Shareholders Service Group has partnered with Advisor Products, and SSG-affiliated advisors can get significant discounts on websites and client portals. We’re excited about this partnership.
Advisor Products was founded by Andy Gluck in 1996. I first met Andy in 1994, when he was working at Worth as a financial write and I was at Jack White & Company. Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to do a lot together — websites, articles and panels at conferences, and other work for advisors.
There is a long history between Advisor Products and Andy Gluck with Dan Skiles, Peter Mangan and Barry Boyte of Shareholders Service Group. Andy’s company, Advisor Products, is one I bet you know something about, whether you use their newsletters or websites, or the content they produce. But I also bet that you don’t realize all of the things they do and how much they bring to the table for advisors with all their expertise. Andy and his firm’s connection to the advisor community is simply phenomenal.
Even though I’ve known Andy for over two decades, SSG never before partnered with Advisor Products. What changed that? Well, the simple truth is that, in February, Andy called me and told me he was retooling his company’s website development platform and he showed me the new platform. I have to say I was impressed.
SSG’s new website was built on that new platform over the last four weeks. I personally saw how fast our website was built. SSG’s website was long overdue for an update, but we just never found the time to get the project done. A few hours after asking Andy to rebuild our website, the first version of the new site was on the Web, and the look of the site and its framework were in place. Most of the site was built within a week. I edited the copy and with help from a consultant on Andy’s staff, and Andy also chipped in. Despite the fact that SSG’s content had to be totally customized because SSG is not the typical firm the tool is meant for, the site went live in three weeks.
The new tool Advisor Products created for building advisor websites is similar to WIX or GoDaddy, and every aspect of every page of an advisor’s marketing website can be customized fairly easily. Advisors get editable content widgets that we changed to communicate SSG’s marketing message. It’s easy to see how SSG advisors could customize their marketing message to their local target markets using this browser-based application for making advisor websites.
Advisor Products content for marketing advisor services can be integrated into your website and lead generation campaigns on your site are refreshed with new images, text and videos on a regular basis To produce content, Gluck taps his network of contacts, who include thought leaders in the advisor community, like Fritz Meyer, Bob Keebler, and Dr. Craig Israelsen. But I must say that high-quality marketing content was only one of the reasons we thought Advisor Products would be a good fit for SSG advisors.
Another reason is that SSG is dedicated to giving independent advisors freedom of choice. We want to support an advisors no matter which tech vendors they choose, and Advisor Products client portal gives SSG-affiliated RIAs freedom of choice. Advisor Products’ client portal is integrated with Advent Axys, Advisors Assistant, Albridge, AssetBook, MoneyGuide Pro, PortfolioCenter, and Redtail. (Two new portfolio systems are in the works.) A vault for securely sharing documents with clients is also provided in the client portal.
Advisor Products is offering special pricing a program designed to help new RIAs grow using online marketing. Through the end of September, SSG advisors with less than $25 million of AUM will get a 50% discount on the annual fee for Advisors Products Financial Advisor Communication Suite. Veterans of the Armed Forces who started an RIA within the previous three years receive 66% off.
