An independent advisor wins a client slowly and keeps that client for years. The ads have to find people at the moment they look for help, a retirement, a rollover, an inheritance, and say only what the compliance rules allow. Every enquiry is worth a great deal and most searchers are not a fit, so filtering is the whole job.
The clicks are expensive and the rules are strict. Both punish a generic account.
Retirement planning is searched 165,000 times a month and most of it is people reading, not hiring. The budget belongs on searches that name an advisor, a planner or a fiduciary.
A firm with an investable asset minimum pays for every click from people below it. Saying who the firm serves, in the ad and on the page, costs clicks and saves budget.
Testimonials, performance numbers and superlatives have rules. Ads written without them get paused after they are live, and the account loses what it learned.
A booked first meeting with someone who cannot become a client costs an advisor an hour. The form and the first call have to filter before the calendar does.
Built for an independent advisor or a small firm where a partner or an operations lead owns marketing.
Rollovers, retirement income, inheritance, business sale and fee only or fiduciary searches each get their own budget and page, with the reading only searches excluded.
Questions about assets, timing and location on the form, so the first meeting goes to people the firm can serve.
Ads and pages written to the SEC Marketing Rule and, where a broker dealer is involved, FINRA Rule 2210, then sent to your compliance review before launch.
Calls and bookings tied to the search, then marked after the meeting as client, follow up or not a fit.
A page per life event with who the firm serves, the minimum, the fee model and how to book. Fixed scope, built for the campaigns. See landing pages and websites.
Spend, first meetings and cost per meeting, with what changed and what comes next, written for the partners.
Advisor advertising follows the SEC Marketing Rule, Rule 206(4)-1 under the Advisers Act, in force for all registered advisers since November 4, 2022, which allows testimonials and endorsements with disclosures and sets conditions for performance claims. Broker dealer communications follow FINRA Rule 2210. Ads here promise a meeting, not a return.
Average cost per click on Google in the United States. A search for an advisor costs more than a search about retirement, and converts far better, which is why the budget goes to the first kind.
| Search term | Monthly searches | Average CPC |
|---|---|---|
| retirement planning | 165,000 | $11.36 |
| financial advisor near me | 49,500 | $25.03 |
| estate planning attorney near me | 49,500 | $6.02 |
| fiduciary financial advisor | 14,800 | $24.40 |
| financial planner near me | 14,800 | $21.76 |
| wealth management firms | 12,100 | $20.61 |
| 401k rollover | 9,900 | $12.70 |
| fee only financial advisor | 8,100 | $29.19 |
Source: Google Ads data for the United States via DataForSEO, read on October 22, 2026. National averages for the last twelve months.
I have not published a financial advisor case, and I would rather say so than borrow one. This is what is real.
Different industry, included because the numbers are public and verifiable. Roughly $20K per month in Google Ads spend, in a market with $45 to $80 CPCs. Read the case.
What carries over is the method. Conversions are defined as booked first meetings, calls and forms are tracked to the keyword, and bids are set against what a prospect is worth.
I go through the account, the tracking and the path a prospect takes from search to contact and tell you what is broken. The findings are yours whether or not we keep working together.
Tracking, conversion actions and structure get corrected first. Optimising on top of bad data just makes you confidently wrong.
Campaigns, ad copy and landing pages built around how your prospects actually search, and around what the platform rules allow.
Weekly optimisation against booked first meetings rather than form fills, with a monthly written read on what moved and what is next.
Longer reads on this topic from the blog.
Independent financial advisors, RIAs and small wealth management firms.
Not a fit. Firms that want to advertise performance or returns, and large firms that buy media through an agency of record.
It can be, because one client is worth years of fees. In October 2026 the United States average click cost $25.03 for financial advisor near me and $29.19 for fee only financial advisor. The account pays for itself when the form and the first call filter out people below the minimum.
Testimonials and endorsements are allowed with the required disclosures, performance claims come with conditions, and nothing can be misleading. In practice the ads describe who the firm serves, the fee model and the first meeting, and the compliance review sees everything before it goes live.
Not as a core term. It is mostly people reading about the topic. The budget goes to searches that name an advisor, a planner, a fiduciary or a specific event such as a rollover, where the person is looking for someone to hire.
You work directly with the consultant who runs the account, without an account manager in between. With no agency structure behind me, the fee sits below what specialist agencies in this field charge for the same scope. The ad accounts stay in your name.
I have not published a financial advisor case, so I will not claim one. The published numbers on this site come from a home services company in Houston. The method is the same one, applied to first meetings with people your firm can serve.
A short form beats a long discovery call. Give me the basics and I will come back with a straight read on whether I can help, usually within one business day.
Rather book a time directly? Schedule a call.