Why Customer Acquisition Costs Are Rising for Financial Advisors (And What To Do About It)

Marketing and client acquisition have become more challenging for financial advisors. Costs are rising, sales cycles are lengthening, and standing out in a crowded market is harder than ever. Traditional methods that once worked well are no longer as effective.

The latest Kitces Report highlights this issue, showing that client acquisition costs (CAC) are on the rise, while returns on marketing efforts are shrinking. It’s not just about the money spent on ads or events—time spent on these activities is also increasing, making sustainable growth difficult.

But there’s a way forward. By using automation and data-driven strategies, advisors can streamline their marketing, reduce costs, and focus on building stronger client relationships. This is where Investipal’s platform comes in. It offers tools designed to help financial advisors manage costs and improve the efficiency and scalability of their marketing and sales processes.

The Rising Challenge of Marketing for Financial Advisors

Marketing in the financial advisory industry is becoming more complex and expensive. According to the latest Kitces Report, the median client acquisition cost (CAC) increased to $3,800 in 2023—a 75% jump from 2021. This makes it harder for firms to achieve a good return on their marketing investments.

Hard vs. Soft Costs: Understanding the Full Picture

When looking at CAC, it’s important to understand the difference between hard and soft costs:

• Hard Costs: These are direct, out-of-pocket expenses like:
  • Advertising fees
  • Software subscriptions
  • Payments to third-party vendors
• Soft Costs: These are less tangible but increasingly significant:
  • Time spent by advisors on marketing and client acquisition
  • Labor costs associated with these activities
  • Soft costs now account for 71% of total marketing expenditures, according to the Kitces Report, underscoring their growing impact.

The Impact of Prolonged Sales Cycles

One reason for rising soft costs is the lengthening of sales cycles. Traditional marketing methods, like relying on referrals or in-person networking, require a lot of time:

• Referral-Based Marketing Challenges:
  • While effective, it’s time-consuming and difficult to scale as the practice grows.
  • As firms expand, repeatedly tapping into the same client base often leads to diminishing returns.
• Longer Sales Cycles:
  • Advisors may spend weeks or months nurturing a lead before converting them into a client.
  • This extended time commitment increases soft costs, making these methods less sustainable for growing firms.

The Decline in Marketing Efficiency

The Kitces Report also highlights a drop in marketing efficiency:

• Efficiency Decrease:
  • Marketing efficiency dropped from 1.2 in 2021 to 0.6 in 2023, meaning that for every dollar spent, the average firm only generated $0.60 in new client revenue.
• High-Growth Firms Lead the Way:
  • Despite this decline, high-growth firms are achieving 2–3 times greater efficiency than their peers.
  • This success is due to their strategic use of scalable tactics and automation.

What High-Growth Firms Are Doing Differently

High-growth firms are adopting more scalable marketing strategies, setting them apart from their peers:

• Less Reliance on Referrals:
  • These firms are moving away from traditional referral-based tactics, recognizing that while effective, they aren’t scalable.
• Adoption of Scalable Tactics:
  • Investing in digital advertising, SEO, and content creation.
  • According to the Kitces Report, 38% of high-growth firms are using these strategies to reach a broader audience without increasing time or costs proportionally.
• Focus on ROI:
  • High-growth firms prioritize ROI in their marketing efforts.
  • They are open to experimenting with non-traditional tactics that may generate more leads, even if it requires filtering through more prospects.
• Embracing Automation:
  • Leveraging automation to reduce time and resources spent on sales processes.
  • This allows them to scale marketing efforts without a corresponding increase in costs.

By adopting these strategies, high-growth firms can maintain or even improve their marketing efficiency as their client base grows. This highlights the importance of not just spending more on marketing, but spending wisely by using tools that enhance scalability and reduce time-intensive tasks.

Addressing Rising Marketing Challenges with Technology

As financial advisors deal with rising client acquisition costs and more complex sales processes, the need for efficient, scalable marketing strategies becomes clear. Investipal’s platform offers AI-driven tools to help advisors streamline their efforts and improve overall marketing efficiency.

AI-Enabled Tools: Streamlining Complex Processes

Investipal’s platform uses AI to simplify and automate key functions throughout the advisor lifecycle, including client acquisition, onboarding, portfolio management, and compliance.

Boosting Lead Generation and Conversion Rates

The first step in any marketing strategy is generating awareness and interest in your services, typically at the top and middle of the marketing funnel. Strategies like SEO, social media, paid ads, and email marketing are often used here. But capturing attention is just the start; the real challenge is converting prospects into clients by providing valuable insights or education. This is where lead magnets become essential.

• Enhancing Top and Middle-of-Funnel Activities: Investipal’s 3-factor risk assessment tool can be embedded on your website as a lead magnet, offering value to prospects while gathering insights that help qualify them for follow-up. Here’s how it works with different strategies:
  • SEO: Embedding the tool on high-traffic landing pages captures leads from search engine traffic, bringing more prospects into the funnel.
  • Email Marketing: Including it in email campaigns encourages prospects to engage and convert through the tool, improving conversion rates.
  • Paid Ads: It serves as a compelling call-to-action in digital ads, motivating potential clients to engage and enter the sales funnel.

• Streamlining Lead Qualification: Beyond generating leads, the tool also helps qualify them by providing key insights into risk tolerance and portfolio details:
  • Assessing Lead Quality: Understanding a lead’s goals, financial situation, and risk capacity helps assess their quality. If a prospect submits their portfolio, it signals higher interest, allowing advisors to prioritize follow-up efforts.
  • Efficient Data Collection: The data integrates seamlessly into the onboarding process, enabling more targeted and efficient follow-up.
  • Improved Conversion Rates: With better-qualified leads, advisors can focus on those most likely to convert, increasing success rates.

Enhancing Productivity and Reducing Sales Cycle Length

Moving prospects through the funnel is one thing; closing the deal is another. As sales cycles lengthen, soft costs rise, increasing total CAC. Shortening these cycles is essential to reducing time spent and lowering costs. While lead qualification is crucial, efficiently presenting solutions that address a prospect’s needs is just as important. This often involves identifying gaps between their goals and current portfolio, then presenting a tailored solution. However, this process can be time-consuming. Investipal addresses these challenges with the following tools:

• Automating Data Entry with AI: Investipal’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology automates the ingestion, validation, and analysis of client account statements. This drastically reduces manual data entry, minimizes errors, and accelerates the next steps in the sales process.

• Speeding Up Comparative Portfolio Analysis: Once the client’s portfolio is in the system, Investipal facilitates a comprehensive comparative portfolio analysis. This delivers deep insights quickly, aiding in better decision-making and simplifying portfolio selection.

• Instant Proposal Generation: After selecting the best-fit portfolio, advisors can generate a customized proposal in seconds, speeding up the sales process and enhancing the client experience.

By leveraging these tools, financial advisors can reduce the time and effort required for each client while also improving the effectiveness of their marketing strategies. This ensures more prospects are successfully converted into clients, all while maintaining high efficiency and scalability. Interested in learning more? Book a demo today.