01
The Client
Who are Allied Investment Advisors?
Founded in 2009 while still in the belly of one of the greatest financial crises in global history, Allied Investment Advisors, hereafter mentioned as Allied, built their business one brick, and one deeply Western handshake, at a time. Serving Wyoming, Montana, and the surrounding communities with deep Western values, Allied Investment Advisors is a locally-owned financial advisory firm that offers advice to their clients as a fiduciary.
Rooted in a “Starts with You” philosophy, Allied emphasizes building relationships with the client first before developing detailed roadmaps for whatever financial journeys the client faces. Their specialties include, but are not limited to:
- Financial Planning
- Investment Management
- Risk Management
- Retirement Planning
- Retirement Plans
- 401(k) Plans
- Fiduciary
See below for shots of their old website.
02
The Challenge
As a financial firm whose character was steeped in trust, value, and confidence, their previous website and branding were doing their reputation a disservice.
Upon the initial launch of the firm, Allied’s website was constructed by an old friend and throughout the years rarely found itself updated, much like many local and national financial firms we researched. However, fast-forwarding to the present day, Allied’s website still found itself having not been updated in 5+ years. Their modules were clunky, their site was old and difficult to navigate, and their messaging read as both dated and disconnected from the heart of their brand.
All of these critical aspects of a website inaccurately represented who they were or where their company was going. And Allied knew it. They knew their website, coupled with the speed of changing technology and innovation, was quickly venturing towards the obsolete territory. But as a team whose focus was, rightfully, on building relationships and financial management, they lacked the digital support to jump their list of “wants and needs” into the list of “currently haves”.
That’s when they came to Primitive looking for a website and brand messaging that:
- Tells their unique story and reflects their personality
- Differentiates them within the marketplace
- Drives business growth
- Is eye-catching, interactive, and informative
(Have you found yourself in similar shoes as Allied? Telling your unique story while catapulting your digital footprint to the modern age all starts by scheduling your free consultation here.)
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03
The Partnership
"Our feedback was always welcome and valued throughout the process.”
Initially having been referred to Primitive by fellow Primitive client, Evensky & Katz / Foldes Financial Wealth Management, Allied already had a fundamental idea of the services, solutions, and capabilities we brought to the table.
“There was never a request that seemed out of bounds nor did we feel like we were requesting too much of the team. There were always clear goals set-out for each month of work, these were discussed with us to get our feedback and thoughts and then Primitive always delivered on the roll-out laid out for each month. Our feedback was always welcome and valued throughout the process.”
04
Branding + Positioning
We initiated the partnership by nailing down branding and positioning which began with 60-days of competitive analysis and research.
This process was performed at the start of the partnership in order to make the website build-out efficient and aligned with brand messaging. Our in-depth analysis identified five competitors (three national, one regional, and one local) and extracted critical components of their respective branding, social media, website design, and strategies that dictated their overall online presence.
We took these insights, along with answers from client surveys, and boiled them down into a unique brand book tailored specifically for Allied, with deep consideration of their wants and business goals. The brand book consisted of:
- Updated logo
- Practical competitive analysis takeaways
- Direction for voice and tone of content
- Design assets for the website
- Comprehensive funnel strategy
- Collateral templates to help yield the successful execution of marketing work
Allied came to us with two self-perceived certainties: 1) their audience is familiar with industry terms (ex: fiduciary), and 2) relationships are of more or equal value to performance. However, after thorough comp analysis, we were able to conclude these two “certainties” to be assumptions and, unfortunately, false. In light of our research, we recommended including educational aspects about frequently used industry terms on Allied’s website, and also utilizing a two-part messaging strategy that balanced performance with relationship, and not one or the other.
05
Growth-Driven Design (GDD)
One of the great aspects of utilizing GDD vs traditional website redesign is the attractive 60-day launch timeline.
However, with Allied, they requested additional pages (About Us, Why Allied, and Our Strategy) to be built out prior to launching their site, leading to a site launch six months post-Launchpad build out. To this point, it’s worth mentioning Allied’s devoted contribution and buy-in, both to the research and design process, was nothing short of complete joy to the partnership. We often met with them one to two times/ month in “Delivery + Strategy” meetings, along with in-between meetings if questions or concerns arose. They often infused input and suggestions, while c-suite executives often felt comfortable to include opinions and ideas that we could distill into practical and actionable items with which to execute.
This symbiotic relationship also helped us confidently address and meet their business objectives, especially regarding helping educate the Allied team on SEO. Furthermore, even though not considered a standard aspect of the GDD process, we connected Allied and their team with our Digital Ad Strategist, Parker, to help inform and educate them on the Google Analytics interface and the importance of this type of data.
Resource: To get an in-depth understanding of GDD, visit Why Growth Driven Design?
06
BIND
As a business with a wealth of content of their own by way of blogs, we recommended Allied utilize a WordPress alternative - BIND.
BIND is Primitive’s in-house CMS that is guaranteed to be safe, turnkey, and blazing fast for any clients looking to optimize their own web content, their way, and on their timeline. Once Allied adopted the addition of BIND CMS, we set up a one-on-one training session (30-45 minutes) with them to cover the ins and outs of the new application, which was immediately sent over to them to have whenever they wished to review.
“Bind is user friendly and easy-to-use. Having never been involved in the ‘back-end’ of the website I was able to quickly learn the system and post all of our past newsletter/blog content, but also feel very comfortable loading new content as we move forward.”
07
DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
Services Utilized
Branding + Positioning | Growth-Driven Design (GDD) | BIND
08
The Outcome
After breathing new life into their branding and constructing a new, modern website that communicates who they really are, Allied Investment Advisors noticed an almost immediate increase in both site traffic and form submissions.
- 40% increase in users
- 44% increase in pages viewed per session
- 100% increase in session duration
- 118% increase in page views
Additionally, even after the initial launch of Allied’s website, we continued to both build out new pages to their website while also holding true to our promise of ensuring their new website is optimized. We honored the latter by proactively conducting an extensive web dev audit that analyzed metrics affected by Google’s Core Web Vitals update slated for May 2021.
Blog: Is Your Business Ready For Google’s New Core Web Vitals?
As stated, this audit analyzed critical optimization components Google’s new update will heavily consider when grading a page’s user experience but are often overlooked by many financial firm websites, such as:
- performance data
- best practice data
- accessibility data
- SEO data
As a business determined to infuse their relationship-driven value into their financial management services, Allied Investment Advisors knew their prior branding and website wasn’t quite hitting the mark. However, with comprehensive industry research backing the messaging and positioning of their new, modern website, they’re now confident that they can wave goodbye to the minor leagues, and give a firm handshake to the major leagues they’re now playing in.