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.