A global SaaS leader providing website and digital solutions for the FinTech industry

DIGIAL MARKETING CO-OP

Advisor Websites is a leader in financial website design and software. They provide visually stunning, fully compliant and mobile-responsive websites to help elevate the online presence of financial professionals. Founded in 2002, Advisor Websites has delivered long-term value and service to over 12,000 customers all across North America through a SaaS business model. Besides creating websites, they also focus on providing a number of valuable resources and content management solutions to their clients so that they can fully automate their firm through seamless design strategies. Partnering with over 150 financial institutions, the team works closely with key players in the finance industry such as national partners, broker-dealers and independent advisors.

During my co-op work placement, I worked in the marketing department of Advisor Websites. This department is responsible for generating educational online content for financial advisors to stay informed about the latest tools, trends and resources to better their practice. The marketing team creates website design strategies, promotes company offers and implements advertisement campaigns to increase marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to be funneled to the sales team. We are also responsible for reaching out to partners and influencers within the financial industry. Webinars are a vital part of the marketing strategy at Advisor Websites where we get to connect clients to financial leaders.

key projects & responsibilities

In my role as a digital marketing co-op student, I was responsible for contributing to a variety of marketing channels. One key area was helping the Marketing Manager, write external content that included both thought-leadership and partner-based articles for the Advisor Websites blog. The blog receives over 6,000 monthly views and has approximately 60 active subscribers. My blog posts include “The Must-Read Guide for Advisors Seeking Greater Online Visibility”, the “Top 5 Scheduling Tools for Financial Advisors” and “With PreciseFP You Can Stay Ahead of the Times, Not Behind.” The purpose of the blog was to engage with financial professionals and provide them with relevant material so that they can stay informed of industry news and trends. Through these articles, I integrated various call-to-action (CTAs) such as “book a demo”, “let’s talk” and “download your worksheet” to help lead prospects further into the customer funnel.

Another platform that I significantly contributed towards was webinar creation and hosting. We typically hosted two webinars a month, one being a partner webinar and the other known as an Advisors Ask. Through the guidance of the Partnership Manager, I got the opportunity to collaborate with well- known industry influencers and experts like Sophia Bera from Gen Y Planning, and Brittney Castro from Financially Wise Inc. These Webinars provide useful content to captivate audiences with topics that potential clients might care for and were interested in learning more about. At the end of the presentation, we informed people about our services and how we could help them. Webinar attendees received access to an exclusive offer and were filtered towards the sales team so that they could gain more information on building a website with us.

Take a look and listen at two key webinars that I hosted, facilitated, designed, and executed: “The Best Ways to Engage with Generation X and Y” with Sophia Bera, and “Marketing Trends for Financial Advisors” with Brittney Castro. Overall, each of these webinars garnered 100+ registrants leading to a direct increase of 40% SQLs (sales qualified leads) by partnering with industry influencers across North America.

Other projects that I had the opportunity to create were email drip marketing campaigns, YouTube promotion videos, a Marketing Self-Assessment Worksheet, PPT slide decks, and marketing integration case studies. I was also in charge of social media management on Advisor Websites platforms which included Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I created a number of graphic designs that were used across all digital channels to increase social awareness of company services, products and resources.

For a further look into the projects I completed and articles I wrote during my time as a Digital Marketing Co-op with Advisor Websites, please click here.

skills acquired

Throughout this co-op work term, there were many valuable skills that I learned and hope to continue fostering within my studies or on my next co-op work placement. Firstly, I received training on Hubspot, an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. It is a customer relationship management (CRM) software that is used by the company to manage client data, build landing pages and automate educational content on social platforms. I was provided with an online training course and received my certification on Inbound Methodology. I gained hands-on experience with Hubspot by using its services to create articles for the blog, construct email newsletters, and schedule social media posts. I also used Hubspot to learn about valuable company insights such as blog traffic over a period of time, CTA clicks and email open rate. As a marketing and business technology management student, I think Hubspot is a great platform for students to become familiar with as it provides a way to actively monitor and evaluate statistics for each distinct campaign.

The monthly webinars also provided me with the opportunity to go outside of my comfort zone and practice my presentation skills to audiences of 50+ attendees. I had full autonomy of the content that I wanted to share and was able to design six PPT slide decks during my time at Advisor Websites. Additionally, different platforms that I learned to become familiar with were GoToWebinar, iMovie, Photo Booth, Canva, Slack, Medium.

I also gained a wealth of knowledge about the financial industry including broker dealers, compliance regulations, insurance agencies, independent advisors and how they are all integrated with one another. Throughout my co-op, especially the first few weeks, I also had to actively research and read finance articles before I could write a blog post or email course that I could call my own. Even though I did not choose “finance” as my specialization, I am extremely thankful to have gotten this opportunity to expand my knowledge on this unique and evolving industry.

learning objectives

This being my very first co-op work term, I really wanted to learn more about Vancouver’s thriving Fintech industry. Through the weekly review meetings with Lester, I was able to stay on track with weekly and monthly goals. Some of my monthly learning objectives included hosting and creating my first webinar, writing my own content for a blog article, creating a marketing assessment tool for financial advisors and completing a marketing integration tool case study. I was extremely excited to join a fast growing company, where I could learn more about the finance industry and how digital marketing significantly contributed to it. I also enjoyed having the autonomy to create my own content and the support of my co-workers and managers to voice my opinions during team meetings. While working there, I also received some great feedback that was invaluable to improving myself during my co-op work term and for future projects and initiatives.

biggest impacts

I think one of the aspects that initially intrigued me about working at Advisor Websites was the culture. There was a really great start-up feel environment that provided a work hard, play hard atmosphere. The office was a tight-knit community of unique individuals from all around the world, including France, Indonesia, Brazil, China and those, like myself, who were born right here in Canada. Every day at 10:50am, there was a brief company huddle meeting to review company numbers, goals, opportunities, threats and core values. We also made it an important aspect of the culture to spend time as a company going through our core values and recognizing those colleagues that embodied and exemplified them. They were to “create wow experiences”, “build a team we love”, “elevate your game” and “make it happen.” Another interesting aspect of Advisor Websites was its fun and healthy work-life balance where team members got together to go on various social events including hiking, running around the sea wall, and happy hour! Although I learned a lot from the job itself, I think it’s the people that I will miss the most. I am extremely thankful that I was given this opportunity and experience to work at Advisor Websites.