Designing the Future RIA – Year-End 2024

Gratitude is often viewed as a personal practice—something we reflect on during holidays or special moments. But what if we applied it more consistently in our work? As author Melody Beattie once said, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more.” As financial professionals, it’s easy to get swept up in what’s next—the next client, the next strategy, the next goal. But when we pause to appreciate what’s already in place—the lessons learned, the people we’ve worked with, the milestones reached—it can provide valuable clarity.

With a new year upon us, it’s a perfect time to reflect on the role gratitude plays in both our personal and professional lives. Taking a moment to acknowledge what we’ve achieved can offer fresh perspective as we look ahead.

From all of us at Beyond AUM, we wish you and yours a thoughtful and joyous new year!

Looking Ahead – Marketing Headwinds in 2025

Every year in December or January, our team does a post-mortem on the trailing 12 months. It’s the most valuable exercise we’ve adopted that directly translates into marketing plan and strategy recommendations for our clients.

We evaluate our clients’ VTOs for their current 1-year goals, how well they (and we) met their success outcomes, and score our rock completion vs. our strategy.
We review our interactive dashboards, which pull in data from every omnichannel source that impacts firm marketing and growth goals. These typically include website and content performance, email marketing performance (list growth, opens, clicks, etc.), social media, paid social advertising and Google search ad campaigns, webinar/event lead gen, Google business profiles and other key directories, and public relations and media pitches, placements, and syndications.
On a weekly basis, various team members cover an agenda item for marketing best practices. This is a fast-moving space where an algorithm change can mean the difference in thousands of impressions and hundreds of clicks. To know what to do, we need to first understand.
In addition to the best practice during our weekly huddles, we test hypotheses across clients and geographies. In our Advisor’s Corner section below, we were informed off-hand of an anecdote about inbound prospecting that helped uncover an important trend around local SEO.

Altogether, we use these continuous learning exercises to answer one simple question. To paraphrase both Greg McKeown and Jim Collins, how do we look for single decisions that remove hundreds or thousands of other decisions? Data analysis can reveal trends and opportunities, but it doesn’t tell you directly what to do next.

In that spirit, and based on our post-mortems, we’ll invite you into our thinking process around what we see ahead for marketing in 2025:

Organic social media, i.e. social media you don’t pay for, continues to dwindle. Many of the major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) updated their algorithms in recent years to prioritize content from family, friends, and possible connections (primarily) and paid/sponsored content from advertisers. At the same time, these channels have been oversaturated with content from brands, influencers, and users. This year, in an election cycle, this effect was amplified even further. A recent report indicated that organic reach for a Facebook post had fallen to below 5%, meaning only one in twenty followers would see a post surface on their newsfeed without paid promotion. If your page doesn’t have a massive following, you can expect this number to be even lower.

The takeaway: Social media is pay-for-play now. The days are long past of posting an update, 50%+ of your audience seeing it organically, and depending on major referral traffic from organic social media clicks. If you’re on a social channel, you should be prepared to spend money to make sure your content gets seen. This means you need to be more selective with what type of content is posted; evergreen lead generators like webinars and eBooks continue to have a good ROI. Regardless of content format, social posts need to be highly targeted, and you must have a compelling CTA wherever you plan to send the click. Start with a budget of $50-100 a month and build out your audience in Facebook’s Ad Manager tool connected to your Facebook Page. You can easily boost an existing post from there. In HubSpot’s The State of Marketing, respondents answered that Facebook continues to be the most used top channel for marketing (57% of respondents) with the highest ROI (29%).

SEO is evolving. If you’ve noticed changes to Google’s algorithm or felt puzzled at the type of content that surfaces on search, you’re not alone. Over the last 18 months, Google has made a series of major updates to its algorithm that runs the search engine. For many content businesses (think of those hawking affiliate products), it’s been called an “extinction-level event”. While the algorithm updates have been aimed at cleaning up the heavily-optimized “SEO content” created solely for search engines, the changes have wrought major changes on traffic levels and search engine result page (SERP) rankings across industries. On top of this development, Google has rolled out “AI Overviews” to users in the United States, whereby Google Search would provide its own AI-generated answers to your questions. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced, “the result is a product that does the work for you.” Other search engines like Bing, using ChatGPT, and DuckDuckGo have followed suit.

The takeaway: It’s clear that Google (and search, in general) are moving toward a zero-click model. You get to Google, AI answers the question for you or sells the product or service to you, and you thank it and go on with your day. Meanwhile, Google has inserted more ad placements than ever before in their search results – especially on mobile, where some queries can return paid ads for 100% of the search spots above-the-fold (before scroll down) on a typical mobile screen.

So, what can you do about it?

Continue to invest in on-page website SEO, technical SEO (including Google’s Core Web Vitals), and getting backlinks from reputable sites while building up your own domain authority with high-value helpful content. These are all still weighted factors for their search algorithm. However, you should also optimize the “answer” pages that they are pushing – these would be the Google Business Profiles you should have for each physical office and their placement in local searches/Google Maps for terms you’ve optimized for on your website. What one person sees on one IP address in a major metropolis is not going to reflect what another person in the same city sees –- search results have become heavily personalized based on previous search activity, device type, internet connection, geographic presence, etc.

The one consistent factor we see for high-ranking Google Business Profiles (and thus local search and maps presence) is 5-star reviews and quantity of 5-star reviews. It’s clear this is a leading signal for clicks to the website based on high search intent (e.g., financial planner + City), especially when there are more than 5 ratings. According to a recent study, 83% of respondents said they trust online ratings and reviews more than personal recommendations, even when choosing a physician.

Invest in client testimonials under the new marketing rule: Talk to your compliance resource, get the policy added to your compliance manual and ADV updates, and find an approach to do it compliantly (don’t cherry-pick clients, don’t compensate or quid pro quo, etc.). Despite what some “advisor compliant testimonials” providers claim about Google or Yelp reviews, the SEC has been clear on its warrants towards third-party rankings and ratings that you do not control.

We hope these insights are helpful as you plan for 2025. Keep an eye out for our end-of-January newsletter, where we’ll share 2 more strategy tips around direct mail and dealing with Google and Facebook’s new restrictive consumer finance policies.

Featured Links:

Advisors’ Marketing Strategies Take the Backseat by Holly Deaton:

Only 20% of U.S. financial advisors have a defined marketing strategy—why is this number dropping, and what’s holding them back? A 2024 Broadridge survey reveals the biggest hurdles advisors face, from compliance concerns to lack of time and resources. But those who personalize their marketing are seeing better results, including higher confidence in achieving goals and converting leads into clients.

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman and Daniel Pink:

How do we make peace with our limits and focus on what truly matters? In Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman and Daniel Pink explore “imperfectionism,” a liberating philosophy that helps us embrace life’s constraints, dodge distractions, and live more intentionally.

Thinking Long Term, Communicating Short Term by Gretchen Halpin:

When life gets stormy—be it market turbulence or unexpected twists—clients aren’t just looking for plans; they’re looking for presence. Advisors who show up with steady communication and sharp insights not only calm the chaos but strengthen trust, keeping clients focused on the big picture.

Quick Hits:

Could the words we choose—’cheating’ vs. ‘cheater’, for example—really shape our actions? Turns out, language might just influence our ethics.
Just as Google’s Media Lab is leveraging AI to revolutionize creative, media, and measurement strategies, marketers should consider embracing AI’s potential to drive smarter, more impactful campaigns.
Is business ownership still your dream—or has it become your daily grind? Time for an honest check-in.
As consumers become more discerning in big purchase decisions, marketers must focus on delivering tailored, informative experiences to stay competitive.

Videos:

Useful Tools and Guides:

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, it’s essential to stay informed about both its capabilities and limitations. While financial advisors can leverage AI tools like ChatGPT for efficient client communication, they should proceed with caution, especially when it comes to creating personalized financial or investment plans. A recent SEC crackdown on firms misrepresenting their AI usage highlights the importance of transparency and honesty in marketing.
Looking to boost your online client conversions? Use this checklist to fine-tune your website strategy and turn visitors into long-term prospects.
Die with Zero by Bill Perkins challenges us to rethink our approach to money and life, emphasizing the importance of maximizing life experiences rather than wealth accumulation. His key message: life is about fulfillment, and the real value of money lies in the experiences it enables.

From a lead advisor at a multi-office midsize RIA, regarding geographic areas they want to target for prospecting:

“We have met with a few great prospects this month and the consistent theme among clients and prospects is proximity, so they can meet with us in person.”

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