The 2026 Video Marketing Plan: Getting Ahead of the Curve
The Advisor Growth Lab Report - Where Data Meets Personality (And They Actually Get Along)
Author: Andrew Murdoch | YT Era
Reading Time: 13 minutes (or one flight delay at O'Hare)
Executive Summary
Here's a question that might ruin your holiday party small talk: What's your YouTube marketing plan for financial advisors in 2026?
I'll wait.
Still waiting...
If your answer involves "figure it out in January" or "maybe hire someone eventually," congratulations—you've just described why 85% of advisors find marketing challenging while 80% still handle it themselves (Broadridge, 2024). That's not a strategy. That's hoping your problems solve themselves. (Spoiler: They won't.)
Meanwhile, the advisors who planned ahead built empires. Root Financial grew from startup to $1.3 billion in AUM with a systematic video strategy for financial services that now generates $120 million in new assets annually. PWL Capital's YouTube channel became so valuable that OneDigital cited it as a strategic asset in their January 2025 acquisition. Jazz Wealth reduced client acquisition costs by 93%—from $3,119 (Kitces Research, 2019) to $210 per client.
These weren't accidents. They were the result of annual planning, budget allocation, goal-setting methodology, and the kind of strategic patience that separates advisors who build practices from advisors who just run them.
This report gives you the framework. What you do with it is up to you.
Why "Figuring It Out Later" Is the Most Expensive Strategy You Can Choose
The Math That Should Keep You Up Tonight
Let me introduce you to the real cost of reactive marketing: It's not the money you spend. It's the compounding you miss.
According to Wyzowl's 2025 State of Video Marketing report, 93% of marketers now report positive ROI from video—the highest in the survey's 11-year history. Meanwhile, 69% of B2B marketers planned to increase video investment in 2025 (Content Marketing Institute, 2024). The train isn't just leaving the station. It left three stops ago.
Here's what proactive planning looks like in practice: Oak Harvest Financial Group invested 12-13% of revenue in marketing—far above the industry median of $6,250 annually (Broadridge, 2024). They committed to a 3-year investment period before expecting positive returns. The result? Growth from $85 million to $940 million in AUM over six years, generating 1,000 first appointments annually through their YouTube channel.
Now here's what reactive marketing looks like: Jeff Rose built 384,000 YouTube subscribers over 13 years. By July 2024, his last two videos "didn't even crack 1,000 views." Why? He admitted that "life happened" and he "wasn't able to commit to publishing" consistently. Thirteen years of work—undone by inconsistency.
The difference between Oak Harvest and Jeff Rose isn't talent or budget. It's planning. One had a system. One had hopes.
The Technology Gap That's Costing You Clients
Here's a stat that should make you uncomfortable: Only 55% of advisor technology is properly integrated (ThinkAdvisor, 2024). Yet 54% of advisors planned to increase tech investment by 19% in 2025 (Financial Planning, 2024).
Translation? Advisors are buying more tools without connecting the ones they already have. That's not a technology strategy. That's a subscription graveyard. (Cue dramatic music.)
The advisors who will win in 2026 aren't the ones with the most tools. They're the ones with integrated systems where YouTube content feeds into email sequences (the RIGHT way), which nurture prospects into consultations, which convert into clients. Root Financial's technology stack includes automated "Start Here" funnels, Calendly with round-robin distribution, and Monday.com project management—all connected, all documented, all transferable.
Your 2026 plan needs to address integration, not just acquisition. As I detailed in my report on YouTube channels as M&A currency, the practices commanding acquisition premiums have documented, transferable systems—not a collection of disconnected tools.
The Annual Planning Framework That Actually Works
Quarter-by-Quarter Goal Setting (Without the Corporate Jargon)
Let me save you from the annual planning mistake that kills most advisor marketing initiatives: Setting annual goals without quarterly milestones.
According to Vidyard's 2024 Business Video Benchmark Report, businesses went from creating one video per month to nearly one every ten days—a 241% increase in production volume. That acceleration didn't happen through willpower. It happened through systems.
Here's the framework that works, based on analyzing successful advisor channels:
Q1: Foundation Quarter Your goal isn't viral videos. It's establishing rhythm. Commit to weekly publishing—no exceptions. Channels publishing weekly see 4x more suggested video appearances than sporadic publishers (YouTube Creator Insider, 2024). Your Q1 metric isn't views or subscribers. It's consistency.
Root Financial's James Conole recorded podcasts on Tuesdays and released YouTube videos on Saturdays. Every week. For years. That consistency trained the algorithm to favor their content. Your Q1 builds that muscle.
Q2: Optimization Quarter Now you have data. Use it. YouTube's A/B split testing allows three different title and thumbnail combinations per video. Test everything. Your Q2 goal is identifying what resonates with your specific audience—not copying what worked for someone else.
Q3: Acceleration Quarter This is where compound effects become visible. Pure Financial Advisors generates 15-25% of their 45,000 annual leads from YouTube—but that success stems from integration across media, education, digital, and partnership channels. Your Q3 goal is connecting YouTube to your broader marketing ecosystem.
Q4: Asset Documentation Quarter Here's what most advisors miss: Document everything. The Merit/Safeguard acquisition happened because Safeguard had transferable systems, not just content. Your Q4 goal is creating Standard Operating Procedures that would let someone else run your content operation.
If you're ready to build this kind of systematic YouTube growth for financial advisors, apply to work with us here. We help growth-focused advisors implement these frameworks with expert guidance.
Budget Allocation That Makes Sense
According to LeadingResponse industry guidelines (2024), financial advisors should allocate 4-10% of revenue to marketing. But here's what that actually looks like for video:
Conservative (4% allocation): Focus on foundational content—your face, your expertise, minimal production. Heritage Wealth Planning's Josh Scandlen built 87,400 subscribers with simple videos from his home office. Production investment: approximately $5,000 in equipment. Results: 60-80 new clients annually with acquisition costs 40-50% below industry averages.
Moderate (7% allocation): Add professional editing and thumbnail optimization. Jazz Wealth invested an estimated $2.85-$5.7 million over nine years in their YouTube strategy. The return? 143,000 subscribers, $450 million in AUM, and client acquisition costs of $210 versus the industry's $3,119 average (Kitces Research, 2019).
Aggressive (10%+ allocation): Full production team, multi-platform distribution, paid promotion. Oak Harvest invests 12-13% of revenue, including a 5-person dedicated marketing team. Their 3:1 minimum ROI justifies the investment—but notice they invested for three years before seeing positive returns.
The common thread? Every successful firm treated video as a business investment (a real asset) with defined budgets—not as "something we should probably do" funded by whatever's left over.
The Technology Roadmap: What to Adopt, What to Ignore
AI Tools Worth Your Time in 2026
According to Wistia's 2025 State of Video Report, the AI adoption hierarchy tells us exactly what's working:
61% use AI captions (doubled for the second consecutive year)
38% use AI voice dubbing
31% use AI language translation
28% use AI-generated visuals
16% use AI avatars
Notice the pattern? Practical beats flashy. AI captions make videos searchable, compliant, and accessible. Don't stress, YouTube does this for you automatically for free. AI dubbing expands your addressable market. Huge advantage if you speak both English and Spanish. AI avatars? Still mostly a novelty. I suggest you pass on this. You need to optimize for trust building and AI Avatars won't get you that.
YouTube's September 2025 "Made on YouTube" announcement dropped 30+ new features designed to compress production timelines. The ones worth your attention:
Edit with AI transforms raw footage into first drafts automatically. For time-starved advisors, this could cut editing time by 50-70%.
Auto-dubbing now supports 20 languages with lip-syncing. Given that 44.9 million people in the US speak Spanish at home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2024), this isn't international expansion—it's domestic market capture that 97% of your competitors ignore.
Ask Studio provides conversational AI consulting with full access to your channel data. Instead of guessing why a video underperformed, you ask and get personalized strategic guidance. Nothing replaces an experienced YouTube Consultant but this is better than nothing.
For a deeper dive into implementation, see my report on YouTube's AI Revolution for Advisors.
The Tools Creating Unnecessary Complexity
Here's what to skip: Any tool that requires a significant learning curve without a clear ROI pathway. PWL Capital's Ben Felix achieved 427,000 subscribers and 1,100 annual leads with remarkably simple production. No fancy AI avatars. No complex automation. Just consistent, high-quality educational content.
The 2026 technology priority isn't adoption—it's integration. Before adding any new tool, ask: "Does this connect to my existing systems, or does it create another silo?"
Implementation: The 90-Day Launch Sequence
Days 1-30: Foundation Phase
Week 1: Audit your current situation. Search your name + "financial advisor" on YouTube. If the answer is "nothing," you're invisible to 89% of U.S. households with $100,000+ annual income who use the platform (WordStream, 2025). Ouch!
Week 2: Identify your content pillars. Root Financial focuses on retirement planning for high-net-worth pre-retirees. Carroll Advisory Group dominates Social Security education. Haws Federal Advisors owns the federal employee niche. Your niche should be specific enough to establish expertise, broad enough to sustain years of content.
Week 3: Record your first batch. As I detailed in my report on batch recording for time-starved advisors, recording quarterly can produce 13 videos in a single 4-hour session—saving 36 hours per quarter versus weekly recording.
Week 4: Publish your first video. It will probably get 3 views. Two will be you checking if it uploaded correctly. One will be your compliance officer looking for violations. (This is completely normal.) It's not about going viral on Video #1. It’s not even about going viral on Video #100.
Days 31-60: Consistency Phase
The goal here isn't growth. It's proving to the algorithm—and yourself—that you're committed. According to Streamline Financial's Dave Zoller, he had just 70 subscribers after seven months. Then a single video generated 20 appointment requests over a weekend. The breakthrough came from 10 months of focused consistency.
Your metrics during this phase: Did you publish weekly? Did you improve one thing from last week? That's success.
Days 61-90: Optimization Phase
Now you have enough data to make decisions. Which topics generate the longest watch time? Which thumbnails get clicked? YouTube's A/B split testing tools let you answer these questions without guessing.
By Day 90, you should have 12 videos published, a documented production workflow, and early signals about what resonates with your audience. That's the foundation for everything that follows.
This Week's Challenge: The 2026 Planning Sprint
Before next month hits, complete these four actions:
Calculate your 2025 marketing ROI. How much did you spend? How many clients did it generate? If you can't answer this, you can't improve it.
Set your 2026 publishing commitment. Weekly? Bi-weekly? Pick a rhythm you can maintain for 52 weeks, not one that sounds impressive for 4 weeks. Aim for weekly.
Identify your first 12 video topics. List questions your ideal clients ask repeatedly. Those questions are your first three months of content.
Block your first batch recording session. Put 4 hours on your calendar NOW before it fills with client meetings
Complete this sprint by December 31st. Your 2026 strategy should build from reality, not aspiration.
The Part Where We Ask You To Do Something
Look, I've given you the framework. The case studies. The budget benchmarks. The implementation timeline.
But here's what separates the advisors who read these reports from the advisors who build billion-dollar practices: action with support.
The firms that dominated 2025—Root Financial, Oak Harvest, PWL Capital—didn't figure this out alone. They built systems, got expert guidance, and committed to consistent execution over years.
If you're serious about making 2026 the year you transform your marketing from expense to asset, apply to work with us here. We help growth-focused advisors implement YouTube strategies that generate qualified leads while building enterprise value.
Not ready for that conversation? Start with my book, Mastering YouTube Marketing for Financial Services, which details the frameworks even greater.
Either way, stop planning to plan. Start executing.
FAQ: Your Questions, Actually Answered
Q: Is it too late to start YouTube in 2026?
A: According to Broadridge's 2021 survey, only 3% of financial advisors successfully acquired clients through YouTube. That's not competition—that's opportunity wearing a disguise. The Merit/Safeguard acquisition happened because most advisors still don't take video seriously. By the time "everyone" is doing YouTube, you'll have a multi-year head start. You'd be crazy not to get started right away.
Q: What's the minimum budget to see results?
A: Heritage Wealth Planning built 87,400 subscribers with approximately $5,000 in equipment and time investment. Jazz Wealth achieved 143,000 subscribers and $450 million AUM. Your minimum viable investment is time and consistency—not a production budget. The expensive mistake is not starting. Don't make that mistake.
Q: How long before I see actual client inquiries?
A: Based on the case studies analyzed, most advisors see initial traction in 30-45 days and meaningful lead generation by month 4-6. Streamline Financial's breakthrough came after 10 months of consistency. The caveat? "Consistent" means genuinely consistent. Every situation is different but Jeff Rose's collapse proves that stopping and starting could trigger an algorithmic penalty that takes months to recover from.
Q: Should I hire someone or do it myself?
A: Root Financial's production costs total $20,000 annually for editing, thumbnails, and graphics—handled by a Serbian-based editor. They make $120,000 in YouTube ad revenue alone. Start yourself to understand what works, then delegate production. But your face and expertise? That's irreplaceable. Outsource video editing first.
Q: What about compliance concerns?
A: Every successful advisor channel navigates compliance. PWL Capital maintains a clean regulatory record despite 427,000 subscribers. The key is educational content rather than promotional, proper disclaimers, and working within your firm's existing framework. AI-generated content still requires the same compliance review as human-created content—it just arrives faster. This is not a barrier or an excuse. You simply build compliance into your content program.
Q: Long-form or Shorts?
A: Both, but for different purposes. According to YouTube's 2025 Culture & Trends Report, both short-form and long-form content are growing. Shorts drive discovery; long-form drives trust and conversions. Advisors report that 12-18 minute videos generate actual client inquiries, while Shorts expand reach. Start with long-form. Add Shorts once you have a rhythm and bandwidth or avoid completely. Check with a YouTube Consultant for specifics.
Disclaimer
This report contains strategies that have worked for some advisors but may not be suitable for all practices. Results vary significantly based on implementation, market conditions, and individual circumstances. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Any earnings or income statements are estimates based on documented case studies. Your results may differ substantially. Success requires consistent effort, strategic implementation, and ongoing optimization.
Before implementing any marketing strategies or delegation workflows discussed in this report, consult with your compliance department or legal counsel to ensure alignment with your firm's policies and regulatory requirements.
Sources (For The Skeptics)
Because apparently "trust me bro" isn't a valid citation anymore:
Primary Research Reports
Broadridge Financial Solutions. (2021, October). Third annual financial advisor marketing survey. https://www.broadridge.com/resource/third-annual-financial-advisor-marketing-survey
Broadridge Financial Solutions. (2024, February). Fifth annual financial advisor marketing survey. https://www.broadridge.com/resource/fifth-annual-financial-advisor-marketing-survey
Content Marketing Institute. (2024). B2B content marketing benchmarks, budgets, and trends. https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/research/
Vidyard. (2024). Video in business benchmark report 2024. https://www.vidyard.com/business-video-benchmarks/
Wistia. (2025). State of video report 2025. https://wistia.com/learn/marketing/state-of-video
Wyzowl. (2025). State of video marketing report 2025. https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/
Case Study Sources
Kitces, M. (Host). (2024, April). How Troy Sharpe built Oak Harvest Financial Group through YouTube (No. 383) [Audio podcast episode]. In Financial Advisor Success Podcast. https://www.kitces.com/blog/troy-sharpe-oak-harvest-financial-group-podcast/
Kitces, M. (Host). (2024, October 2). Leveraging educational YouTube videos to drive hundreds of new clients per year with James Conole (No. 445) [Audio podcast episode]. In Financial Advisor Success Podcast. https://www.kitces.com/blog/james-conole-root-financial-youtube-videos-podcast/
PWL Capital. (2025, January). Form ADV Part 2A. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Rose, J. [@jjeffrose]. (2024, July 3). Thread on YouTube channel discontinuation [Tweet]. Twitter/X. https://x.com/jjeffrose/status/1808522401898463454
Sanduski, S. (Host). (2024). James Conole interview [Audio podcast episode]. In Between Now and Success Podcast.
Industry Data
Financial Planning. (2024). Orion survey: Advisor technology investment trends. https://www.financial-planning.com/
Kitces Research. (2019, August). Client acquisition costs for financial advisor marketing strategies. Kitces.com. https://www.kitces.com/blog/client-acquisition-cost-advertising-marketing-cac/
LeadingResponse. (2024). Financial advisor marketing budget allocation guidelines. https://www.leadingresponse.com/
ThinkAdvisor. (2024). Advisor technology integration statistics. https://www.thinkadvisor.com/
U.S. Census Bureau. (2024). American Community Survey: Spanish-speaking population data. https://www.census.gov/acs/
WordStream. (2025). YouTube statistics: Demographics and usage data. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/youtube-statistics
Platform Documentation
YouTube Creator Insider. (2024). Publishing frequency and suggested video algorithm data.
YouTube Official Blog. (2025, September 16). Made on YouTube 2025 announcements. https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/made-on-youtube-2025/
YouTube. (2025). Culture & trends report 2025. https://www.youtube.com/trends/
