How a $1B RIA Booked 2,500+ First Appointments and Had Their Largest Year Ever

The firm was founded in 2014 by David and his team, the firm grew to four physical offices across Southeastern Pennsylvania, serving nearly 1,500 clients and managing over a billion dollars in assets under advisement. The growth engine that got them there was a familiar one: dinner seminars, educational events, and in person workshops.

But David knew the firm’s message could resonate far beyond the Philadelphia suburbs. The problem was that seminars don’t scale nationally. They require physical presence, local venue logistics, and enormous time from senior advisors. With 12 advisors on the team (six in business development, six in service), there was capacity to take on more clients. What was missing was a reliable way to fill those calendars without being tied to a zip code.

The firm experimented with other digital marketing companies to make the leap into virtual prospecting. None of them delivered. The campaigns underperformed, the leads were inconsistent, and the transition from in person events to a virtual model felt uncomfortable and unclear. They were stuck between a proven but limited local strategy and a digital future they couldn’t quite crack.

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When they came to Clients Blackbox in April 2024, the first priority wasn’t launching ads. It was getting the foundation right. The firm had a strong reputation, deep expertise in retirement planning, and a team that knew how to close. What they needed was a marketing system that could put the right prospects in front of those advisors at scale, virtually, without diluting the trust they had spent a decade building.

The team at Clients Blackbox worked directly with their marketing department to develop content that captured the firm’s voice and philosophy. That meant A/B testing messaging angles, refining ad creative, and iterating through multiple rounds of content development until the campaigns reflected who they actually were, not a generic financial advisor pitch. The process was methodical and collaborative, with constant testing and refinement across audiences, offers, and creative formats.

$17K to $57K/mo Ad spend scaled progressively as winning campaigns were identified and optimized

The ramp was deliberate. They started at $17,000 per month in ad spend while the team tested and optimized. As performance data came in and winning angles emerged, spend scaled to $33,000 to $40,000 per month as the steady baseline, with peak months reaching $57,000. Every dollar increase was backed by data showing that the unit economics held. The goal was never just volume. It was qualified volume, meaning prospects with real assets who understood why they were getting on a call.

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Over 24 months of partnership, the results transformed the trajectory of the firm. They booked over 2,500 first appointments with an average prospect bringing $1.7 million in investable assets. The stick ratio on those appointments was, in David’s words, spectacular. Six business development advisors had consistently full calendars, and the firm’s team grew comfortable operating in a fully virtual world that had once felt foreign.

The business impact went well beyond the ad account. In 2025, they posted the largest revenue year in the firm’s history. The growth was significant enough to qualify them for their fourth consecutive year on the Inc. 5000 list. And the cost to acquire each of those appointments held steady: a $278 lifetime average, with the most recent six months trending between $206 and $261 per booked meeting. For a firm where each new client relationship can represent seven figures in assets under management, the math is not even close.

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