u/GoodLifeWM

We're evaluating our 2027 Marketing Plans & Budget, which prompted me to look around to see what other firms or advisors are doing in terms of Marketing.

Curious to see the following:
• How much is being allocated to marketing?
• What you're spending money on? (Seminars, Ads, Mailers, Events, etc.)
• If you're seeing a decent ROI for your efforts?

For context, we are a Small-Mid Sized RIA/TAMP located in the Midwest. Currently spending very little on marketing other than local ads at Church, Athletic Events, or Etc.

Contemplating trying to vastly improve our digital presence and to do some frequent mailers for client acquisition.

TIA!

Curious to hear what everyone is utilizing from a model-based allocation and how your associated platform looks?
- Building your own models as an advisor?
- Utilizing Third-Party Models?
- Your firm builds models for enterprise use?
- Combination of the above...?

We are a $500M+ RIA that uses a combination of TP Managed Models + Internal Models. We work with a few OCIO Teams for internal model creation, updates, rebalancing, etc.

As we continue to scale - I'm interested if we should lean into one more than another?

Pros/Cons of Internal Models = multi-manager and doesn't look like a ton of proprietary ETFS, but takes time each month/quarter to go through our process

Pros/Cons of TP Models = No time suck for creation, but usually all proprietary funds + above average weighted expense ratios

Thank you in advance for any thoughts, insights, etc!