-HubSpot Quarterly Impact Awards Candidate - Website Design-

Changing the way financial advice is delivered

Persuasive messaging and Customer Centric design in a regulated industry
- for Precedence Private Wealth -

I was attracted to Market 8 because of the conversational copy on their website. I knew this was the direction I wanted for Precedence, but never realized the science behind it to efficiently use the voice of my customers as the center of this whole process. Very impressive...”

Todd McLay

CEO & Founder
Precedence Private Wealth

Precedence Private Wealth

Precedence Private Wealth (PPW) is a full service financial planning firm located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

They are a group of seasoned financial planning experts who specialize in wealth management, insurance planning, tax planning, mortgages and financing, employee benefits and savings plans.

They all believe in one thing: Financial advisors only plan your financial future through putting together a portfolio that matches your investment objectives. However, there is much more to it, and solely focusing on investments does not maximize EVERY financial opportunity you may have.

Market 8 worked with Precedence Private Wealth to formulate a value proposition and website that reflected their unique differentiators.

www.precedencewealth.com

1. Why a Customer-Centric website?

As CEO & Founder of Precedence Private Wealth a full service financial planning firm located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Todd McLay, needed a website that reflected and clearly formulated their unique value proposition.

Our site was expected - a black background, a lion… but I knew there was more to it, I just had to find the right partner to help me build the vision. Luckily HubSpot matched us with Market 8.” - Todd McLay

Unlike past web design firms, who just executed the branding aspect of design, Todd immediately saw the value of our customer centric methodology, understanding through data mining the role of the website in a buyer’s journey and building a customer behavior theory.

Market 8 was able to trace that our clients came from references at the evaluation stage and were looking for reassurance. Our website needed to encourage visitors to engage with our brand in a meaningful way, convey authority, trust, credibility, and legitimacy.” - Todd McLay

Precedence Private Wealth’s vision and key differentiators (truly holistic process, quality work, human approach, and linking people’s life objectives with financial planning), were all hidden behind undifferentiated language. The Homepage, About Us and the Process sections were our primary focus as they were the areas most visited by users.

Market 8 helped us uncover that our customers did not understand our unique value proposition and positioning - our buyers couldn’t grasp exactly what we did and how we were different than mainstream financial planners.” - Todd McLay

Storytelling Homepage
A key differentiator of Precedence is their approach to delivering financial advice to their clients.
We needed the homepage design to help shock the client driving a clear contrast between Precedence’s approach and the traditional financial advisory firm.
About Us
In a firm like Precedence, the About Us is one of the most visited areas. The buyers always look to see more about the firm, who’s behind it and make sure it’s a trustworthy firm.
The message and design of the About Us area was oriented to clear out those concerns from clients so that the conversation can move forward.
Walk thru the process
A core piece of Precedence’s value proposition is the process they follow to help clients take control over every single aspect of their finances.
Each one of the steps in the process gives the buyer a summary, and an easy to digest story about why that step is important.
Making the team shine
For a financial advisory firm, trust is a must. We created a layout that presents the team using large beautiful photography and personable descriptions that highlight their long experience, credentials, and contact info.

2. Business Deep Dive

Through hours of business strategy sessions with Precedence, asking in-depth questions about the buyers and the business, we focused on pinpointing exactly what’s the DNA of Precedence offering. This underlying DNA relied on the approach to giving financial advice to the clients: most firms focus was to “manage your portfolio” whereas Precedence’s focus was on advising clients on “how to take control of your entire financial life.”

The one thing that I loved about Market 8’s own site, was the conversational copy. It resonated with me, and I wanted our website to have the same effect.” - Todd McLay

When crafting a message, there are 2 very important things: understand the buyer and understand the business; if at the end of the deep dive process I can’t sell your product, I’m not prepared to make a website for you.”

Eduardo Esparza,

CEO and Chief Web Architect
Messaging director for this project
Market 8

3. Crafting the Message & Designing Around It

Producing a persuasive site in a regulated industry was a great challenge - Todd wanted to move away from the financial industry’s expected, boring “we are, we do” and jargony corporate websites. Given the strict regulations around the finance industry, we had to ensure that the copy, navigation and disclosures were compliant.

When I first read the homepage copy, I was thrilled - it reads exactly as if we had met the conversation in the heads of our buyers and it sounded like us!”. - Todd McLay

This is a lead generation site, so each website page needed to have clear and specific value propositions, and benefit oriented messaging that would resonate with buyers. The message was created in an iterative process: every part of the message was tested with real customers to gain insights and identify which positioning would resonate better.

The website design was focused on complementing the message, accommodating a storytelling format throughout the site. The design choices followed a few clear design principles that reflect the personality of Precedence: Simple, Clear, Trustworthy, and Human.

This is was my big AH HA moment - they tried brainwashing me into “copy drives design, and not be the other way around” but it was really at this point, seeing how the design supported the copy that I became an evangelist.” - Todd McLay

My vision for the Precedence website was to create a timeless, corporate and classy feel while crafting and executing a smooth and friendly user experience.”

Hiba Moujabber

Sr. UX Designer
Market 8

What's Next for Precedence?

Precedence Private Wealth is building a scalable Resource Center space to support their content strategy. It will need to quickly scale up to hold the increasing volume of content that is on plan to be generated.

The website has been an essential lead generation tool for us, onboarding clients looking for a wealth management firm that will help them maximize every financial opportunity. Thank you!” - Todd McLay

Working with Precedence Private Wealth and Todd McLay has given Market 8 the opportunity to demonstrate that even in the most regulated industries, we were able to produce a persuasive website that resonated with buyers… ”

Yasmine de Aranda

Growth Strategist
Market 8

Changing the way financial advice is delivered