Follow the Gold, Not the Fool’s Gold

Most advisors chase “popular” marketing tactics when a more lucrative opportunity is already within reach.

When I ask advisors what they want to do for marketing, the answer is almost always the same: social media, maybe some ads, automated AI outreach. It always surprises me because these are fool’s gold. They look promising, they take real effort to chase, but they rarely pay off the way you expect. Meanwhile, there’s usually a gold mine within reach that’s being ignored.

Here are two examples.

Imagine a firm focused on divorcees that shares a floor with a divorce attorney practice. The attorneys know what the advisors do, they like them, and they are not only happy to refer them business but willing to make introductions to other attorneys in the area and help them get access to speaking at CLE events. That’s pure gold.

Or imagine a wealth management firm affiliated with a CPA practice that’s growing rapidly through acquisition. Every time the CPA firm acquires a new practice, there’s a new pool of clients who need financial planning. The advisors don’t need to run ads. They need a system for getting introduced to the clients already coming through the door. That’s pure gold.

In both scenarios, why would you spend any time chasing fool’s gold when you literally own a gold mine?

The takeaway: Before you invest in a marketing tactic you have to build from scratch, look at what’s already in front of you. The highest-return opportunity is the one that’s specific to your situation, your relationships, and your niche.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

A Marketing Plan Is Not a Marketing System

A plan tells you what to do. A system keeps you doing it.

A marketing plan is a document. It outlines your target audience, lists some tactics, and sets a few goals for the year. It’s an excellent starting point. But a plan by itself is static. It doesn’t adapt, it doesn’t remind you what to do on Tuesday, and it doesn’t help you when you’re stuck.

A marketing system is the infrastructure around the plan that keeps it alive. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Annual Strategy

A system starts with an annual strategy that defines your direction: who you’re marketing to, what channels you’ll focus on, what topics you’ll talk about, and what assets you need to build. This isn’t a list of tactics. It’s the framework that every decision for the year connects back to.

Quarterly Plans

A system translates that strategy into quarterly plans. Every 90 days, specific activities get scoped based on the time and budget you actually have. You set measurable goals. You identify the people and organizations to build relationships with for that quarter. Then at the end of the quarter, you reflect on what worked, adjust, and build the next one. The plan evolves instead of going stale.

Weekly Action Items

A system breaks quarterly plans into weekly action items. Quarterly goals are too far away to drive daily behavior. Weekly action items tell you exactly what to focus on this week. Creating a reminder at the start of each week keeps it visible so it doesn’t get buried under client work.

Support When You Need It

A system includes support. When you hit a wall, whether it’s filling a room for a small event or writing a blog post you’ve been putting off, you have someone you can talk to or message who understands your strategy and can point you in the right direction.

Resources and Execution

A system gives you a centralized place to store and access your marketing assets, from one-pagers and presentations to educational guides and brochures, so everything you’ve built is easy to find and use. And when you’d rather hand something off entirely, a system connects you with a team that can execute on your behalf.

A plan is what you intend to do. A system is what makes sure it actually happens.

The takeaway: If your marketing feels disorganized or inconsistent, you probably don’t need more ideas. You need a system: annual strategy, quarterly planning, weekly action items, accountability, resources, and support.

Ready to set up a marketing system for your firm? Schedule a call to learn how OnNiche® by Kaleido can help.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

AI Can Help You Become Uncomparable

The best use of AI isn’t replacing what you do. It’s deepening what makes you different.

Yes, I talked about AI last week. And yes, I said we’re all tired of hearing about it. I’m sorry. Here we go again.

There is still a lot of uncertainty about how AI will impact financial advisors. But while people debate that question, I’m starting to see how advisors are already using it to better serve their clients.

In different advisor communities and conversations I’m part of, I’m seeing advisors build entirely new tools for their clients using Claude’s artifact feature. An artifact is an interactive tool, such as a calculator, decision-making app, or comparison chart, that the AI builds for you right inside the conversation. You don’t need to know how to code. You describe what you want, and it creates it. You can then share it with clients via a link.

One of my clients, who works with physicians, used this feature to build a calculator that helps doctors in a medical group evaluate their benefits options. It’s specific to their situation, specific to their decisions, and far more useful than a generic online tool.

And that’s the key: When you have a niche, you can build tools that no one else would think to build because you understand the nuances of what makes your clients different. A generalist advisor wouldn’t know the specific benefits a doctor in a medical group is weighing. A niche advisor does.

I talk about this concept in “Chapter 8: Business Model” of my book, Uncomparable: The Financial Advisor's Guide to Standing Out Through Niche Marketing. Advisors who fully commit to their niche design their entire business around their ideal client, including the tools, processes, and experiences they offer. AI just makes that faster and more accessible. You don’t need a developer or a budget for custom software. You need an understanding of your niche and a clear idea of what would help them. That’s how AI helps you become uncomparable.

A note: Be thoughtful about what information any tool you build collects or displays. Do not build anything that requests information that could create compliance issues for your firm.

The takeaway: AI is most powerful when paired with niche expertise. The advisors who know their clients deeply enough to build something specifically for them will always have an advantage over both generalists and algorithms.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

AI Tips That Are Practical, Not Hype

Here’s how to use AI to standardize your firm’s marketing and communication.

I know. You’re tired of hearing about AI. I am too. But I found a really useful tool that I think can help streamline your marketing and communications.

In mid-January, my team switched to Claude after testing it for a single day. The output was just that much better than what we were getting from ChatGPT. But one of the things I am liking the most is not the original reason we switched: Skills. (I’ve heard ChatGPT now has something similar, but I haven’t tested it.)

A skill is a set of instructions that you write once and that the AI follows every time. Think of it like a standard operating procedures manual that your AI actually reads. You define the rules, the structure, the tone, and the guardrails, and the AI applies them automatically to every piece of content it produces. You don’t have to re-explain your preferences every time you start a new conversation. And because skills can be deployed across your entire organization, everyone on your team is working from the same playbook instead of each person producing things their own way.

Here’s how we use them, and how you could do the same.

SEC Compliance. Everything written for marketing purposes needs to comply with SEC marketing guidelines. We built a skill that ensures the AI won’t produce content with testimonial language, performance claims, superlatives, or other common violations. If you upload a first draft, it will rewrite the language to be compliant. It doesn’t replace a compliance review, but it means the draft that reaches your compliance team is already clean.

Writing Style. We follow Associated Press style with a few modifications, so we created a skill that enforces those rules in everything the AI produces. If your firm has a style guide or even just a set of preferences, you can teach the AI to follow them. Maybe you don’t want your firm to use Oxford commas or em dashes. Or you spell out numbers at different thresholds. Instead of remembering every rule, the skill handles it.

Writing Voice. If you’ve built up a library of original writing, podcast transcripts, or video transcripts, you can create a skill that teaches the AI how you sound. Sentence structure, word choice, tone, how you open an article, how you close one. The output isn’t perfect, but it’s a much better starting point than generic AI copy.

Content Structures. Over time, most firms develop specific ways of doing things. A newsletter follows a certain format. Blog posts have a preferred structure. Social media posts hit certain beats. Client welcome emails, meeting follow-ups, and annual review summaries all have a way they should read. You can build a skill for each type so the AI produces first drafts in your structure rather than inventing its own.

The best part: If you’re on a team plan, skills deploy at the organization level. Your team doesn’t need to know these skills exist for them to work. If a new advisor sits down to write an article with the assistance of AI, the AI will automatically write it in your firm’s style, in the voice you’ve defined, in your standard article structure, and it will flag anything that might raise a compliance issue. The advisor didn’t have to know any of those rules existed.

Don’t know how to create a skill? Just ask Claude to help you build one.

The takeaway: AI gets more useful when you teach it how your firm actually works. If you’re using AI for marketing and communication, take the time to define your style, voice, compliance rules, and content structures.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

You Don't Own Your Social Media Audience

Every social media platform eventually changes the rules. The only question is when.

If this topic sounds familiar, it's because I write some version of this article almost every year. And every year, there's a new example proving the same point.

Let’s start with Facebook. Its business pages used to be a legitimate organic channel. In 2012, an average post reached about 16% of its followers. Today, that number is between 1% and 2%. Facebook didn't announce "we're turning off your free reach." They just slowly turned the dial until paying became the only option.

Next, Twitter became X overnight after an ownership change, and businesses that spent years building an audience watched the platform shift beneath them.

Finally, Google+ shut down entirely in 2019. If you'd invested time there, that audience simply disappeared.

Now it's LinkedIn's turn. LinkedIn was one of the last platforms where organic reach still worked the way social media was originally supposed to. You connected with someone, you posted, they saw it. Not anymore. According to the Algorithm InSights 2025 report, LinkedIn views are down 50% year over year, engagement has dropped 25%, and follower growth has declined 59%. Company pages now reach only about 1.6% of their followers. And if you've noticed LinkedIn suggesting you boost your posts more often, that's not a coincidence. It's the same playbook Facebook ran a decade ago.

This is the life cycle of every social media platform. They launch with a generous organic reach to attract users. Once the audience is there, they reduce visibility to push businesses toward paid advertising. It's not a conspiracy. It's a business model.

The lesson isn't to avoid social media. It still has a role. The lesson is to never let a platform you don't control be the primary way you reach your audience. Get your social media followers onto a list you own: email, SMS, or even a physical address. If the algorithm changes tomorrow, or a platform shuts down, or ownership changes the rules, you still have a direct line to the people who have chosen to hear from you.

The takeaway: Social media platforms will always change the rules. Build your audience there, but don't store it there. When you move your social media followers to your owned lists, you will never be at the mercy of an algorithm update, an ownership change, or a platform that decides your content is no longer worth showing for free.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Setting Growth Goals Isn't Enough

Firms love setting targets. They rarely provide the support to hit them.

Does this sound familiar? Leadership sets growth expectations for advisors, teams, or offices. "Bring in $X in new revenue this year" or "Generate Y new clients."

Then they step back and wait for results. And when the goals aren't met, they're surprised.

What's missing? Support to actually get there. The goal is clear. The path to get there isn't.

Who should this advisor focus on? How should they reach these people? What activities should they focus on each quarter? Once they commit, are they actually doing what they committed to? Who is helping them stay accountable? Who is helping them reflect and adjust each quarter to meet their goals? Who can they turn to when they hit a roadblock?

Most firms don't have a system in place to answer these questions. They set the expectation and assume advisors will figure it out. Some advisors try generic tactics that don't work. Others do nothing because they don't know where to start. Either way, the firm ends up frustrated that goals aren't being met, and advisors feel set up to fail.

If you want to do things differently, here's what it takes:

First, strategy. Who should this advisor focus on? What are the best channels to reach them? Advisors don't naturally think this way, so they need help developing a clear strategy.

Second, a plan. What tactics should they focus on this quarter? And the quarter after that? A plan turns strategy into actionable steps and prevents advisors from spinning their wheels on low-impact activities.

Third, ongoing support. Who is checking in on progress? Who helps them troubleshoot when things aren't working? Who removes obstacles that prevent them from moving forward? Without this, even good plans stall.

Firms have great intentions to help their teams hit goals, but without a support system in place, team members are unlikely to achieve those goals.

The takeaway: If you're going to set revenue or client expectations for your advisors, you need to invest in the strategy, plan, and support that make achievement possible. Anything less is setting them up to fail.

If your firm is ready to provide this level of strategic support to your advisors, schedule a call to learn how OnNiche® can help.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Why Tomorrow's Marketing Will Look More Like 2000 Than 2020

The future of advisor marketing isn't more technology. It's more human.

Last week, I published a piece on my Substack about how AI is fundamentally changing the marketing landscape for financial advisors. The core argument: The pandemic forced advisors onto digital channels, and now AI is forcing us to rethink what actually works.

👉 Read the full article here

Most people assume the answer to AI is more technology. More AI tools. More automation. More digital. I think the opposite is true. Tomorrow's most effective financial advisor marketing is going to look a lot more like 2000 than 2020.

Here's why: The digital world is becoming static noise. So much content floods every channel that it all blurs together. But while digital gets noisier and more impersonal, the value of genuine human-to-human interaction is going up. We're in the middle of a loneliness epidemic. People are craving real connection.

Think about what actually builds trust: sitting across from someone at a small dinner, showing up at industry events, hosting quarterly gatherings where people know each other by name. That's an old-school relationship strategy. And it's the future.

Physical touchpoints matter more than ever, too. An automated email gets deleted. A handwritten birthday card stays on someone's desk for a week. In a world where every interaction is increasingly digital and automated, something you can hold in your hands stands out precisely because it's rare.

The takeaway: The pandemic taught us that digital was essential. AI is teaching us that digital alone isn't enough. The advisors who recognize this shift early, investing in human connection and physical presence, won't be scrambling to adapt when the rest of the industry catches up.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

FPA LIVE: Going Old School—Defining Yourself In the Age of AI

A New Case for Focusing on a Niche: AI Can't Replace What It Can't Access

AI is about to make generic financial advice worthless. But niche expertise? That's still invaluable.

I wrote my book Uncomparable: The Financial Advisor's Guide to Standing Out Through Niche Marketing about why focusing on a niche is so valuable for financial advisors. The core argument: When you specialize, you become the obvious choice for a specific type of client rather than one option among thousands of generalists. You stand out. You build a reputation that generates referrals.

But there's a new reason to focus on a niche that I didn't anticipate when I wrote the book: AI.

AI is getting very good at basic financial planning advice. It can explain fundamental concepts, suggest standard strategies, and walk someone through generic planning scenarios. For basic financial advice, AI will soon be able to advise on much of what generalist advisors do today. And it will do it faster and cheaper.

But here's what AI can't replace: the pattern recognition and contextual expertise that comes from working deeply within a specific niche.

When you've spent years working with business owners preparing to sell their companies, you know the real timeline isn't what the investment bankers promise. You've seen what happens when someone doesn't properly plan for taxes on the sale. You know which wealth management mistakes newly liquid entrepreneurs make in their first year post-exit. You know exactly which attorney, which insurance specialist, which tax preparer to connect a client with for their specific situation. That knowledge isn't documented anywhere AI can access. It's in your head, built from watching the same patterns play out dozens of times.

This is the knowledge that matters most to clients, and it's the knowledge AI can't easily replicate. Why? Because it exists in the minds of people with deep experience in a niche, not in training data.

Generic financial planning advice will become commoditized by AI. But niche expertise built from years of focused experience? That becomes more valuable, not less.

The takeaway: AI will make generalist financial advice a commodity. The advisors who thrive will be the ones with deep niche expertise that can't be easily replicated because it exists in experience, not documentation. If you've been on the fence about specializing, this is your signal.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Marketing That Actually Scales: Build a Plan You Can Execute All Year