The Joy Of Building The Best Advisor Websites

Advisors are calling me every day now and talking to me like we’ve known each other for years. A CPA financial planner, who manages $600 million in New York City, told me just yesterday that he’s been meaning to hire Advisor Products to build his website since he met me at a conference nearly 20 years ago.

He’s been reading my columns for nearly two decades and likes my ideas. Now, finally, he wants a website, email newsletter and everything else my company provides. It’s been a joy here lately! Admittedly, two decades is a long sales cycle, but I’m making the best advisor websites available anywhere for brilliant entrepreneurs who actually understand and appreciate my work and the Advisor Products team.

My conversation with the CPA—let’s call him Jon — is typical of the amazing calls I’m having almost every day with advisors. Jon told me about his business. He said he felt less sure about how to continue to stay passionate about his practice. Amazingly, he had no idea of the value he offers to his clients. He was so smart and humble that he could not understand that protecting long-term investors from bad decisions based on short-term results — by reinforcing prudent investment concepts in bad times — was enormously valuable to clients, especially when coupled with his financial planning and tax knowledge. Jon was so jaded he could not see that most people need a plan and coach to stick with the plan.

Jon said he did not know how to scale his business further, how to give his advice to more than a couple of hundred people most efficiently. So I showed him the chat service on advisorproducts.com and told him that he could offer a premium service for special clients allowing them to chat with his team. He could enable clients to reach him when they’re about to buy a home, pay for a car or need to make other financial decisions on the spot. With nine employees, his staff could always be there for clients. He loved it!

Jon was so jaded and humble, he had no idea that his low-cost index investing style was a huge competitive advantage over other advisors in his locale. He had no notion that simply telling the truth on the Web about what was in his heart would attract the people who would appreciate his system for bringing order to their financial lives, for being the one they could trust to give them financial advice. When I told him that I was living proof this model works and that he was experiencing that with me at that very moment, it clicked. He got it.

Building advisor websites has become more personal for me, as I’ve figured out a way to scale my business by spending an hour talking with every advisor who signs up for a website and learning about his or her practice. Based on what you tell me, I and my team create calls to action for your website and e-newsletter. The campaign is comprised of an offer to provide a solution to a financial problem faced by your ideal clients. It’s a way to invite your ideal clients to talk to you by giving them free information they value. Working with independent thinkers like Fritz Meyer, Dr. Craig Israelsen, and Robert Keebler, CPA/PFS, enables a news stream in accordance with best practices of financial planners and investment advisors, which gives you a treasure trove of intelligent financial planning content and investment news coverage based on prudent priniciples. We're leveraging the ideas of these thought leaders to gives uncommonly intelligent financial tips in articles and videos branded to your firm.

It’s not Mad Men and I’m not Don Draper. But I have a lot of ideas and they work. And now I have a sustainable way of cranking out the best calls to action advisors are likely to find anywhere — a terse headline and image that attracts widows, professors nearing retirement age, or sponsors of small 401(k) plans — all local target markets.

Here’s an example of the fun we’re having: A couple of weeks ago, talking with an advisor, I suggested a frog mascot be used to target pre-retirees “making the leap” from their company’s 401(k) to an IRA. The frog is a fun way to address a serious topic. Every conversation with an advisor is an opportunity for me to help the really smart financial advisors with the brains to appreciate my work with fun new ways to engage and help their people. For me, that’s a joy. Plus, it is implemented by my incredible team, people in New York, Ohio, California, Viet Nam, India and Great Britain.

It has not been easy to get here, but, at 61, I am experiencing joy in making advisor websites.

Please call me if you would value applying what I’ve learned in the past three decades of writing about personal finance to help you connect with people you want to help.