The largest line in an advisor's cost to acquire a client isn't money — it's the advisor's own time

An advisor asking whether a marketing tactic is worth it almost always compares its invoice to the revenue it produced. The published research says the invoice is the small half. Across roughly a thousand advisors the average all-in cost of acquiring one client is $3,800, of which $519 is money spent and $2,600 is the advisor's own time valued at what that time is worth. Client referrals come in at $338, the cheapest tactic in the study, because they consume very little of either. Paid advertising is $3,805. Social media is $11,937. Third-party marketing consultants are $25,403, the highest figure in the set, and a firm comparing that to a retainer is comparing two different objects.

Of the $3,800 it costs an advisor to acquire a client, $519 is money. The other $2,600 is the advisor's own hours, which never appear on a marketing budget.

1. 01

   The same tactic is the best and the worst thing in the study, depending on who runs it

   Marketing efficiency for client referrals runs 19x in the top quartile and 1.7x in the bottom quartile among advisors using the identical tactic. Seminars sit at 0.4x in the bottom quartile and networking at 0.2x. The spread inside a tactic is far wider than the spread between tactics, which means the advice to do referrals carries almost no information on its own.

2. 02

   The cheapest tactic is cheap because it uses the least advisor time, not because it is free

   Client referrals cost $338 all-in. That figure holds only while the referral arrives without the advisor manufacturing it. A referral programme requiring the advisor to make ten calls a month is a different tactic with different economics and should be costed as one.

3. 03

   Growth in the sub-$250M band is real and it is not evenly distributed

   Firms under $250M in assets grew organically at 19.6% in the published benchmarking study. Top-performing firms grew revenue 21.3% against 11.3% for everyone else, added clients at 12.4% against 4.6%, and brought in $57.7M in new client assets against $20.8M — 2.8 times as much. Every firm in that study faced the same market.

4. 04

   There is no published lifetime value for an advisory client, and the derivation is easy enough to be dangerous

   Nobody publishes advisor client lifetime value. It can be derived from average client assets, the fee schedule and observed retention, and a firm should derive its own — but any figure produced that way is a derivation from that firm's inputs, not a benchmark, and it has to be labelled as one everywhere it appears.

Median all-in client acquisition cost **~$3,800 (2023), up 75% since 2021** (was $3,800 in 2019); the newest Kitces read is **~$2,551 (2026)**. The soft/time cost is the majority of the total (~71–83% depending on edition).

The model starts by costing the advisor's hours, because the largest input is the one nobody is measuring. Phase one puts a rate on advisor time and records where it goes across a normal month: prospect meetings, referral conversations, content, events, and the administration attached to each. Phase two removes advisor time from the work that does not require an advisor — drafting, scheduling, follow-up, list work, publishing — and leaves it on the two things that do, which are conversations and judgement. Phase three builds the referral route deliberately: a register naming the introducer, a defined follow-up, and a monthly review of which relationships are actually producing. Reporting is per tactic, in hours and in dollars, with both totals shown, because a tactic that is cheap in money and expensive in hours is not cheap.

1. 1

   Weeks 1–2

   Cost the hours

   An agreed hourly rate for advisor time and a one-month record of where it goes

   Owner: OmniFlow + firm

2. 2

   Weeks 2–4

   Baseline by tactic

   Cost per client for each tactic in use, stated in hours and in dollars

   Owner: OmniFlow

3. 3

   Weeks 4–8

   Remove the non-advisor work

   Drafting, scheduling, list and publishing work moved off the advisor

   Owner: OmniFlow

4. 4

   Weeks 6–10

   Referral route

   Introducer register, defined follow-up, monthly relationship review

   Owner: OmniFlow + firm

5. 5

   Weeks 8–10

   Derive the firm's own client value

   A derivation from the firm's fee schedule and retention, labelled as a derivation

   Owner: Firm + OmniFlow

6. 6

   Month 12

   Review

   Cost per client by tactic against the derived client value

   Owner: OmniFlow + firm

The model reports cost per client twice for every tactic: once in dollars and once in advisor hours. Those two rankings do not agree, and the disagreement is the output. A firm that has been told referrals are cheap will find they are cheap only where they arrive unmanufactured; a firm holding a consultant quote can set it beside the published $25,403 and ask what share of that figure is its own hours. All published figures are replaced by the firm's own from month three. Where a client-value figure is needed the firm derives one from its own fee schedule and retention, and it is labelled a derivation rather than a benchmark, because no published advisory client lifetime value exists.

Modelled. Inputs: Kitces Research, How Financial Planners Actually Market Their Services (~1,000 advisors); Charles Schwab, 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study (1,236 firms). Modelled outputs are not a forecast or a guarantee of results. Cited: Kitces Research *How Financial Advisors Actually Get Clients* (2019 → 2023 → 2026 editions). Figures refreshed 2026 against Kitces Research on Advisor Marketing (2023 median; ~$2,551 in the 2026 edition).

Every figure below is published research, not a client result. They are the inputs to the arithmetic above, listed so it can be checked rather than taken on trust. The bracketed number points to the full citation at the end of this page.

These are the surfaces this engagement is run and measured from, shown with representative figures built around the benchmarks cited on this page. Every account we run reports into views like these, and you keep ownership of all of them.

Each figure on this page, the system it is read from, and the definition and window it is measured over.

Not applicable — this is a modelled engagement. Its weakest input is the hourly rate placed on advisor time, which the firm sets and which moves the entire model. Set it at a lawyer-style billable rate and every tactic looks unaffordable; set it at a salary-derived rate and the time cost disappears into the noise. The model asks the firm to fix the rate once, in writing, before the baseline is taken, and to leave it alone for twelve months so the comparison between tactics stays honest.

A modelled capability, not a client account. Figures illustrate what the model produces and are labelled as modelled wherever they appear. See all our work

Full citations for everything cited on this page, with the sample and period each study covers, so you can go and read the original.