Join Faustin Weber and Stephen Beach on this episode of Craft On Tap as they break down the complexities of financial advisor awards, discussing how to evaluate their worth, make the most of them, and handle the tricky parts of compliance.
👇 Watch the full discussion below:
Co-Founder Stephen Beach & Strategist Faustin Weber discuss financial advisor awards.
Don't want to read the whole thing? Jump to the Key Takeaways
Transcript:
Stephen Beach: Craft On Tap Marketing for RIAs podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Beach, and my co-host Faustin Weber. Today, we're going to talk about awards for financial advisors. One of the questions we get fairly often, it's usually a forwarded email from some publication or entity saying, "Hey, congratulations, you've been nominated for this award". It's exciting, and it will help you stand out among your peers. You need to pay a certain fee to use the award in your marketing and so forth. It's usually an email forwarded to us by our client asking, "Should I do this or not? How do I think about this? Have you guys seen this before? Can we talk about it?" Let's just start there. Some of the more common ones would be like Forbes, Barons, Investopedia, that type of thing. Let's start with how we think about these awards, whether they're worth the fee or not, and some of the things we've seen. Advisors listening to this, or watching this, can take away something to use in their practice and relay it on the next award they're nominated for.
Faustin Weber: Thanks so much, Stephen. I think we should first acknowledge how absurd this entire business model is. We put together a list based on criteria we determine. We put you as an advisor or your firm on the list, and then we turn around and ask for a licensing fee to acknowledge the fact that this list exists and that your firm or you are on the list as an advisor. It threw us off completely when we first started working with advisors. Truly.
Stephen Beach: It's like professional blackmail for credibility, I don't know how to describe it. At first, I'm like, this is a total crock. It's just a—
Faustin Weber: Yeah.
Stephen Beach: It's just a money grab. That's probably what a lot of people's first impressions are. Some of our clients have felt that way, and for ourselves as marketing agencies, it's the same thing. We get these, "Congrats, you've been recognized as the top 100 marketing agency for your excellent client service and blah, blah, blah". They have no idea who we are. They just got my email from a list somewhere and are asking for $2,500. I'm like, "This is a quick delete". So, a lot of skepticism is coming in.
Faustin Weber: Yeah.
Stephen Beach: When I first got into the industry in 2020, our initial thought was, "Well, it's just a money grab. This is kind of ridiculous. Why are we even really spending that much time on it?" But, just like red wine, we've matured. We've gotten a little bit better with age.
Faustin Weber: That's right. A little bit more nuance, right?
Stephen Beach: Yes.
Faustin Weber: Yeah. So, I guess the first big question is just to think of your target audience. You'll ask, "Will my audience, the ones I'm trying to get more prospects in, will they recognize this company right away? Is the brand giving the award something they'll instantly recognize and appreciate?" One of the advisors we have worked with, a long-time client, made a good point that this is a perception industry. Most people don't fully understand the ins and outs of how the actual financial practice works or that much about the offering all the time. So, an award from a recognizable company can help increase credibility, at least in terms of perception. So the first main—
Stephen Beach: I was going to say—
Faustin Weber: Yeah, can—
Stephen Beach: Real quick, sorry to cut you off. That's such a good point because that's why you see all these articles and videos of advisors saying, "If you're seeking a financial advisor, here are 10 questions you should ask them, 20 questions you should ask, here are the things you should be looking for". Because it really can be ambiguous, right? There's a whole spectrum of advisors, people who call themselves advisors—there are all kinds. So, I think that's where it comes from at first. It's a perception business, but there's also a lot of confusion that's kind of baked in, it's like underlying. So, I think that's a good point, just starting there.
Faustin Weber: Yeah. Nice.
Stephen Beach: Sorry to cut you off.
Faustin Weber: No, no, that's all right. And so, you see, the CNBC award is one that everyone recognizes, right? The firm award, the Forbes Awards, even though they'll split up the states, like the South Florida top 100, they try to put as many people as they can. But most of the time, prospects don't understand all the ins and outs or care about how it's set up. So, they'll just see "Forbes Award top advisor". There are some big brands that can carry a lot of credibility with your audience. One way I've verified this in partnering with some of our clients is by just interviewing. As part of our interview process, we interview our clients' clients and just ask them, "Hey, if so-and-so advisor was put on this Forbes list, would that mean something to you?" They'll tell me right away, "Oh yeah, absolutely. That would be a big award". We'll even see, and we'll talk a little bit about tactics to announce, but as an advisor, when you share one of these awards, if you've shared an award that people recognize, you get a lot of great anecdotal feedback that says, "Hey, congratulations on being on this list". So that's a good verification tool for you to say, "Okay, my decision to pay for this license, that's definitely something that's going to increase my credibility, increase my firm's credibility, because my clients told me straight up".
Stephen Beach: So maybe ask yourself, hey, if I'm considering this award, a Forbes award, let's say it's five grand for the year. What do you consider success if you pay that five grand? What do you want it to look and feel like? If you need a couple, or several, or ten clients to mention it to you proactively and say, "Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Advisor, congrats on that. That's cool," if that's success to you, that's great. I think it's just important to ask yourself that question: "What do I need? Do I need a number of website visitors? Do I need to put this everywhere in my collateral and talk about it often so I can close better? What is it?" I think that's maybe a philosophical question, but I think there's something there where people could ask themselves, "Okay, what does it really look like if I pay for this, and I project 12 months later, I'm looking back and saying, 'Oh yeah, that was really successful because of A, B, C?'" What's A, B, C? Yeah. Nice.
Faustin Weber: So, put some metrics behind it. One of the questions, too, is, "Is this something that I'm going to be proud to share everywhere?" Not just the initial announcement that I've gotten on this, like the CNBC list. Our firm is in the top 100. I'm not just going to be excited to announce that, but I'm going to be excited to share that for the next year, however long I get, in my email signature, across the website, in conversations, as a plaque on the conference table if you have in-person meetings. That's a good piece of criteria. The answer is yes, or a better way to think about it is, if the answer is no, if it's more just like, "Hey, I don't really care that much, I don't really want this to represent me on my website," then it's probably not going to be worth paying the licensing fee. That might be a truism, but it's just a different way to think about it. This is not just something you're going to invest in as a one-time thing. It's going to be something you'll want to promote for the rest of the year. Some other questions to help you evaluate: How is the pricing structured? Not only will they try to get you to pay a licensing fee, but they'll also structure it based on, "Well, you can only share this if you pay for this basic package, you can talk about the award, but you can't necessarily use the logo, or you can use the logo on these types of things, like on the website, but you can't use it in social collateral, and you can't use it in other sales like PDF collateral". Really look at that because, first of all, that's extremely frustrating. If you pay for a license, you should just be able to use it everywhere. But if there's a tiered model that really starts to limit your usage, then it might not be worth it for your firm or for you as an advisor. You really want to have full access to be able to share this and not have to worry about it again after you've made the payment. And then, just something to think about, speaking of tiers, if you pay for these awards, you better believe you're going to be top of the list to know how you've received the award for the next five years because you've just been put on a list, and the company is saying, "Hey, they actually paid for this licensing". We're going to hit them up when the next award comes out, and the next year's comes out, and the next year's comes out. So, one of the things we've noticed is that depending on when you announce the award and the runway for the licensing, you don't want to pay. There was one award that was coming out that would've been a great one for one of our clients, and everyone would've recognized it; I think it was actually an Investment News. They were recognizing a top advisor for 2024, and they were giving it out in March or April of 2025. So, we decided not to go forward with it because it's like we don't want to celebrate a 2024 award where it's going to end up being in the middle of 2025. By the time that runway goes all the way into 2026, the 2024 award is going to feel outdated.
Stephen Beach: Yeah.
Faustin Weber: Right? So, it's just one of these things that you have to think about, how long you can promote it, and at what point it's going to run out of its longevity. Does that make sense, what I'm saying, Stephen?
Stephen Beach: Award longevity. Yes.
Faustin Weber: Yeah. So, if all those are yes—if the brand of the award is something you'll recognize, everyone is excited to share it, you feel like your clients are going to be excited about it, the licensing structure makes sense, and you can use your award across all your collateral, and you can make the most of it for as close to 365 days as possible—then a lot of times we end up saying, "Yeah, this is going to be worth the investment to pay for this licensing". Okay, nice. So, Stephen, do you want to talk a little bit about how to make the most of it with sharing it and how to get the most out of it once you pay for the license?
Stephen Beach: Yeah. I just thought of something else too. We had an example a couple of years ago where our client chose to move forward with the award partly because he was hoping to distinguish his company as the one who won the award versus himself. Everybody knew him as the rainmaker. He was the one who went independent, his clients followed, and everybody knew him. They knew his first name; they didn't know his staff or recognize his company name as much. You learn this in the interviews with his clients when we're doing a messaging project. So, to him, there was value in paying for the award that kind of shows it at a firm level. "We've been recognized. It's not just about me anymore". "Sure, I'm here, I'm leading the team, but I have a great team behind me, and I'm proud of the company overall". And here we are, we've made it". I think that's probably a common one for those who've broken away or joined an existing RIA where one or two people might be more recognizable, but you want the firm to be recognized. That's just one other thing I thought of.
Yeah, in terms of promoting, sure, okay. Think about this: if you're going to pay the fee, then we need to get the most runway out of it, right? So, we've got to create an announcement plan and then a continued use plan. So, how do we announce it? Let's make a big splash with it, right? That could be social media channels, an email newsletter, maybe a video, definitely something on the website. We've used a couple of different things, like a thin banner across the top of the website. A pop-in banner that's on the bottom right of the website that only shows up after a certain number of seconds, or maybe only on certain pages. Maybe a blog post that says, "Hey, here's the award, here's what it means". "Thank you to my clients for getting me here and helping the firm achieve this awesome award. We wouldn't be here without you," that kind of thing, and make it about them. Those are just a few. You mentioned email signatures. Really try to use it in as many places as you are legally licensed to use it as part of the announcement strategy. On an ongoing basis, I like the idea that if you have the physical piece in your office and you're doing in-person meetings, that's great. If you're a fully remote team, maybe it just lives on your website, lives in your—
Faustin Weber: Yeah.
Stephen Beach: It stays on those. Social media-wise, I think this goes for a lot of different social content: you can recycle things too. Just come back to it in three months or six months because people forget, and people don't see it the first time around. You're a blip on a radar in a social media feed. So, you could recycle some of it as well. In collateral, maybe you could embed the image or the logo on a one-pager, for example, if you have one for sharing your process or your philosophy on investing. PowerPoint decks would be another one. Just bake it all over the place, embed that thing anywhere you can to get the most runway out of it. You don't want to put it straight in the middle of the website, like right in everyone's face. But I think it is a credibility authority piece that you have to put together a list of where you're going to use it and how.
Faustin Weber: Nice. I think you said that really well. I don't think you missed any tactics. We have a couple of clients that like to put all their awards at the bottom of every email newsletter that goes out to clients and/or prospects. So that would be another one. I think, too, just to add a quick point, treat the announcement like any other big announcement you might have. In the same vein as bringing on a new employee, you want to spotlight that employee. You want to have a plan around whether your company accounts are sharing it versus your personal accounts. Should personal accounts, whether on LinkedIn or even on platforms like Instagram, share their thoughts or comments? Thinking through all of the specific logistics—that's a lot of what we do with our clients. But that's all important for getting the most from the initial announcements. That's really where you're going to see the fruits of your five to ten thousand dollar investment for the licensing fee.
Stephen Beach: Ten grand. If I'm paying 10 grand, I might get that thing tattooed on my arm or something and just put it—
Faustin Weber: That's right. That's—
Stephen Beach: I mean, jeez,
Faustin Weber: Yeah. The problem is—
Stephen Beach: Disappearing tattoo. It—it—
Faustin Weber: You're going to have a nice line of tattoos going up your arm because you only have the legal ability to have that tattoo on your arm for one year, so you better get ready because—
Stephen Beach: No, that's no problem.
Faustin Weber: Disappearing. Okay.
Stephen Beach: Tattoo removal is light years ahead of where it was before, so I hear.
Faustin Weber: Yeah, you're right.
Stephen Beach: My dad would never let me get a tattoo.
Faustin Weber: Okay, so let's talk about the most annoying part: the compliance aspect of these awards. This is something we know from experience, having clients who have gone through a number of random SEC audits. Awards are something they look for, they definitely look for these. A couple of things we've learned: It's very important to make crystal clear the difference between an award given to the entire firm versus an individual advisor. You can definitely make an individual advisor award look like an overall firm award by the way you frame it and talk about it. As marketers, that's what we want to do, right? We're like, "Oh, this founder who got this award—that's a team award," and you can do some of the messaging in your announcement to clients. But the way you represent it on your site and in your public forums, you have to make sure in your disclosure, and also the way you talk about it, that it's an individual award versus a firm award. Your compliance people are going to have specific things you have to say. It's usually that we want to link out to the criteria wherever we're posting it, and we just have to reference the criteria so people can understand exactly how and why you won the award. So that's another thing with some of these awards: it's important to look at the criteria for how you got on this list because you're going to have to link to that anywhere you share it. Very few people, I think, care enough—when we look at the engagement for emails and whatnot, very few people actually click on the criteria or the methodology that you have to link. But I still think it's important because you may have people who go and look at it. If you just won an award for existing, which is how some of these lower-budget companies that are trying to leech off advisors actually share it, you want to make sure the criteria is something you're going to be proud of.
Stephen Beach: Yeah. Well said.
Faustin Weber: Anything else with firm awards that you feel would be good to talk through?
Stephen Beach: I think maybe we should explore the disappearing ink tattoos a little bit more.
Faustin Weber: Yeah, I think so.
Stephen Beach: Maybe some of our clients might be a little bit more forward thinkers, we can put that in front of them. We will come back and report back how that goes. Maybe you'll see people at trade shows walking around with a billboard on their chest, I don't know.
Faustin Weber: I think we just started a trend.
Stephen Beach: That's what we want. All right, well, hopefully, that was helpful, and we'll be back with more soon.
Key Takeaways:
Here's what Faustin and Stephen discussed regarding financial advisor awards
-
Be Wary of "Money Grab" Awards: Many advisor awards operate as a "money grab," where organizations nominate firms and then charge a licensing fee to use the award in marketing. Do your homework first.
-
Perception and Brand Recognition: Financial advising relies on how people see it. Awards from well-known brands like Forbes or CNBC can greatly boost a firm's standing and help it get noticed, even if clients don't fully grasp the award's details.
-
Define Success and Your Desire to Share: Before paying for an award, advisors should clarify what a win looks like for them (e.g., client mentions, website traffic, better closing rates). Also, consider whether you will display the award across all marketing channels for the entire license period.
-
Award Structure and Duration: Review the pricing to make sure you have full rights to use the award. If there's a tiered system that limits how you can use it, it might not be a worthwhile expense. And of course, think about how long the award will seem current. Avoid paying for awards that will feel old before the license runs out.
-
Ways to Promote: To get the most from your investment, have a plan for announcing the award (social media, email, website banners, blog posts, video, and all that jazz) and for ongoing use (email signatures, firm materials, office plaques). Share content regularly, as people often forget or miss initial announcements.
-
Compliance Matters: Differentiate between firm-wide awards and individual advisor awards in public statements and disclosures. Advisors must be ready to link to the award criteria wherever it's shared, as this is a common focus during SEC audits.
Shameless plug for Craft on Tap
Figuring out if advisor awards are worth the investment can be tricky. The key? Know when to embrace perceived credibility and when to prioritize genuine value.
This conversation is only a starting point. For ongoing insights and practical strategies for RIA growth, listen to the new Craft on Tap marketing podcast. Available now, wherever you find your podcasts. Ready to chat? Get in Touch
Listen to Craft on Tap, Growth Marketing for RIAs:
