Most financial advisors get clients from people who already know them. Referrals from clients, friends and family account for 54.2% of new clients, and centers of influence such as CPAs and attorneys account for another 13.9%, according to Cerulli's U.S. Advisor Metrics 2025 report. Everything else in the marketing budget competes for the remaining third.
From referrals, overwhelmingly. Cerulli's U.S. Advisor Metrics 2025 report attributes 54.2% of new clients to referrals from existing clients, friends and family, and another 13.9% to centers of influence such as CPAs and attorneys, which is roughly two thirds of new business arriving through a relationship the firm already has. Ranked by cost, the spread between channels is enormous: a referred client costs $338 to acquire against an all-channel average of $3,119, and the most expensive routes run past $25,000 per client.
- Referrals from clients, friends and family produce 54.2% of new clients, and centers of influence add another 13.9%.
- The average client costs $3,119 to acquire, and 83% of that is the value of the advisor's own time rather than hard-dollar spend.
- Cost per client runs from $338 for client referrals to more than $25,000 for outside marketing consultants, a spread of roughly 75x.
- Centers of influence cost about 27 times more per client than client referrals and still deliver the largest households, at $1.5M to $2M in assets.
- 42% of clients say they have made a referral, while advisors report meeting referrals from only about 4% of clients. Closing that gap beats adding a new channel.
That is the short answer. The longer answer is more useful, because the channel that produces the most clients is also the one almost nobody manages, and the channels firms spend the most money on are often the ones that return the least.
This is a ranking of every channel advisors use to find new clients, ordered by what each one costs to produce a single client, with a note on how much advisor time it consumes. At the end there is a section on what the ranking gets wrong, because cost per client is a useful number and a misleading one on its own.
Where do financial advisors actually get new clients?
The industry data is consistent across sources.
Cerulli's 2025 advisor survey puts 54.2% of new clients on referrals from existing clients, friends and family, and 13.9% on referrals from centers of influence. That is roughly 68% of new business arriving through a relationship the firm already has.
A separate 2025 survey of 829 advisors by InspereX and Red Zone Marketing found 76% of advisors gained new clients from unsolicited referrals that year, while 38% gained them from referrals they asked for and 38% from other professionals.
The mix does shift with client age. Research published by Ficomm Partners in 2024 found 60% of investors over 60 required a referral before hiring an advisor, compared with 17% of investors under 44, and that 57% of the under-44 group chose their advisor through digital marketing instead.
So the honest version is this. Referrals are the largest channel by a wide margin today, digital matters more with younger households, and the two are not in competition for the same budget.
How we ranked the channels
The most detailed public benchmark on what each channel costs is Kitces Research on Advisor Marketing, which surveyed more than 1,000 advisors and produced a cost per client acquired for each strategy.
Two findings from that study shape everything below.
The average client cost $3,119 to acquire. Of that, $519 was hard-dollar spend and $2,600 was the value of the advisor's own time. Time is 83% of the cost of getting a client, which is why a channel that looks free on the invoice can be the most expensive thing a firm does.
The spread between channels was wide, running from $338 per client at the low end to more than $25,000 at the high end. That is a difference of roughly 75x for the same outcome, which is a larger range than most firms apply to any other operating decision they make.
Two caveats before the table. The dollar figures come from a study fielded in 2019, so treat them as a reliable ranking rather than a current price list, because hard-dollar costs have risen since. And they are averages across firms of every size, so read them as cost per client rather than as a budget for your firm.
Every client acquisition channel, ranked by cost per client
| Rank | Channel | Cost per client acquired | Advisor time required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Client referrals and introductions | $338 | Moderate | The lowest cost per client of any channel priced in the study. Returns roughly $5 of revenue for every $1 of marketing cost, and up to 19x for the most efficient quartile of firms. |
| 2 | SEO and educational content | Below average, no dollar figure published | High up front, low later | Modest revenue per client, very low cost. Compounds, so the cost per client falls every year the content stays live. |
| 3 | Paid web listings and directories | Below average, no dollar figure published | Low | 8.3x revenue to cost for the most efficient quartile. Cheap to test. |
| 4 | Writing a book | Below average, no dollar figure published | Very high | 10x revenue to cost for the most efficient quartile, but the time cost is front-loaded and large. |
| 5 | Webinars | Below average, no dollar figure published | Moderate | More efficient than in-person seminars, mostly because the venue and catering costs disappear. |
| 6 | Paid advertising | $3,805 | Low | Comes in below the all-channel average of $3,119 only at firms that already turn enquiries into clients reliably. |
| 7 | Networking | $4,494 | Very high | Returns less than $1 of revenue per $1 of cost on average. Almost all of the cost is advisor hours. |
| 8 | Client appreciation events | $4,933 | High | Produces roughly $10,000 of annual revenue per client acquired, which is why firms keep doing it despite the cost. |
| 9 | Radio and sponsorships | $7,855 | Low | Broad reach, weak targeting. |
| 10 | Centers of influence | $9,144 | Very high | Expensive per client and still worth it. See the section below. |
| 11 | Social media | $11,937 | High | Revenue to cost ratio close to zero on average across surveyed advisors. |
| 12 | Outside marketing consultants | $25,403 | Low | The most expensive route to a client in the study. |
Sources: Kitces Research on Advisor Marketing, cost per client acquired by strategy.
Why client referrals cost so much less than everything else
A referred client arrives already trusted and already screened for fit by the person who made the introduction, so the advisor spends a fraction of the hours on them that a stranger requires. Since 83% of client acquisition cost is advisor time, cutting the hours is what cuts the cost.
The problem is that most firms treat this channel as weather rather than as something they run. It produces the majority of new business and it has no owner, no forecast and no instrumentation.
The gap is not client willingness. Absolute Engagement's 2026 Client Intelligence Monitor found 42% of clients said they had made a referral, while advisors reported meeting referrals from only about 4% of clients. Around 60% of clients said they would like help making a referral easier to make.
Read those two numbers together and the picture is clear. Clients are talking about their advisor. Most of that talk never becomes an introduction, because a casual mention at dinner is not a name and a phone number. Clients say the barrier is practical, which is that they did not know who needed an advisor or what to say.
That is a mechanism problem, and mechanism problems are fixable. The specifics are in our guide on how to ask clients for referrals without it feeling awkward and in the best way to ask a client for an introduction, which covers why asking for one named person works better than asking for referrals in general.
Why centers of influence cost more and are still worth it
Centers of influence sit near the bottom of the cost table at $9,144 per client, and they are still one of the best channels in wealth management.
The reason is client size. Kitces found COI referrals produced more than $15,000 of revenue per client on average, associated with $1.5M to $2M in assets, which is the highest of any channel measured. So a channel that costs about three times the all-channel average per client delivers the largest households in the study, and for most firms that is a trade worth making.
The cost is almost entirely advisor hours spent building and keeping relationships that pay off slowly and unevenly. Cerulli found 63% of practice management professionals rate COI relationships as a highly effective strategy, which is another way of saying the profession knows this and does it anyway.
If you are building this channel, our guide to centers of influence for financial advisors covers what to say in a first meeting with a CPA and how to keep the relationship warm without becoming a nuisance.
What about paid referral platforms and custodian programs?
These two sit outside the table because they are priced as a share of revenue rather than as a cost per client, and the economics work differently.
Custodian referral programs
The Schwab Advisor Network has charged participating firms 25 basis points on the first $2 million of referred client assets, then 20 basis points on the next $3 million, 15 on the next $5 million and 10 above $10 million, with the fee continuing for as long as the account stays open. Schwab has raised participation fees since that schedule was published, so check the current terms. Firms need at least $250 million in assets, two or more CFP professionals and a predominantly fee-based model to qualify. The clients are real and the cost is permanent, which makes this a revenue-share decision rather than a marketing one.
Paid referral platforms
Vendors in this category, usually marketed as lead generation, charge for introductions to investors who have filled in a form. Volume is the model. RIABiz reported in 2024 that one San Diego RIA paid SmartAsset roughly $10 million over about two years, saw 96.5% of those introductions go nowhere, and still added around $1 billion in net new assets. That firm made it work through disciplined follow-up at scale. Most firms do not have the capacity to work thousands of introductions, and a 3.5% success rate with no capacity behind it is just spend.
There is a compliance dimension here as well. Paid arrangements for client introductions fall under the SEC Marketing Rule, and the disclosure and oversight requirements are specific. We cover what the rule requires in SEC Marketing Rule: referrals and endorsements.
Do digital channels work for advisors?
Yes, and they work differently from how most firms use them.
SEO and educational content ranked as one of the most cost-effective strategies in the Kitces data, mainly because the cost per client keeps falling as long as the content stays online. Paid web listings and directories returned 8.3x revenue to cost for the most efficient quartile of firms. Books returned 10x for the same group, and direct mail 9.1x.
Social media was the outlier in the other direction at $11,937 per client, with an average revenue to cost ratio close to zero. That does not mean nobody succeeds with it. It means the advisor hours it consumes rarely produce clients at a rate that justifies them, which is a different claim.
The generational data matters most here. If 57% of investors under 44 choose an advisor through digital channels, a firm with a twenty-year succession horizon needs the channel working before it needs the clients. That is also the argument in why firms lose the next generation.
How much should an advisory firm spend on marketing?
Advisory firms spend around 2% of revenue on hard-dollar marketing, according to the Kitces data. That figure is misleading on its own, because it counts the invoices and not the hours.
Add the advisor time and the picture changes. Advisors spend roughly 20% of their time on business development, and when that time is costed properly, marketing works out at something closer to 10% of total firm expenses.
So the real marketing budget at most firms is five times the line item, and four fifths of it is invisible because it sits in advisor hours rather than in a vendor contract. That is the number to manage.
What the cost ranking gets wrong
Cost per client is one number and it hides three things.
Ceiling
Referrals are cheap and they do not scale linearly. A firm can only ask so often before the asking changes the relationship, which is why the discipline is in choosing the right moments rather than in increasing volume.
Client quality
Centers of influence cost 27 times what a client referral costs and deliver the largest clients in the industry. A firm optimising purely for cost per client would cut the channel that produces its best households.
Capacity
Every channel except paid media consumes advisor hours, and those hours come out of client service. Kitces found advisors spend around 20% of their time on business development. A channel that adds clients while consuming hours the firm does not have is not a growth strategy.
The useful question is not which channel is cheapest. It is which channel your firm is under-running relative to what it already has. For most firms that is the referral channel, because they have the relationships and no system for turning them into introductions.
What to do first if you want more clients next year
Start by finding out where your clients actually came from. Charles Schwab's 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study, covering 1,236 firms and more than $2.5 trillion in assets, found 85% of top-performing firms track the source of new client inquiries, compared with 71% of everyone else. Those same top-performing firms grew client count 12.4% against 4.6% for the rest.
Then work in this order.
- Attribute what you already have. You cannot rank your own channels against this table until you know which introductions produced which clients. Our guide on how RIAs track and measure referral activity covers how to do this without it reading as oversight of individual advisors.
- Fix the mechanism on the biggest channel before adding a new one. If 42% of clients are talking about you and 4% are producing introductions, the return on closing that gap is larger than anything a new channel will deliver in year one. Our financial advisor referral program guide covers how to design the mechanism so it holds up across a whole firm rather than one enthusiastic advisor.
- Give the channel an owner. Advisor-driven growth needs a named person accountable for the rate, in the same way the investment committee has an owner. That is what the Growth Office is for.
- Add a second channel that suits your next generation of clients, not your current one. For most firms that means content and digital presence, and the payback period is measured in years rather than quarters.
- Only then consider paid. Paid channels multiply something the firm already does well, so they pay back at firms that know how to turn an introduction into a client and disappoint at firms that do not.
For the arithmetic behind all of this, see how to grow AUM organically without buying leads, which works through what a change in the organic growth rate is worth per advisor.
See what a managed referral channel looks like
AmpUp raises a firm's organic growth rate by working the channel that already produces most of its clients. It reads across client conversations, shows each advisor a short weekly list of who is worth asking and why, drafts the ask in that advisor's own words, and traces every introduction through to the assets it produced.
Book a demo and we will walk through what that looks like on your book.
You can also read how it works, or start with our security and compliance position if that is the first question at your firm.
Frequently asked questions
How do financial advisors get most of their clients? From referrals. Cerulli's U.S. Advisor Metrics 2025 report attributes 54.2% of new clients to referrals from existing clients, friends and family, and a further 13.9% to centers of influence such as CPAs and attorneys. Around two thirds of new business arrives through an existing relationship.
What does it cost a financial advisor to get a new client? Kitces Research on Advisor Marketing put the average at $3,119 per client, of which $519 was hard-dollar spend and $2,600 was the value of the advisor's time. Cost per client ranged from $338 for client referrals to more than $25,000 for outside marketing consultants.
What is the cheapest way for a financial advisor to get clients? Client referrals, at $338 per client acquired. The channel is inexpensive because a referred client requires far fewer advisor hours before they become a client, and advisor time is 83% of the cost of acquiring one.
Do centers of influence produce better clients than client referrals? They produce larger ones. COI referrals averaged more than $15,000 in revenue per client, associated with $1.5M to $2M in assets, which is the highest of any channel measured. They also cost about 27 times more per client to acquire, so most firms run both.
Is social media worth it for financial advisors? On the industry averages, no. Social media cost $11,937 per client acquired, with a revenue to cost ratio close to zero across surveyed advisors. Individual firms do succeed with it, but the advisor hours it consumes rarely produce clients at a rate that justifies them.
How many new clients should an advisory firm expect to add each year? It varies with firm size and channel mix, so the useful benchmark is growth rate rather than client count. Charles Schwab's 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study found top-performing firms grew client count 12.4% in 2025, against 4.6% for all other firms.
How much should an advisory firm spend on marketing? Around 2% of revenue in hard-dollar spend, according to Kitces Research. Counting advisor time as well, marketing works out closer to 10% of total firm expenses, because advisors spend roughly 20% of their time on business development. Most of a firm's real marketing budget sits in advisor hours rather than invoices.
Do referrals still work with younger clients? Less than they do with older ones. Ficomm Partners found 60% of investors over 60 required a referral before hiring an advisor, compared with 17% of investors under 44, and 57% of that younger group found their advisor through digital channels.