The marketing library for fee-only advisors
How clients find and choose an advisor now, answered with data: published fees, SEC filings, 600 AI answers and 1,792 firm websites. Guides, studies and free tools.
Win more of the right clients
Where clients come from now, what each channel costs, and the numbers to plan with.
- How to get clients as a financial advisor The typical advisory firm now spends $2,551 to win a client. Directories, referrals and SEO cost the least per dollar of new revenue; social media and client events cost the most. Guide · 6 min
- A one-page marketing plan for a fee-only firm The typical firm spends 7% of revenue on marketing once the advisor's time is counted, and most of that is hours, not dollars. A plan that fits on one page puts those hours into the channels that cost least per client. The template is on this page, ready to copy. Guide · 7 min
- How many prospects you need: the math for a fee-only firm At the fee-only median of $4,500 a year, $500,000 of revenue is 112 clients. Growing there from $250,000 over four years takes about 14 new clients a year: 18 to 28 first meetings and 24 to 38 inquiries at the close rates Kitces calls good, or about 280 shared leads at the rate lead services typically deliver. Guide · 6 min
- How new fee-only advisors get their first 25 clients Most new fee-only firms take two to three years to reach 25 clients. The first few come from people who already trust you. The next ones come from being easy to find and check, through directories, your own site and a clear niche. Referrals from clients start to matter only after that. Guide · 6 min
- Referrals for fee-only advisors: why they slow down and what replaces them Referrals are still among the cheapest clients a firm gets, and they still run dry. In Kitces' 2026 research, slower-growing firms got 80% of new client revenue from referrals and high-growth firms about a third. The gap is made up by channels the firm controls. Guide · 6 min
- How CPAs and estate attorneys vet advisors before referring Among advisors who use centers of influence, 89% get referrals from CPAs and 79% from estate planning attorneys. Before either one sends a client, they're risking their own relationship. Here's what a careful CPA or attorney can check, and how to make every check easy. Guide · 5 min
- How to run a discovery meeting as a fee-only advisor Kitces puts a good close rate at 50% to 80% of qualified prospects. Most of that is settled before the meeting: by the time a prospect books, they've often read your website and may have looked you up, and your own Form CRS has handed them the questions to ask. The meeting's job is to answer those questions plainly and agree on fit, in both directions. Guide · 9 min
- Email newsletters for financial advisors: do they win clients? As a way to find new clients, the newsletter is one of the most expensive tactics advisors use: about $40,600 per new client in Kitces' 2026 study, and only about a quarter of firms sending one won a client from it. As a way to stay in touch with people who already know you, email is cheap and it works. The difference is who's on the list. Guide · 7 min
- LinkedIn for financial advisors: what it does and doesn't do Nearly every advisor who uses social media uses LinkedIn, and as a way to find clients it's the most expensive tactic Kitces measured: about $48,800 per new client across social media in 2026. The profile is a different matter. Prospects, referrers and AI assistants read it to check who you are, so treat it as a record first and a feed second. Guide · 7 min
- Direct mail for financial advisors: when it works Direct mail is a channel few advisors use and many write off. Kitces' 2026 data is more mixed than its reputation: advisors rate the leads poorly, but 56% of firms using it won a client in the past year, the clients it brought paid more than average, and it takes little of the advisor's time. It works best as a letter to a list you can describe in one sentence. Guide · 7 min
Get found by AI and search
What AI assistants read, who they name, and how to be one of the firms they can check.
- What gets a fee-only advisor named by AI We took 6,329 fee-only firms in 85 US metros and checked which ones ChatGPT and Perplexity named when asked for an advisor there. Network membership, a CFP on staff and a published price went with being named. A niche specialty, years in business and SEC registration didn't, once the other facts were accounted for. Research · 9 min
- How AI assistants recommend financial advisors We asked ChatGPT and Perplexity to recommend fee-only financial advisors in 100 US and Canadian cities. Every answer named firms, almost 8 on average, but the two assistants agreed on fewer than 1 in 5, and a change of wording changed most of the list. Research · 6 min
- How AI assistants choose which financial advisors to recommend AI assistants don't keep a list of advisors. They search the web while they answer, read a handful of pages, and name the firms those pages describe clearly. Firms with thin, inconsistent or hidden facts rarely come up. Guide · 6 min
- How to get your firm recommended by AI assistants AI assistants name the firms they can read clearly and check elsewhere. Publish your fees and specialties in plain text, keep your facts identical everywhere, let the AI crawlers in, and get onto the independent sources assistants trust. Guide · 6 min
- Why AI seems to recommend big firms over boutiques, and how small firms change that On broad questions, AI assistants lean toward firms with national footprints. On the specific questions clients ask, they mostly name small independent firms. The big-firm edge is coverage, a page for every city and a profile on every list, and a boutique can match it where it works. Guide · 6 min
- How to check what AI says about your firm Ask the questions your ideal clients ask, the way they ask them, in several assistants and several phrasings. Record who gets named, which pages are cited and what's said about you. Then trace every gap and every error back to a page you can fix. Guide · 6 min
- What happens when someone asks an AI assistant for a fee-only advisor in your city We took one answer from our study and followed it through. ChatGPT cited 22 pages on 17 sites, named five small firms, quoted their fees, pulled ratings from local listings, and asked three follow-up questions. Perplexity, asked the same thing, named five different firms. Guide · 7 min
- The fee-only advisor website study Most fee-only firm websites say the same things: retirement (91%), fee-only (74%), fiduciary (71%). About 4 in 10 name no specialty beyond retirement, tax or estate planning, about half publish any price we could verify, and 2% mention AI at all. Research · 4 min
- Is your website blocking AI assistants? Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for the AI companies' user agents. Then check your hosting's security settings, make sure your fees and specialties are page text rather than images or PDFs, and add structured data that matches what the page says. Guide · 6 min
- SEO for fee-only advisors SEO is still one of the cheapest ways to win clients: $0.45 of marketing cost per $1 of new yearly revenue in Kitces' 2026 study, and only about a third of firms do it. What works has narrowed to a few pages that answer a real client's question, and the same pages now feed AI answers. Guide · 6 min
- Google Business Profile for financial advisors A Google Business Profile is free and decides who shows in the map results for "financial planner near me". Google ranks them on relevance, distance and prominence, and you can't pay to move up. The hard parts for an advisor are eligibility if you work virtually, and reviews under the SEC marketing rule. Guide · 6 min
Free tools: Free AI check · Free website check
Price and position your practice
What fee-only firms charge, how to set and raise your fee, and how to say who you serve.
- Fee benchmarks for fee-only advisors US fee-only firms that publish prices charge a median $4,500 a year for ongoing planning, $2,000 for a one-time plan, $300 an hour or 1% of assets. Ongoing fees run from $2,100 in Minnesota to $7,450 in New Jersey. Guide · 5 min
- How to price financial planning Fee-only firms that publish prices charge a median $4,500 a year for ongoing planning, $2,000 for a one-time plan, $300 an hour or 1% of assets. Here's how to pick a model and set a number you can defend. Guide · 5 min
- How to raise your financial planning fees Raise the price for new clients first, then for existing clients with notice. Check the number against the market: fee-only firms that publish prices charge a median $4,500 a year for ongoing planning, with the middle half from $2,400 to $7,200. A flat fee unchanged since 2021 has lost about a fifth of its value to inflation. Guide · 7 min
- Publish your fees: why price pages get cited Clients ask AI what advice costs, and assistants answer with prices they can find. About half of fee-only firms publish one. A plain-text fee page that matches your Form ADV puts you in that half, and makes you the answer to every question that mentions a fee model. Guide · 5 min
- How to set an advice-only fee US fee-only firms that list no asset-based fee charge a median $1,950 for a one-time plan, $300 an hour and $5,000 a year for ongoing planning. That ongoing fee is well above the $4,500 median for all fee-only firms, and it should be: it's the whole relationship. Guide · 5 min
- Flat fee vs AUM for your firm A 1% fee and the median flat fee of $4,500 earn the same on a $450,000 household. Above that, AUM earns more and grows with markets. Below it, a flat fee earns more and opens the door to clients an asset fee can't serve. Guide · 5 min
- Should you have an asset minimum? Of the 781 US fee-only firms that state an asset minimum, 50% say they have none. A minimum makes sense when your fee depends on assets. When it doesn't, a minimum fee usually does the same job without turning clients away. Guide · 5 min
- How to choose a niche as a fee-only advisor Most fee-only firms name the same three services: retirement (63% of firm sites), tax (58%) and estate planning (43%). Equity compensation appears on 18%, founders before an exit on 7%, crypto on 1%. A niche is a group of clients, not a service, and the rare ones are where a small firm stands out. Guide · 6 min
- Underserved niches and places for fee-only advisors Founders before an exit (7% of fee-only firm sites), crypto (1%) and concentrated stock (1%) are among the rarest specialties firms claim. By place, Ohio has 19 fee-only firms that publish an ongoing planning fee for 11.9 million people, while Colorado has 35 for 6 million. These are counts of firms, not of clients: they show where competition is thin. Guide · 5 min
- How to describe what you do in one sentence On fee-only firm websites, 91% mention retirement, 74% say fee-only and 71% say fiduciary. A sentence built from those words describes every firm in town. One that names a client, a decision, a price and a place can be repeated, by a friend making a referral or by an AI assistant answering a question. Guide · 6 min
- Financial advisor bio examples that work in AI answers AI assistants match a bio against the client's question: who they are, what they're deciding, where they live, what they'll pay. A bio that lists those facts in plain sentences can be quoted. A bio about passion and holistic planning can't. Here are fill-in templates, before and after. Guide · 6 min
- How much AUM the average advisor has The number most people quote is the median SEC-registered firm: $446.9 million at the end of 2025, across a median of 8 employees. Per advisor, the latest Cerulli figures come out near $90 million. Fee-only planners often manage far less, because flat and hourly fees aren't counted as assets at all. Guide · 5 min
Free tool: Fee benchmark
Leads, directories and what they cost
Every lead service's price, the close rates advisors report, and the cost of one client.
- Should you buy financial advisor leads? The math The most a lead is worth to you is the most you'd pay for a client times your close rate. At the $2,551 the typical firm spends per client and a 1 in 20 close rate, that's about $128 a lead, below the $150 to $300 reported for shared leads. Here's how to run it on your own numbers, for all three ways of paying. Guide · 6 min
- How much financial advisor leads cost Pay-per-lead services charge from about $25 to over $1,000 a lead, and revenue-share networks take 15% to 35% of a client's fees, often for as long as the client stays. Worked out per client, a bought lead usually costs more than the $2,551 the typical firm spends to win a client. Guide · 6 min
- Shared leads vs exclusive leads vs referrals: close rates advisors report Shared leads close at about 1 in 20 even for advisors who do well with them (Kitces, 2024). An exclusive lead service reported converting about a fifth of referred assets. Client referrals, in advisors' own reports, close almost every time. The catch is that each rate counts something different. Guide · 5 min
- Client acquisition cost for financial advisors, by channel The typical firm spent $2,551 to win a client in 2026, down from $3,800 in 2024. By channel the spread is wide: about $1,400 per client through online directories and review sites, about $3,000 through SEO and client referrals, and $40,000 or more through newsletters, client events and social media. Guide · 6 min
- Financial advisor directories: do they work? Yes. In Kitces' 2026 survey of 506 advisors, online directories had the lowest marketing cost per dollar of new revenue of any channel, $0.28, yet only 18% of firms used them. Guide · 6 min
- Financial advisor lead generation companies compared Lead companies charge in one of three ways: per lead, per appointment or event, or a share of the client's fees. The cheapest per lead is rarely the cheapest per client, so compare them on what a signed client costs. Comparison · 4 min
- The best financial advisor directories, compared honestly Directories were the cheapest way to win new revenue of any tactic in Kitces' 2026 study, at $0.28 per $1. The right one depends on how you're paid, whether you hold the CFP, and where your clients look. Comparison · 4 min
- SmartAsset alternatives for fee-only advisors The main alternatives to buying SmartAsset leads are fee-only directories, matching networks that take a share of fees, and flat memberships. Kitces' 2026 study found online directories were the cheapest way to win new revenue of any tactic it measured. Comparison · 4 min
Free tool: Cost of a client calculator
Trust, press and the marketing rule
What prospects check before they book, how to get quoted, and what you can show under the SEC rule.
- What prospects check before they book a call A prospect who's about to book a first meeting checks four places: the SEC's adviser search, your website, reviews, and more and more often an AI assistant. 40% of the AI answers we studied told readers to look the advisor up with the SEC before hiring. Here's what each check shows them, and what to fix. Guide · 5 min
- Trust signals that win prospects 74% of fee-only firm websites say "fee-only" and 71% say "fiduciary", so neither sets a firm apart any more. The signals that do are the ones a prospect can check: a verified record, prices in plain text, independent press, and client reviews shown under the SEC marketing rule. Guide · 5 min
- Press for financial advisors: what a quote is worth A quote rarely brings a client on its own. It works as proof: prospects and AI assistants use it to confirm what you're expert in. About a quarter of AI citations in one 2026 study came from earned media. Here's what you can measure, and what you can't. Guide · 5 min
- How to get quoted in Forbes, CNBC and Kiplinger Reporters quote the advisor who answers their exact question, quickly, in a few plain sentences they can drop into a story. 88% of journalists delete pitches that miss their beat. Here's how to be the answer that gets used. Guide · 6 min
- How journalists choose which advisors to quote Journalists quote the advisor who fits the story, answers fast and checks out. In Muck Rack's 2026 survey, 70% said a pitch must be clearly relevant to their beat, 58% wanted access to a source they could interview, and 40% wanted original data. Guide · 6 min
- The SEC marketing rule for small RIAs: reviews, testimonials and ratings SEC-registered advisers have been allowed to use client reviews, testimonials and third-party ratings since November 4, 2022, as long as the disclosures sit right next to them. Many small firms are state-registered, so their state's rules apply instead. In September 2024 the SEC fined nine advisers a combined $1.24 million, most of them over awards and claims they couldn't back up. Guide · 6 min
- Can financial advisors use Google reviews? Yes. Reviews that clients post on your Google profile generally aren't your advertisement, as long as you let everyone post and don't delete, edit, sort or write them. They become your advertisement when you ask selectively, pay for them, or put them on your own website, and then the SEC marketing rule's disclosures apply. Guide · 6 min
- Showing press mentions under the marketing rule You can show genuine press on your website, but the page is an advertisement under the SEC marketing rule, so it can't imply more than happened. In April 2024, SEC examiners flagged advisers who said they'd been "seen on" national media when the appearances were paid ads. Link every logo to its story, date it, and label anything you paid for. Guide · 5 min
Starting out or going fee-only
Registration, first clients and what makes a firm fee-only, in the US and Canada.
- Starting an RIA: costs, custodians, registration, first year Most new RIAs register with their state, because SEC registration generally starts at $100 million of assets under management. Hard costs are modest: Kitces put a typical launch at under $10,000 in the first year, and XYPN's registration packages run $3,500 to $10,250. The custodian choice narrowed in October 2026, when Fidelity's $100 million minimum was reported to apply to every RIA. The real cost is runway: firms that start from scratch typically earn about $5,000 in year one. Guide · 7 min
- Starting an RIA with no clients: where the first clients come from An RIA that starts with no clients typically earns about $5,000 in year one and $100,000 or more by year three. The first clients come from your network and from being findable. Client referrals and custodian programs, the channels established firms lean on, aren't open to you yet. Guide · 5 min
- How to become a fee-only advisor Becoming fee-only means no pay tied to a product sale, for you, your firm or anyone related to it: no commissions, no trails, no 12b-1 fees, no insurance commissions. In practice that's an investment adviser registration (the Series 65, or a waiver with a current CFP), a Form U5 ending your broker registration, a firm whose Form ADV checks only fees, and a plan for trails, which the CFP Board lets you work around only by transferring them, asking for them to stop, and giving the rest to charity. Guide · 7 min
- What makes a firm fee-only by SEC data A firm is fee-only by SEC data when its Form ADV reports no commissions, it isn't a broker-dealer or a broker's registered representative, it isn't an insurance agent, it has no related broker-dealer or insurance agency, and its advisors hold no broker registration. That's the test we run on SEC data for the public graph, and you can run it on your own firm in ten minutes. Guide · 6 min
- Fee-only practice in Canada: CIRO, dealers and what "fee-only" means there No Canadian regulator defines "fee-only", so anyone can use the term. What regulators do control is registration: dealing representatives work for CIRO investment dealers or mutual fund dealers, and Ontario and Quebec restrict planner titles. In Wellspent's October 2026 check, 20 of 206 Canadian firms listed as fee-only showed a dealer tie in their own published words. Guide · 6 min
- Advice-only planning in Canada Advice-only is the main model among Canadian fee-only firms: 83% of those whose websites say how they charge list no asset-based fee. Canadian fee-only firms that publish prices charge a median C$1,900 for a one-time plan and C$2,300 a year for ongoing planning. The practical questions are where advice stops and registration starts, sales tax, and how clients find you. Guide · 5 min
When you're ready to be the firm AI can check
A verified record AI assistants read, introductions with no lead fees, a monthly AI report and quarterly press. $89 a month.