Social Media Marketing Tips for Financial Advisors

Millions of people use social media every day. And there's likely a huge gap in your marketing plan if you're not leveraging them to promote your advisory business. Social media platforms offer an opportunity to connect with prospects and current clients on a scale that's unmatched. Knowing how to approach social media marketing for financial advisors is essential to carving out a niche for your brand in a competitive landscape. Ready to tackle your marketing plan and start scaling your business? Here's how to get started.

If you are looking to grow your financial advisory business once you become an advisor, check out SmartAsset's SmartAdvisor platform.

Do Financial Advisors Need Social Media?

There's no rule that says financial advisors need to use social media to market their businesses. However, there's some definite value to be had in social media as a marketing tool. Here are some of the ways social media can enhance your marketing efforts as an advisor.

• Expand Your Reach: Social media makes it possible to get your branding and messaging in front of a wider audience. Globally, more than 4.65 billion people around are active on social media platforms. Within that number is a sizable pool of prospects who may be looking for the kind of financial services you provide.

• Build Trust: Trust is an important component of the client-advisor relationship. Clients want to know that you're in their corner and that they can rely on you to do what you say you will. Social media gives you a platform for building trust around your business through your messaging.

• Define Your Brand: In a sea of competition, how you approach branding can be critical to making your advisory business stand out. Social media creates a path for doing just that. Branding encompasses everything from your business logos to the tone you use in your content. A consistent approach to branding across social media channels can help make your business ‘sticky', in the sense that it becomes clearly recognizable to prospects and current clients.

• Gain Insight: To serve clients effectively, you must first understand what they need. Social media can be an effective way to identify what their financial pain points are and what kind of solutions they might be looking for. You can also use social media to monitor industry trends, which can be invaluable in helping you shape your marketing strategy.

• Humanize Your Services: The financial services industry is built around people – without clients, your business would cease to exist. Being active on social media is an opportunity to remind your clients that you are, in fact, a person just like them. Social media can allow you to create an ongoing dialogue with your clients, which can help to strengthen your working relationship.

Social Media Marketing for Financial Advisors

If you're not using social media yet or you are but not to its full potential, it's not too late to rethink your marketing plan. Here are some tips that can help you to make the most of social media as a marketing tool.

1. Know Your Audience

 Social media is such a vast landscape and new platforms are being created all the time. You could take a scattershot approach and try to target all of them. But focusing on just one or two channels can be a more effective use of your time and resources.

That's where knowing your audience comes in. Try asking these questions if you're not sure which social media platforms you should be using:

• Who is my target audience, demographically speaking?

• What financial problems do they need help with?

• Which social media channels do they traffic most often?

• Are they primarily consuming written or video content?

Asking those kinds of questions can help you determine which social media platforms to use. They can also help you figure out what kind of content you should be creating to get prospects' attention.

2. Engage

Client engagement is a focal point of any advisory business. If your clients feel a disconnect, they may decide to move on to a different advisor.

Social media is an excellent way to boost engagement in simple ways. For example, you might post a poll or survey about a specific topic or issue. And you might ask your followers to respond. Or you may simply pose an open-ended question to facilitate a discussion.

Replying to comments shows that you're paying attention, not just posting for posting's sake.

3. Include a Call to Action

Social media can help you gain a sizable following. But that following may not be worth much if new followers aren't converting to new clients.

You can change that by including a clear call to action (CTA) in your social media posts. For example, if you're sharing thoughts on a recent study, you can direct followers to read more about the topic on your blog.

If you're interested in expanding your email marketing, you might try a different approach and include a CTA for followers to sign up for your email list. Or you might use social media to promote a freebie you're offering on your website, such as a free webinar.

Giving your social media followers an actionable ‘next step' to take can lead to more opportunities for you to familiarize them with your services.

4. Be Consistent

One of the secrets of social media marketing for financial advisors (and other businesses) is consistency. When you follow a set posting schedule, you can get your followers in the habit of anticipating new updates from you.

That applies to email marketing and content marketing as well. If your social media posts (or email newsletters or blog posts) regularly provide valuable tips or information, your readers are more likely to look forward to them.

5. Create Shareable Content

While your social media content doesn't necessarily have to go viral to get attention, it does have to be something your current followers are willing to share. When content gets shared on social media, that's effectively free advertising that can help you to build a larger audience.

What constitutes shareable content? There's no magic formula but generally, it's content that's designed to spark emotion, discussion or debate. In simple terms, it has to be so good that someone reading it just has to share it with friends, family or their own followers on social media.

6. Follow the Rules

The Federal Trade Commission and FINRA have explicit guidelines in place about what advisors can and can't say on social media. It's important to follow the rules when posting to avoid running afoul of current regulations.

The Bottom Line

Social media marketing for financial advisors isn't that different from marketing other types of businesses, in terms of what it takes to be successful. The better you know your audience, where they spend time online and what type of content they're most interested in, the more effectively you can fine-tune your social media efforts to meet their needs.

Financial Advisor Marketing Tips

• Outsource your marketing efforts: Marketing can take up valuable time and it's important that the time spent produce your desired return on investment. Using a lead generation service like SmartAdvisor can leave you free to focus on other areas of your business. That's something 63% of advisors opted to do in 2022 to bolster their marketing strategies.

• Increase your digital footprint: More people are using internet searches to connect with financial advisors. If you're not making a name for yourself online, via a website, blog or social media, you could be missing a chance to connect with people who can benefit from your services. As you work on expanding your digital presence, consider using a service that can help you connect with prospective clients directly.

Photo credit: ©iStock.com/Renata Angerami, ©iStock.com/Prostock-Studio, ©iStock.com/Olga Serba

The post Social Media Marketing Tips for Financial Advisors appeared first on SmartAsset Blog.