I talked to a founding partner last month who was frustrated. His $300 million firm had spent a year on marketing. They’d hired a consultant to help with LinkedIn. Built an email campaign targeting RIAs. Redesigned their pitch deck. Nothing moved the needle.

“We’re doing all the right things,” he told me. “But we’re not seeing results.”

He wasn’t wrong about the tactics. The problem was deeper than that.

Most asset management firms think they have a marketing execution problem. They look at their competitors and see active social media, polished content, and regular email campaigns. So, they try to match it. They hire agencies, buy tools, and launch initiatives. Then they wonder why none of it works.

The issue isn’t execution. It’s clarity. That means knowing what makes you different and why advisors and investors should care.

The Problem Underneath the Problem

When I talk to boutique asset managers, the same challenges keep coming up. Firms can’t differentiate themselves. They struggle to create content that connects. Their outbound campaigns start strong but fizzle out. Compliance feels like a straitjacket. The technology they bought sits half-used.

These look like separate problems. They’re not.

They’re all symptoms of the same underlying issue: the firm doesn’t know what it wants to be known for. Without that foundation, everything else is guesswork.

You can see this play out in how firms talk about themselves. Ask ten asset managers what makes them different, and you’ll hear variations of the same answer. “We’re focused on risk-adjusted returns.” “We have a rigorous investment process.” “We put clients first.” These aren’t positions. They’re table stakes dressed up as differentiators.

When you don’t have a clear story about why you matter, your marketing becomes a collection of tactics with no through-line. You post on LinkedIn because you’re supposed to. You send emails because everyone else does. You create content because someone told you it’s important. None of it connects because nothing is holding it together.

Why Campaigns Fail

Here’s what usually happens. A firm decides it needs to reach more RIAs and investors. They build a list, write some emails, and maybe do some LinkedIn outreach. The first wave goes out and doesn’t land. A few meetings get scheduled, but they don’t go anywhere. Follow-up emails get less attention than the first ones. Within a few months, the whole thing has petered out.

The firm blames the list, or the timing, or the channel. What they don’t see is that the messaging was weak from the start. The messaging wasn’t compelling because the firm hadn’t figured out what made it compelling in the first place.

This is where the content problem shows up, too. Firms know they need to create educational materials, thought leadership, and resources that add value. But when you ask what topics they should cover or what perspective they should take, the answer gets fuzzy. So, they default to generic content about market conditions or investment basics. Content that sounds professional but doesn’t make anyone care.

The advisors they’re trying to reach get a dozen emails a week from firms saying roughly the same thing. Why would they respond to yours?

The Compliance Excuse

Compliance comes up in almost every conversation I have with asset managers. “We’d love to be more creative with our marketing, but compliance won’t let us.” It’s become the go-to excuse for why their marketing feels flat.

I get it. The rules are real. But they’re also the same rules everyone else operates under. And some firms manage to market effectively anyway.

The difference isn’t that those firms have looser compliance teams. It’s that they figured out their message first, then found ways to communicate it within the constraints. When you know what you want to say, you can usually find a compliant way to say it.

Compliance becomes an excuse when you’re using it to explain away messaging that wasn’t working in the first place. If your content is generic and your campaigns aren’t landing, tightening the compliance rules won’t make them worse. They were already failing to connect.

What Technology Can’t Fix

Many firms think better tools will solve their marketing problems. They invest in CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, and analytics dashboards. They buy databases containing thousands of RIA contacts, family-office email addresses, and institutional decision-makers. Then they’re surprised when those tools don’t deliver results.

Technology helps when you already know what you’re doing. It can’t fix bad marketing. If you don’t know who you’re trying to reach or what you want to say to them, automation just helps you send the wrong message to the wrong people faster. Having access to 10,000 email addresses doesn’t matter if your message doesn’t make anyone care.

This is why firms buy all these tools and then don’t use them. They’re trying to use tools to compensate for strategic gaps. It doesn’t work that way.

What Actually Needs to Happen

The firms that market well don’t have some secret tactic the rest of the industry is missing. They know who they are and why they matter. Everything else flows from that.

Most firms want to skip this part. They want to jump straight to the campaigns, the content, and the measurable results. I understand why. Strategy feels fuzzy. Tactics feel like you’re doing something.

But if you’re struggling to stand out, if your marketing keeps falling flat, if you’re frustrated that nothing seems to work, you’re building on a weak foundation.

This means answering hard questions before you launch another campaign. What do you want to be known for? Not what you do. Everyone does roughly the same things. What’s your point of view? What do you believe that your competitors don’t? Why should an advisor care?

These aren’t easy questions. They require you to make choices about who you’re for and who you’re not for. They force you to take a position instead of trying to appeal to everyone.

But once you answer them, marketing gets simpler. You know what content to create because you know what story you’re telling. You know who to target because you know who your message will resonate with.

The execution still matters. You still need good content, smart outreach, and working technology. But now those things work toward something clear. They’re not random tactics you’re trying because someone said you should.

Here’s what it comes down to: you can spend another year running campaigns that don’t work, blaming compliance, budget, or timing. Or you can stop and figure out what makes you worth paying attention to. The firms that choose the second path stop spinning their wheels. Not because marketing suddenly got easier, but because they finally know what they’re building toward.

Still Stuck in Neutral?

Are you running campaigns that don’t convert, creating content that doesn’t connect, or watching your competitors pull ahead while you’re doing “all the right things”?

Without a clear message about what makes your firm different, you’ll keep spinning your wheels. Schedule a complimentary strategy session to figure out where the disconnect is and what your position should be.

Schedule Your Clarity Session Today

Dan Sondhelm is the CEO of Sondhelm Partners. He works with boutique asset managers to help them find their message, raise AUM, and create more meaningful conversations with the advisors and investors who matter most.