Before you invest a single dollar in digital marketing, make sure you take full advantage of the benefits available to you through your industry affiliations and credentialing organizations.

Whether you’ve earned your CFP designation, you’re a member of a professional organization like the XY Planning Network or NAPFA, or you’re affiliated with another respected industry group, many of these organizations offer members a free directory listing in their find-an-advisor tool. 

By ensuring your profiles in these industry directories are up to date, you’re putting your best foot forward with prospects and search engines like Google, Bing, and others.

Even if you don’t expect prospects to find you in these directories, most of these websites benefit from high Domain Authority (DA), providing you with valuable SEO benefits via the link from your directory listing to your website that can help you rank higher in Google search results.

💡 To acquire backlinks to your website of similar value through an SEO agency, you can expect to pay hundreds of dollars per link. Set a reminder to refresh these free profiles at least annually to maximize your membership ROI.

Many financial advisor lead gen platforms take a percentage of your management fee when they match you with a prospect (e.g., Zoe Financial, Harness Wealth, IndyFin). Other platforms charge advisors hundreds of dollars and require you to compete with multiple advisors for leads they send to you (e.g., SmartAsset / SmartAdvisor).

While these services can be effective in adding new clients, the cost can be steep.

When you join Wealthtender, your flat fee digital marketing investment compounds over time, paying dividends when an increasing number of your future clients find you directly online. And when they do, your advisory fee is yours to keep.

To be fair, "costly" lead gen platforms like Zoe Financial and Smart Asset (among others) can often deliver a stream of prospects much more quickly than Wealthtender, but again, the cost can be steep. By comparison, the cost of one lead through Smart Asset (sent to 3 advisors to compete over) might cover the cost of a 1-year subscription to Wealthtender. And the cost of a new client acquired through Zoe Financial would easily exceed the cost of a 10-year subscription to Wealthtender.

This comparison is not to disparage these types of lead gen platforms, but to highlight the difference in economics across business models. This is one of the reasons why "paid web listings" on directory platforms like Wealthtender consistently rank as a Top 5 Marketing Strategy in the annual Kitces survey - The cost is a fraction of traditional lead gen platforms, offering the potential for outsized ROI.

Also, in many instances, a new prospect may first find an advisor through a site like Wealthtender, but not recall the site name once they click through to the advisor's website. Of course, we're happy with this outcome! But the downside is, we'll never be able to quantify the potential value of such introductions. Meanwhile, the upside for advisors when this occurs, there's zero incremental cost beyond the nominal monthly subscription cost paid to Wealthtender. Think of this as a marketing call option with very limited downside and the potential for considerable ROI.

With all of this said, we're not satisfied simply offering a basic "paid web listings" website. We continue to invest in our platform to ensure we're delivering an extraordinary value proposition to both increase the likelihood of consumers finding advisors through Wealthtender, while also offering digital marketing benefits at a fraction of the cost of marketing consultants, agencies, and public relations firms.

Wealthtender, NerdWallet, and Investopedia are popular online finance publications that offer valuable education to consumers, primarily in the form of articles on a diverse range of topics.

NerdWallet is a publicly traded company that primarily generates its revenue from advertisers on its website comprised of credit card issuers, robo-advisors, mortgage lenders, and other companies offering financial products to consumers. While NerdWallet publishes many articles on its website about the potential benefits of hiring a financial advisor, their advertising primarily directs readers to robo-advisors and services not oriented to establishing a relationship with a traditional financial advisor.

Like NerdWallet, Investopedia primarily generates advertising from financial services companies that don't directly encourage establishing a relationship with a traditional financial advisor. Investopedia is owned by Dotdash Meredith, a media conglomerate that publishes print and online content, including brands like People Magazine, Better Homes & Garden, and Liquor.com.

Both Investopedia and NerdWallet experimented with resources to support traditional financial advisors in the past, and both companies shuttered these offerings, burning bridges along the way. The frustrations this created in the advisor community have been documented in articles written by Michael Kitces:

• Investopedia Advisor Insights: Why Most Financial Advisors Should Skip It
• Marketing Lessons Learned From NerdWallet Ask An Advisor Shutting Down

In retrospect, it is clear that both NerdWallet and Investopedia chose to prioritize what became a much more significant revenue stream for their businesses, revenue from credit card issuers and other companies that could offer economics not generated by their relationships with financial advisors.

Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with the NerdWallet or Investopedia business models. Each company generates considerable profitability for its shareholders and investors.

Wealthtender is Designed with an Advisor-First Business Model

Unlike NerdWallet and Investopedia, the Wealthtender business model emphasizes the potential benefits for consumers to consider hiring traditional financial advisors. And the primary source of revenue for Wealthtender comes from the subscription payments from financial advisors, aligning economic interests with our financial advisor clients.

Wealthtender is an online publisher that offers education to help consumers make more informed and educated decisions to improve their financial health. Wealthtender does not provide matchmaking services to consumers, and instead, offers opportunities for financial advisors to gain visibility in various articles and directories, along with a platform to collect and display their reviews in a manner compliant with the SEC Marketing Rule.

Financial advisors interested in joining Wealthtender can learn more and sign up by visiting this page.