Why This Tool Matters

As financial advisors plan their marketing strategy for the year ahead — whether launching ad campaigns, seminars, or other channels — it can be hard to know which channels make sense financially. The LeadCenter Marketing ROI Calculator helps you forecast the return on investment (ROI) of any marketing channel in minutes.

This gives you a data-driven foundation to decide where to invest — helping you avoid wasted budget, set realistic targets, and plan growth effectively.

What the Marketing ROI Calculator Does

With the Marketing ROI Calculator you can:

• Input expected marketing spend and estimate number of leads or registrations.
• Define key conversion rates (e.g. leads → first appointment, first appointment kept → client).
• Set average client value (assets under management, insurance commissions, etc.).
• Factor in AUM/Insurance mix, fees, and optional market growth assumptions.
• Get an estimate of first-year and 5-year revenue, ROI, and conversion outcomes (number of appointments set/kept, number of clients, etc.).
• Compare “base case” vs “optimized case” to see how improving conversion rates impacts ROI.
• Generate a downloadable PDF report summarizing inputs, outputs and recommended actions — handy to share with your team or clients.

Step-by-Step: How to Use the ROI Calculator

1. Open the Calculator in LeadCenter

• Log into LeadCenter and go to the Marketing Dashboard.
• Navigate to Sources.
• Click the “Marketing ROI Calculator” button to open the tool.

2. Fill in Your Marketing Plan Assumptions

On the left panel (input section), enter:

• Marketing spend: e.g. $100,000 for a new seminar campaign.
• Estimated number of leads/registrations: e.g. 600 (for 12 seminars).
• Leads → First appointment conversion %: e.g. 10%.
• First appointment kept %: e.g. 75%.
• First appointment kept → client conversion %: e.g. 10%.
• Average client value (AUM + insurance premium) — your “average key size.”
• AUM vs Insurance mix — e.g. 75% AUM / 25% Insurance.
• Fees / Commissions: e.g. AUM fees 1%, Insurance commission 7.5%.
• (Optional) Market growth assumption, e.g. 6% — if you want projection beyond first year.

As soon as you enter these inputs, the calculator computes: cost-per-lead, expected number of appointments, estimated new clients, projected first-year revenue, and projected 5-year revenue & ROI.

3. Review the Output & Analyze the Results

For example: with $100,000 spend and conservative conversion assumptions, you might see first-year revenue of $59,000 and 5-year revenue of $137,000 — which indicates the channel is likely not a good investment under those assumptions.

The tool also shows how many first appointments and clients you would get, and breaks down AUM and insurance revenue.

4. Test Optimization Scenarios (“What If” Analysis)

• Use the “Compare before / after” function to duplicate your base case.
• Adjust conversion rates (e.g. increase leads → first appointment from 10% to 15%, or first-appointment kept → client conversion from 10% to 20%).
• See how these tweaks impact ROI. For instance: improving conversions could increase first-year ROI to $177,000 and 5-year ROI to $412,000 on the same spend.

5. Check the To-Do / Recommendations List

The tool also generates a checklist of recommended actions to help you improve performance — such as integrating more lead sources, enabling lead capture/verification, ensuring lead qualification, or optimizing the sales process for higher conversion.

This helps you identify whether your bottleneck is marketing input or sales/process inefficiencies.

6. Export Your Plan & Share Internally

Once satisfied with your plan, click Download. You can name the plan (e.g. “2026 Seminar Plan”) — the tool exports a PDF report containing all your assumptions, projections, and recommended to-dos.

Use this to present the plan to your team or clients, or to formalize your marketing budget and KPIs for the year.

Why This Approach Is Valuable

• It forces you to quantify assumptions (leads, conversion rates, average client value), reducing guesswork and bias.
• Enables scenario planning — you can test both conservative and optimistic cases to understand risk vs reward before spending.
• Helps you identify where the real problem lies — e.g. if conversion rates are poor, the issue might be in sales process or lead quality, not marketing spend.
• Provides a shared, transparent reference for marketing planning — good for team buy-in and accountability.
• Supports data-driven decision making, essential for scaling an advisory business responsibly.

Use Cases: When to Use the ROI Calculator

• Planning a new marketing campaign — seminar, ads, webinars, etc.
• Evaluating existing channels to decide whether to scale up or cut back.
• Forecasting long-term revenue & ROI based on different scenarios.
• Presenting marketing budgets and expected ROI to stakeholders, partners, or clients.
• Reviewing historical performance — by plugging in actual spend and results to benchmark future plans.

Conclusion & Next Steps

The LeadCenter Marketing ROI Calculator is a powerful tool to help financial advisors — and firms — plan next year’s marketing with clarity and confidence. By modeling spend, conversions, client value, and growth, you can make informed decisions and avoid costly misallocations.

Next steps:

• Use the insights to guide marketing channel choices, budget allocation, and KPI targets for the year.
• Open the marketing dashboard in LeadCenter — run a “base case” analysis for your planned spend.
• Create alternative scenarios with improved conversions or different channels.
• Download the PDF report and review internally with your team — adjust before investing budget.