Three Crowns Mixtape: October 21, 2022

Important financial industry news + marketing insights + good music.

Need something to read while jammin’ out to TSwift’s latest album? We’ve got you covered.

This week’s mixtape includes:

• SMArtX adds billing

• YouTube URL hacks

• Tips to increase your SERP

• And more!

Must-Read Financial Industry & Marketing Articles

SMArtX Advisory Solutions Adds Billing Functionality

Better ways for advisors to bill is definitely in the air. In recent years you’ve had AdvicePay launch to help advisors bill one-time planning fees, and more recently you’ve got Smart Kx to simplify the alignment of advisory fees with contractual obligations.

Billing seems like it should be a simple task, but in reality it’s often incredibly complicated and difficult for advisory firms to manage well. So TAMP platform SMArtX Advisory is now rolling out an enterprise billing platform of its own.

Much like the way Apple has built a walled garden of apps, adding features like billing functionality is a way for tech platforms to get stickier relationships with advisors and keep them more invested in a single relationship that powers everything.

It’s Super SMArt

Grab a Handle

If you haven’t noticed before, the URL associated with your YouTube channel can sometimes be a little weird. Well, that time is gone.

This week YouTube (Google) announced it would be rolling out channel handles. What’s that mean for you? If you have a channel, you’ll now be able to set a unique URL so people can more easily find you.

If you don’t have a YouTube channel yet, now is the time to get it. At minimum, create one for your firm so you can reserve your preferred handle in the event you do want to launch a YouTube channel at some point in the future.

(And if you do want to launch a YouTube show or podcast, we’re here to help. Click here and let’s chat about it.)

You Get a Handle! You Get a Handle!

Digital Marketing Joke: Where’s the Best Place to Hide a Dead Body?

Punchline: On the second page of Google results, because no one will ever find it.

(Pause for laughs.)

But seriously, folks. If you’re still struggling to hit page one with your search results, this article covering five common reasons your page isn’t ranking is for you.

As with basically everything Orbit Media puts out there, they’ve got the stats to back it up – including the fact that more than 90% of pages on the internet get zero organic traffic from Google. Unbelievable.

The piece is chock full of practical tips on how to analyze your existing content and how to make it better.

Fix That Dank Rank

Bento Engine Grows by Three

You’d expect a fintech company that’s all about empowering advisors to deliver proactive advice to also be proactive itself, and that’s the vibe we’re getting here.

Bento Engine announced it’s adding three new members to its team and they’re all big hires. Here they are:

• Cassie Jackson is joining from AdvicePay as the new Chief Growth Officer

• Marcus Davis left Better to become the new Advice Evangelist and Business Development Rep

• Charlotte Ketelaar is now Chief of Staff

Bento’s an exciting new startup and these additions are a positive sign of company growth. Congrats everyone!

Three (Financial) Musketeers

Google’s Pulling the ol’ Switcheroo (again)

Is your site showing up different in mobile search results? Same here (sometimes)! Google recently announced they’re using site name rather than title tags in mobile results to keep results cleaner on smaller screens.

At the moment, it doesn’t look like you can control if and when it happens, and you can’t control what the name displays as either. Google says they’re determining site names themselves using a mixture of site structure info, headers, tags and meta data.

It’s a little inconsistent. Google seems to only display the site name when searches are performed specific ways.

For example: When you search the term “three crowns,” the old version with title tags shows up. But when you search “three crowns marketing,” the cleaner version shows up with just the site name (see below).

Is this a big deal? Does it matter? Probably not that much. It doesn’t change how your site ranks, it shouldn’t affect anything else. But if you were wondering why your site was showing up differently on mobile results, now you know.

A Results Remix

Riskalyze Marks Fearless 2022 with Major Updates

If you happened to miss Riskalyze’s annual Fearless Investing Summit this year, we want to make sure you didn’t miss the absolute smorgasbord of app updates they announced there.

The enhancements take aim at improving client experiences, proactive communication tools, and compliance oversight capabilities.

Oh, and CEO Aaron Klein also casually mentioned in his keynote that a company name change might be coming up? Keep those eyes on Riskalyze, folks. Big things are on the horizon.

There’s An App for That

Here’s what we’ve been listening to this week.