Wealth managers face an unprecedented opportunity to grow their books in the coming years – but only if they embrace digital marketing with both hands. The right digital marketing strategy can unlock a new client pipeline that delivers:
- Higher Value: Trillions of dollars worth of assets will be up for grabs for firms that win high-net-worth individuals’ (HNWIs) trust online in the coming years. Roughly 50% of mass affluent and HNW clients are more likely to engage with an advisor simply because they use social media.
- Lower Costs: Research suggests targeting a narrow pool of prospective clients with “the right offer, the right marketing hook, at the right time” can produce client acquisition costs as low as 80 basis points.
And we’re going to help you achieve those goals – using the strategies we used to help one firm generate over $2 billion AUM in new pipeline. But before we look at concrete tactics, let’s establish who exactly wealth managers are marketing to.
Understanding High-Net-Worth Individuals in 2025
The foundation of all good marketing is a deep knowledge of your target audience. But a handful of factors that are disrupting established norms within wealth management – and fundamentally changing the marketing landscape:
1. Growing Competition
Wealth has become heavily concentrated in recent years, creating more competition for individual clients. Individuals worth $5 million or more now possess 47% of investible assets- nearly 2x more than they did in 2010.
This is a double-edged sword for wealth managers. While increased competition increases the risk of losing clients, it also frees firms to focus their marketing on a smaller selection of prospective clients and deliver more targeted campaigns.
2. Generational Disruption
The “Great Wealth Transfer” will see children of HNWIs inherit $68 trillion over the next three decades. This sudden shift in wealth managers’ target demographic will disrupt existing marketing strategies – rendering many outdated or obsolete.
It will also present opportunities for firms to gain an edge over larger legacy firms that have won historically high-value business based on reputation rather than service. More than 70% of adult children will leave their parents’ advisors when they receive their inheritance, and a large proportion of them will seek out those new advisors online.
3. Expanding Services
Wealth managers today are expected to be a “one-stop shop,” providing HNWIs with everything they need under one roof. McKinsey reports that 30% of clients with $1 million to $25 million in investable assets prefer to consolidate banking and wealth relationships, an increase of approximately 250% since 2018.
This is borne out by the data: firms that focus on HNWIs now offer 12 services on average – versus just 7 across advisory practices broadly. On average, these HNW firms offer 2 more services than they did 5 years ago – and 82% plan to add more within the next 5 years.
So, what does all this mean for wealth management marketers?
There are several clear takeaways:
- Marketing and sales must be “always-on” functions to compete with other firms for the ever-shrinking pool of HNW clients.
- Communications must be carefully tailored to multiple different audiences, ensuring Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z all “see themselves” in your content.
- “Niching-down” is no longer an option, and wealth managers must embrace the full range of services they can offer
Ultimately, the key to acquiring and retaining HNWIs is no longer in-person events; it’s driving online visibility and out-competing others on factors like inbound content, lead nurture efficacy, and the use of data analytics.
Building Foundations for Wealth Managers: The Digital Marketing Basics
Digital marketing is like a building: it needs strong foundations to avoid collapsing over time. But most wealth managers struggle to put these foundations in place – and miss out on a wide range of benefits and opportunities as a result.
For example, surveys show that 80% of financial services marketers see data infrastructure and accessibility as an issue – while 89% say marketing automation and content personalization are a challenge. They don’t gain the insights digital marketing data could offer, waste hours of manual effort, and fail to drive reliable engagement through content marketing.
Our experience finds there are a few core factors every wealth management firm needs:
1. A Core “Message House”
Marketing requires a clear and consistent narrative at every touch point, but the sheer number of channels digital marketing involves makes that difficult. Tone and emphasis shift slightly between emails, socials and website copy – creating a disjointed experience for your prospects.
Develop a centralized set of messages for each stage of the funnel:
- Focus on Exclusivity: Speak directly to them and address their specific challenges
- Different Yourself: Run a competitor analysis to identify your USPs and emphasize them
- Showcase Range: Make clear that your practice can handle all their needs
2. Website Optimization
While the vast majority of wealth managers have a website, many are either outdated or poorly designed. This is your “home base” online; a bad website that doesn’t accurately or effectively communicate what you do will actively harm how prospective clients perceive your brand.
Revamp your website to ensure the following:
- Messaging is clear and consistent across all pages
- Design is clean and modern to reflect your target audience
- Individual pages or optimized for user experience and conversions
- Your site is easy to navigate, with pages for all key services
3. Performance Tracking
Data and analytics are essential to help wealth managers understand and optimize their marketing performance. We’ve seen first-hand how impactful this can be; one advisory client didn’t properly track their LinkedIn Ads performance and turned out to be wasting huge chunks of their budget on extremely poor-quality leads.
Avoids that fate by assembling an effective data and analytics system:
- Set up tracking to ensure you generate reliable data across all digital touchpoints
- Use a centralized customer relationship management (CRM) system to house and analyze your data (we strongly recommend HubSpot for wealth managers)
- Create tactical dashboards to review all KPIs with ease
Attracting HNWIs: The Best Digital Channels for Each Stage of the Funnel
The 80/20 of wealth management marketing is simple: simply producing enough content and distributing it across the right channels will get you most of the results you want. But in order to do that, you need to understand which channels – and what type of content – your audience wants at each phase of the funnel:
1. Top of the Funnel (TOFU) Channels
Top of the funnel (TOFU) marketing is about building brand awareness and generating high-quality leads. The key factors to focus on here are:
- Audience Targeting: Focus less on volume and more on precision. Poor targeting in your ads and content can attract a high volume of clients who don’t fit your needs and may waste time for sales. Even a relatively brief campaign on LinkedIn Ads can quickly evaluate whether your message resonates with your ideal audience – and save a lot of time and wasted budget.
- Content Quality: Remember that first impressions last. Publishing blogs or social media posts for the sake of it will lower your perceived value. Invest heavily in TOFU content creation and learn to repurpose it for efficiency.
The right content delivered to the right audience will grow your brand and generate steady leads – especially if you use the right channels.
Key channels:
- Social Media: Leverage platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to develop an organic audience. Publish original content that resonates with your audience and comment on popular posts that your ideal clients might be looking at. This is particularly important for younger HNWIs; 23% of Gen Z won’t even consider an advisor who doesn’t have a social media presence.
- SEO: Identify terms your ideal clients search for and develop blogs and website pages that speak to their search intention. Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital for wealth managers to become the go-to authority; local SEO is even more efficient and helps you reach HNWIs within your area.
- Gated Content: Create high-value content your ideal client wants and give it to them in exchange for their contact details. From investment guides to infographics on recent market events, gated content appeals to HNWIs in part because it feels exclusive – this isn’t information you can get just anywhere.
- Paid Advertising: Use paid ads across channels like Google, LinkedIn, YouTube and more to catch HNWIs’ attention and drive traffic to your website. We’ve seen clients drive hundreds of new leads per month using LinkedIn Ads – while helping them reduce the cost-per-lead by nearly 250%.
2. Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) Channels
Middle of the funnel (MOFU) content is designed to nurture warm leads and prepare them to take the next step with your firm. This is the stage where many wealth managers struggle; our clients in the industry routinely complain of high churn and deals getting “stuck.”
This is often a problem of scalability. Most wealth managers have limited marketing budgets and allocate the majority to lead generation or sales enablement; little is left over for the big chunk of time in the middle. This is particularly problematic when you consider the average HNWI takes months to decide to switch advisors or hire a wealth manager.
Our experience suggests these resource problems can be overcome by process automation. Eliminate manual effort and make it easier to scale nurture without stealing resources from other marketing functions. HubSpot is particularly useful here, allowing you to create a wide range of automated workflows that can be automatically triggered. Nurture content is then deployed regularly at the exact right moment, so leads are never left cold for too long.
Key channels include:
- Webinars: Run online events to educate your audience and build authority. These are similar to in-person classes many wealth managers organize; you can even use the same curriculum. But they are easier to scale and help to move warm leads through the funnel (as well as generate a healthy dose of new ones!)
- Email Marketing: Maintain a consistent flow of emails with high-value information. From sharing your latest blogs and guides to commenting on recent financial events, marketing emails are another highly efficient way to nurture lots of leads with relatively little cost or effort.
3. Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) Channels
Bottom of the funnel (BOFU) content converts leads into paying clients. Wealth managers know this is a delicate process; most HNWIs want to speak extensively with their advisor and build trust through direct human engagement. However, marketing can support those efforts in a few key ways.
Let’s imagine you have a HNWI that’s choosing between your firm and a competitor. They might get lunch with both, discuss their portfolio with both, and consider their options carefully. But during that period, we will undoubtedly still use the internet – and firms that remain visible and give prospects a reason to choose them to win more often.
Key channels include:
- Testimonials: Ask satisfied clients to write or record a testimonial about your services. Make these testimonials prominent on your website and social media profiles to maximize exposure.
- Trust Signals: Use credentials, accreditations and any other signal of authority to boost your image. From your AUM to industry awards, these small factors can have a huge impact on your perceived value.
Grow Your AUM and Lower Your Costs with ProperExpression
ProperExpression is a wealth management marketing agency that helps firms grow their AUM and lower their costs. We’ve helped recent clients increase inbound leads by 1700%, reduce cost-per-lead by 248% and drive $2+ billion AUM in new pipeline.
Want to explore how we could do the same for your firm?
