periods for portfolios.

Under the Books and Records Rule, advisers keep copies of advertisements for at least five years from the end of the fiscal year they were last used.

For broker-dealer representatives, FINRA Rule 2210 requires a registered principal to approve retail communications before use, sets testimonial disclosure requirements and bars predictions or projections of performance. If you hold the CFP® marks, CFP Board has its own usage rules too.

What doesn't work for getting advisor clients?

• Generic market commentary. Thousands of firms publish it. It rarely brings anyone to you specifically.
• Treating SEO as a vending machine. The Kitces data shows SEO performs poorly as a standalone lead source. It's a multiplier for content and referrals.
• Abandoning tactics after three months. Events, content and centres of influence all take time to show results.
• Buying leads without checking the fit. Paid lead platforms can work, but measure the cost per signed client, not per lead.
• Skipping compliance until the end. Rewriting a finished campaign is slower than building review into the plan from day one.

The short version

Keep asking for referrals, but don't rely on them alone. Add a directory listing, pick a niche, publish content that helps that niche make decisions, and use SEO and email to get it in front of them. Measure your client acquisition cost, including your own time, and build compliance review into the plan from the start.

This guide is general information about marketing practices, not financial, legal or compliance advice. Your compliance team and the current rule text decide what you can publish.

Sources: Kitces Research, The Kitces Report, Volume 1, 2024, "Marketing Survey: How Financial Planners Actually Market Their Services"; SEC, Investment Adviser Marketing Rule, 17 CFR 275.206(4)-1; SEC, Books and Records Rule, 17 CFR 275.204-2; FINRA Rule 2210, Communications with the Public; CFP Board, "How to use the CFP marks".