Social media is a great source of new clients and is a tremendous tool for brand building and sharing expertise. It has become an essential element of a holistic marketing strategy, meaning that if you’re neglecting social or treating it as a secondary channel, you're missing out on opportunities to connect with prospects and clients on a large scale.
Although social media is not the only way to market your services, it is the most effective avenue for increasing your visibility and establishing trust with potential clients. The on-demand nature of social media allows financial advisors to be authentic and engage with a scope of people that they normally would not have had access to. It surpasses traditional methods like word-of-mouth and cold-calling by providing a wider reach and being time-efficient.
Notably, a Smart Asset report revealed that 19% of advisors identified social media outreach as a key marketing goal in 2023, underscoring its value as a potent marketing tool. To build an effective social media strategy and expand your reach, it's crucial to understand the overall benefits of social media marketing and the unique benefits of each platform.
The role of social media marketing for financial advisors #
As a financial advisor, social media marketing involves leveraging social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or X (previously Twitter), to promote and market your services and brand.
This approach harnesses the influence of social media networks to connect with a target audience, establish brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and, ultimately, generate and capture leads. The goal is to leverage the various features and reach of social media to enhance visibility, build trust, and effectively market yourself and your services.
How to stand out on social media as a financial advisor #
An effective social media strategy needs to be thorough, consistent, creative, and authentic. With so many people marketing themselves and their services online, it’s paramount to stand out as someone reliable, trustworthy, and likable. However, most importantly, it’s crucial to just find a way to stand out.
Social media users see an average of 6000-10,000 ads a day and spend an average of 2 hours and 28 minutes on social media. That means people are consuming a lot of content. And, to be memorable, you need to find your voice, develop your expertise within your niche, and create a memorable experience.
However, it’s also important to find the right balance between self-promotion, service promotion, and content promotion. Hootsuite's 2024 Social Trends Survey revealed that 43% of participants hold a negative view of brands and influencers engaged in excessive self-promotion. Additionally, 32% expressed a negative perception towards those who create bad content. To properly engage your audience, you need to produce content that is educational and showcases your expertise, without directly promoting yourself or your services too much. Your goal in all your social media interactions should be to add value for your audience.
To stand out in a crowded digital marketplace, you need to figure out what you’re good at, and what content your followers are resonating with, and double down on it.
Having said all this, what value-add can you provide for your followers? Do you have subject matter expertise in a specific niche? Are you good at explaining complicated concepts? Are you funny? How can you stand out online in a way that’s true to yourself?
The importance of authenticity as a financial advisor on social media #
For a financial advisor, being authentic means more than just presenting accurate information or having a polished image. It involves crafting a meaningful and brand-aligned experience for clients.
As AI tools become more widespread, it is crucial to uphold authenticity while leveraging these technologies. Hootsuite's research on Social Trends in Financial Services 2024 reveals that 61% of organizations primarily use AI in social media to reduce workload. In the upcoming year, the most significant increase in AI usage is expected in text revision, image editing, and customer service. With the prevalence and access to AI tools on the rise, striking a balance between using AI for mass content generation and maintaining brand integrity is essential.
Authenticity plays a crucial role in building trust and fostering long-term relationships with clients. As the role of social media in marketing grows in 2024, the definition of authenticity has evolved to also include an emphasis on the importance of the overall brand experience rather than just the creator of the content. It's no longer just about whether the advisor as a person appears genuine, but also about how the brand the advisor is creating and representing is presented and interacts with its audience across various touchpoints.
Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms #
Prioritizing your efforts on platforms that resonate with your target audience and yield the highest return on investment is crucial. It’s better to do really well on one or two platforms, than to spread yourself thin and have only average performance on multiple sites.
And doing well on a platform requires more than just posting. You need to post consistently, utilize all the platform’s tools and also engage with your audience to grow your presence.
The biggest considerations when selecting where to focus your social media efforts are to choosing the media channels where your target audience already interact and focusing on a channel that offers the best showcase for your content (i.e. are you most comfortable with text or video, long or short form?)
Understanding the distinctions between the main social media platforms will help you choose where to focus your efforts and what kind of content to post.
LinkedIn for Financial Advisors #
LinkedIn is an excellent tool for professional networking, promoting your thought leadership content, and growing your network. It’s a valuable platform for lead generation and includes tools such as direct mail, targeted advertising and seminars that are cost-effective and easy to use.
LinkedIn is also effective for communicating with different types of working professionals. Whether this is young families with children, or older professionals planning retirement, the content length that LinkedIn encourages is useful for demonstrating your knowledge and providing your readers with valuable information. Through the LinkedIn article or newsletter feature, you can publish long form content that is recognized by Google and shows up in search results. Consistently sharing informative material will enable you to establish credibility within your niche and expand your brand as a trusted advisor.
In addition to communicating with your target audience through content, you can also connect with them through LinkedIn groups. You can discover new groups through the search bar and join groups discussing topics related to your niche. Additionally, consider joining groups with othr advisors to foster a network within your industry. Leverage these groups as platforms to share your insights and content, further establishing your presence and expertise among peers and potential clients.
LinkedIn also serves as a channel for easy web traffic, especially when posts or publications link back to your website. This not only boosts web traffic but also establishes a consistent influx of new prospects, aligning with the principles of inbound marketing. Furthermore, the platform enhances trust-building through Google. Effective LinkedIn profiles receive preferential treatment in search results and will help reinforce your online presence.
Facebook for Financial Advisors #
Facebook provides financial advisors with a multifaceted platform to nurture relationships, share expertise, engage with target audiences, and leverage powerful advertising tools through the Facebook Ads Manager.
Facebook is great for maintaining close relationships with existing customers and prospects. It’s a great tool for joining groups with people looking for specific things which means you can easily match your targeted content to the appropriate group of prospects.
The biggest value of Facebook for financial advisors is that it's a great way to maintain close relationships with existing clients and prospects. The platform serves as a valuable tool for engaging with specific target audiences through groups and pages. One key strategy for Facebook marketing is joining relevant industry or niche groups and pages. Additionally, financial advisors can engage with potential clients by joining groups and pages where discussions about their niche are prevalent. For example, if you specialize in retirement planning, you could join a Facebook group where people are discussing managing retirement and funds. This will help put you in direct contact with individuals seeking your services or advice.
X (previously Twitter) for Financial Advisors #
With approximately 556 million active monthly users, X presents a vast potential for financial advisors to enhance brand visibility and reach a large audience. It provides financial advisors with a platform to actively engage with a large audience, leverage interactive features like polls, enhance brand recognition, and drive valuable traffic to their websites, ultimately fostering business growth and client acquisition.
You can leverage X to showcase your brand, market services, and products, all while actively engaging with clients. However, it is crucial to remember that X is primarily a social platform – meaning it’s a platform for you to showcase your brand and personality more than it is one to promote your services. People on X are looking to connect with one another and learn.
Instagram for Financial Advisors #
Instagram is a versatile platform for client engagement, content promotion, and targeted advertising, making it a valuable part of any advisor’s digital marketing toolkit.
Similar to Facebook, Instagram is a great tool for engaging with your customers and prospects and keeping up to date with their life-changing events. This is particularly valuable for advisors aiming to foster meaningful connections with their clientele.
Instagram is also a great way to showcase your expertise. The platform gives you diverse outlets for sharing your knowledge, such as Reels, Stories, or Posts. It supports various media forms, including images, graphics, videos, and live-stream events. The interactive Story feature allows advisors to conduct polls and gather insights from their followers, fostering engagement and interactivity.
In addition to organic content, Instagram ads offer a valuable avenue for financial advisors to enhance their online presence and precisely target their desired audience. An added advantage lies in the seamless integration of Instagram with Facebook, both being owned by Meta. Financial advisors can synchronize their efforts on both platforms by linking an Instagram account to their Facebook page. This integration enables the creation of ads that can appear on both Facebook and Instagram, maximizing the reach and impact of their marketing campaigns.
Mastering the art of cross-posting #
While it is important to focus on the social media platforms that offer the best return on investment (ROI), there's an alternative strategy worth considering. If you can effectively maintain a presence across multiple platforms with minimal effort, you have a greater chance of expanding your reach. For those advisors looking to connect with a large audience this approach makes a lot of sense.
But if you are going to pursue this strategy, keep a couple of things in mind: 1) don’t over-reach and dilute your social media efforts, and 2) be aware of the differences and and expectations of each platform and tailor your content accordingly.
You could share identical content across all social media platforms, but making slight adjustments to reflect the differences in platform and audience can significantly enhance your engagement. For instance, on LinkedIn, you might create a couple of detailed paragraphs and provide a link to a blog article on your website. Whereas on Instagram you could distill the main idea by using the first and last sentences of the blog article. And on X, you can condense the message even further and add a few relevant hashtags. Using the same image or video for all three posts, you can effortlessly create three distinct posts in as little as 20 minutes. This approach maximizes efficiency and ensures that your content resonates effectively with diverse audiences on various platforms.
Wrap up #
In conclusion, social media has become essential for financial advisors, offering a powerful means to reach new clients, build trust, and showcase expertise. Authenticity is crucial, especially as AI tools become more common. And, choosing the right platforms, such as LinkedIn for networking and sharing long-form content or Instagram for personal engagement with customers and prospects, is vital.
Overall, embracing social media is essential for advisors to thrive in today's digital landscape.
