The Art and Science of a High-Performing Advisor Website

This podcast is brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.

Is your online presence a strategic asset that drives business development? Welcome back to Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. I'm your host, business coach Steve Sandusky. Today's guest is Andy Crestodina. Andy is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media, which is an award-winning Chicago web design and development company. Andy and I do a deep dive on how to think strategically and tactically about your online presence and how to attract visitors and trigger actions from those visitors that convert them into leads and clients. And make sure you listen to the end as Andy reviews 4 websites from members of The Barron's Top 100 Independent Advisor list and shares what they're doing well and what they could improve. You'll also want your marketing team to listen to this episode too. With that, let's get started with Andy Crestodina. Andy, you've been around since essentially the beginning of the internet. You've seen a lot of evolution happen here in terms of technology, the growth of the internet and social media. I'd love for you to start by just setting the stage on where are we at today in terms of what modern marketing looks like?

A lot of people have been out there for many years now, sort of flooding the zone. I think of it that way. There is so much content and so many sources of traffic, which are each so crowded that any given visitor to any given webpage is coming from a place where they saw a lot of other stuff. So it's just very competitive. It's an era of trust and it's a time when we have to do little things, not difficult things, Steve, some of them very simple. We have to do little things to make our digital experience different for the visitor once they land. From wherever they came, it's now more important than ever to do those little things that help us stand out.

And what would you say are some of the key tools that we can use when we talk about quote, modern marketing? I know your focus is mainly in the area of websites, but what's the toolkit that we have to work with here?

The ultimate tool is empathy and listening. So knowing our audience is absolutely step one, step zero we could say. But if you think of digital as having the goal of bringing in a visitor from a traffic source all the way through an experience to the thank you page. There's different tools for different steps, or I think of them as links in that chain. So there are ways to understand, are these pages indicating relevance and ranking in search? That's a tool set. Are we using social media as a research tool to connect with influencers and journalists? Those are tools. Are we measuring results from these traffic sources using analytics? That's a tool. But ultimately, None of it is ever gonna work unless we look at all of these things from the perspective of the visitor and the potential visitor, and really what's the true story in their life that brought them here to begin with. So I always hammer on this. I'm glad to have the opportunity to say it upfront. It's, it's all a giant test of empathy. Okay.

And now you've been building websites since about the year 2000. You've done hundreds, if not thousands of websites. So before you even start, to do any coding or wireframing. What are the kinds of questions that you ask a client so that you really understand what is the strategy? What are we trying to do with this website? How can we create a high-performing website that's going to attract visitors and guide them to becoming new clients?

Yeah, so we really cannot build a web page until we have interviewed the stakeholders. Sometimes it's a top rep, it could be an RIA, it could be the client themselves. And try to understand what was happening at that moment that sent you looking for help. What else did you try and what didn't you love about it? What's that impetus? What was the zero moment of truth? And then once you know that, you can begin to speak to them directly through copywriting. It's a bit ironic that it's all called web design. What do you do? We do web design, web development. That's design and that's programming. But the key differentiator between websites is actually the copy. It's copywriting and it's the words and the writing that make the difference one website to the next. So we start with stakeholder interviews. That's a key input. We also do key phrase research, starting with the phrases that the website might already be ranking for, because it's totally possible. In fact, it happens all the time. People build websites that have lower rankings and less traffic, fewer qualified visitors than the previous version of the site, which is always a, a sad outcome. And then those things together can drive the decisions about the sitemap, what pages should be included, what is the path for this visitor. It's a bit of mind control. Web design is about creating a visual hierarchy that aligns with the messaging priority. You're guiding the eyes through a series of messages where the visitor is getting their questions answered and seeing your evidence for those answers. You're, you're injecting into their field of vision little points of differentiation, testimonials, data, answer, evidence, call to action. That's the structure of a high-performing page. You really don't know how to build that page until you've thought deeply about what are the information needs of this visitor and how can I present that in a way that aligns with their likely priority and will address all of their potential objections.

How much of the heavy lifting should a website do in terms of let's say I'm a consumer, I'm looking for a financial advisor, I'm doing my initial research. Should that website do 90% of the selling? And then the final 10% is I call the office, I talk to the advisor, and I'm pretty much pre-sold just from the website. Is that too much to ask of a high-performing website?

I can tell from the question you have a perspective too, and I love this. The trend in digital is that people want more information before they're willing to reach out. We all have higher expectations because we're on sites where we can read all the reviews. You know, I'm not going to watch a movie until I look up the reviews, or I'm not going to, you know, buy a product or add to cart. But really, in the context of a site for like a financial advisor, the goal is not actually to sell. Of course it can't sell. It's only to start a conversation. So what is the minimum psychological threshold above which we need to get this visitor kind of over that hump where they say, yeah, this might work for me and my family. Yeah, I'm seeing myself in this page. I'm reading the words that make me confident that they, they know where I've been. They understand this. They know that I've got options. And they're— they came at this from a slightly different perspective. And I align with that. Therefore, I'm going to call or I'm going to fill out a contact form. So the best web page is really the ideal outcome in this context is just that they sort of emulate a conversation with the top rep or with the founder or with a great advisor. And that means, again, empathy, and making it approachable, adding clarity, not just tooting your own horn, but guiding them just through those series of thoughts that get them over that little psychological hurdle.

Now, there's a bit of a debate, I'll say, in the financial industry where some people say, well, hey, identify a niche, go after the niche, build a website that's very targeted to that particular niche. Other people are like, well, I want to be a little more generic because I don't want to turn anybody away. I'm willing to work with anybody that's near retirement or in retirement and they've got X millions of dollars to invest. Do you have any thoughts as you think about the websites that you've built over the years? What works? They can both work, I would imagine. How do you think about building a website that's really specific and will actually repel certain people versus one that's a little more generic that might be more all-encompassing?

Beautifully summarized because it's a fear-based decision to try to water down the content to speak to everybody. I don't want to exclude anybody because I do still work with some of those types of people, so I don't want to say anything that might turn those people off. Then you kind of dilute the messaging until it tastes like water and it just doesn't speak too much to anybody. Now, having said that, it's not necessarily a decision where it's either or, because again, there's a true story in the life of every visitor to every webpage. Now, visitor lands on page, visitor scans navigation. If the navigation says something like family office, they they click, they land. What's the true story in the life of this visitor? Every time they click, we can speak to them more specifically. Every click is actually segmentation that takes the visitor to a page just for entrepreneurs, or just for early-stage investors, or just for high-net-worth individuals, or just for referral partners and, you know, your network of other advisors. So every time the visitor clicks or taps, they land on a page and they're niching themselves down for you. Also, a website properly optimized, those pages rank at Google. Those pages are the entry point into the website, which a lot of people don't seem to understand. The homepage is one of many different entry points into a website. So there is an opportunity to speak to anybody more specifically on a page after they've chosen the page, and it's really the job of that page to speak to that person in that context. It's bad copywriting to just be too generic. Specificity correlates with clicks. Specificity correlates with conversion and lead generation. It's really important to identify with the information needs of that visitor, whoever they are. And then if they're not that person, you want them out of your funnel. Help them disqualify themselves. Either get off the site or just hit the back button and find, find a more relevant page for themselves.

We've got websites that are designed for B2B, business to business. We've got websites that are business to consumer. What would you say are some of the differences as you think about designing one for B2B versus one for B2C?

This will sound strange to, I think, maybe the listeners, but more important, I believe, than B2B versus B2C is, is this person making a decision that is high consideration? B2B is frequently more high consideration, right? I'm buying a fancy software, you know, there's going to be 8 people involved. I'm going to spend 3 months making the decision. That's a high consideration decision. Google sometimes calls these your money or your life pages, YMYL pages. So those are high consideration. Some B2C questions are very high consideration. For years, I spoke at this conference on, on senior housing. That visitor is making a choice about healthcare, lifestyle, what food they're going to eat, how close they are to amenities. So other B2B decisions, got to reorder some paperclips, very low consideration. So it's B2B, B2C is a bit of a— it's not the most important distinction, I don't believe. I think a much more important distinction is, is this a high or low consideration decision for this person? Are they going to spend more time? Are they going to involve more people? Do they need to see more trust? Are they going to do deeper research? In which case, you have to approach it differently, right? Advisors have to have websites that have evidence. And that sparkle with proof and that show that they're different and share their views and show their people, their faces. You can't just do it with text. Sometimes you need to upgrade the format to video. So I think that more valuable than B2C, B2B is, you know, lower, high consideration, psychology of the visitor, again, empathy. And certainly, you know, in this context, trust is critical.

And along those lines, you have a blog post called The Perfect B2B Website service page, a 13-point checklist, which I thought and think is fantastic. So I'd love for you to just maybe hit some of the highlights. And you touched a little bit on it there, maybe in terms of social proof and some testimonials, faces of people, that sort of thing. What are some other key things that you think should be on a service page? And in this case, the example I just gave here was B2B, but you're saying, hey, maybe that's not the main consideration, B2B versus B2C. So how do you think about that? What are some of the highlights here?

Yeah, I love that you mentioned that one because I called it B2B because I'm optimizing for search.

Okay.

When you're doing SEO. Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to, you have to use the terms people use when you're doing SEO. I didn't write, you know, high consideration decision service pages. I had to B2B service pages. But I mean, the page is a diagram for anyone who's interested, you know, and you can kind of just scan through it as if it's in order. But I'd like to prioritize, I'll take this chance to prioritize them a little bit. Do or die considerations. Answering top questions, addressing objections. Omit those and you fail. Next, evidence to support those answers. Testimonials, data, years in business, you know, any proof points, certifications, awards, press mentions. Omit those and you'll almost certainly fail because you're undifferentiated. I think you need to get to then the, the things like the personality in this case, because it's so high trust. What am I doing if I'm hiring an advisor? Is it really the firm or is it the person? What's more important, your bank or your banker? It's really much more important. You have to show the people here. That sort of is the product. I think that third on my list would be the faces of the people, the thinking, the leaders, the leadership, and the advisors themselves. Omit those, very high risk of failure. Past that, there's a lot of little more tactical things. Subheads should be specific. Our services, what a waste of pixels. Why not say, you know, our financial advisory services or our family office services? Use a keyword in there. Clean, simple flow. Of course, websites look older faster than ever, so you have to make sure that the, you know, it's not visually noisy and that things at any given scroll depth don't compete too much with each other. Call to action. Some websites are quite successful even without a good call to action, which is surprising, but Again, this visitor is really making a tough decision. They will scroll up and find the contact button if they are ready to go. So these are the really key elements, I think. Also brevity, you know, avoid long paragraphs, be direct and to the point. Don't build a short page. I think the, the very detailed pages with lots of information convert better almost always in studies. But I don't know how to perform, how to build a page that will convert without these key elements.

For those of you listening to this, you can go to orbitmedia.com, and what you just described here, Andy, is right on your homepage. A lot of the key things that you just described here, I think, are laid out very, very nicely on your page. So let's talk about the science of building a great website and the art. I suspect there's both. How do you think about the relative importance of those two items?

Well, there are definitely quantitative metrics that you can optimize for. For example, you've got a call to action partway down the page and it says, you know, speak to an expert advisor. That call to action is a click-through rate. You can see it in your navigation summary in Google Analytics. This is science, right? You've got a hypothesis. I can write a different call to action, which is testable. If I write a different CTA, I'll have a higher click-through rate, and then go do that. That's science. That's basically evidence-based decision making using quantitative data. Where this conversation began and where I think it's proper that it began there was in that qualitative research. It's sort of an art, conversion copywriting. I didn't describe it as such, but that's what we were really talking about. You know, writing content that has clarity, that answers questions, that's differentiated, that's supported with evidence. There is no formula for that. That's an art. You have to talk to a lot of people. You gotta really think deeply about their information needs. You gotta ask questions and follow-up questions. If I was building a website for you, I'd say, okay, if someone wanted to recommend you to a friend, what would they say about you, Steve? And you'd give me some answers. And then I'd say, well, you know, if you disappeared from the world, what would your clients miss about you? And then you give me another answer and I'd write that down. And pretty soon I'd have really good differentiated copy based on your words. I would repurpose those into web copy, but there isn't like a science for that. There's no AI script that can do that, that knows how to ask questions and then follow-up questions and then elicit those little juicy nuggets that make these pages sparkle. So there's a science to it, and go look at analytics. That's your data set, there's your scoreboard. We're playing a sport here, that's like— the analytics is the scoreboard. But also, it's really imperative to do good qualitative research and interviews. I simply don't know how to make a web page without it.

I want to reiterate a couple of questions that you pointed out there because I think those are so good. You you said that if you want to get some good information, ask your clients what would they say about you, and then also if you were gone, what would they miss about you? And asking those two questions of a lot of people will give you some great information about what really differentiates you and why people would refer to you in their terms, in their words.

That's what a brand is, right? It's not what we think we are. It's what they think we are. There's a kind of a little throwaway line I use in presentations once in a while. It says, everything that we do is marketing, everything that they say is social proof. So both of those examples are ways to try to elicit the social proof. You know, you can't write copy as good as they can. Your audience is going to write better copy than you can. And the best conversion copywriting is partly a matter of just collecting these beautiful little nuggets and turns of phrases that will sell. And those two questions will often get you there quickly.

And I know we're segueing here between some strategic ideas and then also some tactical things. So I want to ask you a very granular question here, which is when you're writing a website, and in this case, let's talk about a service website where it's, say, an advisory firm providing a service. Should they be written in third person? Should they be written in first person? Should some pages be third person and some pages be first person? How do you think about that?

Well, there's a little bit of data about this that says that generally speaking, we are speaking, you know, a visitor comes and the copywriting and the brand and the advisors behind the company and the website are speaking to the visitor, sort of second-person language, and that websites shouldn't focus on themselves too much. You're trying to make the visitor the hero in the story. This is very common in financial marketing. So you don't want to say we, we, we, we, us, our too much, or that you're failing the French test, they say. We, we, we, you're too many we's on your website. On the other hand, calls to action, if you flip it to be first-person perspective, you know, I would like to schedule a time or connect me with a financial planner. First-person language is sort of tricking them into— the copy is using— the call to action is using their internal dialogue. You're participating in their internal dialogue. So rule of thumb would be second-person language for all web copy. Except calls to action, which would be first person. The About Us page really is where you go deep on the first person, us, we, our. The About Us page is supposed to fail the French test. That's when you talk about your origin story, your beliefs, your values, why you started this company. Why does this company exist? Right? The person who clicks on the small label About wants you to talk about yourself. So there are places for both first, second, and third person language.

And again, you've done hundreds or thousands of websites over the years. What have you seen as some of the common biggest mistakes that folks make when you see these websites when they become new clients of yours?

Well, it's less of a problem, I think, for advisor websites, although it's still a problem, but a lot of sites are just piles of unsupported marketing claims. I don't even hold back anymore. I just, I just put that directly. Literally piles of unsupported marketing claims. Just look at your site and scan down and ask yourself, could a company that was just formed yesterday say these same things? And you might have just unfortunately say, you know, yes, yes, yes, yes. Any brand new business could say these exact same things. They're not differentiated, they're unsupported. So that's one of the key problems is that people write what they think the reader wants to hear, what they want to say. It's kind of like we love us. We're number one, or we believe in this, or we have a different plan, or our strategy is different, or we care, we understand. Those aren't even differentiated terms, right? So I think that lack of evidence is one of the biggest problems for sure. Past that, people are— and this one's funny. I wonder if you agree. Big companies are always trying to look smaller, and small advisory firms are always trying to look bigger, and they both miss the point. We should all try to be human and personal and tell some of your story. Sites frequently miss the chance to be vulnerable or human or approachable or personable.

Yeah, another segment here that I want to go into is we've been talking about the websites. I want to talk about the content marketing. So specifically blogs and other things related to that, podcasting perhaps. You have done a fantastic job. Content marketing, you and your company, because I see your blog posts, I see the speaking that you do, the webinars that you do. You put out amazing content. And I also want to talk about some of the results that you've generated from that as well. So let's just start at a high level. How do you think about content marketing? And if someone listening to this says, hey, I really want to get better at that, I want to drive more traffic, more quality traffic to my website, what should they be thinking about?

When you're simply considering it as an option without some form of helpful, useful advice on your site, then you're really— your only hope is to speak to a word-of-mouth visitor or referral or someone that you reached out to, which is a very tough road these days. And you need to catch them at that key moment because you have nothing that would attract them to come back a second time, which content can do, targeting the middle of the funnel or the top of the funnel. And you have nothing on your site except sales copy. And service pages. So content marketing extends the reach of your messaging to people who are earlier in their decision process. They didn't know they need you yet, but they're learning from you and they're interested in these, in, in this input. They're becoming brand aware before they need you, which is extremely powerful because how else do you stay top of mind for that person in the key moment? And then also, if the person isn't ready yet and you're talking to them and they're in your, they're in a funnel and they're, or they're going cold, you can put them on a list and you can start to connect with them over time through email marketing, you've got nothing at all for search, for social, for email without content marketing. Your site is simply an online brochure, and that's a 1990s approach that is very, very difficult these days. Now, content's hard still. It's a competitive context. It's not fast at all. But with it, at least you have a chance of setting yourself apart as a thought leader and showing off your expertise and differentiating your thinking and growing the middle of the funnel and attracting a follower or a subscriber or getting links, getting press. If your site is just 100% sales content, why is that magazine going to contact you for your insights? You didn't share any of your thoughts. There's no thought leadership. I could go on and on. It's sort of— I'll stop myself there, but it is basically extremely difficult to do anything without it. A lot of people say it's sort of like the only marketing left.

Now, there was a time when people would say, you need to publish on real estate that you own, which means you need to publish on your blog. And then we had social media, we had Facebook, we've got LinkedIn, we've got Twitter, and we still have our own blogs. Where are we today in terms of where we should be publishing? How should we think about our own real estate versus publishing on somebody else's site?

So for years we always said, don't build on rented land. You know, make your site the place where all your best insights appear. And then promote your own content, the blog posts or articles on your site, in other places. Use social media as a source of traffic, email as a source of traffic. This has evolved a bit in recent years. It is now possible to create a newsletter on LinkedIn, but only if your article is on LinkedIn. So now I'm syndicating a lot of old articles and publishing on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is emailing thousands, 100,000 people. To invite them to come read this article on LinkedIn. So I am building on rented land, but I'm doing it with eyes wide open, knowing that there's a— the pros far exceed the cons. Also, I think you sort of alluded to digital PR there and writing for other people's websites, not just publishing on LinkedIn, but writing for another advisor site or writing for an association website or writing for a financial publication or another blog. That is extremely powerful, highly recommended. That was always a good idea. I love that, especially in the early stages of a content marketing program. In the very beginning of a content program, here's a general rule: publish 2 or 3 or 4 very deep, insightful articles, ideally original research, on your own website. Then start pitching yourself as a contributor to other websites. The editors can go look back and see the strength of your content. But if 75% of your articles are in front of other— in other publications, you're going to grow the visibility and awareness much faster. You're also going to grow links to your website and your future search rankings much faster.

Now, what about this idea of a content mission statement? So a lot of advisory firms, a lot of businesses have a mission statement. Some people are more effective in that actually being a great guiding light for their business than others. But does that make sense when it comes to thinking about your content?

You are turning this into like a mini masterclass. You're hitting all the most important key points. Yes. Again, like step 0 in the content, we talked about step 0 of interviews for building the mousetrap. Now we're talking about the cheese. Step 0 here would have to be to publish that mission statement, to decide at the outset, who are you speaking to? Is your content program just for real estate investors, high net worth individuals, early stage investors? Who is it? Define that audience. It doesn't have to be everybody. Narrower niches here should grow faster. But then also, what are the topics? Original research, trends, maybe insights? Do we make— we're limited sometimes in making recommendations, but are we publishing stories? What is the program here? And once you write that down, the key is to document it. Once you write that down, we write, you know, our content is for audience X, they get information Y for benefit Z. That's the template. Audience X gets information Y for benefit Z. Now you can go write an email signup call to action, repurposing the mission statement, right? We publish financial insights and tips and trends. That will make a great email signup call to action. Now every visitor to your content is gonna be more likely to take action and subscribe. Now when you have subscribers, you got a chance to contact them directly without email or without Google or Facebook or LinkedIn in the middle. So that mission statement is not a academic thing, it's your true north, it becomes public. This is not the company's mission, this is the mission just for the content. It becomes public, becoming a great call to action. It'll grow your audience much faster than if you didn't document it at all.

So a little bit ago we talked about the 13-point checklist for the perfect or excellent B2B service page. Is there something similar for a blog post? I think you've touched on a few of the ideas, but if we want to write great blog posts, What are some of the key things we need to keep in mind for that?

Everything should be at least an attempt at making a great page and making, you know, a detailed page, a thorough page, a page that addresses the topic completely. So the world is not waiting for another medium-quality blog post. Go big. For those few cornerstone pieces— we didn't use the term, we'll use it now— those cornerstone pieces that appear on your website at the outset, you need these to be unexpectedly disarmingly complete. Like exhaustive at times, everything that you need to know about a certain topic. But the formatting of it should be highly scannable. So super detailed articles perform well, but not if they're dense. They need to be highly scannable. So that means subheaders, bullets, bolding, internal links, visuals, charts, images. Just go look at the top publications. You can see how they break it up and make it easier for the visitor to scan. I also think it's extremely important to add contributor quotes. Even if it's from another advisor in your firm, just put different perspectives in there. Content without multiple perspectives has a big disadvantage. And then to whatever extent you can, you know, you focus on a keyword, you know, link to related pieces. For some reason, nobody does this. Link to the new piece from an older piece. We're trying to promote this thing, right? So internal linking goes both ways. It's not just linking from new stuff to old stuff, but You're not really done publishing a new article until you found opportunities to link to it from older articles. That's just a 30-second and very effective way to promote a piece of content.

What would you say is the trade-off or the balance between a long-form detailed blog post like you were just talking about here versus shorter posts but higher frequency?

Well, frequency is, I think, best when tuned to the decision-making like the sales time and the buying interval. So how long does it take someone to pick a new advisor?

Yeah, I mean, it could be months from like initial inquiry. It could be several months on average.

So then why do we need a daily newsletter? That's a bit extreme. If it takes people several months to make a decision, I think biweekly is a pretty good frequency because of the person who's in your— you know, when you're having a conversation, you can talk about the content, you can share it, you can drip that content toward that prospect or someone who didn't even become a lead but came to the site, is thinking about it, they're in consideration mode. If they get something every week or every 2 weeks, this is a big debate and there's no one right answer. But in my experience, quality is way more important than quantity. You're much better off with a piece of 10x content that comes out once every 2 weeks or 3 weeks or monthly than a lot of low-quality posts, which sort of in the end sort of hurt your reputation. I don't have data for this, but they might be worse than useless. They might be negative when the visitor just keeps seeing the same thing from you that they saw everywhere else. So what does 10x content look like? Often it's just sort of counter-narrative perspectives. So ask yourself, what do you believe that most people would disagree with? That's a great clue. That's a great topic. That should be published, right? And then back it up and go into detail and invite some other perspectives and make that piece that's gonna feel different because you wrote about what you think will happen that most people think is unlikely. That's a great piece. That's a great perspective. Like these are just differentiated perspectives. Like the strong opinion piece, it takes guts, but it's not more work. That's a short path to 10x content.

And in terms of the length, again, we're getting a little granular here, but I'm definitely interested in this. I hear you talking about cornerstone long-form content, less frequency over more frequency. If you just have a certain amount of time, go long and go deep. But yet you hear a lot of periodicals, and I publish in a variety of national publications, and oftentimes they'll say 800 words, 900 words, but I like to go 2,000, 2,500 words. How do you think about an 800-word blog post that takes someone a couple minutes to read versus a deeper one? Is it just each has its role and you just have to determine what the purpose is of that content? How do you think about long versus short?

There's a lot of research, and this— I hope people just keep listening because the research itself is insufficient to make a good decision here. The research shows that longer content ranks higher, gets more shares, gets greater time on page, and can generate more leads. There's a correlation— it's not causation, but there's a correlation between length and performance in content marketing. Very well known, very well researched, virtually, except for one tiny exception, every piece of research I've ever seen basically supports this notion. But if you get down to the specific topic and let's say, take search for example, I finished an article just a few hours ago. I had run it through a tool that compared my piece with the other pieces that also ranked high for the topic. The average high-ranking piece for that topic was 3,400 words. Is that long or short? The point is that it's topic specific. I also wrote an article one time that it was like how to share access to Google Analytics. 800 words. Steve, I'm done. There's nothing else to say. It's a small topic. I don't know what else to write about that. This is how to do it. So I think that my ultimate rule would be every piece of content should be just as long as it needs to be to cover the topic completely and no longer, no longer than that. Not a word longer. So they should be concise. But detailed and complete so that the visitor kind of feels like they got enough. And for those that are in a rush and aren't going to read it all, fine, that's fine. They can hit the back button, they can leave. They don't have to read it all. Just because not everyone will read it all, and of course not everyone will read it all, doesn't mean we should write short. So I'm with you on that. There's a correlation between length and quality, and there's a correlation between quality and all good things in marketing.

Let's talk about your website for a moment here, if we can. And I know you have a large number of visitors to your website every year, yet you have a relatively small number of new clients because you have a, you know, a reasonably high price for the service that you offer. You also have, I think, an email list that you have tens of thousands of people that subscribe to. How do you think about the mix of those things in terms of top of the funnel and what the website is doing for that and the blogging that you do? Relative to how many people actually fall out of that as new clients? And maybe tie into that, what is the role of the blog to bring top of the funnel? And how many of those actually turn into clients versus people going to the homepage? 'Cause I think the blog and the homepage, they've got different roles. So how do you think about all that? I know there's a lot in there.

No, it's great. So there's more than a million visitors a year to our website. Great percentage of those are people visiting blog posts that rank high for blockbuster phrases, and they're super low-intent visitors. They're not adding a whole lot of value to my business. They're never going to turn into a lead. They're there to read about, you know, how to make a good social media profile picture or how to write a testimonial. Like, these are blog posts with bounce rates of 90-plus percent, so I never expect them to. And if you— in fact, if you create a segment in Google Analytics to differentiate the people who start their visit on a blog post versus people who start their visit on a homepage or a service page. People who start their visit on a service page, they're 50 times more likely to become a lead. 50 times more likely. Blog post readers almost just very rarely become a lead for a service unless the blog post really connects very directly to that service, which is why the how to make a B2B service page is on my homepage. I'm, it's very closely related to the service we offer. Okay. Why all this blog content and why don't I care that I might, I have low intent readers that don't become leads. Well, without the blog post, there would be nothing for other websites to link to. Websites don't really link to your service pages, right? And without those links, I would have no— not enough authority to rank for the more valuable key phrases. Chicago web design, Chicago web development, e-commerce web design, WordPress web design, bank. I rank really high for like bank web design. That is an impossible to rank for phrase unless you have an authoritative site with lots of links. It's impossible to have lots of links unless you have content worthy of being linked to. And that content worthy of being linked to is your content marketing program. So there's an indirect super powerful benefit for search, for being a content marketer. And that's a mechanic and a relationship that's rarely explained, but there you have it. So that's search. There's also email and social. How would I stay top of mind with thousands of decision makers at brands if I didn't have something coming out, a little drumbeat of useful articles. I understand that these are blog readers are low intent. They bounce at high rates. The conversion rate from visitor to lead is 1/50th the visitors to the other posts. I would come nowhere near generating the kind of leads we do. We generated 900 leads last year. We only do 55 projects a year. We're at $7 million in revenue. $7 million a year in revenue, keeping everyone employed and paying for healthcare for families, like 100 people on our health plan without any advertising. $0 spent on advertising, 900 leads a year, 55 projects, $7 million in revenue, 100% driven by this content program. I know of no other way to do that. And it evolved out of this sort of scrappy beginnings of being a founder with no money. That's what a lot of us figured it out that way, I guess.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of folks listening to this would be pretty happy with 55 new clients and $7 million a year coming in for that. So, I appreciate you sharing those numbers. Well, I could talk to you all day. I've got lots of other questions I could ask, but I do want to finish up with one other segment here. And I've identified a few websites that I'd like you to take a look at. And to come up with these, I went to the Barron's list of the top 100 independent advisors, and I looked at a few of the websites. Some of them I was a little underwhelmed and some of them I thought were pretty good. So I picked a few here. I'd love for you to walk through these just at a high level and point out what you think they're doing well, what you think they could do. And we're going to keep this anonymous. We're not here to shame anybody, but just to point out some practical things that folks should be looking at in their own websites. So let's take a look at the first one.

This first site is actually clearly thoughtfully constructed. The website navigation labels are specific and descriptive. Terms like family office and entrepreneurs, very useful. The header is also specific and descriptive. Wealth management is in there. It says wealth management. It also uses the term family office high above the fold. Immediately below the fold, they have strong evidence. They've got data. They show assets under management. That big capital B says a lot. That one character is very compelling. And then they've got evidence from third parties, Barron's, Forbes, these awards they've won. So a lot of visitors are not gonna scroll very far on the homepage, but they don't have to because at a glance this site is differentiated and they're saying things that you can answer as evidence, calls to action. The first answers are, what do you do? Am I in the right place? Yes, I can see it. Family office, wealth management, entrepreneurs, and the evidence is the very next row of pixels. So this was a thoughtful and well-optimized website project plan.

So on a scale of 1 to 10, you give this a what?

I'm gonna give it a 9. I don't think we also need to look at these things from the what's not here perspective.

Yeah.

Where is everybody? Where are the people? I don't feel the humanity here. So 8.5, 9, it would be an easy fix. And then the, the visitor would just be much more likely to make a connection. I'm not talking about stock photos, just a picture of some of the people there, a little video, kind of the origin story told first person from a founder would be helpful.

Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up about the pictures because when I looked at this site the first time, I thought this seems really high-techy, looks very professional, Very well done, very rich, but a little cold, a little sterile. And I, yep, you said put some faces in there. I wanna see some humans because we're in a human business. I think that's great. Okay, let's take a look at the second one here.

Well, the homepage headline is basically a tagline adding no value. That tagline is common to, to dozens of industries. Doesn't say anything at all. The call to action is learn more. Look at your website from this perspective. What are the verbs? Learn, read, click. These are not strong verbs. They're not specific. Specificity correlates with clicks. Specificity correlates with calls to action, with conversion. Some big missed opportunities there. Also the navigation labels, what we do with those little dropdowns below it. Give me your WordPress login. I'm gonna crack it open in an hour. I will make this a higher converting page simply by adding specificity. Clear is more important than clever. On the other hand, one thing this does do, and there's not super strong data behind this, but they've used color temperature very well. The calls to action are warm while a lot of the rest of the color palette is cool. That's helpful. One other thing about this, that subhead, how can we help you? Doesn't really say anything. It's a missed keyword opportunity. How can we help you? Doesn't actually say how you help anybody. That could be keyword focused, that could be more specific, or just omit it and pull everything up a little bit.

Now to this site's credit, there are some pictures here of some humans, but they look like they're stock pictures. Yeah.

They're stock pictures. Yeah. Yeah. Stock photos add zero value. I don't think they're a negative. I think they're just kind of a zero, but if there have been pictures of themselves, that actually answers a question. Who might I work with if I contact them? Who might I work with? So it just makes a page, makes a brand more accessible. It's not for fun. I mean, answers, evidence, and call to action. You know, the pictures of people there actually does check one of those boxes.

Let's take a look at the third one here.

This page is very similar to the previous page that we looked at. The header is a bit more specific. It mentions the word wealth, but it is still mostly a clever headline instead of adding simple clarity. The homepage headers, by the way, I'm beating these up, but homepage headers are very hard to write. Like, just ask yourself, summarize your company in 7 words. It's very hard to do, but they at least do mention wealth. They've got a quote there from Barron's. That's helpful. Their navigation labels are actually terrible, or at least completely undifferentiated. Services, Insight, About— anyone can use those. Again, scan through. Can anybody say these things? What is different about this? And then the calls to action here: Services for Individuals, Services for Institutions. I understand that it might be successful, but that type of audience-based navigation label should be used only as a last resort. The visitors here on their own terms, they're not here to tell you who they are, you know, how you segment them into groups. But overall it has more than the previous site. The press mentions are strong. There's pictures of the team, which is better. We've got watch video, which is not a good call to action to watch a video. You could at least tell people the content inside the video, but I'm going to give this at least a 7 versus the last site, which is more like 4 or 5.

And let's take a look at the fourth one here.

Very sparse, trying to super modern, extreme amounts of white space. Missed opportunity with color temperature. Again, a logo that has both blue and orange. They didn't choose an action color. Orange probably could have been used as the action color. The headline's a bit clever. The word investment is in it, but it's not specific enough to kind of indicate the category. What are they? It's hard to tell. I mean, how would I describe this? I, I'm not even really sure what this company does. Also, the pixel height or the featured area is so high. That they added a little arrow to remind you to scroll. That's the opposite of intuitive design, to tell people that they can scroll. You don't have to do that if you didn't, you know, if you didn't make 1,000 pixels of blank space above and below the header, then tease the next page block, right? Bring it up a little bit, tighten it up a little bit. And then the navigation labels, they mention their brand again there. There's nothing in the navigation labels that indicate like even the business category. So that's bad for search. That's bad for visitors. This one, we're gonna have to go with like a 6 out of 10. I'm sorry.

Okay. They do have some pictures and it looks like they're pictures of real people as opposed to some stock photos. And they also have a picture of the team. So maybe some points there.

They do. They've got like a recruiting page block.

Yeah.

It says we're hiring. So that's a great place. Of course, that's the employer brand doing a better job, probably in the HR side. It's not close enough for us to even see those people, but it's legitimate. It's a carousel, so it, on a timer, it goes to another slide. There's really no purpose in doing that. Right below that, we see a page block that starts with a subhead, who we serve. I guess, you know, is that really the best you could do? Uh, who we serve doesn't say that much, but you can see below there we begin to segment ourselves, you know, business owners, families, corporate executives. Down at the bottom though, here's what I like to see.

Yeah.

Yep. The team. Here we go. This is what I'm actually potentially getting. You don't hire a firm, you hire a person. It's like a law firm's website. You want the expertise. It's what's in these people's brains that makes this brand different from other brands. This is an extreme example of where humans are the difference. So just imagine if the featured area at the very top, put one of these people with a short quote from them. Below that, show their title, show their years in business, or time with the firm, it would be a much stronger site. You would feel the connection. And I think then you could use more specific calls to action. Talk to Zach, you know, ask Danny your toughest question. You know, the visitor would start, would feel like they're connecting with a person.

Well, Andy, this is great, super helpful information. So just two quick things to wrap up. First is if people want to connect with you, what's the best way for folks to reach out to you?

LinkedIn is my best social network. I'm Andy Crestodina, and it's spelled like it sounds. Also orbitmedia.com. Reach out, andy@orbitmedia.com. Drop me a line. I'm happy to help anybody however I can.

Great. All right. So I want to ask you one final question. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would you change and why?

Awesome question. A bit of trivia about myself. When I was in college, I majored in Mandarin. I have a degree in Chinese. It was super fun to go and live in China after college. But if I could go back, I would definitely do Spanish. I know it's a trendy thing to learn Mandarin, but I teach a class every year in Spain. I just got back from Spain. I live in Chicago, which is a diverse community. I hear Spanish all the time. Wow. Pro tip for parents, unless you're confident that your children are going to move to Asia, I would stick with Spanish. I often regret that I don't know Spanish. I will learn it someday, but that's something that I would like to change and will change about myself.

But when you were taking Mandarin, though, I suspect back then a lot of people were saying, "Hey, learn Chinese because the Chinese are taking over the world." You know, it was even a little earlier for that.

This was like 1992. So when I went to China, there were still way more bikes than cars. It wasn't that trendy or popular of a language. The year that I graduated University of Iowa, some 30,000 students, I was one of only 2 graduating that year with a degree in Mandarin. It wasn't very popular at the time.

Yeah, and look at you now, not using it whatsoever.

Yeah, but that's— I can still speak it, but it's just, uh, it never comes up.

All right, Andy, I appreciate you being on the show and wish you all the best going forward.

My pleasure. Thanks so much for these great questions.

One of my key takeaways here is the big gap between the very best advisor websites and all the others. Now, let me be clear, building a high-performing website is not cheap, but in talking to Andy and other research, it's clear that your online presence, and that includes digital marketing and content marketing, can be a huge strategic and business development asset. Unfortunately, many advisors are leaving lots of opportunity on the table here. All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.