The Advisors Business Hour

Advisors Websites That Win | Clear Niche, Clear CTA, Clear Next Step

January 22, 2026

Advisors Websites That Win | Clear Niche, Clear CTA, Clear Next Step

Your website should not be a brochure. It should create instant clarity, establish credibility, and move the right prospects to a next step. Sherry and Jeff cover the common website mistakes advisors make, how to choose and speak to a true niche, what trust looks like on a homepage, and the modern role of SEO and AI search visibility. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4

Timestamps and segment notes

00:00 Welcome + episode focus: what makes an outstanding advisor website
01:00 Jeff’s travel and live podcast plans at conferences
02:30 The big issue: websites as business cards and dated templates
04:00 Client-first vs advisor-first language (stop the “I/we/us”)
07:30 Niching down: why “pre-retirees, retirees, post-retirees” is everyone
10:30 Decide the website goal: clients vs recruiting advisors
12:30 Human trust signals: names, phone number, address, real people
14:30 Marketing vs sales and why the funnel can help
17:00 “Butterflies” and why the buyer journey is not linear
19:00 Recap: trust, niche clarity, visual credibility, and CTA
20:30 SEO, blog, podcast, and why ranking in AI matters
23:00 Quick audit checklist: differentiation, navigation, CTAs, client language
26:00 Next episode teaser: social media and compliance Advisors Business Hour Episode 4

Key takeaways (bullets for show notes)

A website is not a credential. It is the first step of trust-building. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4
Most advisor sites are advisor-centric. Convert to client-centric language and outcomes. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4
Niching down is not limiting. It reduces competition and increases relevance. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4
Visual credibility matters, but messaging must match the design. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4
Decide the website’s primary goal: organic client growth vs advisor recruiting. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4
The funnel is useful when it separates marketing (attract, qualify) from sales (convert). Advisors Business Hour Episode 4
The prospect journey is messy. Your presence has to bring them back after distractions. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4
SEO still matters, and “ranking in AI” is becoming a new battleground for visibility. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4

“Silent killers” website checklist (copy for a carousel or post)

No differentiation, looks like everyone else
Dated template vibes
No clear call-to-action
Complicated navigation
Boardroom stock photo culture
Advisor-centric copy instead of client-centric outcomes Advisors Business Hour Episode 4

Calls to action (choose one or two)

Visit TheAdvisorsBusinessHour.com and connect with Jeff at Caddis.biz.ure was right.
But something important was missing.

Want a fast website audit? Send your homepage URL and we will share 3 credibility wins and 3 conversion fixes. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4

If your website is a brochure, it is leaving money on the table. Let’s turn it into a trust-builder and pipeline starter. Advisors Business Hour Episode 4

The connection.

In this episode, Jeff Mount, Financial Advisor and Growth Strategist, and Sherry Sarver Johnson share what went wrong in that experiment and why it revealed a deeper truth about technology, trust, and the future of advisory relationships.

Advisors don’t operate in a transactional industry, they operate in a trust-based one.

Clients aren’t deciding whether an advisor is “correct.” They’re deciding whether they feel safe, understood, and supported, especially in moments of uncertainty or crisis.

This episode explores:

Why AI can sound accurate but still feel wrong
The difference between efficiency and connection
The emotional “trust test” clients apply in real conversations
Common fears advisors have about AI, and what reality actually looks like
Where AI can add real value without replacing the human advisor

AI can organize information.
AI can simulate tone.
AI can improve efficiency.

But it cannot replace empathy, presence, lived experience, or reassurance, the qualities that cause clients to trust an advisor with their financial future.

If you’re an advisor trying to navigate AI thoughtfully without losing your voice, your authenticity, or your client relationships. This conversation offers clarity, perspective, and practical guidance.

🎙️ The Advisors Business Hour is created by Jeff Mount and powered by Beneficial Business Solutions, helping advisors grow ethically, sustainably, and with purpose.

👉 Listen to Episode 3 now and join the conversation.

Transcript

Welcome to the Advisors Business Hour, where we’re all about the heart and hustle of developing and building a successful advisory business. Today we’re deep diving into what it takes to have an outstanding website, one that really attracts your ideal client, creates trust, and actually builds a pipeline for you to nurture.

And develop your lead system. And I’m joined today by Jeff from Cadis, LLC. Jeff, welcome to the show. Hey, Sheri, great to see you. It’s great to be here. And happy new year. Happy New Year to you. Yeah, here it is. 2026. Absolutely. Yeah. Before we dive into our topic today, is there anything that you wanna catch up our community on?

[00:01:00] Oh, wow. I think I mentioned at the end of the last episode the fact that I’ll be traveling the country. And I will, I, pretty much every single month I’m booked somewhere and we will be doing a lot of what we’re doing right now. In those places, and we invite advisors who are interested in what we’re doing to join us and potentially participate as guest.

Yeah, you were talking about that. Yeah. In the podcast, which I think would be a lot of fun. And it’s cool because all of these different locations, there’s different themes. Sometimes it’s FinTech, sometimes it’s practice management, sometimes it’s specifically ETFs. That’ll give us something to talk about, number one and number two, hopefully our topic of conversation will compliment the overall conference in some way.

Yeah I like it a lot. And I think just being out and mixing, just so many good ideas come [00:02:00] from that kind of environment and we’re all getting a little weary of the Zoom world where, since COVID, we so much has just been virtual that this is gonna be a breath of fresh air for sure.

Without a doubt. It’s it’s be, this is better than a phone call, but it’s still not the same as shaking hands. Absolutely. So you, are you ready to dive in and dissect what makes a good website and what folks can do? Some simple things they might be able to do to. To make it more effective.

And of course there’s always the major rehaul overall that can be done. Yeah. I think it’s an important conversation. It’s such an easy fix. I find a lot of advisors, not all, but a lot of advisors treat their website as an electronic business card and really nothing else. I’d even heard people say, I only have a website, so people, when they Google me, see I’m a real person.

Yeah. It’s gotta be more than that. Yeah. I kind of [00:03:00] piggyback on that thought is I see some that are a glorified flyer. Yeah. It’s really not doing anything. It may be actually taking away from their credibility. And the worst thing I think is there’s so many templates out there that have been floating around for.

Years, and they might have been real whiz bang at the time. But now they just look very dated and they also look like a lot of other people. Yes. There’s nothing outstanding. I can’t tell you how many sailboats I’ve seen on the front page of ev of advisor websites. What is it with the industry and the water?

And they love the wa And listen, I love the water too, and I’m not a boater, but it is a good look, but everybody does it. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s only great. In the beginning you have to just stay cutting edge because hopefully that’s. How an [00:04:00] advisor sees their business, they wanna stay on the cutting edge with their advice and with the way they deal with their clients.

And the website needs to reflect that so people get that message both consciously and, subconsciously. So Jeff maybe we could start with just talking about some problems that we see with advisors websites. We mentioned a couple. One of ’em that I feel is a biggie is that they seem to be built for the advisor.

Not the client, meaning it probably makes a lot of sense to the advisor what’s said and they don’t necessarily put themselves into the shoes of the client. What would be easy for the client and navigatable for the client and so forth and so on. What are your thoughts on that?

I’m so glad you kicked off with that one. I think it’s. So many websites for [00:05:00] advisors focus on I, we, us, and it talks about who they are, what their process is. Where they’re located. Oh. Then of course at some point you get to the individual advisors and it starts off with a snapshot to your point about the brochure with a snapshot of everyone standing around the boardroom table dressed up really nicely.

And then the individual headshot with where they went to school, a little bit about the family and what licenses they have. And then that’s it. Huge miss. Huge miss because it didn’t say anything about the prospect. And you mentioned it early on, one of the objectives of the website is to begin building trust.

Obviously there has to be a personal human face-to-face element. Later. But if we can answer why should I, as [00:06:00] we think about what this website’s for now. Another thing, what’s, what is the website for? Is it for organic growth or are you trying to recruit other advisors because you’re a large RIA?

So there’s. Different reasons why you have the website to begin with, but in both cases, and they should look very different. Answer the question, why should I? Why should I change what I’m doing now? Why should I consider you in lieu of all the other opportunities that are out there? Why should I believe that this strategy that you’re talking about will be good for me?

If you can successfully do that, first of all, identify their concerns upfront and. Speak to it in a, maybe a case study format. Just talking about, Hey, here’s a common challenge that people in this demographic actually deal with we can help. And you start to build trust because they’re saying, wow, they’re talking about me and they’ve [00:07:00] never met.

Exactly. Exactly. Because that goes back to being able to. First decide who your ideal client is and then speak to that ideal client. You’re not one size fits all for everyone. So much of what’s out there is really trying to attract anybody and everybody. And then it doesn’t attract anyone because it doesn’t speak to that specific situation or that specific demographic.

Yes. Do you have any examples or ideas about. How somebody would go about number one, drilling down to who their ideal client is, and then secondly, creating that hook, that call out, so to speak, so that they say, oh, they’re talking about me. This is somebody that deals with people just like me.

So I do a lot of workshops with advisors where we talk about what’s your niche? And [00:08:00] I’ll hear. Actually, this was a real answer to what that question I, I like pre-retirees. Retirees, and post retirees. It’s everybody. Narrow that down a little bit. And it’s just as bad with small business owners, because they’ll say, I love small business owners.

Okay, what kinds of businesses? All of them. Wow. Yeah. That, that’s most of the, our economy is small business owners. That really doesn’t help. And then of course they say but that’s true. That’s I want all of that opportunity as this is what generally brings them home. Okay. If you are going to go that big.

We’re not really fulfilling a niche and you’re taking on everybody. The beautiful thing about taking on a niche is you have limited, limited competition, and it’s a small pool of competitors, and you can manage that quite well. But if you are taking on UBS, Merrill Lynch, [00:09:00] Morgan Stanley the banks, Edward Jones and you are an independent and of course all the other independents, that is a daunting task.

And that’s a whole different conversation Yeah. Than what we’re talking about right now. That’s a branding conversation, and that’s a long-term strategy and not for today. So yes, identify your niche. Go narrow. Go as narrow as you possibly can so that there’s just a small number of competitors to really go up against.

Yeah, that’s something we can win. That’s a battle we can win all day long. I think that’s a huge point. In fact, that could be like the point of the, this whole episode is niching down because reality is nobody that is a bank’s perfect client. Is going to look at it, a person, a smaller person. ’cause part of the reason why they’re there is they want that big institutional feel.

Yes. So just as that’s true, there’s [00:10:00] plenty of people more than can keep you busy that want just the opposite. Without a doubt. Yeah. Yes. Totally agree. Thanks for all of that. Share. Next question that I wanted to ask you is, do you have tips on how someone who’s creating their website should think about the outcome that they want, the client or the journey that they want the client to take and how to drill down into the outcome?

You touched on it like whether whether they’re looking to recruit or they’re looking for clients. What’s the best way to go about that? Yeah for starters, decide what do you want from this website? Is it gonna generate leads for you, for organic growth of your business? Is it going to generate leads for you for people who are interested in potentially joining your firm?

And of course. Answer, why should I? You’ve got to find a [00:11:00] way to grab people who are visiting the web website and have live conversations so that you can answer the next question, which can only be done in person, which is how can you, the website can’t do everything. It just can’t, but it’s that first little step.

It’s the first step. It’s the first little step. It starts the trust building process. Yeah. But it, it’s very important that they say, okay, I want to go to the next step and ask the questions. How can you, I have recently come across a few advisor websites that was asked to review and, it was interesting.

They had all the things I’m talking about, but they didn’t have any names. You’re talking to a cold entity when you go to even to contact us. There was still no mention of who the principal of the firm was, what the address was. What’s the phone number? It just wanted you to use the contact us page.

And I’m thinking, gee, that sounds like a pretty [00:12:00] cold experience. Let’s personalize a little bit. Make it a little more human. The closer we can get to making this thing feel like a human outreach, the better. Yeah. And that’s what it’s all about. We talked about this in our last episode. It’s that human element that creates the trust.

Yes. And so if the website can both humanize. The per the other side of that website, the who’s on the other side. And also build the trust. They go hand in hand. I’m thinking I, I will share with everybody who’s listening ’cause we are watching everything change. And it’s funny ’cause I have this con this conversation with prospective advisors for Cadis and they’re like, oh we got it.

We got everything. We know what we’re doing. We do marketing, we do advertising. We know what we’re doing. And I share with them this story. I dunno if I’ve ever shared this with you. Albert Einstein in 1942 was [00:13:00] the physics professor at Oxford University. This is a true story. And he had. Worked with the same class through their freshman year, their sophomore year, their junior year, and now it’s their senior year.

Okay? And he asked the teacher’s assistant to pass the final exam out to all the students. And the teacher’s assistant about halfway through, stopped, rushed back up to the desk and looked at this, says, Dr. Einstein these are the exact same tests you gave out last year. Did you make a mistake? And he goes, Nope.

No mistake, but why? The answers have changed. It’s physics. Yeah. The answers aren’t supposed to change. Yeah. It’s all relative. The point is, yeah, whatever worked for you yesterday won’t work for you going forward. You’ve gotta constantly innovate and change and think of new ways to, to accomplish things.

Why do I bring this up? Because the days of cold. Are really getting hard. It was always hard to begin with. It was a [00:14:00] two to 3% response rate. I’m seeing way below 1% response rate on, on, on cold email. Same thing with dms on LinkedIn. That was hot for years. I used it for a long time. It was great.

It isn’t working like it used to. You’ve gotta think of new ways, people visiting websites who just refuse to fill out that contact us form. There is technology now that can identify who’s visiting your website without them actually filling out that contact as form. And we’re more than happy to help advisors with that type of technology in the event that’s a real need.

So these are just things that we all have to think about and start saying, okay what’s next? Yeah, it’s not a one and done. It’s no, it’s not a kind of thing. It’s okay, I checked that off. We’re good for the next 10 years. We live in a dynamic environment and to your point, it’s gotta, it’s gotta evolve.

It’s something else that I wanted to bring up and this is a very charged word [00:15:00] and some people love it and some people hate it. So what are your thoughts on the funnel? I think if you really understand what the funnel is, it’s fine. Here’s what I like about the funnel. It separates sales and marketing.

There is a big difference. I, and I have this conversation with some CEOs who don’t know the difference. They think marketing should be sales. Marketing’s job is to draw in people who are interested in your product or service. Score those leads. This is what’s really good and what’s not necessarily as good and hand those leads off to sales who then have the responsibility of actually trying to convert and bring in revenue.

Marketing should not be responsible for the effectiveness of sales, and sales should not be expected to do what marketing does. So from that perspective, I think the funnel helps a lot. And of course, as most CRMs. Not most, [00:16:00] I’d say most CRMs do have a sales funnel that you can actually visualize and take a look at.

Each case and where you are in it, and then take a look at a big picture and graphically demonstrate what the funnel looks like. Yes I do have an appreciation for it. You look at it as it’s an effective tool if you know how to use it. Yes. And it’s used for the right purposes.

It’s not a substitute for sales. It’s helping take people from broad interests down to preparing them for the moment when they may be right for the sales department to start a conversation. And I think it’s important and I talk about this on the Kaus website to be w of, to be wary of that client journey.

The prospect journey, because it sounds like it’s a one, it’s a straight path and it’s just one foot in front of the other. That almost never happens in real life. There are, we call butterflies. [00:17:00] And butter. I came up with this ’cause there was a friend of mine who used to work with me when I was a wholesaler, and he truly was distracted by butterflies.

So he’d be on his social media and he’d be half listening to someone talking to him. He’d hear another guy out there and go, oh, that should be a prospect. He was always chasing whatever new opportunity and abandoning whatever he was working on. That exists in the buyer’s journey too.

And you have to always be aware of the fact that your competition is somehow communicating with them while you have them on their journey in some way. And you have to be, have some kind of presence in all these places. Omnichannel marketing. Which of course we talked about to help bring them back.

And I think it’s an important thing to be honest and open about when it comes to the funnel. Yeah, that’s a really good point. We don’t have people’s undivided attention No. Just about ever anymore. Nope. [00:18:00] And especially on the web, on the internet and Yeah, that’s right. Social media and that sort of thing.

There’s a lot to compete with and hopefully you do it well enough that you make an impression and they come back to the well, so to speak for more. Yes. Yeah. That’s good stuff. All right what I was thinking we could do next is kinda recap the purpose of a website, what it should do and give people an idea where they could make some changes that would give them a lot of return on their time, and then what they could do to take it deeper.

Great. So some of the things we just talked about in recap number one, the website is to build trust. Yes. And have that light bulb moment go off in the client’s mind that yes, this is a person speaking to me. They work with people like me, and they feel that they’re on the right track just being on your site.

What are some of the things you think? Go into that just real fast. [00:19:00] Tone. Yeah, tone. Stop talking about, I, we, us start talking about them again. We’ve identified our niche and we’re going to address the challenge the most common challenges for people who live in that niche. It’s a great start to trust building and, call to actions, get them to sign up, whether it’s for your newsletter or, oh, go ahead, podcast. Yeah. How important do you think the visual brand is? Oh, it’s very important. In fact, there are a few websites I recently reviewed where the visual was so good. I was like, wow, this is really compelling until you actually get down to what’s in it.

And I’m like, oh, but the stuff in, it’s terrible. But man, that opening visual was phenomenal. So it does help without a doubt. Yeah. A part of it too is not even conscious. I think we all are affected by visuals. Yes. Yeah. [00:20:00] Yes. Okay. Very good. You started to talk about the. The call to action and the leads and so forth.

What are two big takeaways on that you’d like to leave with folks? So search engine optimization, I think is a great opportunity. I know there are advisors out there who have spent money on Google ads, and I think for a niche it could still work. But if you don’t have that niche, I think you’re just throwing money down the drain.

Especially because more and more people see the sponsored. Next to the actual results and realize, oh my God, these are ads, this is frustrating. But search engine optimization does get people to look at your website and they’re coming up on, on search results and there’s no, no indication that this is an ad.

’cause it’s not an ad. So certainly having a website that will rank well. And we have tools that will certainly help advisors with that. If you have a blog, that certainly helps a lot. If you have a podcast, that can help too. [00:21:00] So there are a number of things we can talk about to get more interested parties in your niche to reach out to you.

How important do you think it is to rank an AI now that AI is returning so many of the answers? It’s very important. Yes. So the days, good for Google they see it and they’re starting to build out their ai machines. And I hear, I haven’t tried it yet, but I hear great things about it, just as good as chat sheet pt.

Some even say maybe even better. But yeah, that when it comes to search results, what would you rather have? Would you rather have a long list of page after page of potential answers to your search, or would you rather have just one? Yeah. Yeah. I noticed like some of these tools such as perplexity, they give you the.

The sites that they pulled the information from, in their summary. And I think this is gonna be a bigger and bigger piece of that search engine [00:22:00] optimization going forward because yeah, we’re all looking for the shortcut, right? And yeah, I’ve seen most of the new technology say, Hey, we work both with the search engines and with.

Ai as it relates to, a lot of the names you just talked about, chat, BT or Google or whatever. So I think that’s important. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. . As we wrap up here. Wanted to talk one more time about the client journey. Anything couple takeaways that you’d like to leave with folks on the email, follow ups, educational sequences anything like that.

Big takeaways that they could do fairly easily. Let’s save the educational sequences for a different podcast. Okay. Because that’s a longer conversation. I think it’s incredibly important that you review the website you have, and I think most advisors will tell me when I confront them on this.

They go, it’s it’s older. And I had had one of [00:23:00] your competitors build it, and they all look exactly alike and that’s not good. So they, they recognize the need to do it. I think they have the feeling that it’s just a massive undertaking to, to change it and improve it.

And it’s really not that bad. It’s a lot of work for you and for me. Yes, it is. But that’s okay. We can get it done in a fairly. Reasonable timeframe and more importantly, we can turn it away from I, we, us into, Hey, you might fit into this ’cause I’ve, I identified you as somebody in this niche.

We want to make sure that we can answer your challenges. Good stuff. All right. To recap, it sounds like you’re from a psychology point of view anyway, that when people visit a website, they’re looking to solve a problem. Number one, they look for clarity within seconds. So they don’t have to spend a lot of time to feel like they’re, they know whether they’re in the [00:24:00] right location or not.

Looks like they judge the credibility by both the design and the messaging and, they’ll leave if they don’t see instant value and they’ll leave quickly. Yes. Said. And then the recap, the the funnel idea is I think most clients now do expect some sort of information to be downloadable.

They give their name and email address and probably expect some kind of ongoing communication if they’ve done that. Yeah, and I think most advisors are aware of the significance of communication, not just once their clients, but of course in the beginning because it’s your best opportunity to build trust.

All right. Let’s talk about the silent killers again, no differentiation. Looks like a 2005 template. No clear call to action. Yes. [00:25:00] Complicated navigation. Yes. And like you said, advisor, eliminate the photo in the boardroom. Nobody cares. Yeah. And advisor centric language versus the client centric language.

Whoever’s watching this is gonna have some questions. Reach out to us here at the podcast. We’d be more than happy to. To dive deep in with you on whatever additional questions you have or challenges might be facing.

Awesome. And I know from experience that Jeff does an amazing job with this. He is been at it long enough that he just has a sixth sense when it comes to knowing what works and what doesn’t work. And he’s also a state-of-the-art, it comes to both analyzing and figuring out what. The biggest bang for your buck, so to speak, would be going forward.

All right, Jeff. Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. I think it’s been very enlightening and I even learned a couple [00:26:00] things as well care to share with us what we’re gonna be talking about next time. I’m thinking we should talk about. Social media, how is it, how are advisors using social media?

How frequently are they using social media? Which forms of social media? And of course the topic that every advisor shares with me as a no, don’t do that. How, what about compliance? Yeah. That is, that’s a huge topic. So that sounds exciting. Looking forward to it. And I think you mentioned that you’re gonna be, reporting live from Puerto Rico next time we talk. Yes. I’m looking forward to it. We will have I would imagine we will have a lot of audience participation from other advisors who could share their thoughts on the topic as well. And that’s this month, so very cool. Yes. All right thanks again and thank you guys for joining us today.

Looking forward to next time. Thanks, Sherry. All right. Take [00:27:00] care.

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Podcast Episodes

The Advisors Business Hour

Advisors Websites That Win | Clear Niche, Clear CTA, Clear Next Step

Advisors Websites That Win | Clear Niche, Clear CTA, Clear Next Step

Timestamps and segment notes

Key takeaways (bullets for show notes)

“Silent killers” website checklist (copy for a carousel or post)

Calls to action (choose one or two)

Transcript

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Related posts

Advisors Websites That Win | Clear Niche, Clear CTA, Clear Next Step

How AI Failed Us and What It Means for Advisors

The Advisors Business Hour

Advisors Websites That Win | Clear Niche, Clear CTA, Clear Next Step

Advisors Websites That Win | Clear Niche, Clear CTA, Clear Next Step

Timestamps and segment notes

Key takeaways (bullets for show notes)

“Silent killers” website checklist (copy for a carousel or post)

Calls to action (choose one or two)

Transcript

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Related posts

Advisors Websites That Win | Clear Niche, Clear CTA, Clear Next Step

How AI Failed Us and What It Means for Advisors

Motivating Clients and Prospects — The Psychology of Inspired Action