For today’s Advisor Website Showcase, we caught up with the President and CEO of Peabody Wealth Advisors, Michael Murray, to discuss the design and features of the Peabody Wealth Advisors site. Read on to discover how the history and features of the Peabody Wealth Advisors website, blend to create an effective marketing strategy.
Based out of Danvers, Massachusetts the Peabody Wealth Advisors site offers a clean and modern impression for both first-time visitors, and clients alike.
Engaging imagery and a clean user interface create an experience that’s both easy to navigate and memorable. The result is an elegant website with an emphasis on user accessibility.
Below is our Q&A with Michael Murray, covering the design process, features and marketing of the Peabody Wealth Advisors site. Read on to learn more, and discover inspiration for your own website.
Peabody Wealth Advisors Q&A
1. Can you tell us a bit more about your services and the history of your firm?
Peabody Wealth Advisors was originally founded in 2002 as Peabody Financial Services in Peabody, MA. We rebranded in 2013 as Peabody Wealth Advisors to reflect our shift to providing advice and advisory services to our clients.
Our firm provides comprehensive financial planning through LPL Financial to our clients. We provide customized advice on all aspects of our clients’ personal financial lives from tax-efficient investing, large purchasing decisions, planning for retirement, social security claiming strategies and charitable/legacy planning to name a few.
We strive to be our client’s “concierge” when they need us to address a financial concern in their lives and provide a “Four Seasons” experience.
2. Your site recently launched, but already has an active blog. Could you share some of your current plans for your blogging and content strategy?
We feel that blogging is important for a few reasons. First, the goal of our website is to provide information and education to our audience. We take a strong position that our blog is not there for us to sell products or services, but to inform the reader.
In our opinion, it is such a turn-off when companies use blogs for shameless self-promotion. A blog is a great way to provide good information in a concise manner. We also use our blog to spotlight our business partners/centers of influence and give them a chance to share their expert knowledge with our audience.
It’s also a great way to “cross-pollinate” and give the author exposure to our readers while introducing their audience to Peabody Wealth Advisors.
3. We often recommend advisors create an FAQ page, not only to inform clients but to improve SEO. How did you determine the information that would appear on this page?
Our Marketing Manager, Caroline Murray, came to Peabody Wealth Advisors in April 2021 from a completely different industry and background. When we made the commitment to moving forward on a new website, her first comment on our existing website was “We need to get rid of all of the jargon. We need a FAQ section for novices like me who know nothing about investing and can be intimidated when we go on a financial website.”
As a team, we all agreed this was a key element that was missing, so we had a few brainstorming sessions to determine what were the most frequently asked questions we receive. Once we came to a consensus about the questions, we then added our own personal touch of humor as the answers so it sounded exactly like how we would answer these questions in person.
4. From detailed bios on the “Your Team” page (great name by the way), to team values on the “Giving Back” page, the Peabody Wealth Advisors site does an excellent job of highlighting your firm’s personality. Do you feel this helps differentiate your firm from others?
Thank you. We believe that our firm’s personality is a huge differentiator. When we started this process, we were intentional about the website content being about the reader more than about us.
We were also insistent that the website was not going to be like most financial planning websites – everyone wearing a suit with their arms folded sitting around a giant conference table and looking like nothing fun has happened in their lives for the past 10 years.
Our clients are real people who like to laugh and enjoy life, just as we do at Peabody Wealth Advisors. The images and videos reflect our client’s lifestyles. Our favorite part is the video in the Contact Us section. We all said that if someone doesn’t smile after seeing that video, they’re probably not the type of client we work with.
We also want to highlight our firm’s mission to serve the communities that support us. We feel it is an obligation as a firm to give back through donating our time, expertise or financially to local non-profit organizations.
5. Social media is integral to the growth of your online presence and overall marketing strategy. We noticed you’re active on the big three (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter). Could you share a little bit about your approach to social media?
Our approach to social media is that it is the core focus of our marketing efforts. We believe that people go to different platforms for different reasons. Social Media is a great way to get people who don’t know you to “Know, Like and Trust” your firm.
Twitter is the “Know”. Getting information out there quickly and trying to connect with media personalities and influencers. Quite frankly, we’ve struggled to gain traction on Twitter.
Facebook is the “Like”. Most people go on Facebook for pictures of cute animals, to see what their friends and their kids are doing, and pictures of travel/dining out. This is where we tend to put more “Lifestyle” content out.
LinkedIn is the “Trust”. This is the platform that we focus most of our effort on. Our goal is to establish thought leadership, provide great content, provide introductions to our connections and develop additional centers of influence relationships. This is where we’ve also partnered with Lead Pilot to provide excellent content to engage our audience.
We also work hard to be “social” on social media – liking, commenting and sharing articles. Here’s an unsolicited plug: If you’re looking to do more on social media and don’t know where to start, you need to connect with Samantha Russell from Twenty Over Ten & FMG Suite on LinkedIn. The information she provides is amazing and it’s free if you commit to putting the effort in.
6. If you could give other advisors looking to redesign their website just one piece of advice, what would it be?
Don’t try to do it yourself. Make the investment and partner with experts, like the folks at Twenty Over Ten
7. Was there any part of the website design process that you were not looking forward to or thought might be difficult that turned out to be better than you initially thought?
The part we weren’t looking forward to having to rewrite the website content page by page. We realized we were too long-winded on our previous website. We worked with the copywriting team at Twenty Over Ten and it helped make a time-consuming process less painful.
8. How would you summarize your experience working with Twenty Over Ten?
It has been an all-around great experience working with the Twenty Over Ten team. Their experience in design, copywriting, compliance and implementation helped make a challenging and time-consuming process much less arduous. Whenever we hit a bump in the road, the team was there to support us. I would recommend any financial planning firm looking to improve their website and online presence take a look at Twenty Over Ten.
Final Thoughts
It’s exciting to see the results of advisors working with our design team. The way each site leverages design and marketing best practices to attract and convert leads is a great source of inspiration. What’s most satisfying though is how these combine to create a unique website for each advisor.
Struggling With What Content to Share on Social Media or via Email?
We are offering access to our content for advisors to use via Lead Pilot for 7-days completely free (even on our month-to-month plans).
About The Author
Stuart Farst
Stuart is a Content Marketing Specialist at Twenty Over Ten and enjoys creating content that both entertains and educates. A Game Designer at heart, he can be found pursuing one of his many hobbies during his free time.