--- title: Before You Hire Someone to “Handle Marketing” description: Hiring someone to “handle marketing”? Most RIA job descriptions hide two jobs. Four questions to answer before you post the role — and what to build first. image: https://www.katiegodbout.com/hubfs/We%20need%20someone%20to%20handle%20marketing..png --- [Skip to content](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/before-you-hire-marketing#main-content) [![Katie Godbout, LLC](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/kg-icon.png?width=100&height=100&name=kg-icon.png)](https://www.katiegodbout.com/) - [About](https://www.katiegodbout.com/about) - Services Show submenu for Services - [The Diagnostic](https://www.katiegodbout.com/growth-diagnostic) - [The Sprint](https://www.katiegodbout.com/growth-sprint) - [Fractional CMO](https://www.katiegodbout.com/fractional-chief-marketing-officer) - [Results](https://www.katiegodbout.com/results) - [Blog](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog) - [Let's Talk](https://www.katiegodbout.com/lets-talk) Open main navigation Close main navigation - [About](https://www.katiegodbout.com/about) - Services Show submenu for Services - [The Diagnostic](https://www.katiegodbout.com/growth-diagnostic) - [The Sprint](https://www.katiegodbout.com/growth-sprint) - [Fractional CMO](https://www.katiegodbout.com/fractional-chief-marketing-officer) - [Results](https://www.katiegodbout.com/results) - [Blog](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog) - [Let's Talk](https://www.katiegodbout.com/lets-talk) - [Book a Call](https://meetings.hubspot.com/katie-godbout) [Book a Call](https://meetings.hubspot.com/katie-godbout) Nov 9, 2026, 10:09:01 AM # Before You Hire Someone to “Handle Marketing” ![Picture of Katie Godbout](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/IMG_6288-1-1.jpeg?width=50&name=IMG_6288-1-1.jpeg) [Katie Godbout](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/author/katie-godbout) Share: [facebook-f icon](http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/before-you-hire-marketing) [linkedin-in icon](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/before-you-hire-marketing) [Twitter icon](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/before-you-hire-marketing) [pinterest-p icon](http://pinterest.com/pin/create/link/?url=https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/before-you-hire-marketing) [envelope icon](mailto:?body=https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/before-you-hire-marketing) ## Firms are widening what they offer and hiring for growth at the same time. **TL;DR** - “Handle marketing” usually hides two jobs: a coordinator who executes and a leader who sets growth strategy. - As RIAs add tax, estate, and family office services, every new service line becomes its own marketing program. - Schwab’s Top Performing Firms pulled 4.2 times more assets from existing relationships than other firms. Start there, not with acquisition. Answer four questions in writing before you post the role. If you can’t answer the first two, a hire won’t fix it. ## “We need someone to handle marketing.” It usually arrives right after a good year, or right after a frustrating one. Either way, it’s a real decision. And it’s usually made before anyone has decided what the job actually is. If you lead an RIA and you’re thinking about this hire, get specific about what you’re asking this person to solve. Do you need someone to get the newsletter out, coordinate events, and keep the website current? Or are you hoping they’ll figure out how the firm grows? Those are different jobs. They end up in the same description all the time. ## Is “handle marketing” one job or two? Two. The first is a marketing coordinator: production, cadence, follow-through. It’s a real skill and it’s genuinely valuable. It has clear deliverables. You can tell whether it’s working. I’ve [made this argument before](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/why-a-marketing-person-isnt-a-marketing-strategy): a marketing person is not a marketing strategy. The second job is growth strategy: which clients, which services, which channels, what the firm says no to, how a relationship becomes an opportunity and an opportunity becomes a client. Also a real skill. Also valuable. Much harder to hire for and much harder to evaluate. Committing to strategy can be uncomfortable because it requires naming what you’re betting on and what you’re giving up. So for many small and mid-size financial advisory firms, it never gets written down. You want growth. Your new hire gets a list of tactics: the website, the newsletter, the events, the social posts. [Nobody draws the line from those tactics to the revenue you actually care about](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/tactics-without-strategy-dont-fail.-they-just-never-fully-work). Six months later, you’re frustrated. The newsletter goes out on time. The events happen. The firm still isn’t growing the way you hoped. Your marketer did exactly what you asked. But they weren't included in what you really wanted — growth. I’ve been that hire. I’ve taken director roles where I said yes to all of it. I've had the mandate that was really multiple jobs in one. This mandate burns out whoever holds it. I’ve also worked inside a firm with several owners, where the goal depended on who I talked to that week. When I know the goal, I can run. When it comes from three people with different priorities, I’m spending my energy on the wrong game. If we're clear on the business goal, I can set the strategy, lead the execution, and delegate out the rest. ## Why does widening your services change the marketing job? Something has shifted in the economics of advice. Cerulli Associates’ *U.S. RIA Marketplace 2026: Competing Beyond Scale* puts numbers on it. The RIA channel has grown at a 12% five-year compound annual growth rate. The enterprise segment — firms with $5 billion or more — has grown at 20%, the fastest in the channel ([Cerulli](https://www.cerulli.com/reports/us-ria-marketplace-2026)). Enterprise RIAs now hold 58% of channel assets, up 18 percentage points since 2020, and the number of $5 billion-plus firms nearly doubled, to 357 in 2025 from 202 in 2020 ([InvestmentNews](https://www.investmentnews.com/ria-news/enterprise-rias-need-more-than-scale-to-compete-cerulli-says/268814)). When that many firms reach scale, scale stops being the differentiator. Cerulli’s read is that services become the battleground. Enterprise RIAs have expanded into tax planning, estate offerings, family office services, and institutional consulting. About 10,000 advisors at RIAs are nearing retirement without a settled succession plan, which suggests the deal pace that diluted the old differentiators isn’t slowing down ([InvestmentNews](https://www.investmentnews.com/ria-news/enterprise-rias-need-more-than-scale-to-compete-cerulli-says/268814)). > “Cerulli expects more RIAs to provide all-encompassing services as they seek to support growth and capture fee revenue that might otherwise go to third-party providers.” — Stephen Caruso, director of wealth management, Cerulli Associates The firm stops being only a portfolio manager and becomes the hub for the client’s financial life: investing, tax, estate, and giving. Revenue that used to go to an outside CPA or estate attorney stays inside the relationship. Here’s what that does to the marketing question: every new service line is a marketing program, whether or not you call it one. Launching a capability is an operations decision. Selling it is a marketing decision, and it’s two of them: introducing it to clients who already trust you, and to prospects who have never heard of you. Most firms do the first by accident, with a paragraph in the quarterly letter. Few do the second at all. So “handle marketing” now covers existing-client education across four or five service lines, cross-sell sequencing, acquisition for services with no track record, pricing and packaging, and the referral motion. That’s a senior job with support behind it. Or it’s more than one hire. ## What if most of your new clients come through you? Ask how many of last year’s new clients came from a relationship that existed because of you personally. For a lot of firms, the honest answer is most of them. That’s how good advisory businesses get built. Referrals from a trusted owner convert better than any campaign. It’s also a structural risk, and it caps growth at your personal capacity. Hiring someone to produce more content looks like the fix. On its own, it usually isn’t. Content raises visibility. It doesn’t build a system for developing relationships and converting them without you in the room. If every opportunity still needs you, more content just means more conversations you personally have to handle. A better question: what has to be true for this firm to win a client who never met me? The answers are positioning, a defined ideal client, a service model someone else can describe, proof that doesn’t depend on your presence, and a clear path from first contact to engagement. Content is the last mile of that work. ## Do you need strategy, execution, or both? Someone has to decide where to focus, what needs to change, and in what order. That’s strategy. Someone has to do the work. That’s execution. One person can do both, if you hire for both, pay for both, and give them authority over both. What usually happens instead: the firm hires for execution, at an execution salary, with an execution title, and either slips in strategy later or tries to include in in the JD as a line item. Twelve months later, the employee has been set up to fail at a job they weren’t hired for, and the firm concludes marketing isn't working. If you can only make one hire, someone who executes is a fair choice. Just don’t expect them to set the direction. [Get that from a senior advisor](https://www.katiegodbout.com/growth-sprint), a peer group, a consultant, or a fractional leader before your hire touches the content calendar. ## What should you answer before you post the job? Answer these in writing. Writing is what exposes the gaps. 1. **What is the growth goal, in numbers?** How much new AUM, from which client segment, over what period? If the answer is “more,” the marketing plan will be “more.” 2. **Where will it come from?** Existing clients, through cross-sell into new services. Referrals: who refers, and what actually makes them do it. Or new relationships, which require a real acquisition motion. Name the mix, even roughly. 3. **What does this role own?** Strategy, execution, or both. What can this person decide without you? If the answer is “nothing,” you’re hiring a producer. Price and title it that way. 4. **What does success look like at 90 days and at 12 months?** If you can’t answer this, you can’t evaluate the hire. Neither can they. If you can answer all four, you probably know whether you need a coordinator, a senior marketer, or a fractional leader. If you can’t answer the first two, the hire will just relocate the problem. ## How should a growing RIA build marketing? When you widen your offer and need marketing at the same time, the instinct is to do everything at once. Some of it does need to happen at once. Some of it can’t start until the foundation is set. #### **Set the foundation first.** 1. **Decide who you serve and what you’re selling.** A clear ideal client and a defined offer. You make this call as the owner. A senior marketer can run the process and pressure-test your answers, but it can’t be handed to your newest hire. 2. **Make the offer legible.** Can a client explain your new tax planning service to a friend? Can an advisor describe it in two sentences without hedging? If not, nothing downstream works. #### **Then grow on two tracks at once.** 1. **Grow from the relationships you have.** Tell existing clients what you now do, in a planned sequence, not a paragraph in the quarterly letter. Make referral asks specific: the right person, at the right moment. Not “let us know if you know anyone.” 2. **Build acquisition alongside it.** New relationships take longer to mature, so starting late costs you. Content, events, digital, partnerships, and centers of influence each need their own strategy: who it’s for, what it says, what you’re asking them to do, and how you’ll know it worked. The two tracks don’t get equal weight. Schwab’s 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study, drawn from 1,236 firms, shows where the weight belongs. Top Performing Firms grew 25.4% in 2025, with 12.9% from net new asset flows ([ThinkAdvisor](https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2026/07/17/how-top-rias-are-growing-schwab/)). They captured 2.8 times more assets from new clients and 4.2 times more from existing relationships than other firms ([Schwab](https://www.aboutschwab.com/ria-benchmarking-study-2026)). Read that second number again. The biggest gap between top firms and everyone else is in the relationships already on the books. Those firms are also more likely to have a documented ideal client persona, a client value proposition, and a marketing plan ([Schwab](https://www.aboutschwab.com/ria-benchmarking-study-2026)). Seven in 10 track general inquiries from prospects, compared with 58% of all other firms ([ThinkAdvisor](https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2026/07/17/how-top-rias-are-growing-schwab/)). None of that is a content calendar. All of it is foundation work, and it has to exist before content can do anything. Owning both tracks, and keeping each one tied to your growth goal, is the job most RIAs try to hand to a coordinator. It’s the senior-level work I do with advisory firms. ## Should you hire in-house, go fractional, or use an agency? There’s no universal answer, but the decision is more mechanical than it feels. | Option | Best when | Watch for | | --- | --- | --- | | First marketing hire (in-house) | Strategy is settled, the offer is clear, and there’s enough recurring execution work to fill a role | Expecting strategy from an execution-level hire; no senior person to direct them | | Fractional CMO | You need direction before headcount, strategy isn’t settled, or you want the role scoped before you hire | Requires real access to leadership, not a monthly report from a distance | | Agency | A defined, bounded program, such as a rebrand, website, or campaign, with someone internal to own it | Retainers producing activity with no strategy above them; nobody internal to brief or judge the work | These aren’t mutually exclusive. A common pattern is fractional leadership setting direction, an in-house generalist owning execution, and specialists brought in for defined programs. Capacity makes this harder. Only 14% of RIAs have marketing staff. Just 19% have planning specialists or paraplanners, and 17% have compliance professionals. Advisors spend 53% of a typical week on client-facing work, with administration and investment management taking more than 17 hours of a 40-hour week ([InvestmentNews](https://www.investmentnews.com/ria-news/enterprise-rias-need-more-than-scale-to-compete-cerulli-says/268814)). There’s no spare capacity sitting around. Whatever you add has to remove work from the system, not become another thing to manage. ## Frequently asked questions **Should an RIA’s first marketing hire be a coordinator or a strategist?** Hire a coordinator only when the strategy and plan are settled: you know your ideal client, your offer, and your growth target. If those aren’t decided, get a strategic plan first from a fractional leader, consultant, or senior advisor, then hire to execute it. **What does a fractional CMO do for an RIA?** A fractional CMO sets growth strategy, scopes the roles the firm actually needs, and directs execution, whether that’s an in-house hire, an agency, or specialists. The firm gets senior marketing leadership without a full-time executive salary. **How should an RIA market new services like tax or estate planning?** Start with existing clients. They already trust you, and they’re the cheapest growth available. Make the service easy to explain, build specific referral asks around it, and build prospect acquisition alongside it. **Why do RIA marketing hires fail?** Most often, the firm hired for execution and expected more. Without a defined growth goal, clear decision rights, and success measures at 90 days and 12 months, even a strong hire has nothing to aim at. ## Where to start If you lead an RIA and you’re ready to invest in marketing without managing all of it yourself, let’s talk about what’s creating friction. Bring your growth goal and the job description you were about to post to a [Growth Clarity Diagnostic](https://www.katiegodbout.com/growth-diagnostic). I'll help you get on the right path. [![\Book a Growth Alignment Call\](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/44025611/interactive-212760776472.png)](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs/cta/wi/redirect?encryptedPayload=AVxigLKNnXifAUZh9%2FZnPnVqpKOxVWl3cM5lSSReXZAlaQ1oy8Z80tC1b5%2BpkBxGXjaoZUN9wq2QNF6rpwyrJJXjk6q9VHz3X%2FDCyIi9kJEYsTcw7ShD4FEyupNJNXj%2BsdJaU%2FToM287H%2FkxbipCYr9y95OAXGfG2xlLUT4CwC5ehEMkKR4cMZYFPuIU%2BnDalkfmJWmyAb1%2BMPDvNLk1raIK4DAY&webInteractiveContentId=212760776472&portalId=44025611) --- **About the author** Katie Godbout is a fractional CMO and the founder of Katie Godbout, LLC, based in Omaha, Nebraska. She brings nearly 20 years of B2B marketing experience across marketing, sales, and customer success, with work spanning advisor technology, investment management, and financial planning firms. She sets the growth strategy, then puts the right people around it: leading an existing team, helping a firm hire well, or managing specialists on its behalf. She starts with the business goal and works backward, which usually means the first conversation is about which clients a firm wants and who owns the relationship. ## Sources - Cerulli Associates, [*The Cerulli Report — U.S. RIA Marketplace 2026: Competing Beyond Scale*](https://www.cerulli.com/reports/us-ria-marketplace-2026). Press release, “Scale Alone Is No Longer Enough for Enterprise RIAs,” Oct. 29, 2026. - Leo Almazora, [“Enterprise RIAs need more than scale to compete, Cerulli says,”](https://www.investmentnews.com/ria-news/enterprise-rias-need-more-than-scale-to-compete-cerulli-says/268814) *InvestmentNews*, Oct. 30, 2026. - Michael S. Fischer, [“Growth-Minded RIAs Must Invest Across Their Operations: Cerulli,”](https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2026/10/30/growth-minded-rias-must-invest-across-their-operations-cerulli/) *ThinkAdvisor*, Oct. 30, 2026. - [“How Top RIAs Are Growing: Schwab,”](https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2026/07/17/how-top-rias-are-growing-schwab/) *ThinkAdvisor*, July 17, 2026. - Charles Schwab, [2026 RIA Benchmarking Study](https://www.aboutschwab.com/ria-benchmarking-study-2026) (1,236 firms). ## Related posts [![AI Picked a Side in Financial Services, Katie Godbout, Fractional CMO and Strategic Advisor](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/What%20AI%20Actually%20Changes%20About%20B2B%20(1).png?height=200&name=What%20AI%20Actually%20Changes%20About%20B2B%20(1).png)](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/the-week-ai-picked-a-side-in-financial-services) ## [The Week AI Picked a Side in Financial Services](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/the-week-ai-picked-a-side-in-financial-services) ![Picture of Katie Godbout](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/IMG_6288-1-1.jpeg?width=50&name=IMG_6288-1-1.jpeg) [Katie Godbout](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/author/katie-godbout) Sep 14, 2026, 3:35:07 PM What actually happened in financial services AI this week? Six AI-powered products or research... [Read more](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/the-week-ai-picked-a-side-in-financial-services) [![Do the marketing math. Katie Godbout, Fractional CMO and Strategic Advisor.](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Do%20the%20Marketing%20Math.png?height=200&name=Do%20the%20Marketing%20Math.png)](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/how-many-new-clients-financial-planning-practice-needs) ## [How Many New Clients Does Your Financial Planning Practice Actually Need?](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/how-many-new-clients-financial-planning-practice-needs) ![Picture of Katie Godbout](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/IMG_6288-1-1.jpeg?width=50&name=IMG_6288-1-1.jpeg) [Katie Godbout](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/author/katie-godbout) Sep 4, 2026, 2:40:00 PM A financial planning practice can have a clear growth ambition and still need to answer one useful... [Read more](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/how-many-new-clients-financial-planning-practice-needs) [![Tactics Aren't Goals: Katie Godbout, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer and Strategic Advisor](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Tactics%20arent%20goals..png?height=200&name=Tactics%20arent%20goals..png)](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/how-to-set-marketing-goals-that-drive-growth) ## [How to Set Marketing Goals That Actually Drive Growth](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/how-to-set-marketing-goals-that-drive-growth) ![Picture of Katie Godbout](https://www.katiegodbout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/IMG_6288-1-1.jpeg?width=50&name=IMG_6288-1-1.jpeg) [Katie Godbout](https://www.katiegodbout.com/blog/author/katie-godbout) Jul 22, 2026, 11:29:47 AM Marketing goals should define measurable business outcomes—not activities. Instead of “launch a... 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