Meridian Wealth Management
Wealth Management Firm Generates 285% More Organic Leads While Cutting Onboarding Time by 68%
The Challenge
Meridian Wealth Management was a mid-size RIA in Sarasota, FL managing $180M in assets for approximately 420 clients. Despite strong portfolio performance and high client retention, they were struggling to grow. Their brand identity dated back to 2011 with a generic shield-and-columns logo identical to a dozen other firms. The website was a template WordPress theme that hadn't been updated since 2019, loaded in 9 seconds on mobile, and contained no educational content. Lead generation was entirely referral-based, averaging just 3-4 new clients per quarter. Compounding the problem was the compliance burden: every piece of marketing content required SEC/FINRA review, creating a 2-3 week bottleneck. Client onboarding was a manual, paper-heavy process averaging 14 business days from signed agreement to first portfolio allocation, involving 23 separate touchpoints across three different systems.
Our Solution
The engagement started with a full rebrand designed to communicate modern sophistication. We developed a visual identity anchored by a custom geometric monogram in navy and brushed gold, paired with a clean serif/sans-serif typography system. All brand materials were designed with FINRA compliance in mind, including pre-approved disclaimer templates. The website was rebuilt on Next.js with sub-2-second load times, ADA/WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance, and a custom calculator suite including retirement projections, tax-loss harvesting estimates, and Social Security optimization tools — each acting as a lead magnet requiring email capture. The site included 34 pages of educational content organized into three resource hubs. For SEO, we published 4 articles per month targeting long-tail financial planning keywords, building topical authority clusters around 'retirement planning Sarasota,' 'wealth management Florida,' and 'tax-efficient investing.' Every article went through a streamlined compliance workflow that reduced review time from 18 days to 4. The AI automation component addressed onboarding directly — we built workflows using Make.com integrated with Wealthbox CRM, DocuSign, and Schwab, with GPT-4-based document parsing to extract and validate financial statement data.
The Results
26
Organic Leads/Quarter
+285% from 3-4/quarter
$247M
AUM Growth
+37% ($67M in 12 months)
48
Content Published
Review cycle: 18 to 4 days
4.5 days
Onboarding Time
-68% from 14 days via AI
“In 22 years of practice, I have never seen our pipeline this full. The website calculators alone generate more qualified leads in a month than we used to get in a quarter. And the automated onboarding freed up over 30 hours a week of admin time. Macaw understood our compliance constraints and built around them.”
Richard Caldwell
Managing Partner & CFP, Meridian Wealth Management
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