Wealth Management & RIA Marketing
The Wealth Management Marketing Agency
For Firms Whose Clients Do Their Homework.
A business owner after a sale, an executive with concentrated stock or a family choosing its next office will research you long before the first meeting. We make sure what they find, on Google and in AI answers, matches the firm you are.
49,500
Monthly searches for “wealth management near me”
6,600
Monthly searches for “private wealth management”
1,900
Monthly searches for “multi family office”
Source: Semrush US database, monthly searches and keyword difficulty, October 2026
Where Wealth Marketing Breaks
Referrals Start the Conversation. Search Decides If It Continues.
Many high net worth relationships still begin with a CPA, an estate attorney or another client. Then the prospect searches the firm, the founders and the people they would work with. A thin or generic footprint quietly ends the referral there.
The website reads like a brochure from 2012.
Stock photos of sailboats, a mission statement and a contact form. Sophisticated prospects want to see how you think about tax, estate, liquidity and concentrated positions, and the site gives them nothing to judge.
The firm is invisible outside its own name.
A firm can rank first for its own name and nowhere for private wealth management, family office services or wealth management in its city. Those are the searches prospects run before anyone gives them a name.
Performance is the asset you cannot show casually.
Track records and model portfolios are what many prospects ask to see, and the SEC Marketing Rule puts specific conditions on every performance figure. Firms either hide performance entirely or publish it in ways examiners question.
Breakaway teams launch with no search history.
Advisors leaving a wirehouse to start or join an independent RIA take relationships with them, but not the domain or the profile pages. The new firm starts with no rankings while clients and referral partners look it up.
AI answers describe the category, not the firm.
Ask an AI tool for a multi-family office or a fee-only RIA for business owners in your city and it may describe what those firms do without naming you. If your positioning is not stated plainly on your own pages, nothing tells it otherwise.
Pipeline is measured in meetings, not assets.
One new family can matter more than a year of smaller accounts. Reporting that counts leads equally cannot show which channels bring the relationships that move the firm’s AUM.
What We Do
Wealth Management Marketing for High Net Worth Prospects
Six disciplines, built for long sales cycles, referral driven growth and SEC examination.
How Wealth Management Search Works
What Makes Wealth Management Marketing Different
High net worth marketing runs into rules that most retail advisor marketing never touches: performance advertising, family office status and private fund solicitation. These are the realities we plan around.
Performance
Gross Returns Never Appear Alone
Under the SEC Marketing Rule, an advertisement cannot show gross performance without net performance alongside it, and portfolio performance must cover 1, 5 and 10 year periods ending no earlier than the most recent calendar year end. Private funds are exempt from the time period requirement. We design performance pages with your compliance team before any number goes live.
Hypotheticals
Model Portfolios Do Not Belong on the Open Web
On September 11, 2023, the SEC settled with nine advisers who paid $850,000 in combined penalties for advertising hypothetical performance, including model and backtested results, to mass audiences on their websites without policies tying it to the intended audience. Hypothetical performance belongs in gated material for prospects it fits, not on a public page.
Family Offices
Single and Multi-Family Offices Play by Different Rules
The SEC’s Family Office Rule excludes a single family office from the Advisers Act only if it serves family clients, is family owned and controlled, and does not hold itself out to the public as an investment adviser. Multi-family offices cannot use the exclusion and generally register. A single family office should think twice before marketing publicly at all, while a multi-family office can and should be findable.
Private Funds
General Solicitation Depends on the Exemption
A private fund offered under Rule 506(b) cannot use general solicitation, so public search ads and open landing pages are off the table. Under Rule 506(c) it can advertise, as long as every buyer is accredited and verified. A March 2025 SEC staff letter said minimum investments of $200,000 for individuals and $1 million for entities, with written representations, can support that verification.
AI Search
Claims About AI Get Enforced
On March 18, 2024, the SEC settled its first “AI washing” cases against two advisers, Delphia and Global Predictions, for false claims about their use of artificial intelligence, with $400,000 in combined penalties. As firms rework their sites to show up in AI answers, every claim about technology, process and capabilities still has to be accurate and supportable.
High Net Worth Search Demand
The Searches Wealthy Families Run
National monthly searches and keyword difficulty for the queries a wealth management firm can build pages around. Lower volume high net worth terms often carry the most valuable prospects and the easiest rankings.
Finding a Firm
- wealth management near me49,500/mo · KD 72
- wealth management firms8,100/mo · KD 66
- wealth advisor4,400/mo · KD 63
- wealth manager near me390/mo · KD 76
High Net Worth
- private banking8,100/mo · KD 59
- private wealth management6,600/mo · KD 61
- high net worth financial advisor880/mo · KD 30
- financial advisor for high net worth210/mo · KD 28
- wealth management for high net worth170/mo · KD 35
Family Office & RIA
- family office8,100/mo · KD 41
- registered investment advisor4,400/mo · KD 59
- family office services2,900/mo · KD 40
- multi family office1,900/mo · KD 32
- ria firms near me210/mo · KD 64
Source: Semrush US database, monthly searches and keyword difficulty, October 2026
How We Work
How a Wealth Management Engagement Runs
- 01
Define the client and the minimum
We start with the families and situations you serve best, your minimums and your referral sources, then check what those prospects find when they research your firm and your category today.
- 02
Rebuild the firm’s footprint
Team pages with real depth, plain statements of services, minimums and fees, consistent firm data across profiles, and performance material moved behind the right gates. This is what referred prospects check first.
- 03
Publish thought leadership on a review cadence
A steady flow of compliance reviewed content on the questions your clients face, plus small, precise paid campaigns for the highest value searches while organic rankings build.
- 04
Report on introductions and new assets
Meetings, new relationships and assets tied back to the search, referral or campaign that started them. You see which channels bring the right families, not just the most inquiries.
Working with Bryan Passanisi
“Bryan makes things happen and has an incredible attention to detail on all of the small SEO tweaks that add up to big results.”
Jean Kim Hahn, Senior Director Global Marketing, MiniMed
“Bryan takes the time to educate other business partners on SEO. Because of that, more integrated branded ideas were able to be executed.”
David Nielsen, Lead SEO, Genentech
“Bryan has an unbelievable drive to excel at everything he does. He thinks through all the approaches, identifies those most likely to yield the most impressive results, executes quickly, analyzes the results, communicates the insights and builds upon them.”
Mike Berry, Ex Adobe, eBay, PayPal
The Expert
Bryan Passanisi
Founder, Brown Bear Digital
Bryan Passanisi is establishing himself as one of the sharpest emerging voices at the intersection of SEO and AI search. With 15 years of hands-on experience building and scaling search programs, he brings a depth of knowledge most agencies simply can't match — and a relentless focus on what's actually moving results right now.
As search evolves around AI Overviews, generative engines, and large language models, Bryan is at the front of it — testing, building, and translating what's changing into strategy that compounds. He understands the full search landscape, from technical SEO and entity optimization to GEO and LLM visibility, and he founded Brown Bear to give businesses direct access to that expertise without the agency overhead.
- 15 years across SEO, AI search, and paid strategy
- Deep expertise in GEO, entity SEO, and AI Overviews
- Direct access — no account managers, no hand-offs
Awards
- 2025Semrush AI/GEO Award Winner
- 2022Digiday Awards, Best Search Campaign Winner
Common Questions
Wealth Managers, Answered
A wealth management marketing agency makes a firm findable and credible to the high net worth prospects and referral partners researching it. At Brown Bear that means SEO for service, client type and team pages, AI search work so ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers describe your specialties accurately, focused paid search and compliance reviewed thought leadership.
Many start with a referral, then search. They look up the firm, the founders and the advisor they would work with before agreeing to a meeting, and they ask AI tools to compare options. Search also reaches prospects without a referral: there are thousands of monthly searches for terms like private wealth management and family office services.
Possibly, with care. The SEC Marketing Rule requires net performance alongside any gross figures and specific 1, 5 and 10 year periods for portfolio results, and it restricts hypothetical performance to audiences it fits. Many firms keep performance in gated material for qualified prospects. We work with your compliance team on what goes public.
It depends which kind. A single family office relying on the SEC’s family office exclusion must not hold itself out to the public as an investment adviser, so public marketing can put that status at risk. A multi-family office is generally a registered adviser and can market like one, which is where search matters.
Our financial advisor page is for planners and advisors who serve individuals and families through local search, with FINRA and Form CRS rules in focus. This page is for RIA firms, private wealth teams and multi-family offices serving high net worth clients, where performance advertising, family office status and private fund rules shape the marketing.
Not as named clients. Our client work has centered on medical practices, mostly plastic surgery, where we run SEO, AI search and paid search under strict advertising rules for clients whose patients research heavily before they commit. We will not claim a wealth management track record we do not have. We will show you an audit of your firm’s search and AI visibility before you sign anything.
Further Reading
YMYL and AI Search Research
- Sentiment and Salience in AI Search→Why well regarded brands still get skipped in AI answers, and what changes that.
- What Is YMYL SEO?→Why Google holds financial pages to its strictest standard and how to meet it.
- Can You Optimize Content for AI Search?→What actually makes a page more likely to be cited by AI tools.
- The SEO Website Migration Checklist→How to move a firm’s site, after a rebrand or a breakaway, without losing its rankings.
See What Your Prospects Find
Tell us who you serve and where. We will show you how your firm appears in search and AI answers when a referred prospect looks you up, and what it would take to make that first impression match the firm.