Here is the claim most PR people will not like: the hardest thing about getting into ThinkAdvisor is not reaching the reporters. Their beats are visible on the site, their bylines are easy to follow, and trade reporters reply to good pitches with more regularity than national reporters do. The hard part is resisting the urge to sell.
ThinkAdvisor’s readers are, in the publication’s own words, financial advisors, registered investment advisors and wealth managers. Every one of them is pitched by product companies, platforms, asset managers and consultants every day. They read ThinkAdvisor to get away from that noise and find out what is happening in their industry. A pitch that reads like one more sales message, from an annuity carrier, a fintech or a model portfolio provider, gets treated like one.
So the work of how to get featured in ThinkAdvisor is in large part the work of turning what you sell into something an advisor needs to know. This guide covers who the reader is, how to find the right reporter, four pitch types that land again and again, the contributed commentary route, and how to time your follow-up. Along the way you will find a scoring tool we call the Advisor Utility Score.
Know who ThinkAdvisor writes for
ThinkAdvisor’s reader is a professional serving clients: an independent RIA owner, an advisor at a broker-dealer, a planner inside a bank’s wealth unit, a team leader at a large wirehouse. They manage portfolios, but most of their week is spent on clients, compliance, operations and growing the practice.
That reader wants four kinds of information. First, industry news: who moved where, which firms merged, which platform changed its fees, which regulator issued what rule. Second, practical guidance on planning topics: retirement income, Social Security timing, tax strategy, estate planning, insurance and annuities. Third, practice management: pricing, hiring, succession, marketing, technology. Fourth, perspective: interviews with economists, authors and industry leaders who help advisors explain the world to clients.
The publication covers all four, with staff reporters on news beats and a set of columnists and contributors offering commentary. Long-form Q&A interviews with authors, economists and executives have long been a regular feature.
Some topics are crowded. Generic retirement tips, broad market outlooks and “the future of advice” essays arrive by the hundreds, and editors have little room for more. Others are thin: niche planning issues for specific client groups, such as physicians, business owners selling a company or families with special needs dependents; operational problems inside firms; and data on how advisors run their businesses. If your expertise sits in a thin area, you have an easier path in.
Each of those four needs corresponds to a different kind of pitch, which is why the first step is deciding which need your story serves. A wealth tech company announcing a feature serves the news need only if the feature changes something advisors care about. A planner with a sharp view on Roth conversions serves the guidance need. A firm with data on advisor pay serves the practice need. A founder who wrote a book on behavioral finance serves the perspective need.
Pitch the reporters, not the website
ThinkAdvisor does not run a public submission portal for stories. That means you pitch people, and you pitch the right ones.
Start by reading. Spend thirty minutes on the site, look at stories in your area, and note who wrote them. Retirement and Social Security, tax, regulation, wealth tech, industry moves, insurance and annuities and investing tend to have reporters or editors who return to the topic again and again. Follow their bylines for two weeks. You will learn what they cover, what they skip, and which sources they quote often.
Then write to one person. A pitch addressed to a reporter by name, referencing a story they wrote last week and offering something that builds on it, is in a different category from a release blasted to a generic news inbox. Keep it under 150 words. Put the news or the insight in the subject line. Open with the one fact the reporter cannot get elsewhere. Close with your availability that day.
Before sending, score it with the Advisor Utility Score. Rate the pitch from zero to two on each of five questions, for a maximum of ten.
Is it new? Zero if the reporter could have written it last month, two if it is fresh.
Is it specific? Zero for general claims, two for named numbers, rules, firms or dates.
Does an advisor gain something? Zero if only your company benefits, two if a reader learns something they can use with clients or in their practice.
Is it independent of your product? Zero if the story collapses without your product, two if it stands on its own.
Is it timely? Zero if it could run any month of the year, two if it ties to news, a deadline or a season, such as open enrollment, year-end tax planning or a new rule taking effect.
Send pitches scoring seven or higher. Rework anything below.
Here is how the score changes a real-world style pitch, using an invented company. First draft: “Ledgerline is excited to launch AI-powered rebalancing for RIAs.” New? One. Specific? Zero. Advisor gain? One. Independent of product? Zero. Timely? Zero. Total: two. Rewrite: “In a review of 1,100 RIA accounts on our platform, 38% held cash above their own target for more than 60 days in 2026, costing an estimated 0.4% a year in returns. Happy to share the full breakdown by firm size, and our head of research can speak today.” New, specific, useful, mostly independent of the product, and tied to a year-end review season. That version scores eight, and the product can still come up when the reporter asks how the data was gathered.
Four pitches that land
The first pitch type is original data. Advisors love benchmarks, and ThinkAdvisor reporters often cover new surveys and studies on advisor fees, client behavior, retirement readiness and industry trends. If you have data, even from a survey of a few hundred advisors or an anonymized analysis of your platform’s activity, it can anchor a news story. Lead with the most surprising finding, state the sample size and method, and offer the full report.
The second is the expert reaction. When a regulator proposes a rule, a court rules on a fiduciary case, Congress changes retirement law or markets swing, reporters need sources who can explain what it means for advisors within hours. Build a short list of topics you can speak to with authority. When news breaks, send a two-sentence pitch: your take, and your availability. Speed and clarity win here, not length.
The third is the practice story. Advisors want to learn from peers. An advisor or firm that solved a common problem in a measurable way, such as cutting client onboarding from six weeks to two, building a next-generation client program that kept heirs’ assets, or redesigning fees without losing clients, has a story reporters can use. The key is specifics: what changed, by how much, and what others can copy.
The fourth is the industry move. Firm launches, mergers, notable hires and teams changing affiliation are core trade news. If your firm is making a move, give the reporter the facts early, under embargo if needed, with assets, headcount, reasons and a quote that says something real about why.
What these four have in common is that each one gives the reader information, not a pitch. Product launches can fit into any of them, but only when framed around what advisors gain, backed by facts and placed in the context of something happening in the industry.
Contributed commentary
Outside experts appear in ThinkAdvisor as columnists and contributors, writing commentary on planning, practice management and the profession. This route suits advisors, consultants, attorneys and researchers with a clear point of view and the discipline to write without selling.
Pitch commentary the same way you pitch news: to the editor who handles the relevant section, by name. Send a one-paragraph summary of the argument, two lines on why you are qualified to make it, and links to two published pieces that show you can write. If they want it, they will ask for a draft and tell you the format.
A commentary pitch might read: “Advisors are losing heirs at the second death, not the first. Most firms meet a client’s children only after both parents are gone, when the assets move. I run a 14-person RIA in Ohio where we started inviting adult children to one annual meeting while both parents are alive. Over four years, we kept 80% of inherited assets, against the 30% or so that industry surveys often cite. I would like to write 750 words on how we set it up, what we tell parents and what it costs us in time.” That pitch takes a position, offers evidence and promises something a reader can copy.
The bar is the same as the Advisor Utility Score. Commentary must take a position, give advisors something to act on, and stand apart from your firm’s products. Compliance matters too. If you are a registered advisor, clear your piece through your firm’s compliance process before submitting, and disclose any relationships relevant to the topic.
Contributors who last tend to share one habit: they write about one subject area for a long time. An estate planning attorney who publishes on trusts for blended families twice a year becomes the name a reporter calls when a story on that subject breaks. A contributor who writes about something different every time is harder for editors and readers to place. Pick the narrow area where you know more than almost anyone, and stay there.
Follow-up and timing
Trade reporters work fast and file often. If a reporter replies, answer the same day, within the hour if you can. Have your data, your expert and your facts ready before you pitch, so the reply is not the start of a scramble.
If you do not hear back, follow up once, three to five business days later, in the same thread, with one new piece of information: a new data point, a fresh angle, a news hook that appeared since. Then stop. Repeated follow-ups on the same pitch train a reporter to ignore your name.
Watch the calendar. Year-end tax planning, open enrollment for Medicare, required minimum distribution deadlines, Social Security cost-of-living announcements and major industry conferences all create predictable windows when reporters need sources. Pitch two to four weeks before each one.
Pick one story you could pitch this month, score it with the Advisor Utility Score, and rewrite it until it hits seven before you send it to the reporter whose last three stories it builds on.