Social media continues to grow as one of the most valuable lead-generation platforms for financial advisors. And, as the platform geared toward business, LinkedIn is especially powerful for advisors. But, If you’re not seeing results on social, a change in strategy could help. Read on to learn more about LinkedIn marketing for financial advisors.
What LinkedIn Marketing for Financial Advisors Can Do for Your Advisory
What kind of returns can financial advisors marketing on LinkedIn expect as they build their online presence and reach new audiences?
Create Brand Awareness
Create Brand AwarenessAccording to Kinsta, there are over 170 million LinkedIn members from the U.S. alone, and 40% of those log in daily. That’s a large audience — showcasing your brand on the platform lets you reach and interact with professionals from diverse industries who may become clients and ambassadors for your advisory. Especially for advisors who specialize in specific financial services niches, building a presence on LinkedIn will connect you with the most viable leads.
Drive Website Traffic
Like many social media platforms, LinkedIn features sharing buttons that make updating your status on your profile, groups, and business page easy. Frequent updates and posts on LinkedIn work well for businesses like financial services because it drives more traffic to their websites and builds more links to grow your AUM.
Build Relationships
Building strong relationships on LinkedIn isn’t that different from building relationships with individual clients. The LinkedIn audience may include prospects who are more affluent than the average prospect, but their needs are the same. They want valuable content, personal connections, and a sense of trust. Give your LinkedIn audience what they want, and you could build a seemingly endless network of prospects and referrals. Advisors should join a few of the many groups featuring financial professionals and participate in a meaningful way while making new contacts, getting ideas for new content, and generating new business.
Generate Quality Leads
About 80% of B2B social media leads originate from LinkedIn — that statistic alone makes LinkedIn marketing an essential focus for financial advisors. With LinkedIn’s tools like Sales Navigator, you easily connect with more targeted prospects and generate more quality leads. You can search for prospects based on their location, industry, job title, administrative level, company size, and more.
Powerful Tools LinkedIn Marketing Tools for Financial Advisors
LinkedIn prospecting for financial advisors is easy when you know how to use the full range of tools available. From creating and sharing content that establishes your authority to building strong relationships with your targeted audience, LinkedIn provides the perfect platform for broadening your online presence and reach.
Ideally, you’re regularly connecting with people on LinkedIn, from new acquaintances to past clients and colleagues. The more people you connect with, the better chance you have of connecting with a prospect or getting more referrals. LinkedIn has a great advanced search function to help you target specific companies, industries, locations, schools, groups, job titles, and more.
This type of segmenting is beneficial if you serve a niche audience. For example, if you primarily serve doctors, you can search for medical school graduates or employees of local hospitals. Or, if you cater to millennials, you may search for people who have five or fewer years of work experience.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator leverages the network already on LinkedIn to your advantage by suggesting leads that fit specific criteria, including industry, seniority, and location. Through keywords, you can connect with the decision-makers and influencers of your industry.
The tool is a comprehensive networking approach to prospecting for new leads and converting more prospects. With features like advanced lead and company search, lead and account recommendations, and even job changes and company news alerts, Sales Navigator makes it easy to target your efforts and tap into a tremendous pool of connection opportunities.
Publishing Platform
LinkedIn’s publishing platform is an ideal space for financial advisors to engage prospects and clients, create meaningful conversations, build strong relationships, and establish themselves as thought leaders. We’ve seen countless financial advisors experience success through sharing their guidance and expertise on the platform.
If you already blog, you can get more exposure for your content using the publishing feature. While you should keep your post on your website’s blog, post an excerpt on LinkedIn’s publishing platform and then direct readers to your website to read the rest of the post. You’ll drive more website traffic from your LinkedIn profile and remind your audience that you are actively educating people about the industry.
LinkedIn Groups
One of the most productive tools available with LinkedIn marketing for financial advisors is Groups. Advisors should join a few of the many groups featuring financial professionals and participate in a meaningful way while making new contacts, getting ideas for new content, and generating new business. LinkedIn Groups can be a great lead-generation tool because it’s easy to find groups discussing financial matters.
For example, searching on LinkedIn Groups under the word “retired” yields over 1500 groups. Advisors choose groups with particular appeal to them, such as retired veterans, teachers, and young professionals, and engage in the conversation stream. As questions are raised, these advisors join the conversation with insightful answers to showcase their expertise and grow their reputation as thought leaders. It is an excellent way to build new relationships and further develop your brand.
LinkedIn Marketing for Financial Advisors: Optimizing Your Profile
First, we have a great video that demonstrates 5 Steps to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile.
Make a Good First Impression
They say first impressions are everything. Whether you are using LinkedIn to connect with other service professionals, scout out talent for your office, or promote your specialties to your connections, a professional LinkedIn profile can do wonders.
LinkedIn is the largest network of professionals online, and if you’re not a part of it, you’re missing a crucial marketing opportunity. LinkedIn reaches over 300 million users worldwide, and 40% of its users check LinkedIn daily. We want to share some of our favorite tips on pushing your profile to the next level.
Use LinkedIn for What It Is
First and foremost, LinkedIn is a social networking site. To get the most out of LinkedIn, try to incorporate it into your content marketing strategy. We consider LinkedIn one of the “big three,” which is why we suggest posting there consistently. The more involved you are in the site, the more you’ll get out of it.
Once you complete your profile, you should use LinkedIn Messaging, a direct correspondence between users. Their website describes it as a means “to reach anyone on LinkedIn, no introduction or contact info required. It’s professional, credible outreach — with your LinkedIn profile attached.” Focus on reaching out to specific people, do your research on who you are contacting, and reach out at appropriate times.
Pro Tip: Changing passwords on a social media account, security changes with platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and other activities can cause your LinkedIn account to disconnect from other social media accounts.
Respect Your LinkedIn Workspace
Treat your presence on LinkedIn like you treat your office space. Make it clean, professional, and a place in which you are proud to host your clients. Once your profile is complete, it’s time to get to work. Just as you do with your physical office space, invite clients to join you on LinkedIn, get creative, and use the tools available to succeed while you are there.
Craft a Quality LinkedIn Summary
Your profile is important and that goes double for your LinkedIn summary. The summary is a short area on your profile where you can introduce who you are and what it is that you do. Meaning it’s important to briefly summarize what makes you so amazing as a financial advisor.
What Is a Good LinkedIn Summary for Financial Advisors?
What Is a Good LinkedIn Summary for Financial Advisors?A good summary explains everything that someone needs to know about your professional life. Whether it’s achievements you’ve completed or jobs that you’ve held. It should be your professional life’s bio. Along with that, it should show off your personality. It shouldn’t be boring and instead, be used as a hook to draw in those who visit your profile page.
Struggling With What to Share on Social Media?
Whether you’re getting started or want to increase your frequency and engagement, we’ve got content that captures attention, highlights your expertise, and shows you’re on top of timely topics.
