By Sarah Falcon. Updated 2026-10-08.
Partner time pays most in the parts of marketing only a partner can do: saying what the firm believes, meeting prospects, and keeping up relationships with CPAs and attorneys. Production, scheduling, and follow-through can move to someone else.
In the 2026 Kitces study, the typical advisor spent 8.2% of the workweek on marketing, down from 10% in 2024. About two-thirds of the typical practice's marketing cost was time, not cash.
The cost of that time rises with a firm's size. The typical cost of winning a new client was $815 at practices under $250,000 in revenue, $4,896 between $1 million and $2 million, and $15,788 above $5 million. Kitces describes the cause as the growing value of advisor time.
Marketing also ranks among the tasks advisors find most frustrating, behind only administrative work, compliance, and, for those who lead teams, management.
Client time is the other side of the cost. In Morningstar's 2026 advisor study, reported by InvestmentNews, advisors spent 53% of the week on client-facing work against the 63% they consider ideal, which Morningstar puts at a four-hour gap in a 40-hour week. Of the advisors surveyed, 62% said they want more client time.
Kitces defines high-growth practices as those in the top third of their peers for organic new-client revenue growth. Above $1 million in revenue, they used less advisor time in 14 of the 18 tactics Kitces could analyze one by one. Other practices did so in four.
The savings do not come mainly from using different tactics. They come from running the same tactics with less advisor involvement. At practices above $5 million, staff accounted for 22% of marketing cost at high-growth firms and 6% at the others.
Kitces gives examples of work that can move: scheduling social posts, setting up for a seminar and polishing the slides, drafting content ideas that a senior advisor later records, and reviewing AI-generated outreach before it goes out.
These are associations in self-reported data. They do not show that delegating causes growth.
Kitces notes that relationships with centers of influence and in-person networking depend heavily on relationships the advisor maintains directly. The same goes for the firm's point of view and for the first meeting with a prospect.
| Partners | Someone else |
|---|---|
| Decide the growth goal | Write the posts, newsletter issues, and pages |
| Say what the firm believes, in a conversation | Design and schedule the work |
| Meet CPAs, attorneys, and other referral partners | Build and run ads and tracking |
| Meet prospects | Gather the numbers and write the monthly report |
| Approve what goes out | Hand each piece to compliance and track revisions |
We interview your partners, write from what they say, and send each piece to your compliance reviewer. Your partners approve the work.
How much of the week should a partner spend on marketing? The typical advisor in the Kitces study spent 8.2%. High-growth firms above $1 million in revenue ran their tactics with less advisor involvement, and did not get there by dropping the tactics.
What marketing work can staff do? Scheduling, production, setting up events, preparing slides, gathering numbers, and reviewing drafts. Relationship work stays with the partner.
A marketing team, or a marketing leader who directs one, is how a firm moves the work off its partners. See the services
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