LinkedIn is a popular social media and networking tool for professionals of all backgrounds, but it’s particularly attractive for financial advisors. As a marketing tool, LinkedIn can help you increase your brand’s visibility and establish connections with prospective clients who are looking for financial advice. If you’re not using LinkedIn to market your firm, it might be time to rethink your approach. And LinkedIn marketing for financial advisors could help you maximize its potential.
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Importance of LinkedIn Marketing for Financial Advisors
Why does LinkedIn matter for your marketing plans if you’re already using social media, email or digital ads to promote your firm?
The simple answer is that it offers access to a huge pool of prospective clients, not to mention boundless opportunities for networking. An estimated billion people worldwide use LinkedIn, which makes it a potential gold mine for advisors.
While most users come to the platform to find jobs and build their networks, they’re also interacting with individuals and brands. Being active on LinkedIn allows you to highlight your expertise, share your knowledge with an audience of interested prospects, and make first contact with would-be clients.
You can use LinkedIn’s built-in tools to generate targeted leads who may be actively searching for professional financial advice. LinkedIn is also a way to drive traffic to your website, where you can prompt them to join your email newsletter or schedule a free consultation with you to discuss their financial plan.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Financial Advisors
Having a LinkedIn profile is the first step in using it to market your business, but there’s more to it than that. The following strategies can help you fully leverage LinkedIn’s potential to attract new clients:
1. Grow Your Network
For an advisor, networking is an essential part of running your financial advisor business. And that’s what LinkedIn is designed for at its core. Some of the most effective ways to network through the platform include:
- Joining relevant groups that are specific to your industry or the industry that your target audience belongs to.
- Connecting with existing contacts.
- Ditching the cookie-cutter approach and personalizing your outreach to send targeted connection requests.
Attempting to connect with people you don’t know is a little like cold calling, but you can warm things up by mentioning a shared connection or interest. And don’t forget to make sure that you’ve fully optimized your profile, as this can help build trust.
2. Position Yourself as a Thought Leader
Imagine that you’re looking for a financial advisor on LinkedIn. You come across two profiles that seem like a good fit. The first advisor has hundreds of posts on their profile, sharing their thoughts and expertise on financial topics and industry news. The other has a headshot and basic info, but nothing else. Which one are you more likely to work with?
LinkedIn likes content creation, and if you’re not doing it, you could be missing out on opportunities to market your business. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when creating LinkedIn content:
- Answer questions that your target audience is most likely to ask.
- Address their pain points – what’s challenging them, or what’s stressing them out about finance?
- Engage with your audience by responding to comments or sharing their content, if you find it valuable.
- Avoid the hard sell and let your content speak for itself.
Creating a content schedule can also encourage you to remain consistent, which can help you grow a following on the platform. Posting on the same days around the same time, for instance, gives your followers something to look forward to if you regularly share content that’s helpful, insightful or interesting.
As far as the type of content you should be sharing goes, you can experiment with different formats to see what resonates the most with your audience. For example, you might share:
- Educational or informational articles
- Case studies
- Infographics or charts
- Videos
- Quotes
- Relevant news stories
- Interviews you’ve done
You could also try cross-posting in collaboration with another advisor. For example, if you were a guest on their financial podcast (or vice versa) you could each share a link to it on your profile.
Now, should you post content on your personal page or company page? It depends on the size of your business and your goals.
If you run a small, boutique firm, prioritizing your page may be the better option for building a personal brand. Larger firms, on the other hand, may benefit more from creating content for a company page.
3. Run LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn also allows you to create digital ads. And if you’re using Facebook or Google to promote your business, this may already be a part of your marketing strategy. Creating a LinkedIn ad campaign allows you to target prospective clients who are in your contacts list or filter for specific traits, such as their job title or company name.
When deciding whether to move ahead with a campaign, ask yourself:
- Who you’re trying to reach through the platform
- What kind of message you want to send with your ads
- Where you’d like your ads to be displayed
LinkedIn allows you to create sponsored content ads that will appear directly in your target audience’s feed or sponsored InMail, which you can use to send personalized messages to prospects. Dynamic ads, meanwhile, can help you grow your audience and gain more followers, which can also help if your goal is to become an influencer on the platform.
Each type of ad serves a different purpose and has a different cost. Evaluating your marketing goals and budget can help you decide which type of campaign makes the most sense.
4. Leverage LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn analytics offers a look into the data behind your profile, specifically:
- Who’s viewing your profile
- How your audience interacts with your content
- How many likes your content receives
You can take a deep dive into things like which industries are most represented by those who view your profile, what time of day your profile sees the most activity, and which posts get the most or least engagement. Reviewing your analytics data can give you a better understanding of how to shape your content marketing plan.
For example, if you see that your posts on estate planning get the most interaction and people are typically viewing your profile at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday mornings, that’s a clue for what you should be posting more of and when.
5. Market With Sales Navigator
Lead generation tools can take some of the guesswork out of finding prospects who fit your ideal client profile. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a built-in lead generation tool that you can access through your profile for a fee.
With Sales Navigator, you can:
- Prioritize accounts with the most connections
- Identify key signals that offer insight on when to post and how to boost engagement
- Create warm connections with prospects or other professionals
- Make the most of InMail connection requests
Sales Navigator integrates with many of the top customer relationship management (CRM) tools on the market, which can help you create a more seamless marketing experience for your business. You can use this tool alongside other automated marketing tools to find more right-fit leads for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is LinkedIn a Good Platform for Marketing?
LinkedIn can be an excellent platform for marketing, as its primary users are professionals and job seekers. Financial advisors can use LinkedIn to build brand recognition and authority while connecting with other advisors and prospective clients. LinkedIn offers access to both paid and free marketing tools that you can use to grow your business.
Do Financial Advisors Need a LinkedIn Profile?
Financial advisors aren’t required to have a LinkedIn profile, but it makes sense to create one if you’re using social media to promote your business. LinkedIn attracts professionals and job seekers, as well as people who may be researching financial advisors to work with. Having an optimized profile on LinkedIn can help you grow a following and market yourself as a financial expert.
How Can Advisors Optimize Their LinkedIn Profile?
Search engine optimization (SEO) can help you build out a LinkedIn profile that gets attention from prospective clients. SEO refers to strategies that utilize keywords and other signals to increase your profile’s ranking in search results. It’s also used in driving website traffic. Creating a profile that includes relevant keywords your target audience may be searching for can help you get noticed on LinkedIn.
Bottom Line
Exploring LinkedIn’s possibilities as a marketing tool could help you build a more sustainable business in the long term. If you’re not on the platform yet or your profile could use some polishing, there’s no better time to learn what LinkedIn marketing for financial advisors may have to offer your business.
Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business
- Automating business processes can save you time so that you’re free to focus on your clients. If marketing is one of your biggest pain points, you might consider working with a platform like SmartAsset AMP. You can match with leads and get access to automated tools that make it easier to follow up. Schedule a demo to learn how you can leverage it for your business.
- When marketing your business on LinkedIn or anywhere else online, it’s important to keep compliance top of mind. The SEC’s marketing rule spells out what advisors can and can’t include in their marketing materials. Familiarizing yourself with the basics of online and email marketing compliance can help you avoid running afoul of the rules.
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