At Wealth Management EDGE, three chief marketing officers from some of the largest RIA firms in the country sat down with Marketing Matchup to ask, “How do you build a marketing function that creates growth in an advisor firm where marketing is still proving its value?”
Kate Ardini of Mariner, Angela Giombetti of Wealthspire, and Tara Ryan of Cerity Partners said the first job of any marketing leader at an RIA is to demonstrate that marketing produces growth, not just brand materials.
Even the largest marketing firms do not come with limitless resources. Ryan was direct about the tradeoffs her team makes every year. “We have to make ruthless, clinical decisions every single year about where we put our resources,” she said. "For a smaller organization, those decisions are going to have to be even more clinical and ruthless.” Her approach has been to choose one or two priorities each year and build sequentially rather than trying to cover every channel simultaneously.
Getting in front of the people who matter
Marketing teams have grown in size and sophistication along with the RIA industry’s own rise over the past several years. Still, RIAs are a long way from being a household name, compared to other financial giants.
But is that the goal? Each panelist at Wealth Management EDGE pushed back on the idea that coast-to-coast ubiquity is the end game for advisors. Instead, you need to be in front of the people who will help you grow, whatever that looks like. Ardini broke this down into three components.
“Are you meaningful?” she said. “That means, is there some sort of emotional connection or exchange with the brand? Are you different? Really challenging in this industry, but it does make a difference, no pun intended. And then, are you salient? Are you out there? So you certainly have to be out there as a brand, but are you out there in the right places?”
Giombetti offered a real-world example. Wealthspire recently put its brand on a race car at the Long Beach Acura Grand Prix. She admitted the scale initially made her uncomfortable, given the firm's historically curated approach. But the hospitality experience they built around the event was for their existing ultra-high-net-worth clients, while the broader visibility served a different purpose: early familiarity for a future audience the firm is beginning to serve. “Somewhere down the line, as we're continuing to expand services, there's already this connection with the brand,” she said.
Finding marketing talent requires looking beyond the obvious
Everyone wants organic growth, but very few RIAs have a dedicated marketing director.
All three panelists emphasized that the talent pipeline for RIA marketing is still forming, and that's actually an opportunity. Giombetti encouraged people from outside financial services to consider the industry, noting that strong social media instincts or general marketing skills translate well. Ardini stressed a willingness to learn as a must-have virtue for marketing talent. “You have to be someone that is just naturally curious,” she said.
Ryan highlighted a structural point that applies to firms of every size: whoever a firm hires for marketing will spend a significant portion of their time educating the rest of the organization about what marketing even is. “Probably for the last 20 years, at least 25% of my job is educating the organization,” she said.
Plenty of time to catch up
When the conversation drifted to AI, the good news for the RIA industry is there is still time to learn. Even the heavy hitters are still learning how to make AI work in their workflows.
Ryan mentioned her team is building marketing AI agents, but was candid: “I'd be lying if I said I know exactly how that's going to end up.”
Giombetti flagged a risk that many firms are already encountering: AI-generated content that reads as AI-generated content. Wealthspire has implemented tools to check whether content produced by team members leans too heavily on AI, and she frames it as a coaching opportunity rather than a crackdown. “People know,” she said. “Your clients know, your colleagues know.”
Ardini described a use case focused on audience insight rather than content production. She uses AI to build synthetic audiences for testing messages before deploying them. “It's a great starting point that lets you decide what you need to test, where you need to go deeper on research.”
Watch the full conversation below, or download Marketing Matchup from your podcast platform of choice.
