A Meta video ad does not have to look like a traditional ad, and for an RIA it usually works better when it does not. The person on screen should come across as a professional having a conversation with a client. The viewer should see themselves in the situation being described, sense that the advisor understands the problem, and be drawn into watching more.
That is a fairly simple goal and a difficult one to realize. More often than not the challenge is not the choice of words. It is deciding what to leave out.
In 90 seconds an ad cannot cover every service, every credential, an entire planning process, and every objection. Try, and you end up with exactly the kind of financial services content people skip.
The job is narrower. You want the right prospect to watch, feel it applies to them, sense that this advisor understands their situation, and want to find out more. The most useful structure is four beats: hook, story, education, and call to action. This article covers each one, and how to write it, say it, and record it.
Start With the One Person You Want Watching
Before writing the first sentence, think about who the script is for. Not everyone in need of financial advice, which is far too broad a group. What might a good prospect have in common? They may be retiring with a complex mix of assets, may have recently sold a business, may have built substantial wealth with no coordinated investment, tax, estate, and retirement plan, or may be an executive weighing equity compensation and an exit.
The more specific the scenario, the easier the script becomes. A useful test: could the right prospect hear the first sentence and think that's me? If the sentence could sit on almost any RIA's homepage, it is not specific enough.
"We believe financial planning should be comprehensive" is true and generic. "We help successful families build long-term wealth" is also true and also generic. Compare both with this: "you may have built up considerable wealth, but your investment portfolio, tax strategy, and estate plan could still be working at cross purposes." That last sentence puts something familiar on the viewer's radar.
The purpose is not to sell the firm. It is to get the right person to stop scrolling.
The Four Beats of a 90-Second Ad
A good 90-second script follows roughly this time breakdown.
Hook, 0 to 10 seconds. Get the right person's attention and make them see the relevance.
Story, 10 to 30 seconds. Acknowledge the situation and why it matters.
Education, 30 to 75 seconds. Offer one framework, concept, or perspective on the problem.
Call to action, 75 to 90 seconds. Tell the viewer what to do next, without ending on a pushy sales message.
This is not a fixed formula. A particular concept might call for more education or a shorter story. The order is what matters. The hook grabs attention. The story grounds it in something familiar. The education adds value. The call to action points that attention somewhere.
Beat One: The Hook
More than any other part of the script, the hook deserves close attention. If the first few seconds give the viewer no reason to keep listening, nothing that follows matters.
Here is where most advisors go wrong. They open with the firm: "my name is John Smith and I'm founder of ABC Wealth Management." Or with a general statement: "wealth management is more complicated than ever." Or they state the purpose of the video: "in this video we'll talk about three considerations in planning for retirement." None of these is badly written. None of them is a hook, because the viewer has no reason yet to pay attention.
A hook is not about explanation. It is about recognition. The first sentence does not need to spell out the whole financial challenge. It needs to signal that this particular person should keep listening. Think of the hook as a screen. You are not trying to engage everyone who sees the video. You want one person to recognize that their own situation is being described.
Four kinds of openings tend to work well. A situation: "if you're retiring and have most of your wealth in just a few investments." A problem: "often the biggest mistake we see in the months after a business sale is treating the proceeds as just another investment." A tension: "just because you have a big portfolio doesn't mean your financial plan is integrated." A question: "what happens to your financial plan when your biggest asset stops being your paycheck?" Each raises a question in the viewer's mind without needing much setup.
The contrast shows clearly side by side. Weak, for a business owner: "selling a business can be a significant financial event, and our team supports business owners as they think about their wealth post sale." Better: "if you've sold your business, decisions about the proceeds are only one piece of your financial picture." The second leaves the viewer wanting more. What else is in that picture? That is what the rest of the ad answers.
Weak, for concentrated wealth: "concentrated wealth is where our clients often need our help." Better: "if much of your net worth is in one company, it's probably a mistake to ask right away whether you should sell." Now there is tension, and the viewer wants to know what the right first question is.
What makes a hook work: a specific situation rather than wealth management in general, relevance to the prospect you actually want, curiosity that earns the next sentence, and language you would really hear from an advisor.
What makes a hook fail: starting with credentials, which matter later and rarely stop anyone scrolling. Starting with the name of the firm. Being too clever, since a hook that takes ten seconds to unpack does not work. Promising too much, which creates credibility and compliance problems at once. And trying to fit the entire ad into one sentence.
Write five to ten hooks. Do not settle on the first one that is good.
Beat Two: The Story
Once you have someone's attention, the story lays out the problem. It does not need to be a story about a person. In most RIA ads, story simply means showing that you recognize where this prospect is, and it should answer one question: why is this worth thinking about?
Say the hook was about someone five years from retirement whose portfolio and income plan need to start working together. The story explains what happens next. People at this point tend to hold a portfolio built over their accumulation years, and their thinking about it changes as they consider drawing income from it. Which accounts to draw from, what kind of income they want, the tax consequences of those withdrawals, and their tolerance for risk all start coming into play together. That is a story, because it describes a shift. No client anecdote required.
The mistake here is making the story about the firm. "We started our firm in 1998. Over the years we've worked with families all over..." would be fine on the website. It does not belong in the middle of a 90-second prospecting ad. The prospect's story matters most.
What makes the story work: the prospect's experience is recognizable, the consequences are worth hearing, it moves toward the idea you are about to teach, and it shows empathy without exaggeration.
What makes it fail: too much background, in a 20-second window. Talking about the firm. Fear-mongering. And a client success story that implies a result, which is a problem even when the story is true.
Beat Three: Education
The educational section is where the ad builds credibility. You are not delivering a financial planning presentation in 45 seconds. You are giving the viewer one useful idea about their money: a question, a mistake, a framework, or a way of thinking through the problem.
For example, rather than opening with what should I invest in, start by mapping cash flow needs over the next few years. Which expenses are essential? Which assets are available? What tax characteristics do the different accounts carry? Once you have that picture, investment decisions get made in the context of a plan rather than as a question about the portfolio in isolation. That is useful to the viewer without requiring a complete financial plan.
One problem, one lesson. This is among the most important ideas in writing an ad. If the ad is about getting ready for retirement, do not also include tax-loss harvesting, charitable giving, college funding, and estate planning. Pick one problem and offer one helpful way of thinking about it. Better that the viewer finishes thinking I hadn't considered it that way than that they heard twelve ideas and retained none.
What makes education work: it is useful to the viewer, it is simple, because complexity does not convey expertise, it follows up on the hook by answering the question raised at the start, and it shows judgment. An effective advisor does not just deliver information. They help someone recognize which decisions matter and how those decisions interact.
What makes it fail: jargon the advisor knows and the viewer does not. Too much detail. Exhortations like plan for the future and diversify your portfolio, which demonstrate no particular expertise. And a sales pitch arriving before the viewer has learned anything.
Beat Four: The Call to Action
The call to action is simple: help the viewer see what comes next. For an appointment campaign that means an invitation to learn more about the topic or to meet. The important word is invitation. The CTA should follow naturally from the educational section rather than shifting abruptly into sales.
Something like this works: "if you're going through this transition and would like to talk about how the pieces fit together, you can click here to set up a call with our team." What does not work is "click below before this opportunity passes," which is especially out of character for a registered investment advisor.
What makes a CTA work: it follows on from what came before, it explains what happens next, it sets fair expectations without suggesting any particular result from a consultation, and it keeps the focus on the prospect.
What makes it fail: pushiness, since aggressive language breaks the trust built over the first 75 seconds. Vagueness, because visit our website to learn more motivates nobody to click. And too much information, which is what happens when three more points arrive in the final ten seconds.
Write for Speech, Not the Page
This is where even good scripts tend to fall apart. In print this sentence reads well: "our wealth management approach brings together investment management, financial planning, tax considerations, and estate planning to help clients make decisions across their financial lives." Out loud it is hard to say. Try instead: "we look at your investments, your taxes, your estate plan, and the decisions you're going to face in the coming years." Same point, far easier to deliver.
Use short sentences. Use contractions, because we're and wouldn't sound more natural than we are and would not. Use everyday language: say help rather than facilitate. Write the script the way you would talk, and if you would not say something to a client sitting across from you, leave it out.
Read the whole script out loud. Do not just proofread a video script in your head. Read it at normal speed, then read it again standing up. You will immediately see which sentences should be cut, reordered, or shortened.
The script is also a guide for the advisor, and a good one makes their job easier. It should contain language they can remember and say in their own voice, which means sentence length, line breaks, and punctuation all matter. If the advisor keeps stumbling on the same sentence, do not ask them to try harder. Change the sentence.
Recording: Natural Beats Polished
Advisors worrying about their performance on camera is extremely common. Someone can spend twenty years explaining complicated ideas to clients and lose the ability to speak the moment a camera appears. The answer is almost never more pressure. It is changing how the recording is done.
Do not expect memorization. Break the script into beats and record the hook, story, education, and CTA separately. If a script is not working, prompt the advisor with a question like what do you think clients get wrong about this, since someone who struggles to read a script often does far better answering that. Record several short takes, because fifteen seconds is much easier to work with than redoing the whole ad. And favor the natural take over the polished one. Pronunciation is not what the viewer is after. They want to know whether this person could help them.
The same applies to production quality. Many firms assume the more polished the video, the more credible it looks, and for this kind of ad more production works against you. The client does not need high production value. They need to believe the person in front of them understands their situation. Stock footage, transitions, music, and voice-over all put distance between the viewer and the person on screen. A well-lit advisor looking into the camera is more relatable.
This is not an argument for poor production. Bad audio, a distracting background, poor lighting, and unstable camera work make the firm look careless. What you want is professional without being over-produced, and that takes far less than most firms expect: a smartphone on a tripod, an external microphone, one light in front of the advisor, and a tidy office. No studio required.
There is also a temptation to keep shooting until every word is perfect, and it produces a less natural performance. The advisor starts worrying about word choice and avoiding mistakes, and the result is less engaging. If the third take explains the point well and the twelfth is technically accurate but detached, the third take is the better recording.
Turn One Script Into Several Concepts
One recording session should produce more than one possible ad, and that does not mean taking the same 90-second video and changing the headline. Develop multiple concepts around the same underlying issue.
Say the firm wants business owners who have just sold their company. The mistake hook: "one mistake business owners make when they sell their company is treating the proceeds like a normal investment portfolio." The question hook: "you sold your business. What should you actually do with the proceeds?" The transition hook: "more than your investment account changes when you sell your business. So do the decisions around it."
The story, education, and CTA can stay largely the same across all three. The opening gives the viewer three different reasons to enter the ad, which hands the firm more testing material without three separate production days.
Change the angle, not just the words. Good hooks take the same point in different psychological directions: here is a mistake to watch out for, here is something you may not have considered, here is one way to think about it, the obvious question may not be the best starting point, or now that you are at this stage, here is what changes. Record several hooks, one story, one educational section, and one CTA, and you have a library of combinations to test.
The 10-Minute Educational Video Is Different
The 90-second ad is not meant to explain everything. Its purpose is to build enough rapport for the prospect to take a next step, which is why a 10-minute video calls for a different approach. At that length you can explain the problem, set out a framework, give examples, answer common questions, and establish the advisor's perspective.
But the same rule applies: one video, one problem. If the title is preparing for retirement, do not turn it into a wealth management video. Pick one element, such as income planning, dealing with a large equity position in a single company, or how planning changes around the sale of a business. The viewer should know what they will get from the video before they start.
Put the soft CTA at the end. Most of the value should come before the prospect is asked to do anything, so in the final minute or two the advisor can bridge from the content to a conversation: "if you're facing this kind of issue and want to think about how it applies to your situation, you can click below to arrange a conversation with our team." Do not pepper the instructional section with calls to action. Let the advisor teach first, then invite the viewer to act.
Compliance Starts Before the Camera Turns On
Good RIA advertising takes more than avoiding clearly false statements. It takes discipline in the script, reviewed before recording. Once an advisor starts ad-libbing, approved language shifts easily, and the script becomes a different statement from the one that was approved. That introduces avoidable risk.
Avoid guarantees, and avoid suggesting that investment returns, financial outcomes, or client success will necessarily follow. Be careful with performance claims, and do not reference returns, rankings, or outcomes without appropriate context and review. Be careful with testimonials and endorsements, and apply the firm's own process wherever client statements or third-party endorsements appear. Avoid empty superlatives such as the best, number one, or the only firm. And do not imply a universal outcome: an observation that is reasonable as education becomes a problem the moment it suggests every viewer will experience the same result.
Above all, do not improvise claims. This is one of the strongest arguments for scripting at all. The advisor may be tempted to add that many families working with the firm have doubled their wealth, or that clients consistently retire sooner than they expected. Even where such a statement could be supported, it does not belong in an ad simply because the advisor thought of it while recording.
The process is write, review, revise, approve, record. Not record, publish, then run it by compliance. A script is far easier to review than an improvised conversation, and the same applies to the longer video: if it will touch a sensitive subject, think through the key points and review the language first. Natural does not have to mean unscripted.
A Script Template and a Final Check
If you are writing your first ad, start here.
Hook, 0 to 10 seconds. Describe the situation and point at the problem. "If you're in this situation, you may be dealing with this problem. And the first way to think about it often isn't the best starting point."
Story, 10 to 30 seconds. Show you understand the dynamics. "We often see people at this point dealing with this. The challenge is that it's more complicated than it first seems."
Education, 30 to 75 seconds. Give one practical idea. "A better place to start is this. First this, then this. That gives you a clearer way to think about the problem."
CTA, 75 to 90 seconds. Invite the next step. "If you're working through this and would like to explore how it applies to your situation, you can click here to arrange a conversation with our team."
Then read it through. If you stumble, rewrite it. If it sounds like a brochure, rewrite it. If the educational section contains four different lessons, simplify it.
Before the advisor goes on camera, check that the target prospect is identifiable within seconds, that the hook creates recognition rather than opening with a corporate pitch, that there is exactly one problem, that the education is useful rather than promotional, that the script sounds natural spoken aloud, that compliance saw it before recording rather than after, and that you recorded more than one hook so the session produces more than one concept.
Most importantly, do not try to turn the advisor into an actor. What sets them apart is years of talking to clients about exactly these problems. The script's job is to draw on that experience and shape it into a conversation a prospective client can follow.
The best Meta ad script is not the one with the most advanced language. It is the one that helps the right person realize this is me, gives them a useful idea, and makes a conversation feel like a reasonable next step. That is the role of the four beats: pick up the right prospect, show that you understand their situation, give them something useful, and invite them forward. For an RIA, that is a far more useful starting point than an ad that sounds like an ad.
