What’s on the horizon for Advisor Evolved in 2016 and beyond?

Now that 2015 is in the books (and what a year?!) it’s time to gear up and focus on 2016.

What does that mean for you and your agency? What are some things you’re going to work on in 2016? No really, I’m curious, you should drop us a comment below and let us know!

Here at Advisor Evolved we have a lot of things planned for 2016, many of which are extremely exciting!

One of the most exciting things we’re rolling out in 2016 is this….

The new podcast from Advisor Evolved — The Digital Advisor.

Podcasting is something that I’ve been doing on and off for the better part of 5 years, both for personal projects, and business stuff, and it’s something I’ve always liked doing but just never consistently had the time to crank out a decent number of shows.

In 2016, podcasting is going to be a significant extension of the Advisor Evolved brand.

It’s a great way to add a different dynamic to your message, and what’s cool about delivering content in audio format is that it’s one of the few types of content people can consume while doing other activities.

Eventually The Digital Advisor will be available for download and subscription in iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud, and in your favorite podcast apps (I personally use Pocket Casts and it’s awesome!).

For now, head on over the the new podcast page and check it out! You’ll even be able to submit voicemail questions which we’ll answer live on the show! Neat right?

We’re going to cover a number of things on the podcast, and the content will align greatly with what you see on our blog, plus we’ll have some interviews with some awesome guests, so stay tuned!

New Designs

Aside from the podcast, a huge focus for us in 2016 will be creating new agency website designs. This is an area where we feel like we bring tremendous value.

At the time of this writing we have 2 new designs in development, both of which should be done in early-mid Q1.

If you’ve been patiently waiting for the new designs to be released, just know that they’ll be worth the wait.

Streamlined On-boarding Process

Something that I’ve wanted to streamline since the launch of Advisor Evolved last June is our customer signup & site setup process.

Truthfully, there’s nothing wrong or broken with the way we’re doing it now, but I want it to be even easier, — dead simple for the customer to get us their information to launch their new site, and even easier for us to launch that site, so we can get our customers up and running even faster.

Most of the process is “manual” meaning that sites are setup by hand, by either myself, or one of our team members. This is both good, because of the detail oriented nature of the setup process, but also labor intensive, so my goal is to try and automate some of the process in 2016.

Marketing Dashboard Content

If you signed up with Advisor Evolved before the end of 2015, we ran a promotion that we’ll likely not run again any time soon that grandfathered customers into our Premium Plan for the same cost as the Core Plan, for life.

The Marketing Dashboard will be just that — a dashboard chock full of marketing coaching, training, and over-the-shoulder tutorials that teach you everything you need to know about digital marketing, as well as offline marketing.

And while we’re on the subject, one of the modules is a lesson on starting your own podcast!

Plans & Pricing Tweaks

My goal when we launched Advisor Evolved was to have 3 different plans for customers to choose from. As we sit here today, only one of them is readily available.

This was very much intentional as I wanted to see how the M.V.P. (minimum viable product) would be received first before building out the rest of the platform.

The Premium Plan is in the works and my plan is to have a majority of it completed in early Q3. Once lessons are done along the way, we’ll notify you so you can login and access them as we build out the content.

The third plan, which we haven’t spoken too much about here is pretty far off from being ready. That plan offers a more “managed” approach, where our team would jump into an agency and help them create content, and manage their online brand.

Due to the labor intensive nature of this type of service, we’re holding off on this plan until we have a solid framework in place for how we’ll actually manage an agency’s brand.

Add-On Services

One of the things we’ve seen quite a bit of as people have signed up with us is the need to migrate their agency email accounts. Many of our competitors offer to host clients’ emails, which can be convenient, but also dangerous for the client if they decide to leave.

In my opinion, your email and domain name should always be “self-managed” with no one else but you controlling it.

As such, we are thinking of (and will most likely be) offering email migration services to Google Apps for Business as an add-on service in 2016.

Conclusion

2016 is already shaping up to be an exciting year for Advisor Evolved. If you are an existing client, I can’t thank you enough for your business, and the confidence you’ve placed in AE to help you manage and grow your brand and digital footprint.

Seriously — thank you so much.

To prospective customers: if you’ve been kicking the tires and are in need of a better website, and solid actionable advice that will help you build your business, we are the company you can lean on for that.

Here’s to an exciting and prosperous year! Good luck!