Advisor Blog

Differentiating Independent Advisors From Wall Street’s Sales Machine

strategists-rightwrong

Wall Street strategists are unreliable at predicting the closing price of the S&P 500 in the year ahead, but their 2021 forecast demonstrates just how wildly wrong the largest brokerage firms can be and how much it can cost investors.  

For over a decade, Advisor Products articles and videos have documented Wall Street’s failure to predict the market, thanks to data from independent economist Fritz Meyer, who has tracked the predictions of 10 leading Wall Street investment strategists as published in Barron's every December.

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3700 Hits

11 Marketing Mistakes By Otherwise Brilliant Advisors

GOBsmacking

Certified Financial Planners™ and other professionals advising ultra-high net worth or income individuals (UHNWIIs) make many, many marketing mistakes. These 11, however, are common among professionals building a practice by advising a small number of UHNWIIs – the best and brightest advisors.   

  1. Not sharing content. Sharing content on social sites, emails, websites, blogs, is a requirement of modern marketing for advisors.

  2. Sharing library articles. The rich really are different. So, CFP®, CPA, and other practitioners advising ultra-high net worth or high-income individuals (UHNWIIs) require a different approach, one targeted to individuals with at least several million of investable assets or an annual adjusted gross income of more than $400,000. UHNWIIs urgently – before the new tax law is finalized in the days ahead – urgently need to be alerted to bracket management opportunities under the pending tax bill, trust and gift strategies and the changes in ILITs. UHNWIIs continually need to be reminded of their investment policy statements, reasons they can trust you, and that educated financial consumers are your best clients.

  3. Little financial education. Almost all advisor marketing materials claim a commitment to client education. Few back it up with a stream of substantive financial news that UHNWIs cannot get from The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or by googling “S&P 500.” Advisor Products’ Financial Advisor Marketing Engine 3.0 is an unrivaled solution.  

  4. No written marketing plan. This mistake is quite ironic: While methodical about financials number crunching, CPA and CFPs almost always fail to write down a strategic marketing plan before investing in a website, PPC or SEO marketing campaign.

  5. Not sharing videos. According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches about 28 hours of TV every week, equivalent to two months nonstop per year. Textual content is not as effective as video in reaching most people. Making engagement harder still, some people prefer charts and tables to text. Advisors need to share content on multiple mediums and social networks. 

  6. Not requiring signing in or signing up.  If you have are not making the four mistakes outlined above, then you have valuable evidenced based analysis to share, require signing up for your financial news alerts. While you can show the title and topic of every article along with the first paragraph or two, reading the full; text of articles should request signing in to your client portal filled with educational content updated regularly. Not requiring your users give you a name and email address undermines marketing success.

  7. Not integrating digital badges. The CFP Board, AICPA, CFA Institute and other professional designation organizations enable advisors to link back to a secure server to validate your credentials online. When you meet someone for the first virtually, share a link to your accreditation body digitally verifying your hold a credential.   

  8. Not targeting UHNWIIs. CFP®, CPA, and other practitioners advising ultra-high net worth or high-income individuals require content marketing campaigns targeting individuals with at least a several million of investable assets or an annual adjusted gross income of more than $400,000.

  9. No Yelp Listing. Advisors should list on Yelp. However, don’t let an online advertising or SEO sales consultant convince you that Yelp is marketing-gold. Leads generated on Yelp may keep you busy with questions from individuals below your minimum, but UHNWIIs not so much.

  10. No follow through. Because communications for UHNWIIs about personal finance is complex and advisors are marketing experts, shiny objects – lately, Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn paid ad schemes – may bring some leads but are not a permanent solution for client communications. Ultimately, content is king, and CFP practitioners need a stream of campaigns for UHNWIIs. Because learning enough to find the right solution with the right messaging takes time and then it takes even more time and patience to implement a strategy that will reliably return leads from UHNWIIs, advisors fail to follow through and get sold or sidetracked.    

  11. Not building a list. If you’re not building a list continually, you will fail. Social and email list-building is a game of numbers. Actively building your list of emails, connections, and friends is a requirement of success. Highly targeted paid ads with content for UHNWIIs builds a list of fans who will contact you in two, three or five years. Budget $100 or $200 a month to build your list using PPC ads to find low hanging fruit.     
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889 Hits

Fritz Meyer Was Right About Earnings

Two months ago, economist Fritz Meyer began using the phrase, "upward revisions to accelerating earnings," to describe the outlook for profits. The new tax law, he said, would gradually add eight percentage points to 2018 earnings growth on the S&P 500. 

Since Fritz first made this observation in late December, earnings forecasts tracked by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S have been ratcheting higher fairly steadily. For weeks, advisors subscribing to our website platform have benefited from a weekly financial news stream with updaties on the unfolding earnings surge. Clients and contacts saw it in emails, videos, articles, tweets, scripts and animated GIFs, all of which are customized personally. 

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8382 Hits

Introducing Harvey Rand

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Please contact 516 333 0066 for information about Advisor Products. 

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8464 Hits

Last-Minute Tax Alerts Indicate Advisor Marketing Is Dead

The final year-end tax alerts for clients of CPA/PFS, CFP, CIMA, CFA, and other financial professionals are ready for Advisor Products subscribers to email. So are related videos, articles, scripts, and animated GIFs to share with clients and everyone you know. Here's a three-minute video about how to do that, if you're a subscriber to FAME 3.0 (Financial Advisor Marketing Engine).

Of all the tax reform Acts I’ve covered since TEFRA 35 years ago, this one was the most fun — not just because of the drama staged in the Capitol but also because of the pioneering work powered by our all-star team.   Here's the story in a nutshell.

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7489 Hits

Quick Touches Toolbar Beta Release

A new toolbar for quick touches of clients is open to beta testers.  

Quick Touches is for fast sharing of articles, videos, and animated GIFs about wealth management as well as sharing your camera roll and posting blog entries. It’s designed to draw traffic to your website based on clients’ needs and interests.  Personalize a content stream from Fritz Meyer, Bob Keebler and Craig Israelsen. Put their slides and text in your own words, and add your keywords to improve search engine rankings. Send articles and videos with your spin.

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7860 Hits

Year-End Tax Planning Content Schedule For Advisors

The Trump tax proposal radically changes year-end tax planning.  Since our user base is heavy on CPA financial planners and real financial professionals, here's what we are doing to assist you in moving clients toward proactive tax planning.

Our continuing education program for professionals, Advisors4Advisors.com, is all over it. Bob Keebler, one of the nation's leading educators of tax and legal professionals, is teaching a class today at 5 ET. Go to advisors4advisors.com to register if you are an A4A member. Otherwise join and replays will be available within hours of the live session. Giving planners the technical information within hours of the announcement by the Trump administration is a real achievement. We're covering breaking news all time now.  

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7221 Hits

Manhattan Advisor Marketing Meetup Dinner With Andy Gluck Wednesday

The Metro NYC Society of Investment Specialists is hosting a presentation by me at a midtown restaurant in a prewar townhouse. A private room accommodating up to 20 is reserved, and 1290 Funds is sponsoring the event. A few seats are open.

It's $35 for dinner and drinks at Marchi's at 251 East 31st Street, off 2nd Avenue in Kips Bay, at 6 p.m. Please call 888-274-5755 Option 1 to reserve a seat.    

After a couple of drinks, I'll attempt to demo new technology for quick touches of clients digitally. The quick touches toolbar is part of a practice management system I've built with help from Fritz Meyer, Bob Keebler, Dr. Craig Israelsen and 3,000 users of Advisors4Advisors and Advisor Products. The platform enables investment and financial planning professionals to fulfill the obligations incumbent on an investment fiduciary at the lowest possible cost. It is customized to your personal strengths and specialities. Here's a 2-minute tour of the platform, and here's 2-minutes about quick touches

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7071 Hits

The Best Advisor Websites To Automate Client Engagement

Eighty-percent of advisors want to spend no time updating their website, but they still want a dynamic, engaging and cool presence online.

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7356 Hits

Yes, Canned Content For Advisors Can Be Uncanned

 

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7551 Hits

Advisor Websites For Growing RIAs

To grow your practice, it’s smart to allow clients and prospects to book a meeting with you from your email newsletter.

Integrating advisor calendars with advisor websites and email newsletters is an important business building feature of Build Advisor Websites (BAW), our content management system for financial planners and RIAs. 

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7548 Hits

Just Our Luck, CPA Planners Love Us!

Just my luck! I spend 20 years to build a business that winds up attracting professional penny pinchers! Advisor Products is seeing a surge in sign-ups by CPA financial planners.

Of course, I’m kidding — mostly. While CPA planners are frugal, I ‘m proud to serve them because they are real financial professionals. I worked at AICPA from 1983 to 1986, ghost-writing a newspaper column called, Money Management, that was published in a couple thousand newspapers across the country.

I had been a police beat reporter at the Clearwater Sun in Florida before moving to The Trenton Times, where I was fired after three months, shortly after refusing to write a story about the funeral of the father of a 400-pound rapist of a 13-year-old girl, who unsuccessfully had argued his imprisonment would be a death sentence because he was so fat and, thus cruel and unusual punishment. But that’s another story.

Before I left AICPA to cover Wall Street for The New York Daily News, I spent a lot of time around CPAs and was there to see the PFS designation and Personal Financial Planning practice section get started. So I have a long history with CPA planners.

Since we started making websites 20 years ago, Advisor Products has worked with CPA planners. The AICPA has ignored what we are doing.  But I stayed true to my values of working with real financial professionals. So CPA planners are showing up anyway, and these advisors have great practices. They broadly diversify a core portfolio in low-cost product, and offer financial planning to add value.  They love Fritz Meyer’s fundamental economic analysis, Craig Israelsen’s low-cost models, and Bob Keebler, CPA/PFS’s financial and tax planning strategies.    

If you are a CPA financial planner, see our 25-minute demo on YouTube or click on the chat box below and request a free trial.

 

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6228 Hits

Pre-Review Added To Weekly Email Newsletters

Advisors can preview email newsletters using the  Build Advisor Websites (BAW) content managament system (CMS). For advisors, this allows you to send out email newsletters about breaking news we cover for you and to change anything you do not like.

BAW builds a workflow into weekly email newsletters for advisors. Every week, when a new video or investment updateis ready to be emailed, your email newsletter with your branding is emailed to you. So you can pre-review emails before they are sent to clients. If you don't like a headline, image or text, you can change it yourself. In addition,  the changes to the article in your email newsletter will also be posted to the article on your website. 

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5957 Hits

Unlocking The Strength Of Ensemble RIAs

Multi-professional firms are giving rave reviews to Financial Advisor Marketing Engine 3.0. (FAME).

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5760 Hits

Cheeseheads Rule! Bob Keebler On Paul Ryan's Tax Reform Preferences

In addition to being one of the one of the nation's top educators of legal, tax and financial professionals for over three decades, Robert Keebler, CPA/PFS, is from Green Bay, Wisconsin. 

Paul Ryan, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Reince Priebus, President-elect Donald Trump's chief of staff, are also from Milwaukee, and they are local figures to Mr. Keebler.

Point is, Mr. Keebler, one of the nation's top tax policy wonks, has closely followed Mr. Ryan's tax policy preferences for many years, explaining why his analysis seems particularly insightful in this week's video.

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7005 Hits

A Watershed In Building The Best Damn Email Newsletters For Advisors

In the 20-year race to develop software for managing advisor websites and secure communications, Advisor Products has neither been a turtle nor a hare but a beaver, unceasingly building the best damn websites ever offered to advisors.

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7790 Hits

Social Advisor Solutions

We've been doing such advanced work with our content management system, I've given short-shrift to our Social Media Dashboard (SMD) for advisors.

SMD was initially developed and put into production on advisor website in 2013. It's simple.    

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6144 Hits

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.  

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6147 Hits

Three New One-Hour Presentations For Advisors Monthly

The Financial Advisor Marketing Engine (FAME) has been improved yet again with the addition of three one-hour slide presentations for advisors every month. Transcripts of two presentations about investing and one about financial planning are available in the Advisor Products Marketing Dashboard.

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6915 Hits

Clients And Prospects Want Thought Leadership From You, Not Marketing

With terrorist attacks now a weekly event, the European Union facing an existential political threat, and the speed of news causing two double-digit stock price plunges in the past 11 months, communicating with your contacts is more important than ever, and more delicate.

Our breaking news coverage enables you to send your contacts a stream of information crafted with help from independent thought leaders, including economist Fritz Meyer, MPT-expert Dr. Craig Israelsen, tax and financial planning guru Robert Keebler, CPA/PFS.

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6636 Hits

The Holy Grail Of Advisor Websites And Email Newsletters Is Here

Advisor Products now enables advisors to edit articles we write for advisor websites and email newsletters onscreen. We're giving you financial journalism that you can edit onscreen on the fly whenever major financial news breaks. It's a financial advisor news service you can customize to your needs.

 

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7883 Hits

Fighting Advisor Marketing Misperceptions, One Advisor At A Time

An advisor last week told me sending a weekly email to clients is a bad idea. “It sends a bad message by focusing on short-term news,” he said.

I understand why he said that, but then showed him why he was wrong.

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7367 Hits

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Questions?

How and why does the Advisor Products system work?

In today’s times, when consumers have become more demanding and tech-savvy, financial advisors must use content marketing to attract, inspire, engage, and convert their prospective customers.

A good content strategy is focused on developing and distributing consistent, valuable content to engage and retain prospective customers and target audience, via your website. Our content library provides financial advisors with fresh, high-quality financial content that is updated regularly, improving SEO along the way. And our automated e-newsletter and social media tools allow advisors to reach out to clients and prospects in an easy-to-use manner, providing frequent touch points for optimal brand building.

  • Differentiate you from competitors
  • Expose clients and prospects to your brand message more frequently
  • Build an ongoing relationship with customers
  • Increase your follows and fans on social media
  • Drive more prospects to your website
  • Help convert prospects into leads
  • Increase number of pages indexed in Google
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Seeing is Believing.

See how easy it is to get started with our all-in-one digital marketing platform that drives leads, encourages referrals and increases client engagement.

 

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