How advisors get found online, without a big marketing budget.

Sara Hopp Williams (0:03): Hi everybody, welcome to today's Solutions Spotlight. My name is Sarah Williams. I am the Senior Partnerships Operations Manager at XYPN. I'm going to give it just one more minute or so as people are trickling in before we officially get started, but we are just so excited to have you here. So welcome, welcome. Brian, Diana, I don't think that we actually chatted before this, but how was your weekend? What did you guys do? My weekend? Oh, go ahead, Brian.

Brian Thorp (0:40): I was just going to say it was such a beautiful weekend in Austin after about a week of rainy weather, and maybe Allen can relate if it was the same in Dallas, but I spent as much time on a patio as I could because it was 80 degrees and sunny and absolutely perfect. How was the weekend in Dallas, Allen?

Diana Cabrices (0:56): Pretty good. I was actually sick all weekend, so I spent a lot of time inside. I would have preferred to be outside. There's a lot of that going around. My weekend was particularly fun, so I'm getting married this year, and I went dress shopping, and I've never gone wedding dress shopping in my life, and it was such a cool experience, so that's what I did all weekend.

Sara Hopp Williams (1:21): Oh my gosh, did you say yes to the dress, or are you like yes to some dresses right now?

Diana Cabrices (1:27): Internally, I said yes, but I feel like it's important to look at all of your options, so I have one more store to go this week, but I think I already found my dream dress, and I would have loved to say yes because they do this big celebration, but I'm like, you know what? Let me just look at options. I'll come back. It'll be here waiting for me.

Sara Hopp Williams (1:44): Oh my gosh, it's so exciting. Well, congrats to you. I hope that you find the perfect dress very exciting. Thank you. Cool. Let's get started. Welcome to today's solution spotlight, Affordable Digital Marketing Strategies for Advisors, a Wealthtender Approach. Joining us today are Brian Thorp, Diana Caprices from Wealthtender, and XYPN member Allen Mueller. Wealthtender and XYPN are united by a shared mission to equip financial advisors with the and tools they need to effectively serve their clients. Through this partnership, XYPN members gain access to Wealthtender's platform, which connects consumers with trusted financial professionals, helping advisors expand their reach and grow their practices. Wealthtender's user-friendly interface enhances the client-advisor matching process, enabling advisors to attract more prospective clients who are seeking comprehensive fee-only financial guidance. This collaboration allows XYPN advisors to offer personalized financial strategies while growing their businesses, making Wealthtender an exclusive benefit for XYPN members. I'm going to let our guests introduce themselves, but before I do and turn it over to them for the presentation, a few housekeeping items. There is the Q&A tab below, and we will do a Q&A at the very end of this presentation. As your questions come up, feel free to drop them in that Q&A tab and we'll review them at the end. And then there are some upcoming events on the XYPN side. February 11th, From Idea to Distribution, How Financial Advisors Create Effective Short-Form Videos. And then February 12th, From Scroll to Sale, The Four Secrets to Building a Client-Attracting Website. A lot of things related to marketing and sales, which is so exciting. And then February 18th, Navigating the Future of Financial Planning, Insights from the Industry Leaders. And I'll drop those registration links in the chat below. Last but not least, XYPN Live 2025 is in Austin, Texas from September 25th to 27th. Don't forget to purchase your tickets. Prices right now are $5.99 for XYPN members, $7.99 for non-XYPN members. And that is early bird pricing, which ends March 31st, 2025. Registration will also be in the link. But without further ado, Brian, Diana, Allen, floor is yours.

Diana Cabrices (4:19): All right. Thank you so very much for that wonderful introduction. Sounds like you have some awesome events going on for your advisors. And we hope to add a lot of value today as we know these other events will do as well. So I figured Brian, Allen, we just take off with some really short and sweet introductions. I love introductions, but I know everyone is here for the information. So I'll just quickly start. My name is Diana Cabrices. I'm the Chief Evangelist here at Wealthtender. And I am super passionate about educating financial advisors on marketing, on technology, and on growth and scale. I've been in the industry for about nine years now in various roles, helping financial advisors, small firms, really, really large firms. And I've had a lot of fun along the way. And so I'll pass it maybe over to you, Brian, for your quick introduction. And thanks for having me here.

Brian Thorp (5:08): Sure. And hello, everybody. I'm Brian Thorp, founder of Wealthtender, launched Wealthtender in 2019 after a 22-year career with Invesco, and always been a big believer that we can help more people find advisors, benefit from advice, and really modeled Wealthtender after sites that have existed in other industry verticals, trust-based professions like doctors and lawyers. And the site Wealthtender really couldn't exist until the SEC marketing rule came around. We're going to talk a little bit more about that today. Super excited to see many familiar faces that are registered today, XY members, non-XY members who participate on the platform today. And one in particular, Allen Mueller, who's joining us today. And I'll hand it to him for a brief introduction, and then looking forward to not only sharing more about Wealthtender, but importantly, some of the many ways that Allen himself has been able to take advantage of the platform to help grow his business.

Allen Mueller (5:59): Hey, everybody. Thanks for being here. Super excited. My name is Allen Mueller. I founded Seven Saturdays Financial in early 2022, so been running it about three years. And I'm here because XYPN and Wealthtender have been very helpful in my business. So hoping to help others with similar things.

Diana Cabrices (5:59): Thanks for joining us, Allen. So Brian is going to kick off a screen share. And what you're going to find in today's presentation is we're going to try to keep everything pretty organized. So we'll be doing some showing and some telling. And then you're also going to hear from Allen in different segments about what his experience as a financial advisor has been like. We think it's super important, peer-to-peer learning. To me, there's really nothing better than having another advisor on the line to share their experience. So thanks again, Allen, for being with us. All right. So as you know, the title of this session, Affordable Digital Marketing Strategies for Advisors, that's a key word because we know you have a lot of options out there. Before we really get into why we kind of positioned the webinar that way, let's first and foremost set the stage here that your digital reputation matters more than ever before. Why? There's so many different stats I could have pulled on this slide. I just wanted to choose one. Consumers are nearly 70% through their buying journey before they even contact you. And that means that they're online doing research. They're talking to people in their community. And you have to have some sort of substance there that's going to help sway them in their decision to work with you. And I don't say the word sway because it needs to be, oh, let's try to get them even if they're not a good fit. We really want to make sure that they are a good fit for you. And that means what you're putting out on the front lines should match the type of prospective client that you want. There's a lot of different ways to build authority and trust than ever before. There's a lot more skepticism now with consumers. And so I want you to ask yourself, what do you have online today about you that's helping you build that trust? We're going to talk about online reviews today, of course. If you've been following Brian or myself at Wealthtender Brand, you know we talk a lot about testimonial marketing. It's super important. But that's just one of the ways that we're going to teach you to build trust today. We also recognize not all of you on the phone can do online reviews yet because of based on where your state is. And we're sorry for that. And we're working really hard to change that. And we're going to give you some tools and resources here and some ideas on how you can still help these consumers make that decision to work with you in lieu of using testimonials. So it won't all just be about testimonials. So again, I want to go back to the question, why should someone hire you? Would you hire you? What is it about you online, your digital reputation, your digital footprint that's going to move someone to hire you? The note on affordability here, and then we're going to move along, is it's so important to have your foundation built and your marketing system and your marketing ecosystem of your business, your website, your social media, your brand, your logo. This is all table stakes. And that might cost you a little bit of money upfront. That's definitely an investment upfront. But as you go along the way, every single day, every single month, every single year, you should have a marketing wheel spinning. And that marketing wheel, in order to get it to spin and work and find prospects, doesn't mean you have to spend an arm and a leg. There are a lot of tools out there. I have been across the block when it comes to marketing for advisors. Some are really pricey. Some are promising silver bullet results. And some, like Wealthtender, are super affordable and effective. So yes, you can succeed in marketing and not have to spend a ton of money. So we're going to talk about that today as well. OK, moving along to the next slide here. What I want to tee up on this slide is that a lot of what drives findability online for advisors, so remember, you want to get found online. You want to come up in those search results. You want to be a part of that 70% buying journey that people are already doing on their own when they're searching in SEO. There's a lot of talk about SEO right now, because SEO is changing. But SEO is still key and fundamental to a successful marketing strategy to get found online. So what you're looking at here in this graphic is what happens when someone searches for a very particular search term. And this is based on some of the most frequently searched things, like financial advisor for young adults, or for debt, or for retirement, or student loans. And then kind of seeing here in the middle of this page here where Wealthtender really shines and helps you get found faster is that we're populating on the top of those search results. So you can see over on the right some specific keywords and exactly where we're ranking on Google in that top five search results. But we know SEO is shifting, as I mentioned here. And so if we go to this next slide, what you're also going to see is how this looks with AI search summaries. So if you've been using Google lately, you've been seeing there's an AI summary, or sometimes it's just a summary from Google, or maybe you use chat GPT. And you can even see here, SEO still matters. It's still being pulled into these search results. And we think that's really important to understand. AI isn't going to take away the principle of SEO. In fact, it is riding on the principles of SEO. So you can see here, Emily Rassam, who is a Wealthtender advisor, she is populating in these different Google summaries and chat GPT summaries. And a lot of that is based on that SEO. So I want to take a quick pause here and see, Brian, if you wanted to share anything here or Allen as well.

Brian Thorp (11:50): Sure. Let me jump over and just share a couple of examples live. We're going to toggle back and forth today between some of the slides, and then move online to share some additional examples in real time. And as Diana mentioned, I think it's important to remember that even if you don't have reviews, SEO matters. And you can still very much control the visibility when people are searching for you. Just using Kevin Estes, another XY member, a great example of an advisor that does a terrific job with SEO, even though he's in a state, Washington state, where reviews, testimonials are not yet permitted. And what you'll see is he's done a terrific job with his website. We can see his Wealthender profile showing up prominently, his XY directory listing showing up prominently as well.

Diana Cabrices (12:36): And if we were to look- Brian, I'm sorry to cut you off. We can't see what you're sharing.

Brian Thorp (12:41): Okay. Again, this is… Let's try this. All right. Not my expertise on navigating slides. Can you see Kevin's profile? Okay, great. So sure. So we were looking at a Google search previously, or at least I was, and just showing how Kevin ranks prominently, and then jumping over to an example of a Wealthender profile page where we can see, again, being in Washington state, no reference to reviews. We want to ensure that advisors, if you're in states where you're not yet able to have reviews, we just won't have those referenced. But what people can see instead is a lot of great information about you. And again, as you saw, Kevin's profile ranks prominently from an SEO perspective, reviews or no reviews. One of the things that Kevin does a nice job of, as well as including a video on his profile. And this is definitely something that I would suggest if you're an advisor in a state that can't use reviews yet, think about how you can build that emotional connection with prospects. And this is a great way to do it. Reviews are all about accelerating that trust building process, help people get to feel a more emotional connection to you. And another great way to do that is to have a video on your profile, which is also just terrific from an SEO perspective, helping with consumer engagement on your site. And the longer time people spend on your profile, the more that can help your profile and your SEO rank and benefit as a result as well. With that said, let me turn it or try to turn it back to the slides. And Diana, if you want to confirm when you can see those and we can continue unless, Allen, was there anything that you wanted to chime in with just in terms of high level with regard to your profile or experience on that front?

Diana Cabrices (14:27): Not specifically. Thank you. Sure. We'll keep it moving. So on the next slide here, if you toggle over to the next slide. So why is this really happening? What is it about Wealthtender? You might have your own website. You might have good SEO for your own website. And we could have an entire webinar on that. In fact, I just recently hosted one in December. If you want the link, let me know. But some advisors know and understand it takes time to build good SEO. And so what I like to often say and how I position this and the power of really a financial advisor directory and having a listing like Kevin, like Allen, is that we've put in years of work to build up our SEO, to build up the amount of page visitors that we're getting every single day, every single month, every single year. And so you're all sort of riding the wave that we have created with this powerful SEO platform, this powerful platform that has good SEO. What you can see on the screen from SEO to WTO, what the heck is WTO? Wealthtender Optimization is that among some of the most popular find an advisor directories, we rank highest in estimated monthly visitors. And this is fresh data as of this month. And so again, if you're placing a listing on a directory that people are often seeing in their financial search results, then the chances of you getting found increase. That's what this is truly all about. So SEO is great. You should have a lot of your own SEO principles built into your website. Testimonials even promote good SEO. We'll talk about that later, how that looks on your website. But just know that you can almost immediately double down on your findability by creating a listing on a webpage like Wealthtender. We have about half a million visitors to the Wealthtender platform every single year. And we're not just giving you a platform or a profile, a listing. We're going to be on that. We're featuring you in category and specialist guides, destination guides, local guides. And we've got some examples that we'll show you that here as well. Brian, if you want to do that portion.

Brian Thorp (16:35): Sure. So as an example, if we were to go into a Google search, we were given a bit of a preview in the slide deck earlier. But for high net worth financial advisors, what you'll see, of course, are sponsored results, people that are paying to get at the first page of Google. And then right behind that, you're often going to see results from Wealthtender. So in this case, we can see looking for high net worth wealth managers. This is consumer facing guide to help people looking for exactly that. If they're looking for an advisor that specializes in this area, they can then see an interactive map where they can click on a little preview, get to know advisors in our community that when they joined indicated that working with high net worth advisors or high net worth clients was an area of focus. Another example, I know this is near and dear to a lot of XY members are working with more hourly or flat fee. And just using hourly as an example, if you were to do a search, you're going to see one result that shows up before Wealthtender and then that Wealthtender results showing up prominently as well. I would also mention we see fee only network here. And Allen and the team at Fee Only Network, I think they have done a tremendous job. If you are eligible to be featured on Fee Only Network, you should definitely take advantage of that as well, because they do a great job of ranking for relevant keyword searches when it comes to words like fee only or even hourly. In the case of Wealthtender, what you'll see with the resource, if somebody is looking for an hourly financial advisor, and this is something when you join Wealthtender that is important to you, you can be featured in that interactive directory, again, whether it's that map or gallery view where people can do a little bit more searching. And then, of course, if you're focused on working with advisors in a local area, we're going to make sure that you have an opportunity to be featured on your local guide. Again, throughout Wealthtender, you'll see these interactive maps where somebody can click on a little blue dot, go to the profile page for that advisor. Here we can see Allen popping up in the Richardson area. If there's a dot with a number on it, it just represents multiple advisors in an area. And as you continue to zoom in, you'll start to see those become the individual blue dots. So you can get to know the different advisors or, again, use more of that gallery approach to do additional filtering and sorting as well. And Diana, I'll turn it back to you. Let's move on to the next slide here.

Diana Cabrices (18:49): Yeah, sounds great. What I want to say about this next slide, you know, what I love about XY Planning Network is you do get a lot of education on marketing and creating your niche and or niche, however you say it. I think niche sounds a little cooler, so I say it that way. But a lot of the times you have been kind of told, hey, it's a good idea to have a niche because then you can really attract the right kind of person, right? If you're putting out who you are, then you're going to attract those same people. So what I like about what a directory like Wealthtender can do, and again, Brian just said a really important thing. You don't just have to be on Wealthtender. If I'm an advisor and I have the option to be on several directories, you better bet I'm going to get myself on as many directories as possible. Remember, we are trying to increase the probability you get found. Also, that people look at you as a credible professional. If you just have a website and that's all, and maybe it's a great website, that's awesome. But if you have a website and you're also featured on this directory and this directory and all of these directories look pretty darn official, then I might as a consumer think, okay, this person is it, right? They're being featured here and here and here. It's not just them saying they're great. Everybody else is also featuring them as well. So we sort of validate your niche expertise. We have articles that are focused on financial planning for dentists, for crypto, for small business owners. We even narrow in as specific as certain employers. And Allen, I definitely want to talk with you about this one. But for example, if you target Dell employees or Pepsi, right, we have different directories, different articles that are popping up in those search results. And they're going to feature you if you're associated with that, if you actually help these type of employees. So there's just a few examples here. We have quite a long list of different niches and different specialties that will feature you in. Brian, anything else you want to share there?

Brian Thorp (20:42): Sure. So I think this is just a great example. And again, something that XY does a terrific job of promoting, the opportunities beyond just a geographic footprint to identify a particular niche. But even for advisors that perhaps have more of a geographic footprint, it's very likely that as an advisor, you've worked with clients that are employed at a large employer in your area. And through that, you're gaining knowledge about their compensation model and their benefit plans and really positioning you as an expert in helping employees of that particular firm. So what we've seen are a lot of opportunities to really help advisors, not only in more traditional broad-based niches. And on this page, we can see many different examples. The links that you see here are organized by different categories. So age, life stage, each one of these links are consumer-facing resources on Wealthtender where advisors have the opportunity to be featured, whether it's general baby boomer, millennial-type demographics, or more specifically, widowed women or moms. In some cases, it can be investing specialties, planning specialties, of course, ensuring that you're getting visibility for any designations that you hold, ethnicity, religion. And what you're going to then see are a lot of these resources then showing up on the first page of Google for relevant search results. And then coming back to what we were saying with the ability to get featured as a specialist based on an employer, dozens of resources where we've helped advisors participate in Q&A question and answer style resources like Raytheon, as we were mentioning, where Allen is featured. And what you'll see within these resources is we're reaching out, we're looking for keyword research-type questions to really understand the types of questions that an employee at Raytheon, at Dell, at Pepsi, at any number of different companies might be thinking about when they're thinking about financial planning, perhaps about retirement, or whatever transition they might be going through. And so in this example, we shared a list of questions with Allen, providing him the opportunity to provide responses, and then putting this into a resource that now if we were to do a search, and again, these are what people would consider to be a long-tail search, meaning there's clearly not thousands of people searching for Raytheon financial advisor. But for those who are, you can see the top thing that shows up in a little summary across the top of Google is indicating you can find a financial advisor for Raytheon employees through Wealthtender with a link to the resource, in this case, where Allen is featured. And with that, I'd love to turn it, Allen, over to you to just share a little bit more about your focus. And I know we've got different things we're going to cover today, but maybe just speaking a little bit about your experience with Raytheon and how having that as a resource has been beneficial in your practice.

Allen Mueller (23:31): Yeah, sure. So I specifically chose Raytheon and a couple other aerospace companies because I used to work at Raytheon, so I was very familiar with their career paths. I was familiar with their benefits. Also had a couple of clients at Raytheon, so had access to all the benefits guides and things like that. But I think that writing these employer-specific articles not only helps from an SEO perspective, but also once the article is written, you have an asset, right? You don't need to just have it on the Wealthtender platform. You can turn it into a LinkedIn article, and you can take that LinkedIn article, you can feature it on your profile so that when people look at it, they find your article. You could even turn it into a PDF as a white paper and use it as a lead magnet to get people on your monthly newsletter. And then another way you could even repurpose it further is take that LinkedIn article that you wrote, and if you're using Sales Navigator on LinkedIn, you can filter down a list of potential clients to that specific employer and just send them that LinkedIn article and say, hey, did you know your benefits feature ABC? So there's a lot of different ways you can use these digital assets once they're created beyond the SEO perspective.

Brian Thorp (24:47): Yeah, and I think those are great examples. We've heard other advisors taking advantage similarly and really seeing not only the opportunity, as we saw, to strengthen SEO by being featured, linking back, perhaps if you have a landing page on your website, which can reinforce your own SEO, and then ultimately we do see consumers, employees at these firms periodically reaching out that are doing that search. They find that resource on Wealthtender, and then they're reaching out to the advisor, which is, of course, terrific to see as well.

Diana Cabrices (25:17): Yeah, that's awesome. That is content marketing at its finest, taking one piece of content and repurposing it for different channels. That is amazing, Allen. I love that you're doing that, and thank you for sharing, because I'm sure some of you are inspired here in the group. That's what this is all about. So the next area that when you think about building credibility online, and you've got your website, you've got your socials, hopefully you're a little bit active on both. You're listed on some directories, but now you're also getting featured in the media. This is another huge benefit of Wealthtender, and I know XY Planning Network also supports you here and some other organizations, and we'll talk and kind of compare and contrast, but having mentions in the media is important for credibility. It's also important for your own SEO. Having backlinks to your SEO and other websites that have a lot of traffic, like a Wealthtender, we will link your website, of course, like a media publication is big. And so part of Wealthtender's value is actually every single week, really every single day, we have reporters that reach out and say, hey, do you have an advisor who can talk to me about divorcees or financial planning for small business owners, right? Whatever that specific topic might be, we give that to all of our advisors via email. So you get these email alerts, and then you can decide if you want to respond or not. And so it's another way to establish authority, show your expertise, and get featured and quoted in the media. Brian, how would you compare and contrast this to what XY offers and maybe some of the other companies out there?

Brian Thorp (26:49): Sure. So, and we'll let Allen chime in here as well with some of his experience. You know, I think XY does a terrific job at financial planning or FPA. You may have opportunities to get featured in the media there as well. And some of you may have used Help a Reporter Out that was recently shut down. One of the reasons or frustrations that we heard from writers and reporters utilizing those types of platforms is that they were getting a lot of junk responses, increasingly AI responses. And whether they solicit requests for quotes through XY, FPA, Wealthtender, they know they're getting responses from qualified financial advisors and, you know, not others and extraneous type responses. So that's something that's been terrific. Now, clearly, you may see a bit of redundancy if there are certain reporters putting requests in, both through XY, maybe FPA and Wealthtender, but you will also see variations. In some cases with Wealthtender, you're going to see opportunities to get featured on Wealthtender itself. We also have syndication opportunities each month that are being pushed out through associated press affiliates, and then writers and reporters that are turning to Wealthtender for various publications in the last few weeks. I think we've seen US News and World Report, a number of other, again, associated press affiliates amongst others. And what we'll do is create social media posts when advisors have been quoted. So it's easy for you to know when you've been featured and then be able to share that. What we hear typically from advisors is that when they respond directly to a writer, through Wealthtender, they're getting picked up 30 to 50% of the time. And a lot of the writers that we work with are really good about including a link back to the advisor's website, so beneficial from an SEO perspective as well. I think this is just a recent example of a US News and World Report article with several advisors in the Wealthtender community who were featured. With that, Allen, maybe turn it to you to talk about maybe some of your past experience getting quoted in the media as well.

Allen Mueller (28:45): Yeah, so I think this is one of those things where it's really important to view your marketing efforts through the lens of every touch with a prospective client has one of two effects. It's either increasing your credibility or it's decreasing your credibility. So things like your website messaging, your credentials, your office, or your background, if you're virtual, even your email signature, they all add up to this imaginary credibility score in the potential client's mind. So the more we can nudge them towards the credible end of that spectrum, the better off we'll be. And I think getting quoted in the media is a really great way to do that. It kind of puts you on more equal footing with the big firms that are going to spend more in a day on marketing than we're going to spend in a lifetime. So to get quoted in these articles, you really want to avoid kind of the boilerplate or you mentioned kind of the junk AI responses. You definitely want it to be unique and something that every advisor who's responding is not going to be saying, you know, like the Roth IRA contribution limit is $8,000 this year. You don't want to say generic stuff like that. You want to say something that's a bit unique and you're more likely to get featured in the article. And then once you are featured, you know, very similar to the employer-specific article, you can take that article and you can display it very prominently. So you can create a press page on your website and you can link back to all those articles that you've been featured in so that when folks are on your website, they can see, oh, this guy's been featured in the media 15 times. And then you can also create a banner with those different publications that you've been featured in. Put it on your LinkedIn featured image at the top of your LinkedIn profile. You can feature it on your website, just kind of show to increase that credibility score with prospective clients. And I like to think of those particular media publications kind of like passport stamps, like you're just collecting like, okay, I got one from CBS News and I got one from Kiplinger's and just kind of display them there. So there's a lot you can do with those media features.

Diana Cabrices (28:45): That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that, Allen. And you make such a good point. And I've never heard it positioned this way, but just like that imaginary credibility score. And so much of what is driving that, folks, is not just, you know, them physically finding you mentioned in the media, but there's also an emotional component. So much of our decisions are based on emotions, especially economic decisions. And this is a very economic-based profession. And so I love that you had that comment there because it also speaks exactly to reviews. So we're going to come back to reviews. And I see some of you in the Q&A box who are asking about reviews. So I'm excited to finally arrive here because I'm so passionate about what online reviews can do for your business. So yes, online reviews are an emotional driver because when somebody reads something that someone else said and it touches them because maybe they're having a similar issue or maybe they want that same outcome that that person said you gave them, that creates an emotional response. And again, buying decisions are heavily based on emotion. So, you know, reviews aren't really just nice to have anymore. At this point, they're really, really important. I think the data here shows that 81% of consumers in a January 2023 survey said that online reviews are either important or very important to them when making decisions about financial services. So this is industry specific. We're not talking about plumbers here. We're not talking about restaurants, although we can definitely draw a line there because really looking at reviews has just kind of become part of our buying process. Part of that 70% of the buying journey reviews are absolutely a piece of that. So they're going to help you stand out. Now there's a study out there. I'm not going to perfectly quote it, but I believe it was put out by FICOM and they said that 90% of advisors are not using reviews right now. So Allen made another great point. You know, getting featured in the media is kind of what helps you stand up against some of those bigger competitors. You know, the Morgan Stanley's of the world, the Merrill Lynch's that already kind of have that credibility because of that brand name. Whereas, you know, you may not have built that up just yet. And so reviews are doing the exact same thing. They're really giving you that competitive angle, the accelerate trust. And we know again, not all of you can do reviews yet. In fact, we do have a resource. I'm not sure if we're able to drop it in the chat, but we do have a resource that you can kind of stay in touch with sort of what states are allowing reviews, you know, red light, green light, yellow light, where are we kind of making some moves and where are we trying to get that yellow light to turn green? I think if we can drop it in the chat, we'll find a way to get it to you. Maybe it'll be in a follow-up email. So Brian, I'm going to pass it over to you because a lot of times advisors say, well, yeah, reviews are great. I want to do them, but like, where do I really start?

Brian Thorp (33:43): Sure. So I'm happy to chime in with that. And I think where it really starts is first and foremost, of course, abiding by the rules. We provide all the templates, checklist resources to help you get off to a great start. One of the first things you need to do once you have the green light is send out an email to all of your current clients, inviting them to write a review. And then importantly, once those reviews come in, each review, as we can see on this slide needs to include three clear and prominent disclosures. We like to refer to them as the three C's. So whether or not the individual that wrote that review is a current client of your firm, if they were compensated in any form to write the review, and if there are any conflicts of interest. And what we've done with Wealthtender, and I'll share my screen here again, just to walk through an example, is made it very easy for you to invite your clients to write reviews. You can do that in a couple of ways. It can be done directly on your profile page. It can be done through a link that you can provide. And I'll just pick on Emily another great XY member and advisor in our community. We can see the reviews summarized across her profile. So once you have reviews, we can see those summarized across the top. And then if somebody wants to write a review, you can have a form to allow them to write a review directly here. Or again, we can provide a link that you can share with them as well. Either way, it's a very intuitive form. So we didn't want to create any additional burden for a client that's writing a review. So analogous, if they've written a review on any other type of industry or professional platform, they can put in their review details, their name, how they want that to be publicly displayed. The SEC does permit reviews to be publicly anonymous. So if your clients prefer, or if you prefer to not display their full name, it can be abbreviated or even fully anonymous. But we do require that they provide their email address so that you'll know exactly who they are. And then importantly, when they click submit review, that review is not immediately published. What happens is we're first going to send an email to you that includes all of the pending review details. And then we'll also provide a link to a form where you can see the pending review itself, how that individual wants their name to appear publicly. And then it's very easy to add those disclosures that we were referring to earlier, simply indicating if it's a current client, if they were compensated or any conflicts of interest. And then once the reviews, once you've added those disclosures, the reviews are then going to work for you on Wealthtender. They're also going to start showing up in Google search results. So if we were just doing a search for Emily Rosam, we're going to see her Wealthtender profile showing up prominently, even if I spell her name incorrectly, it still shows up prominently with those gold stars that I'm just really messing it up. So let's do it properly here. And you'll see those gold stars showing up. So here's a better example of spelling her name correctly. We can see those gold stars are sending positive trust signals to Google's algorithm, helping her rank higher. And then, of course, tools to also put those reviews on your website. If we were to come over to Allen's website, as an example, we can see on his homepage, and Allen, maybe I'll hit a refresh here because I think my internet connection may have stalled out on me. But just talking a little bit about how you've incorporated the reviews into your website. This is an example of another advisory firm. We're on the advisor bio pages. They're taking a widget from Wealthtender, putting those reviews that they've received right there. We'll pull up Allen's page. Allen, as I let you talk a little bit about your experience with reviews, and I think importantly, too, for everybody to kind of consider, you know, what was it like getting started? Can you share a little bit about that experience? Maybe that fear of, oh, my gosh, is anybody going to respond? And a little bit more of that emotional side of asking for reviews as well.

Allen Mueller (37:33): Yeah, it's, I mean, it's definitely a little bit nerve wracking when you send out that first email, specifically because this, I don't know, in my mind, it was kind of like a regulatory landmine that you might step on. But, you know, the guide that you guys put out was very instrumental about it. But it turns out reviews are actually one of my favorite features about Wealthtender. So the reason for that is it can help prospective clients get excited about working with you before you've even met them and kind of increase that likability and that trust factor. So, yeah, I kind of talked about the testimonial playbook. That's a great document. If folks on the call haven't read that, definitely recommend going through it. It's got sample language for your ADV. It's got a template for the review request email, which was great. You know, anything I don't have to start from a blank page is as preferable. And then, you know, once I sent it out initially to all the current clients at the time, made sure to archive that specifically because it's likely to come up in an audit in the future. But one other piece of a little tidbit I did was I had a couple of clients that were brand new, like they signed their engagement agreements like a week ago before I sent the initial review request email. So it felt a little bit weird asking a brand new client, hey, can you write me a review? So those folks specifically, I gave a call and said, hey, listen, you're going to get this email. I've got to send it to everybody per the regulators. But, you know, in no way feel obligated. I understand we're very new to working together. So I went ahead and made that specific call to a couple of clients. And then when it comes to, you know, importing Google reviews, I don't know if now is a good time to talk about that feature, Brian. Sure. OK, cool. So I actually preferred to have clients write the review on Google and then import it into Wealthtender. So it shows up in both places, you know, a little bit more reach there. Plus, if they just Google my firm, obviously the Google my business is one of the first ones that pops up. So just wanted to have kind of the duplicate reviews there, understanding that that may not be acceptable in all states to request on a noncompliant platform. But obviously, once I've imported the reviews into Wealthtender, I can use it in marketing efforts. I can be 100 percent compliant there because I'm not promoting my Google review specifically. So the last thing I'll point out about my experience with reviews was one improvement that I would have made if I could go back and do it all over again was I was asking folks after they left me a Google review, I was saying, hey, follow up email. Hey, do you mind if I use this in marketing efforts? Do you mind if I import it into another website called Wealthtender? And they would always say yes, because they wanted me to be successful and they were happy to write the review. But Brian actually had a great suggestion, which was kind of go the negative consent route. And in the initial request email, you know, just put a line in there that, hey, I may also use this in marketing materials. Please let me know if you're not OK with that. So that's that's done. And, you know, the client is probably not going to tell you that they're not OK with that. So you've you've got the consent there.

Brian Thorp (40:49): Yeah, all great points. And you'll see that disclosed as well when somebody submits a review, they're agreeing to the various policies and that they do, in fact, give the financial advisor permission. And, you know, again, what we see if somebody is taking the time to write a review about you, they care about you. And I think that's what's been most exciting as well. You can see this as we look at all of Allen's glowing reviews and people aren't just saying five stars and then walking away. They're sharing thoughts and really sharing experiences. And I guess on that front, Allen, I'd be curious to hear, was there anything that surprised you in terms of some of what you actually heard from advisors, maybe where they focused their attention in terms of what they shared that maybe was a little unexpected?

Allen Mueller (41:30): Yeah, so the the client reviews that I got, I was the main thing that surprised me was how quickly and how like the volume that came initially within the first couple of days, you know, I sent it out and I was like, yeah, whatever, I might get a couple of reviews. But I think I had five reviews within the first couple of days, which was about 20 to 25 percent of my clients at the time. So pretty good response rate on that. Ultimately, I ended up with, I think, 11 reviews on the platform, which I'm very proud to display on my website. And, you know, I created a little graphic to display on my LinkedIn featured section, you know, read my five star reviews. So, you know, the response was just overwhelming. I was really happy with to hear all those things and kind of a side benefit of receiving positive reviews is it's a great remedy for imposter syndrome. Right. I know. I know a lot of us solo advisors experience that. So if you're ever having a bad day, you know, you can just go read your reviews and get a little pick me up. That's awesome.

Brian Thorp (42:31): Yeah, I agree. It's completely awesome and definitely one of the benefits that we've heard from advisors who are getting those reviews. You get over the imposter syndrome and wow, you know, of course, it's not a surprise that your clients love you, but it is reaffirming to see all the great things they say and how many, in fact, do take the time to respond. And then staff morale, if you have others on your team, as well as just for your own ego, it's just, I think, so terrific to get to see what people are saying. And in some cases, learning a little bit more about what it is that really made a difference in their lives. So that's all been terrific. And then Allen started to touch on a little bit around LinkedIn and social media. And so next, what we'd love to do is give you a bit of a preview with what we've called Testimonial Marketing Studio. We just announced this officially last week. And what we've seen is advisors doing a terrific job collecting reviews on Wealthtender, getting those working for you. So they're showing up in search engines, also using the tools to put them on your website. And then importantly, the SEC provides guidance that really makes it easy for advisors to also promote online reviews or take a single testimonial and promote those in social media, as well as any other marketing activities. And so as an example, if we pull up Allen's profile, he's taken advantage of the Testimonial Marketing Studio features, where we can see a recent post that he put out where he's using one of the professional designs from Wealthtender to showcase the testimonial. In some cases, we have animated designs. And this one, that's emulating a Google search. What do clients say about working with Allen Mueller? And then the testimonial appears along with the disclosures that are required. And so let me just hop into the studio itself to share a little bit more about how this works. Within the studio, what you'll see on this particular page are a lot of example templates on the left with little descriptions. And each one of these represents, in some case, an image file that, again, incorporates all of the required disclosures and other instances, more animated designs. And we're having fun with this. Throughout the year, the goal is that when you get a single review, it's not something that you can just put out on your social media one time. You can repurpose it, because we all know, myself included, sometimes have the memory of a goldfish. And I may have seen a review published on your social media before. But if you put that out and republish it a couple of months later, and especially if you use a different design, you have some cool ways to just keep those testimonials fresh, keep them working for you. You can see this example as we have Valentine's Day coming up. It's a great example to say, what do clients say they love about their advisor and have a little bit of something fun? And importantly, these are then eye-catching. They're scroll-stopping, getting people to pay a little bit more attention, because we all know those social feeds are really crowded these days. And the goal here being that you can simply come in, click Create Project, select one of your reviews. It's automatically pulled into a template with the disclosures that are required. And then from there, you can go out and create social media posts like this one. Also, you can utilize these outputs in prospect and client newsletters and really offline activities as well. If you're doing seminar marketing or webinars just like we're doing today, you could have these types of resources displaying on the screen or printed on a flyer using some of the still images that are out there as well. Allen, I know this is pretty brand-new territory, but anything that you would say in terms of how you're starting to incorporate some of the features from Testimonial Marketing Studio into your weekly or monthly marketing efforts?

Allen Mueller (46:13): Not the Testimonial Studio specifically. I put up a post on LinkedIn. It was very well received. But the reviews in general, very similar to the media mentions, I think that once you have the reviews, you want to spread them far and wide. So the LinkedIn Featured section is a great place for that. If you're following up with a prospect and you're sending them an email, just put a line in there. Hey, also we've got over 10 five-star reviews. Click here to see those. So you can kind of promote those with prospect follow-up emails. Even like the frequently asked questions on your website, you can add a question on there. Do you have any reviews I can read? Yes, we do. Please click here to see the 10 reviews we have. So those sorts of things. Then also just adding the widget to your home page. Again, just trying to get those in front of potential clients as much as possible.

Brian Thorp (47:07): Yeah, I think those are all great points. It could be prospect nurturing campaigns. There are so many opportunities to drip out these testimonials that you've received throughout the process. Certainly, I think something that's going to be a terrific advantage for the advisors that are able to get started with reviews. Again, we do sympathize with those that are in states that aren't yet able to take advantage of this feature. For what it's worth, I've participated on calls with regulators. We've had success. Texas is going to be a state granting approval later this month. Part of that was through a comment letter that I submitted. It's been terrific to have some of that receptivity from regulators that are listening. Arizona heard back from their lead regulator last night. Probably later this year, Arizona advisors are going to have the ability to get started as well. So if I can be a resource to you, I've joined FPA chapters with regulators to help get in front of regulators, feel free to reach out. I'm happy to be there and help wherever I can on that front as well.

Diana Cabrices (48:06): Beautiful. I'm going to take us home here. I know there's so many questions in the chat, so I want to make sure we get to as many as we can. Also, a lot of your questions, we can answer in our testimonial marketing playbook. So if you just stay tuned a few more minutes, we're going to give you a QR code you can scan directly from your phone to pull up that playbook and use that as a resource. What I'm hearing, I just want to really quickly recap, is that Allen, you appreciate leveraging Google's reach by having your clients write reviews there, but you know that you can't go and promote those reviews as they stand because they don't have the disclosures. So then you're using that import feature into Wealthtender, which then publishes the review, takes it through a certified certification process, includes the disclosures, and then from there, you even have the testimonial marketing studio we've built so you can make these beautiful graphics, eye-catching graphics, to put on social media and in other channels to stop people on their scroll, because we're all scrolling all day and they catch your eye and you say, oh, wow, this is a really cool comment somebody said about this advisor, further increasing those chances of them wanting to work with you. So I just wanted to walk us all through that here for a second, because I know a lot of us have questions about Google. We love XY Planning Network advisors. One thing I forgot to say at the beginning of this call is that we're giving away a free pass to XY Planning Network Live. If you've made it all the way to the end here, you have become officially eligible. So I feel sorry for the few folks who have dropped off, but most of you are still here, which is amazing. So if you're still here right now, we will be able to pull the report for this webinar and we're going to choose one lucky person to get a free pass, whether you're a member or not. Now, clearly, these prices are still really effective. You get a lot for your money when you go to XY Planning Network Live. It's such a fun event. I can't wait to go this year in Austin, Texas. But because you've been here with us, we'll make sure to reach out and one of you might get that free pass. OK, so how can you sign up for Wealthtender? And what's our price? We talked about affordability and we haven't even talked about pricing it. So I think we really got to cover that. But you can sign up in less than two minutes and you can look at pricing at Wealthtender.com forward slash grow. If you're new to Wealthtender, use code XYVIP for 50 percent off your first two months. This code will be active until Valentine's Day. So you got about 10 days. And if that's your reminder, you have to get your spouse a gift. Please go get your spouse a gift. All right. And then if you're already a Wealthtender advisor, you could still benefit just from being here, from learning, from growing with us. If you refer another XY Planning Network member or even just another advisor, we'll give you a fifty dollar Amazon gift card per referral. We make that really easy when you log into your account. There's a little link that you'll see. Brian, do you want to talk about pricing? Do you want to talk about this referral pathway?

Brian Thorp (50:49): Yeah, I'm just going to be real quick on pricing. We have a few different tiers starting at forty nine dollars a month. Most popular plan. Fifty nine dollars a month includes most of the features that we've talked about today. And then more recently, seventy nine dollars a month if you also want to bolt on that testimonial marketing studio feature. So if you're just getting started today and you are able to get started with reviews and want to be featured in different category guides, that fifty nine dollars a month is a great place to start. Then once you have reviews on Wealthtender, think about upgrading at that point to incorporate the studio. But again, as you mentioned, Diana, it sounds like there's a lot of questions. So let's jump right in so we can make sure that we're helping people get the answers they're looking for.

Diana Cabrices (51:26): Yeah. And maybe we leave this slide up here. There was quite a few people with specific questions around reviews that I think you can get a lot of answers in this playbook here. So feel free to scan this QR code and pull that up. OK, I am happy to kind of roll through some of these questions here. And let's see here. This is a good question. What happens if there's another advisor focusing on Raytheon like the same niche or geographic location? How does Wealthtender choose what advisor content goes on the site and manage those conflicts?

Brian Thorp (51:57): Sure. So we see it as a complement, less of a conflict. And of course, we want to be sensitive to not having just a huge number of advisors for something that's incredibly narrow. But we do have examples like for Google employees where multiple advisors featured on Wealthtender are interested and working with Google employees. In many instances, they're in different parts of the country and there are Google offices in different parts of the country as well where they're really focused. Now, with that said, what we'll do is create a what we call showcase article. So if in the case of Raytheon, you're interested in being featured there, we'll create a version that's unique to you. That's a great version to share proactively with prospects, with clients, with employees that work at that particular firm. So they're only going to see information about you with your responses. And then we will also include a section within the primary, in this case, Raytheon or Google or other resources so that you are getting exposure there as well. And the ultimate goal is that we're helping advisors that are getting that visibility with a particular firm or that niche where you're interested in being featured, but also providing consumers that maybe work at a particular employer or in a particular niche to be able to have that ability to evaluate different advisors based upon what's important to them. In the case of a Raytheon, it may very well be that geographic area where one advisor is in the Dallas area, another one may be located elsewhere where there's another big Raytheon office.

Diana Cabrices (53:25): Wonderful. Caitlin asks, what are your thoughts on sending out webinars and newsletters to current clients? Maybe Allen wants to jump in, but I will just say from a marketing and marketer perspective, absolutely. Just because there are your clients doesn't mean they shouldn't get those valuable communications. And really what should be happening in these webinars and in these newsletters is that you're educating them. And maybe they pick up a new nugget or maybe they just feel that assurance like, wow, my advisor knows what they're talking about. They know their stuff. I feel so good about working with them. So Allen, if you want to add anything to that, feel free or we'll move on to the next question.

Allen Mueller (53:25): Yeah, I haven't done webinars, but monthly newsletter is huge. And yeah, I send it to prospects and clients. A couple minor differences with the footer for current clients. I'll put a link to schedule a meeting with me, things like that. For prospects, it'll be, hey, here's what the next steps are if you'd like to move forward. So little changes, but the bulk of it's the same for clients and prospects.

Diana Cabrices (53:25): Love it. Okay. So we've got a few requests for New Jersey, if they're approved for testimonial marketing yet. Brian, is there a short link or maybe we can pass it to the XY team here to drop in the chat for everyone, just the link where you can go to know, look up your state and see if it's approved or not.

Brian Thorp (54:44): Yes. Let me pull that up. New Jersey is a state that provides sufficient leeway. There are some states that have adopted the SEC marketing rule by reference. This gets technical. Other states like New York and New Jersey that have sufficient leeway to get started. And what I'm going to put in the link here in just a moment is a link to a database where you can see the, each of the states, if they're a green light or a red light state, and then specifically, even some of the feedback we've heard from those regulators. So let me get that out there here or XY, let me send it your way if you're able to put that into the chat for the broader group.

Diana Cabrices (55:19): Awesome. Someone asked, is it okay to send just the testimony or request to clients who have worked with you longer than 12 months rather than sending it to every client, Brian?

Brian Thorp (55:30): Yeah, that's a great question. One that I would defer to your compliance consultant, compliance officer for their guidance. I do think that it's a good approach and that what the SEC first and foremost is focused on is ensuring that you're not cherry picking clients based on them being your favorite clients. And having something that is not arbitrary, this is based on they've been around for quite some time is probably a sound approach that could work well. But again, just playing a compliance officer on TV, or in this case, a Zoom webinar. So we'll defer to your compliance professional, but I think that's a smart approach to raise with them.

Diana Cabrices (56:06): Yep. Awesome. As long as you're asking everyone at some point, but yes, definitely go to your compliance officer. When do you think the state of California will approve testimonials?

Brian Thorp (56:15): That is more than a million dollar question. We are seeing other states. I mean, I'm hearing even Washington state as an example that it sounds like they're at least thinking in this direction now. And again, we are at a point now where the majority of states have given the green light. And so that in itself should create a little bit more pressure. Also, there's an organization called Nassau State Administrators Organization that is going to be having a meeting coming up where I've put in another request back in 2022. They said they were going to be putting out a model rule for states to follow to get started with an alternative to the SEC marketing rule. Flash forward to 2025. I haven't seen that. And they had a committee that was supposed to be really focused on that. So trying to do what we can to push there and any advisors in California, if you want to rattle some cages, I'm happy to partner with you, your state representatives, any FBA chapters there to see what we can do to try and be a noisy squeaky wheel, get on those calls, help those regulators understand that, hey, this is in the best interest of consumers. That's why the SEC put out this rule in the first place, helping people be able to read reviews about their experiences, make more informed and educated decisions. There's no good reason for California or any other state at this point to be really putting state registered advisors on an uneven playing field and really penalizing consumers as well.

Diana Cabrices (57:32): Okay. That's a great response. And we have one other question here and we're running up on time. So maybe we'll just take one or two more. What can an advisor expect from listing on Wealthtender? This is a great question.

Brian Thorp (57:44): Yeah. So, you know, first and foremost, to the, you know, we're not looking to suggest that we're going to be like a smart asset where you spend three thousand dollars a month and your phone just starts ringing off the hook. So we want to be transparent about that. We love hearing from advisors when they do get clients or prospects that find them through the platform. But on day one, what we're really focused on is ensuring that you're showing up more prominently in search results, that you're really strengthening your online presence, getting the SEO benefits. If you're able to get started with online reviews, that's, of course, incredibly powerful. But being able to do that compliantly, ensuring we're providing that compliance solution for a lot of the advisors not able to take advantage of reviews, they're leaning into those opportunities to get quoted in the media. And of course, those opportunities to then also be featured in those different types of category guides based on the niche and those opportunities to be able to share that proactively with clients can be quite useful as well. So excited for all the different ways that we can help. We do want to be a bit of a digital marketing Swiss army knife for you and always open to having conversations to better understand and learn more about your business to see if there are ways that we can specifically help you based on things that may be unique to your business and areas where we may have a strength that we can lean into as well.

Diana Cabrices (58:56): Awesome. I think for purposes of time, Sarah is going to come back on and wrap this up.

Sara Hopp Williams (59:01): Thank you, guys. This was so great and informative. I am so glad that you were able to join us. And then thank you to all of you who joined us as well to listen to Wealthtender just talk about testimonials and really how that can apply to your firm. So as a reminder, visit Wealthtender.com to learn more about Wealthtender and joining. And then if you are interested in joining XYPN membership, you can schedule a call with an XYPN teammates. And then last but not least, we love feedback here at XYPN. So when you do leave the webinar, then there is going to be a little bit feedback survey that pops up. Please do take some time to tell us how you really enjoyed this. Give us a rating and suggest any other topics that you want to hear about. But thank you so much. That is time and look forward to seeing you again in the future. Bye, everybody. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, everyone. Thanks, Allen. Thank you.