An RIA Marketing Playbook: How Three Top RIAs are Re-Writing the Rules of Advisor Marketing
Emigrant's Mark Bruno interviews three of the top marketers in the RIA industry: Michelle Panzera, Director of Marketing at Evensky & Katz | Foldes; Tyler Resh, Chief Growth Officer at SteelPeak Wealth Management; and Michele Welsh, Chief Marketing Officer at Verdence Capital Advisors. This wide-ranging episode covers their personal journeys into their current roles, while also exploring their unique approaches to brand marketing - and individual advisor marketing - within their respective firms. Michele, Tyler and Michelle also shared their top marketing priorities of 2025, while previewing what will be in focus for 2026. This episode is a must-listen for any RIA trying to figure out how to 'crack the code' and drive consistent, high-quality organic growth across their organization.
Summary
- Michelle Panzera entered the wealth management industry unexpectedly, initially seeking a job without weekend hours and transitioning from a banking role to marketing due to her aptitude and interest. She emphasizes the importance of curiosity in her role, especially when joining a new company, and the need to understand what makes each advisor successful, tailoring marketing efforts to support their individual strengths while aligning with the firm's overall brand.
- Tyler Resh was drawn to wealth management by the opportunity to build a new industry, focusing on growth strategies and firm valuation rather than direct advising. He highlights the importance of viewing growth as instrumental to a firm's valuation and champions the cause of marketing as a driver of growth, emphasizing the need to align business development and marketing initiatives for consistent messaging.
- Michele Welsh's background in industrial design, which combines engineering, design, and communications, led her to wealth management when she helped Verdence rebrand after lifting out of Hightower. She emphasizes that Verdence embraces and invests in marketing, giving it a priority within the firm and crediting it with contributing to the firm's growth. The marketing team works one-on-one with advisors on onboarding, brand building, and managing the firm's data to support advisors and reinforce the firm's value proposition.
- Tyler Resh notes that marketing is often viewed as a cost center, but firms that elevate marketing to an executive level, driving growth, recognize its true value. SteelPeak surrounds advisors with resources in the prospecting phase, viewing them as everyday influencers, and transitions clients to firm-wide marketing after they are acquired, offering additional solutions over time.
- Michelle Panzera emphasizes that marketing is at the intersection of various firm functions and advocates for leaning into strengths, both personally and professionally. She focused on leveraging Evensky's existing strength in community involvement by creating a new website architecture to support these activities and tailoring marketing to individual advisors' successes, shaping the brand around them rather than enforcing strict adherence.
- Tyler Resh describes a major project in 2025 involving retooling Steel Peak's website to improve lead capture and ensure leads are handled effectively by the right processes and people. This required rewriting the website and fundamentally retooling how business is handled, necessitating buy-in and internal education to ensure the business development team trusts the marketing department's lead generation efforts.
- Michele Welsh describes a time in 2024 when Verdence's digital marketing efforts tapered off quickly after an initial surge of leads. In 2025, the firm focused on "romancing the prospect," taking a more empathetic approach to the client journey and building trust over time. This involved taking incremental steps to get to know the client and drip content on them, recognizing the personal nature of wealth management and the need to build a solid foundation.
- Michelle Panzera's key learning in 2025 was the validation of the idea that sales is marketing's baby, emphasizing the need to nurture and understand the sales team rather than simply providing them with materials. The content program helped tap into what's working now and who the firm is today, creating systems to intake successful strategies and forcing advisors to articulate their connections and the value they provide.
- Michele Welsh identifies a top priority for 2026 as implementing more processes to ensure a consistent experience for clients, new advisors, and prospects as the firm grows. This includes creating "The Verdence Way" to ensure everyone is aligned on messaging and service articulation, as well as focusing on answering clients' most asked questions to improve search engine optimization and generative AI optimization.
- Tyler Resh's priority for 2026 is to give people more reasons to take action by creating a content marketing engine that is very robust and touches on the triggers of why people might think about hiring a financial advisor. He envisions a loop rather than a funnel, focusing on touchpoints where action can be prompted, drawing inspiration from luxury brands that use experiential events to encourage clients to finally pull the trigger and do what is right for their family and estate.
- Michelle Panzera's top priority for 2026 is finding new ways to leverage content and connections, focusing on relationships and how to connect with people more easily. This involves partnering with centers of influence, such as attorneys and CPAs, to amplify content and cross-pollinate client bases, as well as hosting educational events to connect with prospects and existing clients over a wide range of life phases.
- Michelle Panzera recommends documentation and organizational tools, such as Airtable, to departmentalize information and prevent it from being gatekept by a few individuals. Tyler Resh recommends Monday.com, a project management tool with tasks, workflows, and notifications, to stay organized and manage the complexity of marketing efforts. Michele Welsh recommends a custom GPT trained on the firm's tone of voice, SEC advertising rules, and empathy statements to enhance content generation.
Michelle Panzera
Michelle Panzera
Michelle Panzera joined Evensky & Katz/ Foldes in October 2023 as the Director of Marketing. She comes to the firm with ten years of experience across banking, wealth management, and technology. She works to define strategic initiatives—overseeing branding, content strategy, events, and social media initiatives that drive the company’s vision of empowering clients through financial planning and education.
Prior to Evensky & Katz/ Foldes, Michelle held various roles within wealth management, from client services to marketing, then went on to support a book of financial advisors to develop their content strategy and branding. From there, she ran a consumer finance content program for Ally Bank before taking on a comprehensive marketing director role in the technology sector.
Michelle is originally an Italian-Canadian from Montreal but was homegrown right here in sunny Florida. She went on to become a University of Florida Gator and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a double major in English and Political Science. Michelle relishes her Miami lifestyle, but maintains her Montreal-Italian culture, bringing together food and family as often as she can. Her greatest passions are food, family, travel, and art.
Tyler Resh
yler Resh is the Chief Growth Officer of SteelPeak Wealth and is based out of the Newport Beach office. In his role, Tyler oversees all aspects of business development, marketing, and growth strategies. With an emphasis on both organic and inorganic growth, SteelPeak Wealth has set itself apart in the industry as one of the leading registered investment advisory firms in the nation.
Tyler has spent close to two decades working in — and advising to — the independent RIA space. He most recently was with First Foundation Inc. where he oversaw marketing, business development, public relations, investor relations, communications, and branding for its three core lines of business: private wealth management, banking, and trust services. In this role, he provided sales and marketing strategies to over 60 advice-providing professionals, including approximately 15 financial advisors, 30 retail bankers, and over 15 lenders and deposit bankers. His business development initiatives included organic growth, growth via centers of influence (COIs), growth via custodian referral networks (Schwab and TD Ameritrade), and growth via acquisitions. Tyler developed a digital content marketing program that advisors and bankers used to distribute valuable insights about the markets and the economy, as well as education on life events–such as buying a new home, preparing for retirement, etc.–to thousands of clients and prospects via videos, website, blogs, webinars, in-person events, email, and social media. The programs he implemented included the ability for advisors and bankers to nurture leads through systematic touch-points to qualify and close. During his eight-year tenure, he supported the expansion of the company into new geographic markets within Hawaii, Florida, Texas, Nevada, and California.
Prior to First Foundation Inc., Tyler was a founding member of ECHELON Partners, a leading investment bank focused on the wealth management industry. It was through this experience that Tyler gained an appreciation for what drives value in wealth management firms. He was involved with approximately 100 transactions and consulting assignments and conducted valuations on many of the nation’s top RIAs, seeing first-hand the practices of elite firms. Tyler has been a speaker at industry events where he has shared his future-forward thoughts about the growth and development of RIAs.
Tyler began his career as a management consultant at a boutique strategy consultancy in Downtown Los Angeles as well as with a nationwide, multi-diversified consultancy focused on Fortune 500 companies. He holds a bachelor’s degree from UCLA in International Economics with coursework in finance, accounting, and computer programming. Tyler enjoys spending time outdoors, surfing and mountain biking, as well as coaching youth soccer. He is involved in the local community and has recently served as a board member for Laguna Niguel Youth Soccer Association.
Michele Welsh
Michele leads firm-wide marketing, branding, and content strategies. These include setting and executing technology-based marketing solutions focused on excellent client experience and unbiased, transparent financial advice. Her multifaceted career has included roles as an Art Director, Creative Director, and the Founder & CEO of two startups. Michele has been featured on national network media including GMA, Fox News, and The Today Show. Additionally, she brought her entrepreneurial teachings to the Johns Hopkins MBA program where she co-opted case studies with the Carey Business School. In her community, Michele is a co-founder and board member of Sisters Circle, a mentoring program for girls and young women from underserved communities in Baltimore.