Wealthcare Capital Management
Since 1999, Wealthcare Capital Management has provided a goals-driven process for financial planning and investing, encouraging advisors and clients to dream big. At first, the business grew through word-of-mouth referrals. But over time, the advisory platform aimed to grow its reach through revamped marketing efforts. For more than half a decade, MarketSmiths has helped Wealthcare Capital increase its growth marketing through collaborative, streamlined copy.
Client
“Whether it’s for clients, or for advisors, I’ll turn to MarketSmiths to help with creating content”
Did you know that financial advisors are among the most in-demand people in the U.S.? There are already nearly 300,000 of them—and their number is expected to grow by 14.9% between 2016 and 2026. Given the corresponding demand toward the advisor-centric technology platform provided by Wealthcare Capital Management, Shantese Smithers-Alexander, the company’s centralized Marketing Manager, has a lot of balls in the air.
For example, the audience for Wealthcare is complex and diverse. “Our marketing strategies differ for the various target audiences we’re trying to reach—whether it’s recruiting advisors to our platform, or helping our advisors recruit clients,” says Shantese. That’s true across a number of content areas, she adds, from articles to social media to website copy.
What’s more, marketing execution didn’t really exist when Shantese arrived at Wealthcare. “We were basically building this department from scratch,” she says.
So, after Shantese’s then-boss discovered MarketSmiths, they decided to approach our copywriting agency. Over the past seven years, our relationship has been an ideal match, enabling MarketSmiths to deepen and broaden our copywriting support while Wealthcare increases its growth marketing. “Whether it’s for clients or advisors,” says Shantese, “I’ll turn to MarketSmiths to help with creating content.”
“MarketSmiths took the time to get to know our company—and understand our company.” – Shantese Smithers-Alexander, Marketing Manager, Wealthcare Capital Management
Challenge
“We were more of a referral business, with a smaller pool of advisors that had been specifically targeted”
When she first started at Wealthcare Capital Management, Shantese says that the firm’s marketing setup was fairly rudimentary—the business model just didn’t call for anything more (yet). “We were more of a referral business, with a smaller pool of advisors that had been specifically targeted,” she explains. “The founder of our company was known in the industry—and was handpicking specific advisors to join the firm.”
Even as this ad hoc approach continued to pay off, Shantese was hired to help implement a more proactive growth strategy, activating sophisticated marketing campaigns to attract both new financial advisors and more clients. But with she and her boss as Wealthcare’s only copywriters, they had a slow start.
Timing could also be a challenge. With so much information to share—articles on retirement planning, explainer videos on Wealthcare’s proprietary advisory tools, and more—Shantese says that she just didn’t have the space to publish prompt new content.
She also adds that constant scrambles on the copywriting front meant she had less time to build Wealthcare’s brand in other ways. As she puts it: “If I had to write all our copy, I wouldn’t have time to devote to my clients—my advisors.”
Shared Success
“I just find that you’re way more efficient than some of the other companies I've worked with—especially once you factor in the absence of a learning curve, redos, and even most revisions”
Though Wealthcare started working with MarketSmiths in 2015, Shantese still vividly remembers how quickly we understood her marketing strategy and its subtle positioning. “MarketSmiths took the time to get to know and understand our company.”
It helped that we had a deep background in complex financial writing. “You really spoke the language of finance,” she says. “That makes it a lot easier for me to put something in front of you—which may or may not make sense to Joe Schmo on the street—but which you can understand and make readable.”
From the start, these foundations have fed into our collaborative process. Unlike freelance copywriters and copywriting vendors Shantese has hired, MarketSmiths is able to turn a general brief into incisive, streamlined copy—with a minimum of fuss. “I just find that you’re way more efficient than some of the other companies I’ve worked with,” she says, explaining that our efficiencies increase value—especially when considering a complete lack of redos, fewer rounds of revisions (usually zero or one), extremely flat learning curves, and the like. As a result, the work can be published sooner, too, which helps Wealthcare drive momentum.
For Shantese, this is true whatever the deliverable, positioning, or audience. “You always send over very high-quality copy,” she says.
This all feeds into Wealthcare’s engagement numbers. On the client side, Shantese says our consistent stream of sharp, engaging content means better clickthrough—and ultimately more sales.
As an example, she tells the story of how one client kept postponing signing up for one particular financial service—until a MarketSmiths content marketing email convinced them to take the plunge. “That was a big win!” she laughs.
MarketSmiths also supports Wealthcare’s advisors. Many were trying to organize their own marketing efforts—but struggling to gain traction. But securing professional support from our copywriters—including elegant advisory articles, tight accompanying emails, and comprehensive social media copy—has revolutionized Wealthcare’s advisor relationships.
“They really appreciate the help,” Shantese says. “We’re giving them everything they need to be successful. And we can gain traction by saying we have a marketing service. Our advisors are like: ‘I don’t have to get content out on a regular basis? You’re going to do it for me?’ MarketSmiths is a big reason why we can offer that service to them.”
Secure in the knowledge that MarketSmiths is developing loyalty among its advisors (while they’re busy building up their client base), Shantese now has more time to embrace the kind of overriding marketing strategy she’d envisioned when she joined Wealthcare, saying:
“Now I can focus on the different marketing campaigns for the various target audiences that we’re trying to reach—whether it’s Wealthcare recruiting advisors to our platform, or helping our advisors recruit clients. You get right to the heart of what we want to say.”
