How Much Should a Financial Planning Practice Budget for Marketing?

10 September 2026·4 min read

Quick answer: Most financial planning practices should budget somewhere between 4–8% of revenue on marketing, split roughly 40% on things that build trust before someone enquires (your website, Google Business Profile, reviews) and 60% on things that bring the right people to you (referral nurture, content, and a small amount of paid). A sole practitioner might spend $800–$1,500 a month; a five-adviser practice might spend $6,000–$12,000. The number matters less than knowing where every dollar is going. 📈

Ask ten financial planning practices what they spend on marketing and you'll get ten different answers — and about half of them will be guessing. That's the first thing to fix, and it's also the thing most practices get most wrong: they don't have a marketing budget, they have a marketing impulse. A conference sponsorship here, a website refresh there, a boost on a Facebook post because someone said it might help. None of it adds up to a system, and none of it gets measured against the one number that actually matters — cost per new client. 💖

What most practices get wrong

The most common mistake isn't spending too little. It's spending unevenly — a big splash on something exciting (a rebrand, a video series) followed by six months of nothing, because the budget got used up in one hit. Referral-based businesses like financial planning need consistent, boring, unglamorous marketing far more than they need one impressive campaign. The second most common mistake is treating "marketing" and "compliance-approved content" as separate line items, when for a regulated advice business they need to be built together from the start.

The usable asset: a simple budget split you can copy

Take your target marketing spend (start with 5% of revenue if you're not sure) and split it like this:

35% — Foundations: website hosting and updates, Google Business Profile management, review generation tools, branded email templates. This is the stuff that has to be right before you spend a cent sending people there.
30% — Referral engine: the systems that keep you front-of-mind with accountants, mortgage brokers and existing clients — newsletters, review meeting follow-ups, referral partner check-ins.
20% — Content and visibility: the blog posts, LinkedIn content, case studies and local SEO work that gets you found by people who don't yet know an adviser to ask for.
15% — Paid and testing: a modest, trackable amount on Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads for a specific service line (aged care advice, SMSF, pre-retirement) — never "general brand awareness."

A two-adviser practice in a regional centre: spending $2,200 a month, they put $800 into a proper website and GBP overhaul in month one, then settled into $700/month on a referral newsletter and content, and $500/month testing Google Ads for "retirement planning [suburb]." After five months they could point to exactly which channel brought which client — something they'd never been able to do before.

A five-adviser CBD practice: historically spent big on one annual client event and little else. They reallocated 60% of that event budget into always-on content and referral partner nurture, kept a smaller event, and saw enquiries spread more evenly across the year instead of spiking once and going quiet for eleven months.

How to actually set the number

Start with revenue, not vibes. Multiply annual revenue by 5% as a starting point (higher if you're actively growing or entering a new market, lower if you're at capacity and mostly retaining). Divide by 12. That's your monthly ceiling. Then use the split above and review it every quarter against one question: which channel actually produced a client meeting, not just a click.

💡 The number that actually matters isn't the budget — it's cost per new client. A practice spending $3,000/month that converts two new clients worth $4,000 in first-year revenue each is doing better than one spending $1,000/month for zero. Track spend against enquiries against actual onboarded clients, every quarter, in one simple spreadsheet.

Mistakes to avoid

Setting a budget based on what a competitor is rumoured to spend, rather than your own revenue and growth goals.
Spending the whole quarter's budget on one big push and then going quiet — consistency beats intensity for a trust-based service.
Running paid ads for "financial advice" broadly instead of a specific, in-demand service where you can write compliant, useful content.
Forgetting to budget time, not just dollars — someone has to actually manage this, even if it's an hour a week.

Frequently asked questions

Is 5% of revenue a hard rule?

No — it's a sensible starting point used across professional services generally. A practice in growth mode or a newer practice building a client base from scratch often needs closer to 8–10%; an established practice at capacity might comfortably sit at 3–4% focused mostly on retention and referral.

Should compliance review add to the budget?

Yes, factor it in. Time spent getting content checked against your AFSL's compliance requirements is a real cost, and rushing it to save money is a false economy.

What if we've never tracked this before?

Start simple: a spreadsheet with date, channel, spend, and outcome (enquiry, meeting booked, client onboarded). Three months of honest tracking will tell you more than any industry benchmark.

Does this apply the same way to a sole practitioner?

The percentages hold, but the mix shifts — a sole practitioner usually gets more value from referral nurture and a strong Google Business Profile than from paid ads, simply because there's no capacity to handle a sudden spike in enquiries.

Please note: general information, not financial or compliance advice — check current ASIC and AFSL guidance before finalising any marketing or advertising content for a licensed advice business.