If you’ve ever completed a Gabriel report we understand why you don’t want to look at a computer again.
It doesn’t matter how good an adviser you are, we have noticed one thing.

All advisers have the same difficulty using social media.

Any of these sound familiar?

“I put in a lot of time to social but can’t see any good results”
“I’m stuck in my marketing and don’t know how to progress”
“I don’t understand why some advisers seem to get clients online”
“Not having a big following makes me miss out on opportunities”
“I don’t have a social plan, I just randomly post stuff”
“I can’t figure out how to attract good clients online”

If this sounds like you, then you’re in the right place. We’ve got some great social media strategies for financial advisers below.

You don’t have to do them all, but if you start chipping away at one, you should start to see the creep of results – and you know, the more you do, the more likely you are to get more traction.

If you think you might want a more hands-on approach, reach out to us (CLICK HERE) and we’ll give you a run down of what we would do in your position.

1.
Use less social media.

Seriously. You don’t have to use every platform, if you’re doing that, stop. Now. Pick two and focus all of your energy on that. We would recommend you start writing and using your website as a blog (everyone likes to see you know what you’re talking about) and use these blog articles to share on Google My Business and Facebook.

2.
Follow fewer people.

Don’t follow random people in the hope they follow you back. Don’t follow those you’re not genuinely interested in. And don’t fret about unfollowing people – often. The better your feed is, the more likely you are to engage and offer real value to those who want to see it. It’s also worth noting that who you follow builds your personal algorithm and changes your recommendations, so your feed gets better over time.

3.
Don’t waste your bio.

Your bio, the ‘about us’ info, the location, etc. Make sure it is all completely filled out, correct and relevant. make sure your website is in there, and that it works when you click it. Make sure your location is filled out, your map directs people to your office, or wherever you work/meet. Make sure you’ve written any relevant info – don’t want mortgage clients, write that – you’ll save the client time, and yourself. Only deal in clients who have large portfolios, state it upfront. Your bio is important real estate, make sure it is well used.

If someone is asking “what can this person do for me” your bio should let them know.

4.
Create evergreen content.

Evergreen content is content that reaches out and speaks to a client whether it is January or July. Using social media, you’ll have to have info about tax year ends, important key updates, budget etc – but there are rules that don’t change. ISA’s are good, the benefits of life/CI insurance, the long term benefits of pensions.

Yes thresholds change, yes, we occasionally get updates for the products (LISA’s etc) but the general info remains the same. Savings, investments and insurance should all be used, no matter your income levels.

Consider this. It takes the same amount of time to create evergreen content as it does for topical content, but the value of evergreen content is infinitely higher, and grows.

5.
Reply and engage

Even if you don’t love social media this is the first thing people check on new business. They ask questions, and they expect them answered. Even if you don’t get to it right away, it is worth setting aside as little as ten minutes per day to check your notifications as this is where people are truly saying “can you help me?”.

Not only do you show your professional knowledge and expertise to the person who asked the question, but to all of those who see it subsequently.

6.
You need to invest in it: time, effort, AND money

Yes, social media can be the route to a free audience, but you have to create the spark. Imagine investing £12,000 in to a product and then refusing to spend money to tell potential clients about it.

Facebook advertising is far and above the easiest method of advertising available. You can put an advert up in 20 minutes. You don’t have to have all the hassle that goes with newspaper advertising, or radio advertising and you can see information on Facebook that radio and newspapers won’t tell you.

How many people saw my advert, how many people saw it multiple times, how many people clicked on it, how many people watched my video, how much of my video did they watch. And if you’re not completely happy with the results, you can stop the advert after a day. You can scale up or down your spending, you can target ads to older people with images of older people (who are more likely to click if they see people like them) you can put out the same ad with different images targeted to men, women, families, old, young – these ads all get clicked more when people can relate.

You just can’t do any of this with radio, TV, or newspaper advertising. And with social ads you can start as little as £1 per day spending.

7.
Facebook Ads 101

Here’s the “how to” in brief.

– Pick a piece of content that you want to promote – I’m going to pick insurance, something everyone should have.
– Pick an audience. I’m going to pick women, and I’m going to team this up with ‘parents of kids’. Facebook knows you have kids, as you browse kid content, CBeebies, mum blogs, mommy instagrammers and forums… (yeah, it knows all this)
– Create an ad that targets this group, and use an article/blog you’ve got about the benefits of insurance for new parents.
– Make sure your webpage with the blog has a call to action at the bottom (call us, contact form, “click to email”)

Though decisions like this are likely made jointly, targeting mums has already shown to convert higher, click email and call. (We’re not saying dads don’t consider this, we’re only telling you what we’ve tested, and has worked for previous clients of ours).

8.
Start a newsletter

We know, some of you are thinking this already sounds hard. But, in financial services, you already have a lot of pre-made content. You don’t have to re-make it all, just bring it to your audiences attention.

Tax year end, budget announcements, what’s going on in the economy, what you’re picking in investments (not financial advice, just an overview), case studies, your outside interests (this makes you “more human”).

Email continues to convert at far higher rates than any other medium because your audience is warm and it knows you. Further to this, your existing list of clients can be loaded in to Facebook to grow your existing audience (this is more advanced Facebook targeting, but is great if you have an existing audience).

Grow your email list, send a curated email list once per month.

9.
Get yourself a promotional partner

Sounds obvious, but build a digital partnership team. Get your investment managers to work with you on promoting join content (write a piece about why you work with them, and get them to share it), if you work with an external mortgage broker share case studies that cover you and them working in tandem for a mortgage/ISA client. If you deal with trusts or probate share stuff with your legal partners, if you’re supporting charities work with them to cross promote content (this may be easier to do with a local charity, than it is if you choose larger charities).

Write about your partners, write about your team, get them all tagged on your social posts and linked on your website. Write about your clients, get them to share (a social post or recommendation from an existing client is worth 10 of your own!) and shout about your joint successes as it makes it easier for them to do the same and gives them content to fill their own social media timelines.

Bonus

The best strategy is; stick with it. Be consistent. Social and digital media is a long term strategy, it takes a while to get the wheels moving and get some momentum, but once you’ve got this going it is hard to stop – it continues like a flywheel spinning. It isn’t about hitting one post and “going viral” it’s about getting better value to your audience, and growing 1% a day. It sort of like your kids growing up, you don’t see the centimetres each week or month, but they’re growing, and one day you’ve got an adult.

What you need to remember is, if you’re not doing this – growing the centimetres each day – your big worry is that your competitors are. And when they’ve been growing 1% per day, you might not notice it, but one day they’ll have doubled their audience, and their leads and all the local recommendations will no longer be coming to your business.

Why Speak To Us?

Financial services is hard enough day-to-day without having to work out how to use Facebook, Instagram, and Google to find new clients. Luckily, we’ve got ex advisers on our team and BDM’s who specialise in speaking the right language to your end client. Our team are CISI registered, we understand your compliance needs because some of our team have spent 10+ years in adviser businesses. We know what needs compliance checked, what needs signed off, and how to get that done.

More importantly, we know digital marketing. Whether you’re looking for a few new mortgage clients a month, or you’re really looking to scale up pension and investment clients we are doing it for companies like you. Forward looking, progressive businesses are looking to implement digital in a serious way, not only can it cement your current business, it can protect the future value by growing your overall client base and provide you with a bigger asset to sell in years to come.