How to tell whether your RIA's marketing is working

By Sarah Falcon. Updated 2026-10-08.

Marketing is working when you can name where your last new clients came from and tie each source to something the firm did. If you cannot, the first job is to start recording it.

Four questions for one sitting

1. Where did last year's new clients come from? Write each client's name and the source beside it.
2. Which activities produced first meetings? Match the meetings to the events, posts, ads, pages, and introductions that preceded them.
3. What did each one cost, in cash and in time? Include partner and staff hours.
4. What did the firm stop doing because of what it learned? If the answer is nothing, the numbers are not yet being used.

Numbers to read each month

Number	What it shows
First meetings by source	Which activities bring prospects to the table
New clients by source	The result the rest feeds
Qualified inquiries	Inquiries that fit your ideal client
Partner and staff time	The cost firms leave out. In the 2026 Kitces study, about two-thirds of the typical practice's marketing cost was time.
Cash spent	Completes the cost

Kitces measures what marketing returns as the new client revenue it brings in over the following 12 months, set against the full cost. That horizon is a fair way to judge a tactic.

A simple way to record sources

Add one question to the first meeting: "How did you hear about us?" Save the answer in your client system, and ask each new client again when onboarding ends, once they know the firm well.

In the Kitces study, 37% of high-growth practices had a system to track prospects once they arrived, against 25% of other actively growing practices. That is an association in self-reported data, and the habit itself costs little.

Numbers to read with care

• Impressions and likes show attention. They do not show clients.
• Email open counts can be inflated by mail privacy features. Replies, clicks, and meetings are firmer signs.
• Referrals carry the credit for a new client, and the reason the friend said yes may be the website they visited first. Ask the new client what they saw.

Questions

How often should partners review marketing results? Each month, in a one-page report. The review should end with one decision: keep, change, or stop.

What if we cannot say where clients came from? Start with new prospects from today, and ask recent clients what led them to the firm. The first useful report is a rough one.

Sources

• The Kitces Report, Volume 2, 2026: How Financial Planners Actually Market Their Services. The survey drew 506 qualifying responses, 91% from Kitces.com readers. Figures are self-reported and show associations, not guarantees.

Next step

The marketing score takes these questions in order and gives a result for each of five areas.

Score your marketing

Tell us where you want growth to come from.

Book a call

A 30-minute call with Sarah Falcon. We talk through where your clients come from today and where you want growth to come from.