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By Blair Kelly Showcase

Financial Advisor Showcase: Pacific Asset Management

14 minute read
Financial Advisor Showcase: Pacific Asset Management Featured Image

Josh Morin

We’re excited to bring you another financial advisor showcase blog this month. For this one, we had the chance to catch up with Joshua Morin, CPA, CFP®, partner at Pacific Asset Management. Built on the Fresnel framework, they have created a beautiful website to best serve their clients and prospects.

From gated content to website design and the tools they use, we take a deep dive into their website. Check out the rest of the blog to find out more!

1. Let’s get some background on Pacific Asset Management. Can you tell us more about your mission and how you got started as a firm? 

Pacific Asset Management was founded in 1998 by Gary Lucy and Don Cox, Certified Public Accountants who owned and operated Cox & Lucy CPAs, a tax and accounting business in Port Orchard. As CPAs, they saw firsthand the problems inside the majority of financial service companies, where the focus was on selling products and profits – and not about the best interest of clients. When you review tax records and see thousands of dollars in fees and the churning of investments, you realize the need for something better.

Gary and Don formed Pacific Asset Management as an independent Registered Investment Advisory (RIA) firm.  They teamed with Dimensional Fund Advisors to find investment solutions rooted in science and academic research.  Gary and Don took the financial worry off the table for regular people, just like them, to create the space for what was most important. Don loves to tell the story about one client who went into a panic when he realized he could retire five years earlier than he thought.  Of course, Don and Gary were able to help him and his family makes the transition to retirement. This laser focus on the best interest of clients and actively listening to their story and the story of their families continue to drive Pacific Asset Management.

2. Gated content can be a fantastic lead generation tool if it is done correctly, so it’s great that you have created a guide, “20 Thoughts on a Better Way to Invest.” By simply providing a name and email address, visitors can get the guide. How has this helped with your lead generation? 

You make us laugh when you attach technical names like “gated content” to our pamphlet! Our approach is simple: we want our website to be a landing page for those who want to learn more about investments and wealth management.  The guide, “20 Thoughts on a Better Way to Invest,” was originally created to commemorate our 20th anniversary in business and is a natural extension of the resources we offer to prospects and clients, alike. Our continued efforts are to build out our blog page, combining original content with informational pieces. The increase in clicks and downloads points to the immediate success of our strategy. The progression from prospect to a client will be a story for a future interview!

Gated content

3. We noticed that you detail your “Why Us” section with our accordions feature. This makes for more interaction and a smoother user experience. How did you decide to use this feature and how has it helped with the overall feel of your website? 

Thanks for noticing the dancing accordion feature. The idea is to allow people to go where they want to go. Today, no one wants to scroll through pages of information, and end up forgetting what they were originally interested in! We want our website to be interactive and, frankly, fun for the end-user.

Pacific Asset Management

4. A meeting scheduler is a good way to boost lead generation, so it’s great that you are using Acuity on your website. We actually conducted a survey in 2019 and found that advisors who get 6-10 or 11+ clients per year had a calendar link on their website. Have you noticed an uptick in qualified leads since integrating a tool like this on your website? 

The scheduler saves staff time and allows the user to maintain momentum from the webpage to a meeting without the need to pick up a phone. Included in the scheduler is a survey to prequalify prospective clients to ensure we are not chasing down dead-end leads. Unfortunately, the survey is not perfect; we are still working out the kinks. We are witnessing an uptick in both qualified and non-qualified leads at this point, as our website continues to drive more clicks. Of course, we have the resources available if a prospect wants to call to schedule a meeting.

Pacific Asset Management

5. When someone lands on your website, you do not have a lot of time to grab their attention, which is where offering a free assessment or consultation comes into play, so it’s great that you are utilizing this tactic! How has offering this to your leads helped with your lead generation and conversion rate?

You only have one opportunity for a first impression. Our message is about Peace of Mind.  If the user has to struggle to use the website, then we have already failed. Every page was intended to be user-friendly and interactive. The assessment – like the scheduler and the pamphlet – is all about the branding of ease and comfort.

Our goal to make the progression from prospect to client as easy as possible. We are continuing to refine the questions we ask, as we do not want to turn away a strong prospect, yet we do not want to suggest our services are suitable for someone who would be better served by another advisor or firm. The increase in traffic leads to an increase in the number of those interested in investment advice. The follow-up fifteen-minute phone conversation allows us to better understand their needs. The idea is that if we are not a fit, Pacific Asset Management will offer a direction and solution to leave the prospect in a better space than before they contacted us.

Free Assessment

6. We love to see that you’re integrating Riskalyze on your website to help generate leads for your business. How did you go about choosing this tool and have you found it to be beneficial thus far? 

We needed a landing page for Riskalyze where clients could learn more. The integration with prospects was a natural evolution, as a quantifiable risk assessment is something that has long been a need in the industry, and has appeal across the board. Even though lead generation is secondary to the primary use for clients, we are excited to see where this takes us. The embedded video is a great introduction to Riskalyze, and we are already finding that prospects are excited about what the tool offers. Riskalyze filled our need for a scientific approach to assessing risk, and it fits in perfectly with our goal of achieving financial peace of mind for clients.

Riskalyze

7. Blogging is a crucial part of your inbound marketing strategy and even though you only recently went liVe, you have begun to do this. Can you tell us more about your plans for the future in terms of content creation and scheduling? 

We are most excited about what blogging can offer. We are taking a systematic approach at this time, as we determine what frequency and what content will inform, yet not overwhelm, our clients. The intent is to expand our outreach to prospects and centers of influence and to allow visitors to our website to receive notifications of new postings. Over time, we would like to offer a unique take on the usual blog and video blog – stay tuned!

Pacific Asset Management blog

8. Your fiduciary page is incredibly unique as each letter represents an aspect of your firm. How did you decide to incorporate this page and how did you decide to represent your values in this way?

Fiduciary is one of those industry buzz words that many people have heard, but few actually understand.  Being a firm developed by CPAs, we have always celebrated our role as fiduciaries from the beginning.  We wanted to take the time to make sure prospects and clients truly understand what “fiduciary” means.  As we began attaching ideas to the word, we found that we had an idea for each letter of word.

Fiduciary page

9. In terms of marketing and growth, where do you see your firm headed in the next 5 years?

As my father-in-law reminds us, if you’re not growing, you’re dying like the dinosaurs. And we do not want to be a dinosaur! We have two strong locations, in Shelton and in Gig Harbor. We have taken on a new investment advisor, with a strong background in financial planning and tax law. We want to continue to drive traffic to our website, as we build content and strengthen our community ties.  These are our immediate goals.  To be truly successful, we will better align our purpose with technology to free us for the unexpected.  Dan Sullivan talks about how it is easier to grow 10x than 2x — so why not 10 times growth in 5 years?

10. If you could tell another financial advisor something about the website design process, what would be the number one thing that you would tell them? 

You cannot rush the process. Take your time to understand who and what you are as a firm, and the rest will flow from there.

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About the author

Blair Kelly

Blair is a digital marketing assistant at Twenty Over Ten and has a passion for uncovering what drives online traffic and the highest engagement. She follows more animals on Instagram than humans and her greatest achievement is her daughter, Grey.