A one-page marketing plan for a fee-only firm

A marketing plan for a fee-only firm fits on one page: a goal in new clients, one sentence about who you serve, three or four channels picked by what a client costs through each, a budget in hours and dollars, a 90-day schedule, and five numbers to check every month. The costs below come from Kitces Research’s 2026 survey of 506 advisors, which found the typical firm spent $2,551 to win a client and 7% of revenue on marketing, counting the advisor’s own time. The template is at the end of the page. Copy it and fill in the brackets.

What goes on the page

Six lines, in this order, because each one depends on the one above it:

1. The goal, in new clients and the inquiries it takes to get them.
2. Who you serve, in one sentence.
3. The channels, three or four, and the ones you’re dropping.
4. The budget, split into hours and cash.
5. The next 90 days, as tasks with a finish line.
6. The numbers, checked monthly.

A plan longer than a page usually means too many channels. Kitces credits the fall in acquisition cost since 2024 to advisors cutting tactics that took a lot of time for little return, such as newsletters and webinars.

Line 1: a goal in clients, not activity

“Post three times a week” is an activity. “Nine new planning clients by December” is a goal you can check. Start from revenue: divide the new yearly revenue you want by what a typical client pays. At the fee-only median of $4,500 a year for ongoing planning (Wellspent fee report), $40,000 of new revenue is nine clients.

Then work backward to inquiries. Kitces suggests at least 75% of inquiries should be a real fit, and that 50% to 80% of qualified prospects should become clients. At the low end of that range, nine clients take 18 first meetings and 24 inquiries, about two a month. How many prospects you need runs the same math for firms at $250,000, $500,000 and $1 million.

Line 2: who you serve, in one sentence

Every channel on the page carries this sentence, so write it before choosing any of them. It names a kind of client, the decision they bring you, how you charge, and where you work. If it could describe every firm in your city, it won’t help a referral partner, a searcher or an AI assistant tell you apart. That’s the common case: in our website study, about 4 in 10 fee-only firm websites named no specialty beyond retirement, tax or estate planning.

How to describe what you do in one sentence has the formula and examples. If you haven’t chosen a niche yet, start with how to choose a niche.

Line 3: channels, ranked by what a client costs

Pick three or four. Kitces measured each tactic by its marketing cost, money and time, for each $1 of new yearly revenue it brought in. Lower is better.

Source: Kitces Research 2026 marketing study. The full ranking is charted in How to get clients as a financial advisor, and cost per client by channel is in Client acquisition cost by channel.

One more line belongs in most plans. Firms that showed client reviews on their own website spent $0.13 per $1 of new revenue on that tactic, against $0.86 for firms that only collected them. Check the rules first: the Marketing Rule on reviews and testimonials.

Write down what you’re not doing this year, too. A plan that says “no newsletter until we have 50 clients” saves more hours than any tactic.

Line 4: a budget worked from revenue

Kitces found the average firm spends 7% of revenue on marketing, counting the value of advisor and staff time, and that time made up more than two-thirds of all marketing costs. So most of a marketing budget is hours. At 7%:

The share of the workweek advisors spent on marketing fell to 8.2% in the 2026 study, about 3¼ hours of a 40-hour week. Put the hours in the plan as a number, and protect them the way you’d protect a client meeting.

The cash side is usually small: listing fees (Kitces put the typical directory fee at about $500 a year, and the typical per-referral fee, where a listing charges one, at about $250), your website, a review platform if you show reviews, and coffee or lunch with referral partners.

What the budget buys depends on your size, because the same channel costs more as the advisor’s hour gets more valuable. Dividing a 7% budget by the median cost per client Kitces found for firms of each size gives a rough count:

Doubling from $500,000 to $1 million doubles the budget but barely moves the number of clients it buys. Past that point the plan has to move hours off the advisor: to staff, or to channels like listings and published pages that keep working without you.

Line 5: the next 90 days

Ninety days is long enough for a listing or a page to produce its first inquiries, and short enough that you’ll still remember why you started. A typical first quarter:

For the first two weeks, publish your fees and what prospects check before they book a call cover what to fix. For weeks 7 to 10, how CPAs and attorneys vet advisors explains what referral partners look for.

Line 6: five numbers to check monthly

1. Inquiries, by source. Ask every new inquiry how they found you, and write down the first and last touch. “My sister mentioned you, then I looked you up” is two sources.
2. Share of inquiries that fit. Kitces suggests 75% or more. Below that, put your fees and minimums where people see them before they book.
3. Share of qualified prospects who become clients. Kitces suggests 50% to 80%. Below 50%, work on your first meeting. Above 80%, Kitces says advisors are probably undercharging: see how to raise your financial planning fees.
4. Cost per new client, by channel, counting cash and hours.
5. Months of fees to earn it back. Divide cost per client by a client’s monthly fee. The 2026 median was 8.4 months. A planning client at the $4,500 median pays $375 a month.

Kitces also suggests tracking hours of marketing per inquiry, which can run 10 to 20 or more when an advisor is starting out. The question is whether it falls over time.

The template

Copy this into a document, fill in the brackets, and keep it to one page.

# Marketing plan: [Firm name], [quarter and year]

## 1. Goal
- New clients this year: [number]
  (new yearly revenue goal $[amount] ÷ typical client fee $[amount])
- Inquiries needed this year: [number]
  (new clients ÷ share of qualified prospects who hire us ÷ share of inquiries that fit)
- This quarter: [number] inquiries, [number] first meetings, [number] new clients

## 2. Who we serve, in one sentence
[Firm] helps [specific clients] [with a specific decision or situation],
for [fee model and starting price], [in city / virtually in states].

## 3. Channels (three or four)
| Channel | Why it reaches our clients | Hours a month | Cash a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Listings that verify fee-only status] | | | |
| [Client referrals] | | | |
| [Pages that answer our clients' questions] | | | |
| [Two referral partners who see our clients] | | | |

Not doing this year, and why: [channels we're dropping]

## 4. Budget
- Revenue last year: $[amount]
- Marketing budget, time and cash (about 7% of revenue): $[amount]
- Cash: $[amount]
- Hours a week: [number]

## 5. Next 90 days
| Weeks | Task | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Write the one sentence; publish fees; match site, ADV, LinkedIn, listings | All four match |
| 3-6 | [Listing or review task] | [Live and checked] |
| 7-10 | [Two question pages]; [two referral-partner meetings] | [Published / held] |
| 11-13 | Review the numbers; keep, change or drop each channel | Next plan written |

## 6. Numbers, checked monthly
| Measure | Target | Month 1 | Month 2 | Month 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inquiries, by source | [number] | | | |
| Share of inquiries that fit | 75% or more | | | |
| Qualified prospects who become clients | 50% to 80% | | | |
| Cost per new client, by channel (cash + hours) | Under [one year's fee] | | | |
| Months of fees to earn it back | Under [number] | | | |

After the first 90 days

Keep the page and change the lines. Most quarters only lines 3, 5 and 6 move. Once a year, compare each channel’s cost per client with a year of a typical client’s fee. If a channel costs more than that, it needs a reason beyond growth, and the plan should say what it is.

Where Wellspent fits

The plan above starts with being easy to find and easy to check, the cheapest end of Kitces’ table. Wellspent is a membership for fee-only advisors, $89 a month: a verified record in the public graph at find.wellspent.co with your fees, specialties and the clients you serve, which search engines and AI assistants read. Prospects write to you directly, with no lead fees and no share of client fees, and members get a monthly report on who AI assistants recommend in their market plus quarterly press placement with media partners. See how it works.