Yes, Financial Advisor Websites Can Now Display Testimonials. Here’s How to Get Started.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) now permits financial advisors to collect online reviews and promote testimonials as advertisements to attract new clients. Here’s how to do so compliantly.

When it comes to promoting advisor testimonials compliantly, it’s important to remember that the devil is in the details. As the industry’s first online reviews website designed for SEC compliance, Wealthtender is proud of the role we’re playing in educating advisors and wealth management firms on how to get started with compliant testimonial marketing.

↗️ Learn more about Certified Advisor Reviews™ from Wealthtender.

How Financial Advisors Can Use Client Testimonials to Get Found Online

As financial advisors collect online reviews from their clients, these testimonials are displayed on their individual Wealthtender profile pages. Thousands of people who visit wealthtender.com each month can browse online directories featuring advisors with reviews. Prospective clients can then view advisor profile pages, read testimonials, and schedule introductory calls with advisors they’re thinking about hiring.

Next, search engines like Google and Bing, along with AI platforms like ChatGPT, frequently check Wealthtender for updates to determine when advisors have received new reviews. After advisors receive their first reviews on their Wealthtender profile page, search engines begin to display gold stars in search results.

The power of online reviews comes from the combination of numeric ratings (e.g., 5 stars) and contextual insights provided by client testimonials that send positive trust signals to search engine algorithms. These positive trust signals play a significant role in how search engines like Google rank advisors and wealth management firms in search results. This is SEO (search engine optimization) in action.

Beyond impactful SEO benefits, the gold stars displayed in search results help advisors stand out online when prospective clients turn to Google to decide which advisors they will research further. Imagine a prospect who has narrowed their search to three financial advisors and they only find one advisor with online reviews. Guess who is most likely to get the call?

Online reviews are especially important and impactful for solo advisors and independent wealth management firms trying to compete against wirehouse advisors and others not yet permitted by their home office to collect online reviews or promote testimonials. While wirehouse advisors benefit from their firm’s brand recognition and multi-million dollar advertising budgets, without online reviews, solo advisors and independent wealth management firms have a powerful advantage that can tilt the odds in their favor of getting the first call from prospects who only find their reviews online.

🔍 Example: How Google Displays Gold Stars for Advisors Featured on Wealthtender

Multiple Ways Financial Advisors Can Display Testimonials on Their Websites

Beyond the benefits of having reviews published on an advisor’s Wealthtender profile, appearing in Google search results, and AI tools like ChatGPT, financial advisors can amplify the impact of their client testimonials by displaying them on their websites.

To avoid the hassle of costly development work, Wealthtender offers a variety of easy-to-use widgets that advisors can use to embed and display testimonials directly on their websites. These widgets incorporate the clear and prominent disclosures the SEC requires to ensure regulatory compliance.

Let’s review four different Wealthtender widgets, including live examples, that advisors can use to publish testimonials on their websites.

1. Display Advisor Testimonials on Website Homepage, Bio Pages, and in Articles

An effective way to capture the attention of website visitors is to prominently display useful information on popular pages on an advisor’s website, including bio pages and articles. Wealthtender offers a widget for this purpose that advisors can use to display client testimonials in multiple places on their websites.

Beyond a dedicated testimonials page on an advisor’s website (discussed further below), this widget amplifies the reach of advisor testimonials by seamlessly inserting them into the pages and articles most visited by prospective clients.

Below, you’ll find examples demonstrating how advisors display their reviews within articles on their websites (like the article you’re reading on our website right now).

For added flexibility, the height settings of this widget can be adjusted for optimal formatting preferences.

Each testimonial displayed within this widget includes the accompanying disclosures required by the SEC to indicate if:

1. A client or non-client wrote the review,
2. The person who wrote the review was compensated in any form and,
3. There are any material conflicts of interest.

In circumstances requiring additional disclosures for an individual review, these details will also be displayed. Advisors can also add disclosures above or below this widget if their compliance officer requests it.

To view actual examples of this widget, visit the following pages for these advisors and advisory firms:

• Beacon Wealth
• Clear Rock Advisors
• Rather & Kittrell (homepage) | Jay Slagle, CFP®, AIF® (advisor bio)
• Level Wealth Management
• Thayer Financial
• Focus Planning Group
• Water Street Wealth Management
• Insight Financial Strategists

Example: Next Mission Financial Planning – Mike Hunsberger

2. Create an Advisor Testimonials Page (Collect and Display)

In other professions where regulatory prohibitions haven’t constrained client testimonials, it’s generally considered best practice for websites to include a testimonials page that helps prospective clients learn about the experiences of current and former clients. Wealthtender offers multiple widgets for advisors to create a dedicated testimonials page, including the widget discussed in the section above.

This next widget is designed with functionality that allows website visitors to write and submit testimonials in addition to reading an advisor’s existing reviews. The top section of the widget includes the new review submission form, and the bottom section displays the advisor’s approved testimonials.

When clients write and submit reviews within this widget, the testimonials are not immediately displayed publicly. Rather, because Wealthtender hosts this widget, details of the incoming review follow the same compliance-friendly workflow as reviews submitted on the advisor’s profile page on Wealthtender. Advisors receive a notification by email of the pending review with a link to a secure form where disclosures can be added. Once this certification process is completed, the testimonial will be displayed in each of the advisor’s widgets.

To view an actual example of this widget, visit the testimonials pages for this advisor:

Example: Abundant Advisors – Leo Marte

3. Create an Advisor Testimonials Page (Display Only)

Another popular approach to building a testimonials page is to only display reviews already received. Unlike the advisor website featured just above, a testimonials page using this widget doesn’t include an area for new reviews to be submitted. In this use case, new reviews are written and submitted on the advisor’s Wealthtender profile page, then displayed on Wealthtender, indexed by search engines like Google and Bing, and also displayed on the advisor’s testimonials page.

Similar to the widget above, testimonials are displayed in a single column, with the most recent reviews displayed first. Displaying testimonials in this reverse chronological order helps advisors satisfy SEC compliance requirements that frown upon reviews being filtered only to show 5-star reviews or to display the highest reviews first.

To view an actual example of this widget, visit the testimonials pages for this advisor:

Example: Wealthcare for Women: Russ Thornton Testimonials

4. Create a Gallery of Advisor Testimonials

Financial advisors can also display testimonials in a gallery format. Using this Wealthtender widget, an advisor can showcase up to three reviews side-by-side in a single row depending on the device and screen width used by the visitor to their website (e.g., laptop, iPad, mobile phone). Additional rows display the rest of an advisor’s reviews in reverse chronological order to satisfy compliance requirements.

To view examples of this widget, visit the following advisory firm websites:

• Genesis Wealth Planning
• Pacific Northwest Advisory
• The Wealth Plan

Using Widget Embed Codes from Wealthtender to Add Testimonials to Advisor Websites

Whether an advisor relies upon a website provider to maintain their website or chooses to manage their website on their own, Wealthtender widgets make it easy to create a testimonials page or add a reviews widget to specific pages and articles. If you’re an advisor in the Wealthtender community, simply follow the steps just below.

Follow These Steps To Get Your Embed Code (see screenshot and how-to video below):

1. Sign in to your Wealthtender account and visit your dashboard.
2. In the left sidebar menu, look for the ONLINE REVIEWS section
3. Click the My Toolkit menu option
4. Click the Embed Codes tab

Choose the embed code(s) you would like to use to display reviews on your website. The code can easily be copied and shared with your website developer or added directly to your website content management system.

Why It’s Important to Promote Your Online Reviews and Client Testimonials to Grow Your Business

As a financial advisor, it’s important to understand how the SEC Marketing Rule and the opportunity for advisors to collect and promote client testimonials could impact your business.

Even if you don’t plan to ask for reviews or include testimonials in your own marketing activities, you’ll need to be prepared to respond to questions from prospects and existing clients when they begin to see reviews appear online for other financial advisors.

Online reviews may be new to financial advisors, but an evaluation of their impact on local businesses and professionals in other industries demonstrates why it’s imperative for advisors to begin preparing for a future where consumers are empowered to voice their opinions about you and your services.

Convert More Prospects into Clients with Online Reviews and Testimonial Marketing

We hope you found this article helpful, and we encourage you to read each of the articles in our SEC Marketing Rule Education Series for more ideas to compliantly attract new clients and grow your business with online reviews and testimonials.

Financial advisors who embrace online reviews in their marketing efforts will lead the industry in attracting new clients during the historic transfer of wealth from Baby Boomers to Millennials over the next decade.

Online reviews establish a human connection with prospects, demonstrating your trustworthiness and increasing their confidence in contacting and hiring you. But online reviews are just one important part of an effective marketing plan to strengthen your online reputation and attract new clients in today’s world.

At Wealthtender, we’re dedicated to helping you grow your business compliantly with Certified Advisor Reviews™ and our Modern Advisor Marketing platform, providing you with the tools to ensure prospects can find you online and feel confident about their hiring decision.

If you have questions, feedback, or would like to discuss the SEC Marketing Rule with us, please email yourfriends@wealthtender.com or call Wealthtender Founder and CEO Brian Thorp directly at (512) 856-5406.

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