Tag: Advisor Marketing
EP 26 – How RIAs are Using AI to Create Better Marketing with Michele Welsh

EP 26 – How RIAs are Using AI to Create Better Marketing with Michele Welsh

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Growth gets harder when every firm has access to the same tools.

What separates strong marketing is not the software itself, but the judgment, structure, and empathy behind how it is used.

In this episode, Dan Gilmartin speaks with Michele Welsh, Chief Marketing Officer at Verdence Capital Advisors, about building a practical AI and marketing system inside a wealth firm. She explains how her team evaluates tools through acceleration, accuracy, and innovation, how they train AI to reflect brand voice and empathy, and why clean CRM data drives better automation. Michele also shares how education-first content, strong prompt strategy, and patient distribution across formats help advisors build trust with high net worth prospects.

Key takeaways:

  • Michele shares an AAI filter for judging tools by speed, better output, and new possibilities for teams
  • She explains why empathy, tone training, and compliance guardrails make AI output more personal and usable
  • Thoughtful prompts beat quick prompts when firms want content that sounds distinct and fits the brand
  • Clean CRM data helped advisors adopt automation by showing why bad inputs only create more bad outputs
  • Education across long, written, and short formats helps firms stay top of mind before prospects are ready
  • And more!

Connect with Dan Gilmartin: 

Connect with Michele Welsh:

About our Guest: 

Michele Welsh is the Chief Marketing Officer of Verdence Capital Advisors. 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.

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EP 19 – Human First, Funnel Second: Caleb Stinson on Redefining Lead Generation

EP 19 – Human First, Funnel Second: Caleb Stinson on Redefining Lead Generation

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Speed matters, but connection matters more.

In this episode of Grow Organically, Dan Gilmartin speaks with Caleb Stinson, Chief Marketing Officer of Exencial Wealth Advisors, about creating meaningful connections in the lead generation process. Caleb shares how pacing, personalization, and purpose-driven outreach strengthen both client relationships and firm outcomes.

Caleb discusses:

  • Why humanizing outreach conversations leads to stronger client relationships
  • How to evaluate whether a lead has a meaningful need that the firm can address
  • The importance of adapting outreach pacing and volume to team capacity
  • Why a shorter “crawl-walk-run” runway accelerates firm growth
  • How roleplaying calls with team members improve empathy and performance
  • And more!

Connect with Dan Gilmartin: 

Connect with Caleb Stinson:

About our Guest: 

Caleb Stinson is the Chief Marketing Officer at Exencial Wealth Advisors, where he leads marketing initiatives focused on lead generation and client engagement. With a background in operations and project management, Caleb brings a unique blend of strategic thinking and hands-on experience to the financial services space. His passion lies in building authentic relationships, humanizing outreach, and aligning marketing with a firm’s mission to serve clients with purpose.

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EP 8 – Tech, Talent, and Experimenting with Mark Bruno

EP 8 – Tech, Talent, and Experimenting with Mark Bruno

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Are you ready to learn about some of the highest-performing financial advisory firms? Discover innovative organic growth strategies from industry leader Mark Bruno, exploring crucial topics from growth-oriented compensation to data-driven decision-making.

In this episode of Grow Organically, Dan Gilmartin hosts Mark Bruno, Managing Director and Head of Strategic Advisory for Emigrant Partners, to dive deep into the intertwined nature of organic growth and strategic compensation within financial advisory firms. Learn how closely integrated tech and talent can boost growth, the importance of an experimental mindset, and why advisor-level marketing strategies may trump traditional firm branding. You will gain insights into how aligning compensation plans with growth strategies can create a robust foundation for long-term success by tuning in. 

Dan discusses: 

  • How strategic compensation plans impact organic growth
  • How high-performing firms excel by experimenting with digital strategies, data utilization, and content precision
  • Understanding and leveraging your data can transform your growth strategy and improve client engagement
  • Advisor-level marketing can humanize and build trust more effectively than firm-level branding
  • And more

Resources:

Connect with Dan Gilmartin: 

Connect with Mark Bruno: 

About our Guest: 

Mark Bruno is Managing Director, Head of Strategic Advisory, for Emigrant Partners, where he is primarily responsible for helping its partner firms identify and execute on opportunities to accelerate their growth. Prior to joining Emigrant in October 2023, Mark spent more than 20 years working across the wealth and asset management industries with a particular focus on developing and delivering research, events and consulting platforms to growth-oriented RIAs. Mark most recently served as the Managing Director of the Wealth Management Group at Informa, where he oversaw the group’s media, research and events businesses and launched the unit’s RIA Edge podcast, research studies, and nationwide events.

Before Informa, Mark was a Managing Director at Echelon Partners, a leading investment bank and consulting firm to the wealth management community. Mark also spent more than ten years at InvestmentNews, where he oversaw the company’s digital businesses, RIA events and RIA benchmarking studies. He has been a fixture on the wealth management event circuit for the past decade, and is also the author of Save Now or Die Trying, one of the top-selling retirement planning books shortly after it was published in 2007.

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