The Best Marketing Investment for Your Youngest Advisors

Your 25-year-old advisor might not be ready to bring in clients. But they're perfectly positioned to build the relationships that will.

I see advisory firms struggle with this question: What marketing should our youngest advisors be doing, if anything? They're too early in their careers to have real credibility with prospects. They can contribute to the firm's content marketing, but there is an even better marketing activity these young advisors are uniquely positioned to do: building relationships with future centers of influence (COIs) who can become referral partners.

Think about it. Your 25-year-old advisor can't easily connect with a 55-year-old business owner who needs exit planning. The credibility gap is too wide. But they can absolutely connect with a 26-year-old attorney at a large law firm or a 27-year-old CPA at a local accounting practice. Because they are peers, the relationship is natural and not forced.

Here's what makes this so valuable: These young professionals are building their own careers at the same time. In five or ten years, that attorney might be a partner bringing in estate planning clients who need wealth management. That CPA might have their own book of high-net-worth clients. And when they do, who will they think of first? The advisor who built a real relationship with them early, before everyone else was competing for their attention.

The key is setting the right expectations. You shouldn't set the expectation with your advisors that anything will come from these relationships in the short term. These young COIs aren't established enough yet to be consistent referral sources. Some might work at firms where they can occasionally refer, but that's not the point. The point is building strong relationships now, during a unique window before these professionals already have referral partners locked in.

This is relationship-building without the pressure of immediate results. Your young advisor can focus on building genuine relationships, staying connected, and establishing trust over time. They're not asking for referrals. They're just building a network of peers who will grow their careers together.

The takeaway: You don't need to wait until your youngest advisors have credibility with prospects to start their marketing efforts. Put them to work building relationships with future referral partners now, while they're peers. It's an investment that compounds over years.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Why Your Marketing Budget Shouldn't Be Divided Equally Across the Year

Consistent spending doesn't guarantee consistent results.

When it comes to a marketing budget, it's easy to fall into the habit of dividing it equally across the year: $10K per month, every month, like clockwork. A little spending in January, a little in February, steady through December. The thinking is that consistent spending means consistent results.

But it doesn't. Steady spending doesn't create steady results. You end up wasting money in months when no one is paying attention to your marketing and not investing enough when they are.

The ebook The Lightning Strike Strategy, by Category Pirates, argues that the most effective marketing isn't evenly distributed across the year. It's concentrated. Instead of spreading resources thin across 12 months, you focus 70% of your budget on two to four major initiatives per year, investing heavily when it matters most.

For financial advisory firms, this might mean going all-in during the months when your niche is most likely to make decisions. Maybe you invest heavily around the start of the year, around the end of tax season, and early fall when prospects are already thinking about their finances, and pull back in November, December, and the summer months when nobody's paying attention.

This doesn't mean everything else stops during the quiet months. Some activities require a consistent budget regardless: your marketing technology like email and website costs, podcast production, or a networking breakfast you attend every month. But the big-money campaigns get concentrated in the windows where they can actually move the needle.

This makes perfect sense when you hear it, but it's rarely how firms operate. Most advisors default to even monthly spending because it's easier to budget. But you'll spend your money more wisely and get better returns when you invest in attracting clients during the windows when they're actually ready to hire you.

The takeaway: Strategic concentration beats equal distribution. When you focus your marketing budget on the right moments and give those initiatives the resources to actually break through, you get results.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Financial Advisor Services Map

Are Your Next-Gen Advisors Business Development or Service Advisors?

Not every advisor who wants ownership is built for what ownership requires.

A pattern keeps showing up in my work with advisory firms: A talented next-generation advisor who was hired to service existing clients starts asking about ownership. They're good at their job. They care about the firm. They want to build something long-term. But when the ownership conversation happens, it stalls. Why? Because firm owners aren't confident that these advisors can bring in new business.

It's a fair concern. Servicing clients and developing business require different skill sets, different mindsets, and different levels of comfort with uncertainty. An advisor can be exceptional at one and struggle with the other. The challenge is figuring out which type of advisor you have before making ownership decisions that affect the entire firm's future.

Working with advisors through our OnNiche® program has taught me something: The difference between a business development advisor and a service advisor shows up almost immediately—not in what they say they want, but in how they behave when given the opportunity.

Business development advisors engage quickly. They're anxious to build their plan. They ask questions about implementation. They start taking action, even when it feels uncomfortable. They treat business development as a challenge to tackle, not an obligation to avoid.

Service advisors drag their feet. Even with professional support and coaching behind them, they struggle to get anything off the ground. It's not that they don't care or aren't capable—they're often excellent advisors. They're just not wired for the proactive work of putting themselves out there in ways that feel uncomfortable. And that's perfectly fine. Both roles are valuable.

The mistake firms make is waiting too long to figure out which type of advisor they have. They assume that interest in ownership indicates a capacity for business development, or they hope that with enough training, any advisor can become a rainmaker. But aptitude matters. Some advisors will thrive in business development. Others won't, no matter how much support you provide.

The takeaway: Before discussing ownership, give next-gen advisors a real opportunity to demonstrate business development capability—not through hypotheticals, but through action. How they respond will tell you what role they're truly built for in your firm's future.

Want to see if your advisors are built for business development or client service? Schedule a call to learn more about OnNiche®.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Why Your Marketing Metrics Might Be Lying to You

The things easiest to measure in marketing are usually the things that matter least.

I'm currently reading The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game by C. Thi Nguyen, and one concept keeps showing up in my thinking about financial advisor marketing: The Gap. Nguyen defines it as "the distance between what is being measured and what actually matters." It's a simple idea with big implications for how firms approach their marketing efforts.

Here's how it plays out: Marketing platforms give firms endless metrics: likes, impressions, click-through rates, email open rates, website traffic. These numbers are easy to track, easy to report, and easy to compare month over month. So firms do. They check them constantly. They celebrate when they go up and worry when they go down. They make decisions based on them.

But these metrics mostly measure one thing: attention. And attention isn't the same as trust. It's not the same as credibility. It's definitely not the same as a prospective client thinking, "This is the advisor I want to work with."

The things that actually lead to new client relationships—depth of connection, perceived expertise, whether someone feels understood—are much harder to measure. There's no dashboard for "this person now trusts you enough to have a real conversation." No metric for "your content helped someone realize they need help." No score for "you're now top of mind when they're ready to hire an advisor."

So advisors default to what they can measure. They optimize for engagement instead of trust-building. They chase virality instead of relevance. They produce more content to increase impressions rather than better content that deepens relationships. The scoring system focuses them on the wrong outcomes simply because those outcomes are quantifiable.

The gap between what firms measure and what actually matters widens, and they wonder why all that activity isn't translating into new clients.

The takeaway: The best marketing metrics are often the ones you can't easily track. Don't let the ease of measurement pull your focus away from the harder work of building real relationships and demonstrating genuine expertise. Those are what convert attention into clients.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Why Marketing Planning Feels So Frustrating

Marketing feels complicated when you focus on the tools instead of the purpose.

If your marketing plan starts with brainstorming, that’s the problem.

Earlier this week, I published a piece on Kitces.com titled Creating an Annual Marketing Strategy to Fit Your Firm (and Stop Guessing What to Do Next) about why advisory firm marketing often feels ineffective and expensive, and why that usually has less to do with the tactics themselves and more to do with how firms choose them in the first place. If marketing planning has ever felt frustrating to you, this will sound familiar.

👉 Read the full article here:
https://www.kitces.com/blog/marketing-strategy-ria-advisor-firm-long-term-budget-investment-prospecting-roi/

For many advisory firms, annual marketing planning feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. Instead of a clear strategy, the process turns into a guessing game.

It often starts with brainstorming. Podcasts. Social media. Webinars. Some new tech solution. Why those ideas? Usually because they were mentioned at a conference, recommended by another advisor, or feel like something the firm should be doing.

At larger firms, this gets even harder. Each advisor brings their own ideas, and the list quickly becomes overwhelming. To keep everyone happy, marketing teams end up doing a little bit of everything or choosing ideas by consensus. The result is a collection of disconnected tactics that don’t reinforce each other and may not actually attract new clients.

When results don’t show up quickly, confidence in the process disappears. Activities get dropped before they’ve had time to work, new ideas replace them, and the cycle repeats. Over time, marketing starts to feel expensive and pointless, even though the real issue isn’t whether a specific tactic works.

The problem is choosing marketing ideas in a vacuum, without a clear framework for how they work together or what they’re meant to accomplish.

The takeaway: Marketing planning isn’t a brainstorming exercise. It’s a strategic decision-making process. When you change how you choose marketing activities, you give them a real chance to work.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Creating An Annual Marketing Strategy To Fit Your Firm (And Stop Guessing What To Do Next)

When Marketing Feels Confusing, Come Back to This

Marketing feels complicated when you focus on the tools instead of the purpose.

You’re not alone if you feel frustrated or overwhelmed by how often marketing seems to change. New technology appears. Algorithms shift. Tactics fall in and out of favor. It can start to feel like you’re always behind or doing the wrong thing.

When that happens, I find it helps to zoom out.

In the independent financial advisory space, marketing has always been about two things: relationships and education. That hasn’t changed, even as the tools have.

Every effective marketing tactic, whether it’s social media, a podcast, networking, or a referral campaign, is simply a way to build trust or help someone understand how to solve a problem they care about. The format may change, but the purpose does not.

If you use relationships and education as your true north, decisions get easier. You can ask simple questions: Does this help me build real connections? Does this help my audience better understand their situation and options? If the answer is yes, you’re probably on the right track.

You don’t need to chase every new trend or platform. You just need to show up consistently in ways that deepen relationships and educate the people you want to serve.

The takeaway: Marketing will keep changing, but the foundation won’t. Anchor your strategy in relationships and education, and you’ll always know what to do next.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

4 Ways You Are Wasting Time and Money on Marketing

No marketing is better than the wrong marketing, because at least you aren’t wasting your time and money.

When marketing isn’t working, the cost isn’t just financial. It’s the time, energy, and momentum lost along the way. Below are a few common ways advisors unintentionally waste their efforts and money.

1. Doing the Wrong Things

Without a clear strategy, marketing turns into throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. That doesn’t just waste money on activities that won’t work. It also wastes time you could be spending on building momentum in the activities that do work. Remember: Most effective marketing takes time to compound.

2. Not Doing Things Consistently

Even the right strategy won’t work if it’s applied sporadically. Inconsistent effort prevents momentum from building, which means you never see the return on the time and money you’ve already invested.

3. Spending Time Where Your Audience Doesn’t

If you’re investing a lot of time in a channel your audience doesn’t use, that effort is wasted, no matter how good the execution is. For example, spending hours on a social media platform when your ideal clients aren’t active there won’t produce results. Marketing works best when your efforts align with where your audience already pays attention.

4. Communicating the Wrong Message to the Right Audience

Reaching the right people isn’t enough. If your message doesn’t clearly explain who you help and how you help them, you’re still missing the mark. Confusing or generic messaging wastes attention, which is one of your most valuable marketing assets.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Doing nothing is sometimes better than doing any of the above. At least then, you’re not burning time and money while convincing yourself you’re making progress.

The takeaway: Marketing works when strategy, consistency, audience, and message are aligned. When they aren’t, effort gets time-consuming and expensive very quickly.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®

Simple Marketing Resolutions for the New Year

Four marketing resolutions worth keeping this year.

As the new year starts, it’s easy to set lofty goals while your energy is high. More content. More channels. More activity. Before you burn yourself out by mid-quarter, here are some simple marketing resolutions that are easy to adopt this year:

1. Get Clear About Who You’re Trying to Reach

Whether you focus on a niche or not, clarity matters. Be specific about the type of person you want your marketing to attract. When you know who you’re talking to, your messaging gets clearer, and your marketing becomes more effective.

2. Track the Actions, Not Just the Outcomes

You can’t control how many clients you’ll get this year, but you can control the actions you take. Track the tasks you commit to each week or month. Consistent action is what drives results over time.

3. Go Deeper Instead of Wider

Resist the urge to be everywhere. Choose a few marketing activities and commit to doing them well. Depth builds momentum. Shallow, scattered efforts rarely do.

4. Choose Sustainability over Intensity

You want your marketing to be consistent all year, not just in January. Build a plan that fits your schedule, energy, and team so that consistency becomes the default.

The takeaway: If you simplify your marketing and commit to what you can sustain, results will follow.

Kristen Luke

Founder of Kaleido Creative Studio and OnNiche®