How one advisor became the answer AI gives.

Diana: Emily, take me back a bit, before you and Richard were on Wealthtender and actively building reviews. What did your online visibility actually look like, and what would someone have found versus today?

Emily: Hi, I’m Emily Rassam, partner and senior financial planner at Archer Investment Management. Back then, before Wealthtender, they would have seen our website. We weren’t front page. They also would have stumbled upon our LinkedIn profiles, which we were posting on regularly.

So our digital presence was the blog within our website and LinkedIn, but it wasn’t really high-level visibility. I remember we were ranking pretty low in some of the SEO reports we pulled, and some of the keywords we wanted to rank for were lower. We were just starting to ramp up our digital marketing when we found Wealthtender.

Diana: Was there a moment where you thought people are researching differently now, and I need to expand my reach in other ways?

Emily: Absolutely. We’re a fully virtual firm, so digital marketing and visibility are very important to us. We wanted to amplify what we were doing, but we were also very interested in reviews. When we were marketing, it was just us putting our own words about ourselves out there. Reviews let us finally put our clients’ words out there too, to tell other people looking for an advisor like us what their experience might be, directly from our clients. People like reading and learning from others they can relate to.

Diana: On Wealthtender we built large employer Q&A articles, where advisors weigh in with expertise on a topic unique to that group of people. What’s your experience been like?

Emily: I am so grateful for that opportunity. One thing that shocked me: I had a prospective client book me through Wealthtender, but they said they Googled the search term “financial planner for Dell employees,” and we came up right away. We contributed to several employer-based Q&As, and that has led to those specific people finding us.

That’s even more meaningful to us as digital marketers working within a niche. We work with mid-career tech professionals, so getting visibility within the specific employers we do our best work with was really cool. Since then there are several large tech employers we’ve contributed to articles on, that now when you search for an advisor for that type of employee, we’re at the top of the search.

Diana: There are still advisors who think of reviews as just nice to have. For you, how did collecting and promoting reviews change the way your prospects and clients experience your business?

Emily: Periodically a prospective client asks, can we talk to some of your current clients? That can be invasive and takes time from our clients. Now we can say, go read the reviews of current clients, in their own voice, in their own words, and that has satisfied every single person who has asked. It saved us the awkwardness of putting our clients on the phone.

We feature reviews in our intro and discovery process for every prospect. We’re proud of what our clients said, and we feel it reflects the heart of what we do. We’ve even taken some of our clients’ words from the reviews and used them in the copy on our website.

Diana: Were you shocked when you sent the first request out and started getting reviews back?

Emily: It’s a little nerve-wracking to fire that off to every client. You think clients are happy, but you worry it could surface something. Fortunately, our clients were incredibly kind. We loved reading what they had to say. As soon as a review comes in, we make sure everybody on our team sees it, we celebrate it, and we thank our clients, because it’s kind of them and heartwarming to see those words.

Diana: Would you agree reviews have impacted trust, conversations, response rates, referrals, and search visibility for you?

Emily: Yes, 100%. Any advisor is crazy not to have reviews if they’re allowed to. So go for it. You might be very surprised, in a very positive way, by what your clients say.

Diana: Let’s talk about AI. Have you noticed a shift in how prospects find you, through Google, Wealthtender, or AI tools like ChatGPT?

Emily: It’s huge, and the quality of prospect has increased. It used to be that winning SEO meant people within your SEO market; ours goes to Austin, Texas, where we were founded. Now it’s completely different, because we’ve niched in on mid-career tech professionals. Somebody goes into a ChatGPT-type tool and types in their situation, their age, their net worth, their issues, what they want help with. What we’ve put out there through Wealthtender and our other marketing creates this great match, and people come to us saying you are exactly who I need.

Right now about a quarter of new clients are coming through AI tools. I check myself on every tool, and the reference material is very Wealthtender-heavy. The data influencing the AI tools is very much based in what’s coming through on Wealthtender, with the reviews and the profile, plus other work I do with writing and podcasts. I remember our first AI lead last year and thinking, this is kind of cool. Now it’s a daily occurrence that prospects book us and cite an AI tool. We had to add an AI search tool option to our how did you find us dropdown. Some people still say web search, which I think are also AI leads, so that number may be higher than a quarter.

Diana: My last question. When I think about the power of Wealthtender, I come back to AEO, on-site versus off-site. On-site is content you own; off-site is third-party platforms featuring your visibility and reviews, and it’s more important than ever. How does that off-site power change the way prospects perceive you before they even reach out?

Emily: Absolutely. When we’re listed in another tool, in a directory, and clients find us not through our website but through those channels, it builds credibility. Regardless of how they heard about us, they’re going to look us up, and they want to find not just our website, but that we’re showing up in other places. That adds strength to how and where we show up in search. Being diversified across these channels is really important to round out that profile and give people something to find when they’re searching for the advisor they want to talk to.

Diana: A multi-channel approach. This has been super helpful, Emily. Thank you for sharing your story.

Emily: Thanks for having me.