Digital Advertising for Investment Managers: These Local Advertisers Are a Leading Spender

The 2025 Spending Numbers for Investment and Retirement Advice

The spending channels in the BIA analysis of importance to this discussion include:

• Radio OTA spend: It’s down from 2024, but accounts for 10.3% of total spend.
• Radio digital (consists of any digital advertising sold by radio except OTT/CTV): This is up 4.4% over 2024.
• OTT/CTV: This category is spending 32.2% more on streaming ads.

This data showcases how important investment and retirement advice businesses are to local media. The increase in digital is a huge opportunity.

Let’s review ways to capture their digital ad spend.

What Works Best in Digital Advertising for Investment Managers?

When defining best practices for investment manager digital advertising, start with this foundation: the messaging must focus on trust-building and social proof.

Consumers are looking for investment managers who have experience and are credible. This is a money category, and people aren’t going to respond to ads that don’t emphasize these things.

Some channels are more effective at this than others.

Digital Tactics That Can Build Trust

What should you recommend to this advertiser? Their goal should inform this, as it will need to align with the sales cycle. However, some tactics are innately better for trust building.

• Email marketing: Email marketing as a service allows investment managers to target folks by geography and demographics. In this channel, the communication is one-to-one, and personalization is critical. It can be a starting point for a consultation with an offer, such as a free consultation.
• Social media: People often look to social as a search engine and for brand discovery. Depending on the audience age, you can recommend a specific site (e.g., Facebook for those over 55 and Instagram for millennials). Be sure to include reviews and testimonials from current customers for this to be more impactful.
• OTT/CTV: This is a chance for the investment manager to speak directly to a targeted audience and share their expertise. Having a client talk in the ad would be even more valuable.

What’s the Right Message?

We’ve discussed trust, integrity and social proof. Here are some campaign ideas that emulate these characteristics.

• Ads should include certifications, years in business and awards: Consumers need to know the investment manager is legit, and these things prove this.
• Results are validation: If an ad can use specific examples of positive results for a customer, this type of story would be very impactful.
• Messaging should relay services offered: Investment managers can offer a variety of solutions. They should make this clear in the ad copy so there’s no confusion later.
• Address issues the audience may have head-on: People seek investment and retirement advice for various reasons and at different times in their lives. If you’re able to target precisely, ads can highlight those challenges from those approaching retirement to those planning for a child’s education to those just starting their adult lives.
• The CTA should be an offer that makes sense: Someone viewing a few ads isn’t ready to make any big financial decisions. They won’t suddenly invest tomorrow, so the CTA needs to be a small step, like a free consultation or an invite to a lunch-and-learn on investing.