We discuss why many firms track the wrong numbers, how to conduct a proper channel audit before setting metrics, and share real examples of KPIs our most successful advisory clients use to measure their marketing success. If you've ever wondered which marketing numbers actually matter, this episode is for you.
👇 Watch the full discussion below:
Co-Founder Stephen Beach & Strategist Faustin Weber discuss Marketing KPIs for RIAs.
Transcript:
Stephen Beach: There's a great topic. We get into this a lot during the business development process, right? If a financial advisor practice is evaluating us as a marketing partner, some do, some don't care about this, but KPIs - how do we set the right KPIs that we can do a few things: evaluate the partnership from a more quantitative level, and then evaluate our results from a quantitative level.
You might be operating on EOS (Entrepreneur Operating System) or Pinnacle or System in Soul or whatever else, where you need to assign KPIs. Everybody gets a number, and you need to assign a KPI to the marketing team, or multiple KPIs.
So, where do we start? Generally speaking, in the sales process, I kind of just brainstorm ideas with the business owners or with the managing directors. What makes sense as a KPI to help them achieve their overall firm goals? We can iron them out ahead of time, or what we'll do - and this is where I pass it off to Faustin - is say on our kickoff call, we can say, "What does success look like to you?"
So like, we'll do our thing. We know the playbook that works for marketing communications for RIAs, but we need to hear from you: what does success look like? Some of those things will be qualitative. Like, "Okay, nobody's a jerk. You show up on time for meetings." We even put in a contract before that, we had the right vibe with each other. And that one ended up working out really well. We worked with that client for four or five years.
Let's workshop them together because I think that's important. It'll show how we are a strategic partner. That's when I'll pass it over to Faustin and say, "All right, we need to define what success looks like for this team. We're gonna talk about it all together. What do you think makes sense from a quantitative marketing channels standpoint for KPIs?" And so we've got a lot of ideas, but it just kind of depends on the client.
Faustin Weber: Yeah, absolutely. It made me laugh a little bit about putting the vibe in the contract. That would've been tough to explore through a legal lens, trying to flesh that out a little bit.
So I guess I'll talk through how we start off with a client in terms of setting those KPIs and figuring out what success looks like to them in terms of metrics. Then I'll share some examples of ongoing KPIs and how we look at KPIs differently on a quarterly basis and on an annual basis. We have clients that we've been working with now for multiple years - our longest-term client has been with us for over 10 years.
We don't just set one KPI at the beginning of a partnership and then drop off. It's something that's consistently connected with the firm's overall goals. And so that's where we start. We start first with the firm's overall goal, usually a net new AUM type of goal, and sort of go back from there. We say, "Okay, what is going to be the best way on a marketing front to get our firm to that goal over the next year?"
We break that down. We do a full audit of all the different marketing channels, and that includes sales channels as well for the firm. We'll break down their Google Analytics. We'll dig into what's happening on their website. We'll look through all their different social platforms, measure everything from impressions to engagements to conversations happening on LinkedIn DMs.
We'll also look at their CRM - whether it's Salesforce or Wealthbox or Redtail, or some firms are using HubSpot to track their sales process. We'll dig into that tool and see how many discovery calls have been booked, what the firm's sales process looks like, how many clients are being closed, and how many are dropping off and need to be re-engaged.
I think that's important when you're thinking about KPIs, especially at the beginning of a new relationship, just to think about what's currently happening. Because you can learn so much as a marketing partner from that. It very well could be that we're generating all sorts of leads and discovery meetings, but we don't have the right sales collateral to take that prospect to the next stage. That's where we focus first - on key deliverables in those first few months to really increase the conversion process there.
But more often than not, everyone's coming to us because they don't have the leads themselves. So after that audit, we'll go back to the firm and share the different results. We'll share quick-win opportunities that we see. Maybe it's a blog post that's getting all sorts of traffic that the firm didn't even know was getting thousands of views every month from Google.
Stephen Beach: To add a cliche phrase, what gets measured, gets managed. I think it's a way for us to just try to double down on what's working and then try to eliminate what's not. And the second piece of that is really important too, because you can chase vanity metrics a lot. I've been guilty of it myself.
It could be anything - LinkedIn impressions, let's say. But I'm getting a lot of LinkedIn impressions from developers in India and Pakistan. That's not really gonna help my business, so I couldn't care less. In that case, we've just picked the wrong KPI, so I think it's important to workshop those.
Great point about starting with your audience. That sounds really simple, but as you start talking, getting all these ideas and seeing what your colleagues are doing, it's easy to forget to start with the audience and then build the KPIs around them - or start with your overall business goals, usually net new AUM or new revenue or sometimes number of households. You kind of start with the end in mind, and then build out from there.
Faustin Weber: Yeah, just as an example of a client we've been working with for seven or eight months. We are seeing a correlation and connection between a couple of the higher-up founders and managing partner advisors in terms of their personal brand building, leading to a direct connection with firm discovery calls and new clients that are coming in.
So we're kind of shifting gears a little bit with them, where we're looking specifically for metrics like the individual advisors' following from a particular type of audience on LinkedIn. Because we're seeing a connection between the more times we're posting content that's directed at that target audience, we should see a connection between that and him growing his following on LinkedIn. Over time, over months, we should see a connection between that and more leads for the firm themselves.
Another KPI is how many queries on the website, like on Google, are leading to actual visits of the website. Because we know now in 2025, something like half of all searches are branded queries, meaning that somebody knows the brand from another channel before they even get onto Google. They're not discovering the firm like they would've 10 years ago on Google. They know the firm because they see the post on LinkedIn, they see the post on Instagram, or hear them on a podcast, and they're going to Google and typing it.
Stephen Beach: Or their friend says, "Hey, go check out my financial advisor, check out this firm," and then they at least know the name of the firm or the name of the financial advisor. Then they type that into Google. That's what you're saying, right?
Faustin Weber: Yeah, absolutely. And so our metric for Q2, one of the things that we're tracking, is the number of people that are either searching for the firm name or these individual advisors that we're focusing on for personal brand awareness. We can see clicks from the person's name into the site and clicks from the firm name onto the site, and that is what we want to see increasing.
We understand attribution is so crazy in 2025 that someone can see across five different channels the name of the firm for months before ever raising their hand or visiting the website. But we should expect to see, over time, more people searching those branded names.
It's definitely case by case per firm. These aren't blanket KPIs, but in each firm, based on who we're going after and specifically what kind of goals we're trying to reach, we set quarterly KPIs that can be measured and tracked.
Stephen Beach: Perfect. Love it. I think I would just say, parting 2 cents, if you haven't already thought about this or have some KPIs in place, try to keep it simple to start. And the second key would be to try to tie it back to your overall business plan that you and your partners have agreed on.
Generally speaking, that's an increase in revenue or an increase in AUM. But even if it's just one KPI that you start with, that we can tie to and kind of rally around, even that would be really helpful for us to align and to be a true marketing partner for your firm.
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Setting the right KPIs and tying them directly to your business goals is the clearest path to measuring success, but this conversation is only a starting point. For ongoing insights and practical strategies for RIA growth, listen to the new Craft on Tap marketing podcast. Available now, wherever you find your podcasts. Ready to chat? Get in Touch
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