The 5-Part Marketing Review Every Advisory Firm Needs to Stay Relevant and Grow

At least once a year, your team needs to pause and ask a major strategic question: Is our marketing truly aligned with whom we are becoming as a firm? Marketing is how your firm shows up in the world. It’s how you attract, engage, and retain the clients you want to serve. So its success is a direct driver of your firm’s success.

As our industry becomes increasingly competitive, marketing can no longer be thought of as optional. It’s now table stakes. It can’t be a vague, surface-level conversation, a knee-jerk reaction to a down quarter, or a compliance checklist item. It’s a leadership exercise – one that’s rooted in clarity, alignment, and the long-term enterprise value you want to build.

Think of this exercise as a marketing review rather than an audit. There’s just way too much baggage attached to the latter word. After all, we’re not talking about redlining errors – we’re talking about becoming more intentional.

Because when teams gloss over marketing, they invariably drift. Messaging becomes outdated. Materials no longer reflect the true value you deliver. And worst of all – you start attracting either the wrong clients or no new clients at all.

Why a Review Rather Than an Audit?

Conducting a thorough marketing review helps optimize your marketing budget, and in turn, maximize your client acquisition efforts by:

• Identifying successful strategies and areas for improvement – pinpointing which tactics generate the most high-quality leads that convert into clients, and which tactics have underperformed so you can better channel your dollars towards the most successful approaches. 
• Gaining a deeper understanding of your target audience – by reviewing marketing results, you’re able to refine your ideal client segments, demographics, preferences, pain points, and how best to reach them through tailored messaging. 
• Optimizing your marketing spend – assessing the ROI of different activities by tracking metrics like leads generated, conversion rates, and client retention to make more informed resource allocation decisions. 
• Driving sustainable growth and building trust – through things like positive testimonials that enhance credibility and attract more prospects.
  
  

5 Core Aspects of a High-Impact Marketing Review

1. Marketing Plan, Calendar, and Budget
   Do you have one? Is it documented, visible, and actively reviewed? High-performing teams aren’t flying blind – they revisit their marketing plans monthly (sometimes even weekly). If marketing is still a side project owned by whoever has time, that’s a definite red flag.
2. Ideal Client Types and Segmentation
   Are you attracting the clients of your future, or the ones from five years ago? Do your website, LinkedIn profiles, and conversations reflect who you want to serve going forward? If your messaging doesn’t speak directly to those clients, you’re missing the mark and bringing into question the long-term sustainability of your business.
3. Value Proposition and Capability Deck
   Can every team member clearly, confidently, and consistently articulate your firm’s value? Are you using a current, professional, and differentiated capability deck – or is it a dusty PDF that nobody really bothers with?
4. Marketing Collateral and Communications
   Are your materials aligned with your voice, your vision, and your client priorities? Or are you still relying on templated content that no longer represents the firm you’ve evolved into?
5. Digital Presence and Systems
   Is your website a lead generator or just a digital brochure? Are your lead sources tracked through a well-segmented CRM? Are your digital channels active, current, and intentional?

If you’re not staying on top of all five of these areas, you’re not just leaving opportunities on the table – you’re stalling the firm’s growth potential.

Marketing Is a Team Sport

Regardless of your organizational structure (whether you have a full in-house marketing team, an outsourced partner, or a single marketing coordinator) your marketing review can’t be a solo project – not if you want it to be genuinely productive.

The best in the business make this a shared conversation across advisory, leadership, and operations:

• They identify particular marketing skills and expertise of individual team members – from content creation to social media management and SEO optimization.
• They pay attention to compliance mandates – closely adhering to regulatory guidelines regarding marketing materials and communications.
• They establish a predetermined annual marketing budget and track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure each strategy’s effectiveness and then optimize as needed.
• And they align internally before ever pushing any external messaging.
• This ensures consistent messaging and content creation value which in turn establishes the firm as a thought leader, helps build trust, and engages both clients and prospects.

Because when these things don’t happen, inconsistencies creep in. Clients and prospects hear one thing from one advisor, and then something totally different from another team member – a sure recipe for eroding trust.

Review to Results: Set Your 90-Day Priorities

Once you’ve conducted your review, choose 3–5 marketing priorities to tackle in the next 90 days. More than that, and you’ll lose focus. These moves should be high-impact and measurable. A few examples might include:

• Refreshing your capability deck with new messaging and visuals
• Rewriting your value proposition to reflect your current model
• Launching a niche-focused campaign aligned with your future ideal client
• Optimizing CRM tags to track lead sources more effectively
• Tightening your website language to better speak to your next-gen clients

For each initiative, define the outcome, the expected payoff, the budget, and who owns it. Our ClientWise 5-Part Marketing Review worksheet can serve as a valuable tool in helping you capture and organize this information.

Marketing doesn’t need to be perfect – but it does need to be intentional and accountable. Just because it’s difficult (if not impossible) to precisely measure the ROI of your marketing efforts, doesn’t mean they’re not essential to the long-term sustainability of the enterprise.

About ClientWise LLC

ClientWise is the premier business and executive coaching firm working exclusively with financial professionals. We specialize in helping clients optimize growth and maximize revenue by engaging as a knowledgeable partner in accomplishing specific and significant business results. Our full-service coaching program empowers financial advisors, wholesalers, managers and executives to enhance performance through customized, action-oriented solutions based on each client’s specific vision and situation.

Our certified coaches are members of the International Coach Federation (ICF). They adhere to ICF’s strict code of ethics and have the experience and insight to work with you on the unique challenges and opportunities you face each day.

Drawing from an in-depth knowledge of the financial industry, ClientWise’s mission is to professionally develop industry leaders and consistently raise the bar for industry service, commitment and integrity. Simply put, our singular focus is to help you get clear, get focused, and get results.