Financial Planners & Real Estate Brokers
MARKETING FOR
FINANCIAL &
REAL ESTATE PROS.
Blank Box Digital builds the search presence and the booking systems that independent financial planners, RIAs, and real estate brokerages run on. SEO, Google Ads, niche and neighborhood pages, Google Business Profile, and automated follow-up, handled by a small team in Austin, TX with no handoffs, on month-to-month terms.
How a Client Arrives
Nobody Hires a Planner or a Broker Without Looking Them Up First
A financial planner and a real estate broker sell the same thing: trust in a named person, with a fee attached. Nobody buys that from a ranking or an ad. They find you, look you up, read what other clients said, and only then book a call or send an inquiry. Every service we sell to these firms maps to one step on that path, and we report on the whole path rather than on whichever step looks best this month.
That is also why the vetting step gets as much work as the search step. An ad that lands on a page with no reviews, no face, and no booking link spends your money sending the prospect off to look you up somewhere else.
Each step below names the service that owns it. Pricing for each is on our pricing page.
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Search
A pre-retiree types "fee-only financial planner near me," a homeowner types "how much is my house worth," or either of them asks an AI assistant what to look for. The search happens weeks before the decision does.
Owned by SEO, Google Ads, Google Business Profile, AI search
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Vet
They look you up by name. Your profile, your reviews, your bio and credentials, the neighborhoods you have sold in, and whether your site answers the questions they have before booking. Most of the decision is made here.
Owned by Profile, reviews, site pages, content
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Contact
A booked call on your calendar, a valuation request, or a portal inquiry. Each one is tracked back to the search and the page that produced it, so you know which niche or which neighborhood is paying for itself.
Owned by Booking calendar, forms, call tracking
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Conversation
A confirmation and a reminder for the booked call, and a reply within minutes to the inquiry, because the seller who emailed three agents works with the first one who answered with something useful.
Owned by Speed to lead automation
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Engagement
A signed advisory agreement or a listing, often weeks after the first contact. Follow-up runs for as long as the decision takes, and past clients get worked for the referral and the next transaction instead of sitting in the CRM.
Owned by Follow-up sequences, database reactivation, your CRM
Our Services
What We Do for Planners and Brokers
SEO
Niche pages for the clients a planner serves, neighborhood pages for the areas a brokerage sells in, and the technical work underneath. Built to rank for searches by situation, by place, and by name, not for "advisor" or "realtor."
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Google Ads
For planners, campaigns on niche and intent queries inside Google's financial products policy. For brokers, seller-intent queries like home valuation and "sell my house," built inside the housing category's targeting limits.
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Websites & Landing Pages
Hand-coded sites and single-purpose landing pages that put the bio, the fee structure, the reviews, and a booking calendar or valuation form in front of the visitor, with conversion tracking built in from the first day.
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Google Business Profile
Categories read from the planners and brokerages that already rank in your market, a profile for the office and for each agent where one applies, a reply to every review, and review requests written with the disclosures your regulator expects.
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Speed to Lead & Follow-up
An automated reply to every booking, form, and portal inquiry within minutes, confirmation and reminders for booked calls, and follow-up that runs for as long as the decision takes before handing the conversation to you.
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Content
Articles that answer the questions a prospect asks before the first meeting, written for your niche or your market and structured so Google and AI assistants cite them, each linked to the page that takes the booking.
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Profession
Marketing for Financial Planners
A prospect hires a planner after weeks of reading and one conversation. The work is a niche they recognize themselves in, pages and reviews that survive a compliance review, and a booking path that does not lose them between the first search and the first meeting.
How clients search
By situation and by niche long before they search by name: "financial advisor for physicians," "fee-only financial planner near me," "do I need a financial advisor," "what to ask a financial planner." A growing share of those questions now go to AI assistants, which answer from the pages that state facts plainly, the subject of our guide to generative engine optimization. A planner who serves everyone ranks for nothing specific. A planner who serves business owners, pre-retirees, or tech employees with equity compensation has a set of queries that the national firms are not writing for.
What decides the call
The person and the terms. Prospects read the bio, check the credentials, look for the fee structure, and read the reviews, which the SEC Marketing Rule allows advisers to use as long as the required disclosures are attached. Then they look for the easiest way to book a first conversation. A calendar link on the page wins over a contact form that promises a callback, and a confirmation with a reminder is what gets the booked call to actually happen.
What we build
- Niche pages per client type (physicians, business owners, pre-retirees, equity compensation) as the foundation of the SEO work, each stating who the service is for, how you charge, and what the first meeting covers.
- A content program built around the questions people ask before they book, written for your niche and structured for AI search as well as Google, with each article linked to the niche page that takes the booking.
- A Google Business Profile with categories matched to the advisers that rank for your queries, services set per niche, and a review request process that carries the disclosures the Marketing Rule requires.
- A booking path: a calendar link on every page, automated confirmation and reminders, and follow-up sequences that run for weeks rather than days, because the decision takes that long and the planner who is still in touch when it is made gets the engagement.
- Google Ads on niche and intent queries inside the financial products policy, with no audiences built around debt or financial hardship, and every ad, page, and sequence sent to your compliance officer before it goes live. For broker-dealer reps, that means FINRA review of retail communications before anything is published.
Profession
Marketing for Real Estate Brokers
Zillow and the portals own the listing search, so a brokerage does not win there. It wins on the seller, the neighborhood, and the agent's name, and on being the first to answer when an inquiry comes in.
How clients search
Buyers browse listings on the portals, and a brokerage will not outrank them for "homes for sale in" a city. Sellers search differently: "how much is my house worth," "sell my house fast," "best real estate agent in" a neighborhood, and, once they have a referral, the agent's name. Those are the searches a brokerage can own. The neighborhood and agent-name queries are where a local brokerage beats a national brand, and where a second audience, agents deciding which brokerage to join, searches too.
What decides the call
Reviews, proof the agent has sold in their neighborhood, and speed. A seller who requests a valuation or sends a portal inquiry usually contacts more than one agent, and works with the one who responds first with something useful. A brokerage whose leads sit in an agent's inbox overnight is paying to generate listings for the office across town.
What we build
- Neighborhood and hyperlocal pages (recent sales, market notes, the agent who works that area) as the foundation of the SEO work, following the order in our local SEO guide, with a Google Business Profile for the office and for each agent who qualifies for one.
- Google Ads on seller-intent queries (home valuation, "sell my house," listing agent plus the city) landing on a valuation page, rather than the buyer browsing the portals already own. Housing ads sit in a restricted category on Google and Meta that removes age, gender, parental status, and zip code targeting, so the campaigns are built inside those limits and every ad and page gets a Fair Housing read before it runs.
- Speed to lead on portal, site, and valuation inquiries: an instant reply, a text within minutes, and routing to the agent on duty with a timer, so no inquiry sits while the seller moves on.
- Database reactivation of past clients and the sphere: a 30-day scripted SMS and email campaign across the CRM for referrals and repeat transactions, with warm replies routed to the agent who owned the relationship.
- Recruiting pages for agents as a second audience: the split, what the brokerage provides, and who to talk to, on their own landing page with a separate form, so recruiting traffic never mixes with seller leads in the reporting.
How We Work
Built for How Planners and Brokers Operate
Compliance Review Built In
Advisers work under the SEC Marketing Rule, broker-dealer reps under FINRA's communications rules, and every housing ad under the Fair Housing Act. We write inside those rules, flag anything that touches performance, testimonials, or protected classes, and send each piece to your compliance officer before it goes live. Final sign-off stays with the firm, and we put that in writing.
Bookings and Calls Tracked
Every booked call, valuation request, and phone call is tracked back to the campaign and the page that produced it, so you know which niche page or which neighborhood is paying for itself. Call recording stays off unless the firm decides to turn it on, because all-party consent states make that the firm's decision, not ours.
A Small Team, No Handoffs
The people who build your campaigns are the people who answer your questions. A small team in Austin, TX handles the SEO, the ads, the site, the profile, and the automations, so every piece is built to work with the others.
Month-to-Month, You Own It
No long-term contracts. The domain, the site, the ad account, and the data are yours from the first day, and every price is published on our pricing page and on each service page.
FAQ
Questions Planners and Brokers Ask Us
Yes. This page is written around the two professions we focus on, but the mechanics carry over: a niche or a territory, a profile and reviews that hold up to a compliance review, a booking path, and follow-up that runs as long as the decision takes. Tell us the profession and the market and we will say what we would build first.
Every service is priced on its own page and on our pricing page, month-to-month with no contract. Ad spend is separate. Tell us the niche or the market and we will tell you what a budget has to be before it can work, and we will say so if it cannot.
For registered investment advisers, yes, under the SEC Marketing Rule, with the disclosures it requires: whether the person is a client, whether they were compensated, and any material conflicts. Broker-dealer reps run retail communications through FINRA review first. Real estate brokers have no equivalent restriction on reviews. We write the review requests and the pages with those disclosures in place and send them to your compliance officer before they go live.
Not by age, gender, parental status, or zip code. Google and Meta place housing ads in a restricted category that removes those targeting options to comply with the Fair Housing Act. We target by keyword, by a city or a radius, and by the search itself, which is where seller intent shows up anyway.
Google Ads can produce booked calls and valuation requests within the first week. SEO typically shows movement in three to six months, sooner for profile and indexing fixes, longer for competitive neighborhood terms. We set the timeline in the audit, based on your market rather than on an average.
Usually. The audit tells us whether the site can carry niche or neighborhood pages, a booking calendar, and tracking, or whether a rebuild is the cheaper route. Franchise and broker-provided sites often cannot, in which case we build the pages on a domain you own and link the franchise site to them. Either way you keep the domain, and if the site goes we build the new one on it.
Get Started
Tell Us Who You Serve
and Where You Sell.
We will look at your site, your profile, your reviews, and the planners or brokerages ranking around you, then come back with what we would build first and what it costs. No charge for the audit, no contract after it.