Social Media Marketing

We've just seen an important shift in marketing for financial advisors. For some top advisors, more leads are now coming from their social media channels than their websites alone. In this exclusive webinar on social media, guest expert Amy Mcilwain from Hootsuite Advisor Tools joins us to share her insights, examples, and best practices.
Amy is Hootsuite’s global industry principal and author of the book The Social Advisor: Social Media Secrets of the Financial Industry, which has been featured as a best-seller on Amazon. She has appeared on FOX, CBS, ABC, and NBC as a social media expert, and delivers keynote presentations to financial service organizations around the world.
In this exclusive webinar, we'll cover:
  • What is the value of social media?
  • What should advisors be sharing on social?
  • How are top advisors getting new business on social?
  • How can you engage more prospects?
  • How can you automate and streamline your social posts?
  • What are the benefits of using Hootsuite's advisor tools?

Sign up now to reserve your spot!


Meet Your Webinar Host


Amy McIlwain

Amy is Hootsuite’s global industry principal and author of the book The Social Advisor: Social Media Secrets of the Financial Industry, which has been featured as a best-seller on Amazon. She has appeared on FOX, CBS, ABC, and NBC as a social media expert, and delivers keynote presentations to financial service organizations around the world.
Amy McIlwain
Claire

Claire Akin, MBA

Claire Akin runs Indigo Marketing Agency a full-service marketing firm serving top independent financial advisors.

She works closely with several of Barron’s Top 100 Financial Advisors to grow their AUM using digital marketing.

Read The Transcript Below

Claire Akin:

Hi financial advisors, I’m Claire Akin with INDIGO marketing agency and thank you so much for joining me for social media marketing for financial advisors. I’m so excited to have our special guest here, Amy Mcilwain from Hootsuite and she is the leading expert on social media marketing for financial advisors and she’s going to share with us tons of tips and tricks to get more engagement on your social media accounts.

               To get started, I’ll give you a little bit about my background. My firm INDIGO marketing agency does custom marketing for independent financial advisors. I know a lot of you’re busy and you don’t have the time and maybe you don’t have the expertise to do social media marketing, so we do everything from content creation to email marketing, to setting up and posting to your social media accounts, as well as some advanced techniques like paid ads and LinkedIn campaigns.

               Here’s an example of some of the content that we post for advisors, and so we write everything from scratch. We have a team of writers that writes with your background, your philosophy and your voice in mind. And so we first post it as a blog post on your website and then the next step is we actually share it by email to everyone in your network. So all of your prospects, clients, friends, family, anybody who could potentially refer you business so you stay top of mind with them and they understand exactly what you do and how you can help.

               And then finally, the next step is that we go ahead and we share it on social media. And so social media has become so powerful for financial advisors that now we’re seeing more traction on social media than we are in other forms of digital marketing, like email marketing. And so we actually use Hootsuite’s tools to share on a daily basis for our advisors on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And so I’m so excited to partner with Hootsuite and with Amy to teach you all of the secrets because they really are the best of the best at what they do, which is help financial advisors to really embrace social media marketing.

               And so without further ado, I’ll introduce our speaker. Now, I became aware of Amy years ago when I was with a company called FMG Suite and I was attending all of the broker dealer conferences around the country and I would see Amy speak and she’s an amazing keynote speaker. She is the author of a book called The Social Advisors: Social Media Secrets of the Financial Industry, which is a bestseller on Amazon and it’s amazing resource. I highly recommend you pick up a copy today. She’s also appeared on Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, and you’ve probably seen her at maybe your broker dealer conference as a keynote speaker speaking on social media.

               She started the company Financial Social Media, which many of you advisors have probably used in the past. And now she is the goto expert at Hootsuite for secrets of the financial planning industry as far as social media. And so she’s going to walk us through everything that you need to know today to take advantage of social media. Amy, I’ll turn it over to you.

Amy Mcilwain:

Wonderful. Thanks so much for the great introduction, Claire. So for those of you that aren’t familiar with Hootsuite, Hootsuite is a social media management platform. So we’re the technology that you can utilize to schedule your posts in advance to see the analytics on what’s working, what’s not working, and post to multiple networks all at the same time from a centralized dashboard.

               And as Claire mentioned, she uses us to manage all of her accounts, several advisors use Hootsuite as well and we’ve got a great tool for a lot of large broker dealers, insurance companies. It’s a compliant social media management platform that companies can use for their social media presence.

               So let’s get started. We’re going to talk about the social advisor today and really how to empower agents with social media. First, we’re going to cover what is social media, but more important, why should you care? Then we’re going to do a network overview, high level Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and look at examples from your peers on what’s working today. And we’re going to talk about the age of content marketing. Content is king, that can never be more true than right now.

               Then we’re going to talk about where to start. You’re going to hear a lot of great examples and stories, and then we’re going to give you a solid roadmap on where to get started with all of this. And then we’re going to focus on what’s next, what is the next big thing when it comes to social media. If you’re following along this presentation, if you’re on Twitter, feel free to tweet to me. You can see my Twitter handle out the bottom and I encourage you to connect with me on LinkedIn as well and all of the social networks. I’m really out there practicing, what I’m teaching others to do. So feel free to connect and look forward to sharing these and hearing your feedback.

               All right, so first, what is social media? You hear Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all the social networks being thrown around, but really at its core, social media is a conversation. It is a dialogue and it is fundamentally changing the way we communicate. And with this, you could take a look at email. Email only became mainstream among small businesses in the mid to late ’90s let’s think about this. That’s barely 20 years ago. Where would your business be today if you hadn’t adapted to email? Communication is shifting again, and it’s happening twice as fast. Social media accounts now eclipse email accounts. It’s time to get on board with these new technologies before your competitors start taking your market share.

               So let’s look at a high level what exactly is social media. Again, we hear these networks thrown around, but as I mentioned it’s at its core, it is a conversation. It’s about building trust and relationships, which is really very foundation of this industry. So social media is a level playing field. With social media, you can be as big or as small as you want to be. The one man advisor can now compete with the thousand man firm down the street, building up a strong online presence, thought leadership, and really presenting yourself as an expert in the field. So with social media you can be as big or as small as you want to be.

               Social media is communication without borders. The bottom line is conversations are happening whether you’re out there and talking with them or not, these conversations are happening, and with social media you can communicate with anybody. You can communicate with politicians, you can communicate with celebrities, you can communicate with the media. This is a phenomenal opportunity that we’re really seeing emerge, this concept of social PR. So being able to communicate directly with different media outlets.

               There’s an example of one advisor that regularly wrote about best practices for retirement planning and he was a fan of a journalist in Wall Street Journal that wrote on the topic and he would retweet his articles on Twitter. So rebroadcast those articles to his network who liked the content, but his main goal was really to get on this guy’s radar. And then when he was in New York, he reached out to this Wall Street Journal reporter and said, “Hey, I’ve been a big fan of your content and your articles. I’d love to meet for coffee. I have some interesting thoughts on this particular investment strategy.” And because he got to know the guy through Twitter, the man accepted the meeting and they hit it off and sure enough, this advisor is now used regularly as a subject matter expert in this reporter’s content.

               And when he came out with a new book, this reporter even did a review on his book in the Wall Street Journal. This is literally tens of thousands of dollars of PR and it all started with a tweet. What I want you to take away from this though is it wasn’t just Twitter, it wasn’t just social media and the tweet that got him all this PR, he used social media to build his reputation, to earn the right for a conversation, for a face to face meeting. And that’s what you have to think about with your clients. You want to use social media to turn strangers into consumers of your content and earn the right for that meeting or that face to face appointment. So social media is communication without borders.

               Social media is marketing at its finest. I’m a really analytical person and one of the things I love with all my marketing, you can actually see what’s working, you’re not just putting up a billboard on the side of the highway and guessing how many people look at it as they’re flying by on their cars. You can actually see how many people are reading your articles, viewing your social media posts, clicking and taking action, filling out lead forms. It’s marketing at its finest. One of the things that I encourage you to set up if you haven’t already, is analytics for your website. This is a free tool, Google analytics, but get this set up and you can see what are the traffic sources, how are people finding your website and here, this is an advisor. He gets nearly 4,000 visits a month and about a third of them are a direct result of social media.

               Now, if you were to look at Google pay per click ads or things like that, it could cost you anywhere from 10 even $15 per click sometimes on these keywords. This is literally thousands of dollars of free traffic as a direct result of social media, with LinkedIn being the number one traffic driver. So it’s really important that you track and measure the success and the KPIs.

               Social media is word of mouth on steroids. Now the bottom line is people are out there. They’re talking about you and your business, whether you’re online or not. I remember when I was in college, I waited tables and there was a little sign that hung above the door that said a happy customer tells five people, a dissatisfied customer tells 20. Well, with the connectivity of social media, you can multiply that by a thousand. The bottom line is people are out there and they’re talking. So it’s time to get on board with these new technologies before your competitors start taking your market share. If they’re not listening to you, who are they listening to? The Suze Ormans’ of the world?

               So with that, let’s move at a high level network overview. So this was a fun graphic I created that just illustrates the different social networks, and oftentimes they get lumped together, social media in one big lump. But the reality is, is each network really has its own voice, audience and purpose. So advisors will often say, where do I get started? Which network should I be on? And the answer is it’s not going to be the same for everyone. You need to go where your audience is, and you need to go where you’re most comfortable. So today I’m going to cover the top three, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and we’re going to look at how advisors are utilizing these networks to grow their business.

               First, LinkedIn. LinkedIn I think of this like the trade show when it comes to social media. People are here for business networking purposes, but I often have advisors come to me and they’re like, I have a LinkedIn profile but it’s just not working for me Amy, and I ask, I’m like, well are you doing anything? Are you posting are sharing? Because if not you, it’s like going to a trade show and just setting up a booth and not talking to anybody. You have to get out there, ask and answer questions, engage in conversations, post in groups. It is social networking. We’re here to be social to network.

               Now with that same analogy, you want to think of your booth at this event as your profile. You don’t just want to have a little white tablecloth over in the corner with the name tag. You want to have the interactive media displays, embed some video on your LinkedIn profile summary. You want to have the colorful banners, put a cover photo on your LinkedIn. You want to have the nice brochures. Make sure your profile tells your story. This is your chance to make a first impression, so make it a good one.

               And what’s the ROI of LinkedIn? I’ve heard numerous success stories and advisors gaining clients as a direct result of LinkedIn. The fact that LinkedIn itself has done some studies on our particular industry. Three out of five advisors have gained a new client and nearly a third of those brought in over 5 million or more in new assets under management.

               One advisor I know he was able to double his referrals simply by connecting to his clients, and then every time his clients came in he went and he looked at their profile on LinkedIn and he identified, you can look at second degree connections. So he looked for some second degree connections that he wanted an introduction to. So he would, after their meeting he’d say, hey Mr client, I know we’re connected on LinkedIn and I saw that you’re also connected to John Smith and Mary Moore. I think I might be able to help them because of X, Y, Z. Would you be willing to make an introduction?

               Sure enough, half the time the clients picked up the phone right there in the office and made a phone call. So there’s a really great opportunity there. If you’re not comfortable doing that with your clients, think about any of the chamber of commerces you belong to. Do you sit on any boards of directors for local companies or charities? Look, even your neighbors. Oftentimes people want to help you, but they don’t know who you’re looking to connect with. Make it easy for them, by looking at their LinkedIn profile and asking for specific introductions.

               Twitter, now this is the cocktail party when it comes to social media. This is the network where I get the most feedback from people. How does this network work where a Kim Kardashian is out there trying to break the internet? How is this going to help me in my business? Well, you can think of Twitter like a cocktail party. A lot of conversations are happening, meeting people for the first time. Now if you go to a cocktail party, who are the people you remember? You remember the people that listened to you, you remember the people that had interesting stories or helpful information. No one wants to follow up with a guy that walked around all night talking about how great he is. Yeah, we’ve all met that person. Don’t be that person online.

               So on Twitter you really want to listen first and talk second. Add value to conversations. This is one of the rare social networks where it’s welcome to jump into a stranger’s conversation, just add value, not promote yourself. So Twitter can be a really valuable tool for doing research, staying up on top of what’s happening right now, and really sharing interesting valuable information for your audience.

               Now you might feel like that little bird on the right sometime I still have some advisors who are saying, well what’s this Twitter business? I don’t think I understand. What’s these funny little at signs and pound symbols? I don’t get it and that’s okay. Like I said, social media is a conversation and the best place to start is to start with listening, and listening on social media equates to following. So just set up an account.

               My challenge for you is all of those that don’t have a Twitter account set up account. You don’t even have to use your photo or your real name. Just open up an account and start following people. So follow some of the industry associations. Follow some competitors, follow some peers, follow things you’re interested in. Follow the Olympics, there are so many conversations going on right now.

               Follow some of the political conversations. Follow something you’re interested in and when you’re comfortable, then you can join in and start posting. Change your profile name to your real name and use it for business. But maybe you just want to listen and that’s how you’re going to use social media is to gather information to stay on top of news. So there’s a lot you can do, but it all starts with listening first and talking second.

               Facebook. Now this is the pub when it comes to social media, it’s a little more personal. This is where you really want to get connected with your clients. It’s a very visual platform. So sharing photos, sharing videos, if you’ve moved into a new office, take a picture. Sarah at the front desk has been pregnant for the last eight months and you want to share photos of her new baby online, this is a place to do that. Oftentimes I know advisors will send that out via email, but talk about this. This is a great place to really build a community. So you want to interact and comment, and really build a community here on Facebook.

               Now, a lot of people see the opportunity are looking to market to baby boomers and seniors. And I can tell you Facebook is the spot to do that right now. In fact, the fastest growing segment on Facebook is the 55 to 65 year old female. My mom is the perfect example of this. She, I remember she got on Facebook probably about five years ago, but she was a little reluctant. But now she loves Facebook and she’s not just following her kids, she’s connected to her hairdresser, Carla, she’s following brands and the brands are following her back, promoting ads to her. But this is a really great place to market the baby boomers.

               And in fact, so much so I shared a video about this on my Facebook channel a while back when I was still a financial social media and I had an advisor call me up. She was in the villages in Florida and she said, “Amy, I do a lot of events for my clients, client appreciation events. We might take them golfing. We might take them to the opera, to a baseball game. What if you came down to Florida and we did an event on social media?” So this was really thinking outside the box. She brought her clients together. We had 35 clients come and oops sorry, 25 clients come and she brought 35 friends, a total of 60 people. We did a workshop in the morning and a workshop in the afternoon and she spent $0 million on direct mail to get them there. She spent $0 million on food or anything like that.

               This was an educational workshop. We had iPads on the tables. We talked about Pinterest and we looked up knitting patterns on Pinterest. We did a live Skype call. It was a really fun interactive workshop and they had a blast. Look at their faces. Do these look like your clients? They had a great time. But the best part for the advisor is at the end of it, she stood up and said, all the new faces in the room, this is who we are and what we do and everyone you came with is a client and we’re a family. If you want to learn more, you can set an appointment with Sarah at the door. Otherwise, we’re doing a seminar next week on social security timing if you’d like to sign up. And as a direct result of this event, she was able to write $800,000 in annuity premium within the next three months.

               Incredible, $800,000 in annuity premium as a direct result of this event. So this is just a great way to really think outside the box. But if you’re going to host something on social media, you have to be leading by example. So make sure that you yourself are getting out there and are on social. So, we are in the age of content marketing and that’s what this was. This was content. She had a workshop that was a really strong content. The bottom line is millions of people are out there putting content together every day.

               With social media, you become the media. You don’t want to pay $5,000 for a radio show, start your own radio show, start doing podcasts. Don’t want to hire a PR person to help you get TV exposure, start doing your own videos and TV, start a YouTube channel. There’s so much opportunity out there. In your smartphone, you have the ability to broadcast messages to millions.

               So when you’re sharing these messages, it’s important to think about the four E’s of content marketing, educate, empower, engage and entertain. Everything you do should be doing one, if not all four of these things. Educate, empower, engage and entertain. This is an example. This is Jeff Cutter here and he moved his offices and again, he shares a visual picture, hey, I’m in my new office. If you’re interested, come check it out and sure enough this guy responds, pops up, hey, what days are you out there? I’ve got everything ready in my stack and file box, eager to be there. Simply staying top of mind when in money, and motion of that occurs. So just simply posting and connecting can really help.

               This is Michelle Matson. This is one of my favorites. She does dressed to invest with Michelle Matson and every Friday she does fab you shoe Friday and shoes have nothing to do with financial services, but let’s face it, women love shoes. So she’s constantly staying top of mind, staying relevant. She gets a lot of engagement, comments and anytime time someone comments on this, it actually shows up in their profile too that they’ve commented, and engaged. So all of their friends see. It’s really just a great way to spread the word.

               This is a fun one. This is Bill Cummings and he is at an event and he met Ben Stein. So rather than just simply, you posted a photo here on Facebook and again, look at the engagement and having fun. Like I said, you need to entertain. So here he is, hey stop by our financial social media booth and said like us on Facebook, put a silly hat and glasses on. But this is just a good way to be human. It’s a big part of us. We’re in this world where global advisors are marching in, we need to remain human and share our values and our personality. So really just a good example here.

               I’m going to wrap up with this one I love this. This was a woman Sheryl Brown and this is me in the red dress. I had short, dark hair back then. So, I was in the red dress, and I posted this picture from an event and sure enough this woman followed up and said, I feel like you’re my friends after reading your writings all this time. This, I mean, this is what it’s about. This is a person that I had never met. So a stranger and you have the opportunity to turn these strangers into warm prospects and ultimately clients. And now I consider Sheryl a friend and it’s amazing the power of social media and how you can really transform these relationships.

               So where do you get started with all of this? Told you a bunch of stories, gave you some ideas, but where did you get started with all of this? Well, first you need to identify your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? Often at times I talked to advisors and they’re like, well, yeah, we’re looking to reach anyone in or nearing retirement with a couple hundred thousand and investible assets. I’m like, great. You and everybody else. What do those people have in common? What 20% of your audience is producing 80% of your revenue? And really focusing on that. Are they women like Michelle Matson focuses on women. Are they professors? Are they Verizon executives? Think of a real niche audience and really narrow down on that.

               I know one advisor, he had a really unfortunate accident in his family with the son, suffered a ski accident and became paralyzed, which was terrible. But what it did is it opened his eyes to this world of spinal cord injury victims and their families and he saw the need for financial advice. Oftentimes they come into large settlements of money, and they don’t know what to do. So he really dedicated his practice to helping that unique market.

               So again, think outside the box. What could be your unique market because the reality is with technology, you can think beyond those people that are within 10, 20, even 30 mile radius, driving radius. That doesn’t matter anymore. Really, you want to think broader. Set goals. How do you know you’ve arrived if you don’t know where you’re going? So want to make sure you set goals for your social media. So what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to get some of that social PR I mentioned earlier, are you looking to increase referrals? Are you looking to have customer support, stay top of mind with clients? The number one reason clients leave an advisor is lack of communication, building relationships with the spouses.

               The women earners are really important. Eight out of 10 women will leave their financial advisor after their husband passes away. So really building relationships, but understanding what are of those goals and then put key performance indicators in place so you can really track and measure the success there.

               Next, get out there and connect, connect, connect, connect. So this is where there’s really an opportunity to build your own audience. When you run an ad in a newspaper or you run an ad on TV, the radio, you’re renting somebody else’s list, you’re paying a one time fee for access to their audience. But with social media, you can build your own list. You can build your own audience, and it’s going to take a little bit longer, but it will pay dividends in the long run. So really great opportunity there to really own and build your own list. And once you’re getting connected, you need to share content. Content is king, but we need to stop thinking about content as the new news letter or this is social media, that’s simply how we’re distributing the content. We need to start thinking of content as assets.

               As Claire mentioned in the beginning, one of the things that her company does for her, she can help create those content assets. So creating the blog and then distributing it via email, via social media, via paid social media. You can create a webinar with it, create infographics and start thinking of constant like assets. So maybe you create a white paper on social security timing and then you can chop that up into four different blog posts, two videos, an infographic, 10 social media posts. Because that’s simply how you’re distributing that content. So share, share, share because content is king, as I mentioned before, but distribution is queen and she’s the one that wears the pants.

               You can have all the great content in the world, but if no one sees it, it’s not going to help you. So not only do you need to be creating the content, but you also need to be getting that content out there. And that’s where tools like Hootsuite can come in. So Hootsuite helps you distribute that content. We’ve got this great app called Amplify. This is only available through our larger enterprise clients. So your RIAs, or broker dealers, insurance carriers would be able to have this app that can be filled with preapproved compliant content that you guys can easily share out with a few clicks of a button.

               We also have a great desktop application that allows you, say you’re just even reading an article and you want to share it, you can just push a little button and it’ll share it to all of your social networks. Or it’ll allow you to auto schedule to go live when your content is most likely to be read. So Hootsuite’s just really a great tool to help you manage this. And whether you’re an individual advisor or working with a company like Claire’s where she can utilize Hootsuite to manage your content for you. It’s the technology that allows you to do this in a streamlined and compliant way.

               So where does all this great content live? Your website, your website is the hub of your online media presence. It is so important to have a strong website. I’m going to walk you through, this is one of my absolute favorite websites out there. This is good financial cents by Jeff Rose. You might’ve seen Jeff as he’s often highlighted as one of the top advisors utilizing social and a lot of different entities or publication and all in all, Jeff is just a great guy. So Jeff is a great guy and he’s on really cool stuff. Head of the curve when it comes to this.

               And one of the key things with your website is you need to have a blog. So the blog is the heart of your website, pumping it full of fresh and relevant content. So this is Jeff’s blog. What you want to do then is share that blog. As Claire mentioned in the beginning, send it out via email, send it out via social media, send all that good traffic back to your blog. Now, one of the biggest mistakes people make though is once they get on here, they don’t have calls to action. The calls to action. Look over there on that right hand sidebar. This is what Jeff is doing right, listen to the podcast, tools to dominate your money. Ask Jeff a question. They’re asking them to take an action because you’ve got them here, but then you need to get their information.

               So you need to have that call to action. And with that call to action, then it takes them to a landing page. So it’s an example of one of Jeff’s landings pages. It’s time to make your financial life awesome, sign up below and get the following. And there you go, you got to lead. Enter your email address and you can build wealth now. So it’s not just the email or the social or the website, it’s all of these things working together. Doing one of them on their own is like trying to balance on a one legged stool. You really need all of them working together to see success.

               Now when you get it right, that’s when we can really see the value of a tweet, and I’ll walk you through this. So, let’s say we get a thousand people to this landing page. They make it through the blog and they find this landing page through social advertising, but let’s say you get a thousand people here and maybe 20% of them enter their email address, that’s 200 leads, and then we want to take them through some marketing automation. So once they sign up for, it’s a to download whatever that first piece is, that’s where you get their email address and you get them in your email system. So, email automation, they can go down different paths whether they open it or they don’t open it. These are tools like MailChimp, Constant Contact, Infusionsoft, Salesforce, all of these have an email component. Let’s say others, 200 people that end up in your email system, let’s say 10% of them decide to schedule an appointment, that’s 20 appointments.

               Now, if half of them close, that’s 10 new clients. So here’s how you can really see the Math. 1,000 people go to the landing page, you get 200 in the funnel, 20 appointments and 10 clients. So then ask yourself the question, what are those 10 clients worth to you? How much did it cost to drive the thousand people to the landing page? And when you put these together, this is when you can really start to see success, but you’ve got to have all these pieces connected. But once it’s working, that’s when it’s time to add fuel to the fire. And the fuel to this fire is social advertising. This is what’s next for advisors. Social advertising, a tremendous opportunity around this to really accelerate your efforts when it comes to your online and digital marketing.

               So a couple of types of social advertising. Let’s look at boosting Facebook posts. If you have a Facebook page, you’ve probably been given this option. I don’t want to say that it’s not worth to do Facebook. It’s not worth the time it takes to put the posts on Facebook anymore unless you’re willing to spend a little money. Because the way the algorithm has continued to change, especially most recently with fake news and filtering that out, it’s really hard that organic content, which is non-paid content, it’s just not getting visibility to your audience. So this is an example. This is an advisor’s page and I want you to look at the numbers over here on the right, he has about 2000 people that like his page. So 2000 followers and only 52 people are seeing the content or 53 people on the next post.

               But if he spends some money on advertising, that 53 jumps to 1800 so that’s quite a big jump. You might be thinking, yeah, well how much is he spending? $5. All that is $5 is the difference between 53 people seeing and 1800. Look at those clicks over on the right. Again, the difference between two people clicking and 18 people clicking. So, [inaudible 00:34:41] decide if you’re going to do this, it’s worth just spending a little bit of money. It doesn’t have to be a huge budget set aside 50 bucks a month, but it’s worth it to get your posts out there.

               Now if you really want to go big here, there is an incredible opportunity, and I honestly believe we’ve got about two more years of a window before everyone starts catching on. And this is where we can be nimble in this independent space too. So we can get a little bit more nimble than some of the captive wealth management firms out there and insurance companies. So this is an example of a Facebook ad targeting. The incredible thing with Facebook now is basically the number of people that follow your page is totally irrelevant. That doesn’t matter anymore. You can reach anybody now at the right time with the right message.

               So this is an example of an advisor. He was utilizing Hootsuite. I talked about the sharing capabilities of Hootsuite, but there’s also the ability to listening. So he has set up streams within Hootsuite to listen for specifically for employee pension buyouts. So he was listening for employee pension buyouts and saw this notification from NCR that they were buying out 20,000 pensions from their employees. So he set up a landing page like that one we saw from Jeff Rose that provided information about is this the best decision for you? And then he started a series of ads on Facebook and this is it. You’re looking at the actual ad.

               Did you receive a 2014 lump sum buyout from NCR? Find out if this is the right option for you. So he ran this ad and he targeted it to people over the age of 50 that currently or in the past had worked at NCR that had a net worth over $200,000. Yes, Facebook knows your net worth. They also know your income. They know your zip code, they know if you like dogs, they’ve got all this information on you, they know where you went to school and the more you can tailor the audience, the better click through you’re going to get.

               As silly as it sounds, if you put an image of a dog in an ad of someone that likes dogs, your click through is going to go up. So he ran this ad and you can see the post-click, nearly 2000 people, 1900 people clicked on this and went to the landing page, had reached over 60,000 people. Tremendous, tremendous reach here, but the bottom line, what did this do for his business? Well he received almost a hundred phone calls, 35 qualified prospects and brought in $12 million in new assets under management over the next six months, $12 million directly from this NCR ad campaign. How much did he spend on this? $900 a fraction of what he was able to target.

               Now think about this. The same advisor after we saw this success off of this, he does a lot of work with Verizon executives. So he ran a campaign on Facebook, five things Verizon executives need to know about your retirement plan. Then you can skim this. Maybe you focus with Microsoft executives or Boeing executives. You can do the same thing. So there’s a million ways to target. You can target again by title, all sorts of things. So something to think about. This is what’s next and there is a window before everyone starts catching on and it becomes saturated like the Google ads have. So take advantage of this now and this is something that Claire’s company can help you do. Social ads was one of the things that she’s talked about earlier.

               I want to end with this quote here from Warren Buffett, in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. The bottom line, what worked 10 years ago, what worked five years ago, it doesn’t work anymore. You can keep throwing time and money at it, but it’s not going to patch the leaks, it’s time to change vessels and that new vessel is technology and ultimately the choice is yours whether you change vessels or go down with the ship.

               From that note, I’m going to open it up to some questions here, and again, feel free to contact me. My contact information is below. Reach out to me on LinkedIn, Twitter.

Claire Akin:

Great. Thank you so much Amy. That was an amazing presentation. I love all of the examples you gave and I think my favorite comment that you had was that having a LinkedIn profile on its own without actually using it is a lot like going to a trade show and paying the money to get in and not talking to anybody. And that’s so true. I see advisors all the time who set up their LinkedIn profile and then don’t do anything with it. And so those were so many great analogies. Thank you for your insight.

               Everybody remember to follow Amy on Twitter. Her information is there. And also feel free to connect with both of us on LinkedIn and ask any questions that way. We’re both really active on social media and if you want to get in touch, you can go to indigomarketingagency.com to learn more about my marketing packages and hootsuite.com to learn more about their tools for financial advisors. And I just want to finish with a couple of quick questions for Amy. So tell me a little bit about, how often advisors should be posting on social media. Give us an idea for a novice advisor who’s never done this before, how much time do they need to be putting in?

Amy Mcilwain:

So when it comes to how much content, that’s always a good question. And the reality is it’s going to vary for your different networks. So on Twitter it’s typically when a post more frequently, once a day, every other day if you can even more. LinkedIn you can get away with once a week, Facebook, a couple times a week. But the reality with anything, the more time you put into it, the more you’re going to get out of it. And you don’t want to be posting just for the sake of posting. You want to make sure you’re adding value to the community.

               So, I typically look at social media in three tiers. So there’s the very base layer of social media. This is the evergreen content that you can schedule in advance and this is where tools like Hootsuite can come in because you can just set and forget. So go in there in the beginning of the week, just set up your content and have it run. And then there’s the mid level of content. This is where you want to layer in photos and things that are more personal and you can have someone manage this in your office or hire a company like INDIGO marketing to help manage this. And this is really that next level.

               And then there’s the very top level of social media. And these are things that as an advisor only you can do. So I mentioned going through the second degree connections of the people of your clients, only you’re going to know who is important that you want to set up a meeting with. Looking at your client’s profiles before they come in or strategically searching on LinkedIn. There’s certain things that only you can do. Time-wise, it’s really not going to take that much with the right tools and technology in place.

Claire Akin:

That’s great. Yeah, that’s a great point. And then two last questions for you just to get your insight. I’d be interested to hear what’s the biggest mistake or misconception that you see financial advisors make or the misconception that they have. And finally, if there’s one thing that you would encourage advisors who aren’t using social media today to do after watching this webinar, what would be your recommendation?

Amy Mcilwain:

All right, so biggest mistake I see is advisors jumping onto social media and treating it like traditional media. So traditional media is very much a monologue. It’s one direction. You’re taking out an ad, a billboard, you’re really shouting a message in one direction. And social media is a conversation. It’s that dialogue. It’s listening first, talking second, contributing value to the conversations. So I see as a mistake, advisors getting on and just taking these messages and shouting me, me, me, me, me. And that won’t help you be successful in social media. I would say, what was the second question, Claire?

Claire Akin:

If you could make one recommendation for advisors to get started, what would that be?

Amy Mcilwain:

It would be start with listening. So sign up for these accounts. And again, you don’t have to post anything at first, but start paying attention. Start to understand these social networks. I’m working on a new book right now called the Social [inaudible 00:43:25], and seeing more and more CEOs of fortune 500 companies, executives of financial services companies, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Tim Hockey with TD Ameritrad.

               A lot of very prominent and powerful people see the value of social media. They’re on Twitter, but I can tell because I’ve talked to both of those two for my book. And they had social media accounts for a while. They were on Twitter for about three or four years before they ever said a single word. And they were listening and they were understanding how to use the platform and then they saw the power and its potential and then they started using it as a platform to have a voice. So, that would be my advice is where to get started is to start by listening.

Claire Akin:

That is great advice. Thank you so much for your time and everyone check out the links below. You can download the slides, you can ask a question, you can get in touch with Amy, checkout Hootsuite’s tools. You can sign up for my newsletter to see my monthly webinars and you can get in touch on social media with the both of us.

               So with that I’d like to end the webinar presentation. You can ask a question by email in the right hand chat box. And thank you so much for Amy for your time and for your insight.

Katie Cress Digital Marketing Consultant, Sales & Client Strategist
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Joshua Yanson

Web Developer
Negros Occidental, Philippines

Joshua spends his days developing client websites, implementing automations, and troubleshooting website issues. He enjoys the challenge of working with websites while simultaneously learning new tips and tricks to optimize them for maximum efficiency.

Originally from Pulupandan, Negros Occidental, Philippines, Joshua holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, and in his free time enjoys playing computer games and watching anime and movies.

Indgio Team Member Dan Corcoran

Dan Corcoran

Account Manager
Madison, Wisconsin

Dan Corcoran enjoys being on the front lines of financial advisor marketing, working directly with advisors to help them build a strong marketing plan to get their firm’s message out. Working remotely can be a challenge as talking to others, brainstorming, and sharing experiences recharges him; he maximizes touchpoints to connect with others to make every day at Indigo rewarding.

Dan holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He enjoys drone photography and videography (he owns his own drone business, Forward Focus Photography), sports broadcasting (he was a hockey broadcaster for four years prior to COVID), spending time with family, camping/hiking, running, swimming, and road biking.

Originally from Sun Prairie, WI, Dan has three siblings, and prior to joining Indigo’s team, he worked for an RIA in Madison for two years.

Hugo Fernandez CEO of Indigo Marketing

Hugo Fernandez

CEO
Whispering Pines, North Carolina

Leading the Indigo team with heart, Hugo Fernandez is passionate about helping our financial advisors attract a flood of their A+ clients with sustainable marketing campaigns. He enjoys running companies that are wildly successful and wearing a black t-shirt every day of his life. When his two favorite things come together, you have an average day at Indigo.

Hugo Fernandez is also CEO of Indigo’s partner company, Just Digital, and author of The Client Acquisition Blueprint. He has personally helped hundreds of entrepreneurs grow their business through his proven blueprint for creating an EPIC marketing strategy and online presence.

Kelli McLeod Director of Client Services

Kelli McLeod

Director of Client Services
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Kelli McLeod plays an integral role at Indigo while overseeing the Account Services Team, providing customer service, getting financial advisors onboarded and in serving as their primary point of contact during that process. Her team looks to her for her leadership and decision-making abilities For Kelli, the most rewarding part of this role is working with clients one-on-one to ensure they’re happy and that their needs are met.

Kelli has a bachelor’s degree in communications and public relations from Pacific Lutheran University. More recently, she’s done extensive work in the corporate housing and property management industries.

Kelli currently lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her husband, Ian, who is an officer in the U.S. Army, and their two sons, Zachary and Cameron. When she’s not working, you can find her running or hiking, attending group fitness classes, and cooking. Kelli’s also an avid book club enthusiast, so be sure to reach out to her if you’re looking for a new read.

Sara Dressler

Director of Operations

DuPont, Washington

Sara Dressler manages all systems and operating processes while overseeing several departments. Sara is responsible for supervising many activities within Indigo and identifying areas of improvement to better meet company goals. She functions as the bridge connecting management to every department.

Sara has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a minor in communications from Pacific Lutheran University. She leverages this degree, along with her years of experience as a virtual assistant, to keep our company running like a well-oiled machine. Sara is happiest when spending time with her family. Her three young boys and life as a military spouse keep her busy, but she wouldn’t trade it for the world. She lives an active lifestyle and loves working out, getting outside, and watching sports with her family (whether it’s on TV, at her kids’ games, or in the backyard).

Indigo Marketing Team Member Elizabeth Reider Director of Marketing

Elizabeth Reider

Director of Marketing
Clearwater, Florida

Elizabeth Reider is a woman of many talents. She spent 10 years as a Chief Marketing Officer for a top-level independent financial advisor, and since her entry into financial services, she has networked and become friends with many advisors. Elizabeth admires their empathy, knowledge, and passion for their work, and has seen how independent advisors are more than professionals providing investment and planning advice; they are trusted confidants, life coaches, and guides. Over time, they become a part of their clients’ extended family—and she loves coming alongside that. (Check out this video to hear directly from Elizabeth about why she loves working with financial advisors.)

As Director of Marketing, Elizabeth helps get the word out about how partnering with Indigo can take an advisor’s marketing to the next level and beyond to grow their business and increase their productivity.

Elizabeth earned her bachelor’s degree in management information systems from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business. She also holds a life, health, and variable annuity license, which gives her a special understanding of the many products and services advisors offer. Originally from Clearwater, FL, Elizabeth loves to travel and has visited 12 countries, including extended visits to eSwatini, Africa, to visit family and assist with humanitarian relief programs. She has seen firsthand how independent financial advisors are providing advice to their clients that outpours into the lives of their own families, staff, community, and sometimes across the globe. When she’s not working, Elizabeth enjoys attending orchestral and theater productions with her husband, David, and taking their son, Julian, to art museums, as well as family evenings in the backyard playing baseball with her son and shih-tzu poodle, Wrigley. She is also an active participant in overseas humanitarian work—using her skills to make a difference in the lives of others.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Katie Cress

Katie Cress

Digital Marketing Consultant, Sales & Client Strategist
Cincinnati, Ohio

It’s Katie Cress’s mission to help financial advisors reach their ideal prospects through custom digital marketing. On any given day, you can find Katie meeting with new financial advisors to learn more about their marketing goals, who they love working with, and why they’re passionate about helping others. Her favorite part of her job is meeting new advisors every day and continuing to learn how each firm and individual advisor is different, and using her marketing and small business background to help them craft a game plan that empowers them to grow their business and enhance their services. Often described by loved ones as a “helper” and “caretaker,” Katie is passionate about advocating for her advisors’ needs and supporting her coworkers to help them succeed.

Katie holds an MBA from Xavier University and a BA in Economics from Ohio University. A Midwest girl for life, she lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband, Brandon (who’s also a marketing guru), and their three kids, Charli, Lucy, and Teddy. She and her husband also own Clean Eatz Cafe, where they use their collective marketing prowess and love of food to create a welcoming space for employees and hungry customers alike. Katie is passionate about and for small business owners, being raised by her father who was an entrepreneur, being one herself with her husband, and working with them every day at Indigo. She loves the spirit, creativity, and drive of entrepreneurs. When Katie’s not working or helping run the family business, she enjoys working out with her husband at Orange Theory, loving on her three kids, and cooking delicious food.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Lori Koepke

Lori Koepke

Account Manager
Boise, Idaho

Lori Koepke plays a major role as a liaison between Indigo Marketing Agency and its wonderful clients. She works directly with our advisor clients on their marketing strategies, marketing calendars, article creation, editing processes, compliance approvals, deployment of their content, and more. Lori enjoys helping strategize and be a support to her clients, and loves the camaraderie among the Indigo team members.

Before joining the Indigo team, Lori was a schoolteacher for 10 years. She has a Master of Education and Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education from Concordia University in Portland, OR. She was born and raised in Vancouver, B.C., and lived in Vancouver, WA, for 25 years before moving to Boise, Idaho, where she currently resides with her husband, Jeremy, and four wonderful kids, Sophie, Tanner, Jonas, and Violet. In her free time, you can find Lori reading, watching football, and driving her kids to all their activities.

Watch this video to hear why Lori loves working with Indigo.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Heidi Wilson

Heidi Wilson

Account Manager

Alexandria, Virginia

Heidi Wilson thrives on helping advisors create an online voice and streamline their marketing efforts. With her mother being a retired financial advisor and her brother-in-law currently a CFP® professional, she’s passionate about taking the marketing pressure off of advisors so they are able to focus on their clients. She loves when advisors tell her something we did for them helped; it can be as simple as taking something off their very busy plate or helping them land a new client with one of the articles we wrote. With broad-based consumer and B2B marketing experience, Heidi is constantly thinking outside the box and brings a fresh perspective to the Indigo team.

Heidi holds a bachelor’s degree in public relations from Florida State University and hails from Tampa, Florida. Her husband, Chris, is in the U.S. Army, and as they are constantly moving, they take every opportunity to explore the new areas where they’re living. Some of their favorite places they’ve called home include Hawaii and New Orleans. Heidi is thankful for the opportunity to work remotely with Indigo, which allows her to take her job with her, no matter where the Army moves her family next.

Watch this video to hear why Heidi loves working with Indigo.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Jillian Segrue

Jillian Segrue

Account Manager
Columbus, Georgia

Jillian Segrue acts as a liaison between clients and the Indigo team, using her 12 years of customer service experience in fields such as healthcare, financial services, and risk management to help hone their message and deploy it effectively and efficiently. Jillian enjoys building unique relationships with each of her clients as she uniquely helps them reach their ideal target audience.

Jillian has a bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration and a minor in business administration from SUNY Brockport. Originally from Rochester, NY, she currently lives in Columbus, GA, with her husband, Tim (an Army captain), daughter, Macie, son, Henry, and two cats. As a military spouse, Jillian appreciates the flexibility Indigo provides—allowing her to juggle motherhood and excelling in her career—and its unmatched positive, supportive, and uplifting company culture. In her free time, Jillian loves to read, shop, and go running outdoors (just not in the Georgia heat!).

Indigo Marketing Team Member Amanda Laskey

Amanda Laskey

Account Manager
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Amanda Laskey works with clients one-on-one to develop and implement marketing strategies that help spread the word about who they are and how they help. In her role, Amanda strives to deliver outstanding customer service to our clients. She is tech-savvy, an independent problem-solver, extremely organized, an excellent communicator, and thrives on helping others. She appreciates the ability to work remotely in a collaborative team environment while supporting her family.

Amanda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Education and a Master of Arts in Inclusive Education from Seton Hill University and has over 10 years of experience in secondary classroom teaching and over 3 years as an Executive Assistant. A proud Army spouse, Amanda resides in Pittsburgh, PA, with her husband, Brandon, their two sons, Jackson and Harrison, and their sheepadoodle, Waylon, and goldendoodle, Cash. Outside of work, Amanda enjoys spending time with her family, relaxing at the beach, traveling to new places, dessert, and all things Disney.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Beverly Anderson

Beverly Anderson

Account Manager
Portland, Oregon

Beverly Anderson is the go-to contact point for advisors to create a targeted and cohesive marketing strategy that is unique to their specific goals. She loves seeing her clients experience positive results from their marketing efforts, and as a world traveler, she appreciates the ability to work remotely and connect with clients from any country.

Beverly holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Oregon State University. In addition to traveling, she enjoys making music as a singer/songwriter and anything outdoors (she’s an avid snowboarder and rock climber). She and her partner have a rescue pup, Toro, a former street dog in Cabo, Mexico, before they adopted him. Beverly has three older sisters, with whom she is very close, and they all, along with her mother, live in the Portland area. Although she spent the first half of her childhood in Fountain Hills, Arizona, Beverly considers Portland to be home.

Watch this video to hear why Beverly loves working with Indigo.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Kasey Yhap

Kasey Yhap

Account Manager
Ellicott City, MD

Kasey Yhap’s commitment to her clients is the driving force behind her work. Her diverse educational background (a bachelor’s and master’s degree in vocal performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music and a master’s degree in communications from Syracuse University) has equipped her with the unique skill set required for success. Kasey’s strong communication skills and creative mindset, combined with her passion for helping her clients, make her a valuable asset to the team.

In her free time, Kasey stays active and maintains a healthy lifestyle through yoga, CrossFit, and spending time outdoors. These hobbies complement her professional life by allowing her to recharge and bring new ideas to her work at Indigo.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Lisa Gaines

Lisa Gaines

Content Deployment Manager
Fort Hood, Texas

Lisa Gaines spends her work days uploading blog posts to our clients’ websites and LinkedIn profiles, drafting emails, and making adjustments to content as advisors request. Lisa has learned a lot as a long-time member of the Indigo family and has enjoyed seeing the processes evolve to become more streamlined and efficient over time. And she loves working with the amazing Indigo team! 

Lisa is a proud alum of Texas A&M University, where she received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance. As a military child, Lisa feels as though she grew up everywhere; however, she claims central Texas as home where most of her family is originally from. She currently lives in Fort Hood, Texas, with her husband, Korey (an active-duty Army officer), and two kids, Madelyne and Jameson. As a military family, Lisa moves quite a bit—often to areas where the job market is small. She loves that Indigo provides her with a steady job she can take with her wherever she goes. When she’s not working, Lisa enjoys dabbling in interior design, binging a good Netflix series, and spending time with friends and family.

Read more about why Lisa loves working with Indigo.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Anne Wheeler

Anne Wheeler

Marketing Assistant
Cincinnati, Ohio

Anne Wheeler is responsible for a variety of administrative tasks as well as updating social media pages for clients. Anne enjoys the creative side of her position and the ability to collaborate with the team to help advisors get started with Indigo.

Anne holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of Tennessee. Outside of work, she enjoys walking, baking, spending time with her husband, Rick (a structural engineer), and two sons, Thomas and Turner. Anne loves being a full-time mom, and appreciates that Indigo gives her the opportunity to work part-time while still caring for her boys.

Melanie Valdez

Account Manager
Vancouver, Washington

With her marketing expertise, Melanie Valdez leaves no stone unturned when helping clients hone their marketing strategy. She loves interacting with clients and brainstorming new ideas to enhance their marketing results. No two days are ever the same, and that’s the way Melanie likes it!

Melanie holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Western Washington University as well as an MBA from Western Governors University. When she’s not rocking her role at Indigo, she enjoys cooking (trying out new recipes every week), painting, and discovering new restaurants with friends. She and her husband, Dat, love to travel and go on walks with their dog, Brutus, a pomeranian-chihuahua whose personality is definitely not proportionate to his small size!

Indigo Marketing Team Member Jennifer Farrior

Jennifer Farrior

Lead Writer & Proofreader
Louisville, Kentucky

Jennifer Farrior is Indigo’s go-to for all things proofreading and editing. Her attention to detail is unmatched, and she takes pride in making sure every article is clean and concise before it heads out to our financial advisors. She says, “Even a single typo can affect an advisor’s credibility, and we strive for perfection when it comes to how they’re presented online.” As Lead Writer, Jennifer trains and manages the team of writers, and also writes and collaborates with team members to create Indigo’s blog posts and promotional material.

Jennifer holds a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA. In addition to her role at Indigo, she runs her own copy editing and proofreading business, She Proofreads LLC. Jennifer hails from San Diego, California, but now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her three kids, Joshua, Julia, and Joel, and goldendoodle, Dexter. She loves working at Indigo because it provides her with the income, flexibility, and the community she needs as a stay-at-home mom. Outside of work, you can find her spending time with her kids, friends, boyfriend, or working on a puzzle while watching Netflix.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Sarah Robichaud

Sarah Robichaud

Social Media Manager
Rochester Hills, Michigan

Sarah Robichaud uses her love of spreadsheets to create engaging content calendars for our clients’ social media pages. Sarah holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Salisbury University and a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling from Liberty University. In addition to her role at Indigo, Sarah volunteers as a virtual administrator for Army Wife Network, a nonprofit organization that aims to empower and educate military spouses through blogs, podcasts, and various other resources.

Born and raised in Maryland, Sarah currently lives in Rochester Hills, Michigan, with her husband, Andrew, two children, Emily and Logan, and two fur babies, Penny and Chewbacca. As a military spouse and mother, Sarah loves working for Indigo because of the flexibility it affords her, allowing her to continue to build her career while frequently relocating around the globe and working on her own schedule to accommodate a busy lifestyle. Sarah also loves Indigo’s supportive team atmosphere. Outside of work and volunteering, you can find Sarah enjoying time outdoors with her family, typically running, camping, or traveling. An avid traveler, she’s visited 16 countries and is always planning her family’s next great adventure.

Peter Wardenaar

Peter Wardenaar

SEO Specialist & IT Lead
Cali, Colombia

As a natural problem-solver, Peter Wardenaar uses his skills to help financial advisors find new ways to grow their site traffic and attract more clients they love. Peter enjoys the dynamic nature of his role; the challenges are never the same as every situation is unique and requires a different approach. But don’t let Peter’s technical prowess fool you—he also has quite the creative side! Before joining the Indigo team, he worked as a first-grade teacher and university English professor in Cali, Colombia.

Peter has bachelor’s degrees in education and in music from Portland Bible College and a master’s degree in music production and technology from Berklee College of Music. In his spare time, he loves writing and recording music, graphic design, engaging with people, and studying leadership and theology. Peter is also one of the most well-traveled people you’ll ever meet! He was born and raised in the Netherlands but lived in the Pacific Northwest for over 12 years. Today, he resides in Cali, Colombia, with his wife, Gloria Isabel, and their three kids, Emanuel, Paloma, and Violet.

Indigo Marketing Team Member Kourtney Kearney

Kourtney Kearney

Tech Support
Antelope, California

Kourtney Kearney is a data-driven woman with a knack for coding. On any typical day, you can find her building web pages, troubleshooting bugs in code, and setting up automations to make life easier for our clients. Thanks to her technical background, Kourtney has a vast understanding of the inner workings of websites and the data associated with them. She’s always on the lookout for new technology that will help us improve our workflows so we can focus on what we do best—helping financial advisors grow their business. Kourtney enjoys the variation of tasks and loves the challenge of taking an existing website and making it better without completely rebuilding it.

Kourtney is originally from Newark, CA (Bay Area), but currently resides in Antelope, a suburb of Sacramento, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Curatorial Studies. Outside of work, Kourtney spends her free time reading, playing volleyball, baking with her two sons, and hanging out with family.

Indigo Marketing Agency Adrian Bachini

Adrian Bachini

Web Developer & Tech Support
Manila, Philippines

Adrian Bachini works on tasks requiring technical knowledge and other various administrative tasks. A software developer by day, prior to joining Indigo, Adrian had very little knowledge on how nontechnical positions operate. His position at Indigo allows him to both learn and experience a variety of platforms and gain more knowledge about how to maximize marketing initiatives.

Adrian holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a specialization in software technology from De La Salle University Manila. Adrian considers himself somewhat of a workaholic, with a full-time day job in addition to working with Indigo. When he’s not working, he enjoys watching documentaries, action movies, and anime, and also loves cycling on muddy downhill trails or cross-country rides, playing video games, and simply resting when he can. He is also a licensed commercial pilot and flies in his free time; he obviously also enjoys traveling. Adrian lives with his family and more than a few pets (11 dogs, 6 cats, a few birds, and fish)—he has more pets than humans in his home!

Claire Akin

Claire Akin

Founder
San Diego, California
Claire Akin founded Indigo Marketing Agency with the mission to help financial advisors leverage marketing to grow their businesses. As a former Investment Advisor Representative and proud daughter of an independent advisor, she’s seen first-hand the value advisors bring to their clients and community. Claire transferred ownership of Indigo Marketing Agency to Hugo Fernandez in 2022 to spend more time with her family.
Indigo Marketing Team Member Adriana

Adriana Escalante

Website Project Manager
San Antonio, Texas

Adriana Escalante thrives on creating an online representation that looks and feels true to our financial advisor clients as she builds their websites to best represent them and their businesses. Her experience working on travel and tourism websites motivates her to make sure every site she works on is exciting and engaging to web visitors. A graduate of University of Texas in Austin, Adriana double-majored in International Relations and a Liberal Arts program called Plan II. She also received a certification for front-end development from a coding academy in Austin, which has equipped her to serve as a great liaison between developers and clients.

After living in Austin, TX, for most of her adult life, Adriana now resides in San Antonio, TX (a city with a ton of history and many things to do), with her partner, Russell, and their dog, Abbey. She also has a brother and sister with whom she’s very close and tries to see a few times a year. Most of Adriana’s hobbies revolve around nature. She grew up spending lots of time on a sailboat or at a beach, and her family has a small cabin in Creede, CO, where she spends half the year hiking, camping, skiing, or snowshoeing (depending on the season). When she’s in Texas, she tries to get out most weekends to kayak. A Texas Master Naturalist, Adriana loves learning about all the plants, birds, and animals in her home state. She also dabbles in making stained-glass suncatchers!

Kaitlin Thornal

Marketing Assistant
Fort Moore, Georgia

Kaitlin Thornal helps clients onboard as they begin their marketing journey with Indigo, and she loves meeting new people and learning new things. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication/Public Relations, International Studies, and a minor in French from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a Master of Arts in Communication and Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University.

Kaitlin was born at Fort Lewis, Washington, but she moved around a lot growing up, spending the most time in North Carolina. She now resides in Fort Moore, Georgia, with her husband, Mason, and their four children, Caroline, Mason, Jack, and Bo. Kaitlin’s favorite place to live has been Europe (Italy, Ireland, and Belgium) and she would go back in a heartbeat! In her spare time, she enjoys long-distance running, reading, and spending time in the mountains of western North Carolina.

Samantha Triglia

Marketing Assistant
Queens, New York

In her integral role, Samantha Triglia schedules social media posts, deploys email campaigns, and updates Google Business Profile pages for clients’ new blog posts. She also assists with lead generation/tracking and other administrative tasks. Helping out wherever she’s needed, Samantha appreciates the opportunities she has to learn and grow in her position. She says, “I love being a part of the team, especially when content deployment involves many moving parts and collaboration to get done and ready to go.”

A former teacher for 14 years, Samantha holds a Bachelor of Arts in Childhood Education from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York. She also holds a Master of Arts in Middle School Earth Science Education from CUNY Brooklyn College and a Master of Science in Educational Administration and Leadership from the University of Scranton. (Yes, TWO master’s degrees!) While in college, Samantha was the assistant to the Chief Compliance Officer of a brokerage firm on Madison Avenue in New York City for high-net-worth individuals and families, so she’s quite familiar with the types of clients Indigo serves.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Samantha currently lives in Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York (the place the Ramones song is about!), with her husband, Matt (a Navy veteran and currently a New York City Firefighter), and their three sons, Matthew, Thomas, and James. Outside of work, Samantha enjoys spending time with her family riding bikes on their neighborhood boardwalk and going to the beach. They love to travel, including yearly family trips to Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Universal Studios in Florida (they’re big Harry Potter fans!). Samantha also stays active exercising and playing on a women’s softball team and a co-ed beach volleyball team with her husband.

Amanda Bicknese

Marketing Assistant
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Amanda wears a few hats at Indigo, bringing value to the team by creating custom social media posts for advisors, assisting with the onboarding process of new team members, and tackling behind-the-scenes team tasks. She loves to collaborate with our amazing clients and supportive team members.

Born and raised in Fort Myers, Florida, Amanda holds a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of Central Florida and a master’s degree in education from North Carolina State University. She worked as an educator for about a decade before pivoting to a career in writing and marketing. A Space Force military spouse (former army), Amanda and her husband, Michael, are currently located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with their two children, Mikayla and William, and two fur babies (a cat and a dog). When she’s not reading or writing fiction in her spare time, Amanda enjoys hanging out with family, hiking, trying new foods, and traveling.

Adam Spera

Account Manager
Astoria, New York

A marketer at heart, Adam finds satisfaction when consulting, strategizing, and implementing strategies to improve his clients’ business. He specializes in organic and paid social campaigns, as well as email and SEO optimization.

Adam holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Central Florida and a Juris Doctor degree from Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Raised in Boca Raton, Florida, by his mom (an event planner) and dad (a private boat charter captain), Adam currently lives in Astoria, New York, with his wife, Olivia, who works in pet care. When he’s not cooking up killer marketing strategies, he enjoys role-playing games, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and reading non-fiction and philosophy books.

Hugo Fernandez CEO of Indigo Marketing

Hugo Fernandez

CEO
Los Angeles, California

Hugo Fernandez acquired ownership of Indigo Marketing Agency from founder Claire Akin in 2022. Leading the Indigo team with heart, Hugo is passionate about helping our financial advisors attract a flood of their A+ clients with sustainable marketing campaigns. He enjoys running companies that are wildly successful and wearing a black t-shirt every day of his life. When his two favorite things come together, you have an average day at Indigo.

Hugo Fernandez is also CEO of Indigo’s partner company, Just Digital, and author of The Client Acquisition Blueprint. He has personally helped hundreds of entrepreneurs grow their businesses through his proven blueprint for creating an EPIC marketing strategy and online presence.

To get in touch with Hugo, email him or connect with him on LinkedIn.