Professional Services, Social Media Tips & Tricks

5 Actionable Steps to Kickstart Social Media Marketing for Financial Advisors

A financial advisor with her business partners in the backdrop

“Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.” – Brian Solis


In search of ways to kick your business’s sales up a notch with social media? You’re in the right place! With social media marketing gaining traction, it has become essential to keep up with the recent trends.

90% of marketers believe social media is very important for their clients and business. And did you know that more than 50% of marketers who have used social media marketing for two years or more have seen increased sales?

But the question arises: how can financial advisors use and market through social media? We know that trying to figure out the answers can be a little confusing, to begin with. But the good thing is that we did it for you! This social media marketing guide for financial advisors will help you analyze how you can leverage social media to your advantage while you sip on your favorite beverage.

  1. Devise a Strategy
  2. Work on Planning and Publishing
  3. Improve Engagement and Listening
  4. Track Analytics and Reports
  5. Amplify Advertising 

1. Devise a Strategy

Having a strategy provides direction to your actions. But, what’s the use of all your efforts if they go in vain? Before you blindly start posting, it’s important to know a few things and align your priorities. With a financial advisor’s social media strategy, you can save both time and resources.


A) Finalize Your Goals

One thing to think about here is: what is a social media marketing goal?

A goal is simply something you want to achieve over a stipulated period of time, and a marketing goal here is something you want to achieve through social media.

One way to go about it is to utilize existing resources. Nonetheless, you can also add new ones based on your requirements. We often overlook the value of creating strategies that are in line with our goals in the midst of setting goals and acting with zeal. 

But the question arises: why is setting a goal important?

Well, the answer is very simple, but if you sit and think about it, you’ll realize that setting a goal is the foundation of everything.

  1. A goal helps you set a target. Without a goal, you’re running towards something that has no end!
  2. A goal helps you allocate the right budget.
  3. A goal gives you focus and gives you direction.
  4. A goal helps you measure your progress.
  5. A goal helps you stay motivated.

Now that we are aware of how crucial it is to set goals, we must also comprehend which goals we ought to pick. Given below are some of the most popular marketing goals people consider.

Top goals in social media marketing for financial advisors
Source: Sproutsocial

I’m sure by now you already know what you want from social media marketing as financial advisors, but how can you be sure that your objectives are appropriate? To know that, you must have answers to these questions:

  • Is it specific to your needs? 
  • Is it possible to measure the success of your goal?
  • Is your goal achievable?
  • Is it realistic given your current resources?
  • Is it a time-sensitive goal? 
    • Is it a short-term goal?
    • Is it a long-term goal?

All these points form an acronym: SMART, so that you never forget!

Don’t forget to discuss your goals with your stakeholders! 


B) Learn About Your Competitors, Clients, and Prospects

Being aware of your competition helps you present yourself better in front of clients and prospects. Knowing about the competition gives the impression that you are improving your services and keeping up with the times.

You and your competitors can use social media to keep tabs on the top financial advisors, which is an important thing to do. Is there something that you can do that will grab the viewers’ attention? What new things are they posting? This will give you an idea of where you stand in the industry.

Learning about clients and prospects will help you build personas specific to your industry. This will not only help your target audience better, but will also give you a sense of what they are really looking for.

Don’t forget to write down the new ideas you come across!


C) Choose the Right Social Media Platforms

We’ve all been in situations where we don’t know what the right tool/site is. As financial planners, choosing social media marketing platforms that work can be difficult. 

By now, you are already aware of your client pool and their retention rates. The next step is to choose the right platform. To make it simpler, we have mentioned all the useful social media platforms, highlighting their advantages below! 

  • Facebook:
    • It ranks among the top websites for users over the age of 50.
    • You need a Facebook strategy if your advisory business targets retirees and those who are nearing retirement.
  • Instagram:
    • With 116 million users, the US leads all other countries in Instagram usage.
    • Planning to target millennials? This is definitely a place to be.
  • Twitter:
    • The daily active users of Twitter are 229 million.
    • Keep in mind that most people use their phones to access Twitter. Therefore, Twitter must be your first choice if your content is mobile-friendly and you want to start a conversation on a social media platform through your posts. 
  • YouTube:
    • YouTube is that one platform where age doesn’t matter. You can use YouTube whether you’re 12 or 70 years old. This makes YouTube the second largest search engine after Google.
    • You must have a YouTube channel.
  • LinkedIn:
    • Young adults are the most active users.
    • For professional networking, targeting working individuals and the corporate sector, LinkedIn has proven to be the most successful platform for financial advisors.

Don’t forget to maintain the same brand identity across all the platforms you choose!


2. Work on Planning and Publishing

Have you ever come across a content piece that just doesn’t make sense? This happens mostly when people outsource their content and have multiple authors involved who have no knowledge of the brand identity and content strategy exclusive to the firm. 

Well, the result is, you know, disorganized content with no clear intent! As financial advisors, you need to pay special attention to the content requirements for social media.


A) Pay Attention to Your Company’s Social Media Policy! 

Almost all financial firms have social media policies. If you don’t, now is the right time to build one. But let’s understand what exactly social media policy is.

The social media policy is a code of conduct for the employees, stakeholders, and basically everyone in the firm on what content can be put up on the various social media platforms.

Here are some tips that will help financial advisors like you to formulate your social media strategy. 

  1. Reach out to these teams within your organization;
    • Compliance
    • Legal
    • IT
    • Information security
    • Human resources
    • Public relations
    • Marketing
  2. Take input from every team in order to maintain a consistent identity.
  3. Sit with HR and define roles and responsibilities to set a workflow.
  4. Learn about the security risks associated with social media for financial advisors.

Don’t forget to double-check before posting!


B) Adhere to Compliance Standards

Being in this industry for so long, you’re already well aware of the compliance standards and their dire need to be implemented. The SEC recently permitted companies to share their investment performance on social media only if they were willing to adhere to the set criteria. 

Similarly, FINRA (The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ) has clearly stated social media guidelines for financial advisors that specify the requirements to be met. It is very important to monitor compliance regulations and social media rules for financial firms as they continue to be updated. The number of compliance regulations, including FINRA, FCA, FFIEC, IIROC, SEC, PCI, AMF, and GDPR, can be overwhelming. In particular, for the use of social media, it is essential to have compliance processes and tools in place.

Here are certain things to keep in mind while posting on social media:

  • Provide information about the risks and benefits clearly. 
  • Don’t hide important information in an obscure footer; it might call out actions against misleading the clients. 
  • Have your compliance team work with your marketing manager to help guide the steps and protect your brand.
  • Have a chain of approval so that there’s no scope for error.

One important thing worth highlighting is the need to archive everything. According to FINRA: “Firms and their registered representatives must retain records of communications related to their business as such.” These documents must be kept for a minimum of three years.

Don’t forget to educate your employees!


C) Create Thoughtful and Personalized Content

Here’s a question for you, imagine you’re following a page on Instagram and it has uploaded 6 posts back to back. They have promoted these posts through their Instagram story. Will you check out all the posts individually? 

Of course not! No one has the time to check out 6 posts posted on some account in a single day. This makes us realize how important it is to create valuable posts. Avoid posting merely for the sake of posting.

Yes, it’s true, the more you post, the more engagement and ROI you’ll get, but only on one condition, your post must be interesting and appealing to the viewers. You can use content creation tools such as Canva for some interesting templates to create them, but always add your logo to your posts no matter what.

The next question to be addressed is what content do people find truly valuable and what posts can get you a lot of views? Social media content for financial advisors can include:

  1. How-tos and quick tips
  2. Local and industry news, you can also include the global news
  3. Data and insights relevant to your field 
  4. Polls, questions, and contests
  5. Updates and announcements

But remember, the posts should be a healthy mix of informational, emotional, and professional content according to the 70-20-10 rule.

Advisors need a lot of content for their social media accounts. If you’re stuck, you can always research for new content or simply use the 3 Rs.

  • Repurpose: There are endless possibilities. You can make a whole post on Instagram out of a customer review; post about your webinar on Facebook; convert a blog into a series of small Tweets and even highlight the case studies on all the platforms under the customer spotlight.
  • Repost: It can be of great help if you have gaps in your posting calendar and you don’t have new content to post. You can repost your old posts or posts from an influencer or someone related to your field by giving due credit and obtaining permission beforehand on social media. But don’t forget, excess of everything is bad! Post in moderation.
  • Recycle: Post your Instagram Reels as YouTube shorts, add your YouTube live on Facebook and Instagram, and share your best-performing blog again each month to let new followers know about your content!

But the question remains, what are some post ideas for financial advisors?

  • Post about real-life experiences and client success stories.
  • Share educational content.
  • Work on thought leadership pieces.
  • Upload bite-sized information that is easy to comprehend.
  • Advertise your services through the content.
  • Feed financial literacy of the readers.

Don’t forget to have a consistent voice for each platform! 


D) Be Consistent with Your Posts

One thing that social media demands is consistency. Your posts should be consistent irrespective of the platform you’re posting on. Having a library of content you’ll be posting in the future, and planning a month in advance are some of the best practices for social media.

People often overlook the importance of spacing out posts. Spacing out is important as it reminds people of your firm’s presence constantly. For instance, if you can produce only 8 quality posts in a month, space them out at 2 posts per week. This maximizes the impact and the reach of your posts. You strike through people’s minds at least twice a week instead of striking one when you dump all your content pieces together. 

Just being consistent is not enough; you need to post your content when it can reach the maximum number of people throughout the day. Imagine posting at a time when your prospects are not even checking their social media. Your reach will drop significantly, and when they do check their social media, your post might not even show up due to the enormous amount of content that is posted each day. Therefore, post at optimal times.

Don’t post on late nights and weekends!


3. Improve engagement and listening

Working on engagement and listening will help your business grow.

More engagement = More participation of viewers = More chances of lead generation


A) Engage with Prospects:

Is social media ever off? No boss!

Use this to your advantage. It’s like a 24-hour advertisement. Update the world about your business; tell them about the latest milestone you’ve achieved, your setbacks, and even the challenges you’ve faced.

Respond to all questions, comments, and criticisms about your firm on every single social media platform with a positive attitude. Here are some popular social media tips for financial advisors to boost the engagement of viewers:

  1. Create a Poll: Ask questions, and ask people about their take on certain issues by creating a poll. It’s a popular way of creating engagement.
  2. Ask intriguing questions: Ask open and close-ended questions to engage a larger crowd, as not everyone prefers to provide a long answer. 
  3. Post “Did you know?” content: These tweets and posts get a lot of engagement as they offer useful insights and tips to the followers.
  4. Share testimonials: If you have compliance standards in mind, you’re good to go! Advisors often leverage reviews and testimonials in order to capitalize on new possible social media opportunities. Show your work to the world.
  5. Upload “Behind the scenes”: In this way, people connect to the human side of the firm. It builds a real connection between the organization and the viewers. They will see more than just a brand, and that’s what you should be aiming for.

Don’t forget to reiterate your company’s virtues in your posts!


B) Create Brand Awareness:

Let me ask you something. Will you go and explore a new food corner when you are super hungry or will you go to the one you’ve heard about? The same happens when someone is looking for a financial advisor. Word of mouth referrals increase the chance of you landing a new client because people believe more in what their near ones are suggesting.

This is what it means to create brand awareness. Letting people know about you and your firm through social media can help you create strong and positive relationships with future prospects. This way, people are most likely to select you as their advisor. 

But out of all the advisors, how can you stand out from the crowd?

  • Use the “about us” section wisely! List your strengths and try to convince people why they should go with you instead of others in the market. 
  • Highlight the unique features that make you stand out from other advisors, and acknowledge the pain points of the prospects with a possible solution.
  • Humanize your brand by getting your firm’s officials on social media. People will start bonding with your employees. This creates trust.
  • Link your online footprints. This can be done when you increase your website’s visibility by including links to it in all of your social media posts, as well as to your blog and other elements.

Don’t forget to include a persuasive CTA- a sign-up for your newsletter!


C) Provide Unified Digital Customer Service:

With increasing digitization, it has become important to update your customer service and manage social media. No one wants to open a different platform just to reach out to a firm! 

Customer care executive resolving client issues

Customers want to reach out to businesses on the platforms they are already most active on. This can include social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.

Customer service tools make it easier for firms to coordinate with customers across various platforms. Social media bots are a great way to address simple queries or help connect with a customer care executive.

Don’t forget to have a booking option on all the different platforms!

Must Read: How to convert leads into paying customers using Reserve with Google, Facebook, and Instagram book buttons.


D) Incorporate SEO Techniques:

I’m pretty sure you’ve already come across this word at some point or other. But what is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization techniques that make your website or content rank higher on the search engine result page(SERP).

Now that you know how important it is, let’s explore some points that will make SEO easier for you. Your content is SEO optimized if you have:

  • Done the keyword research(even your competitor’s keyword research).
  • Finalized the keywords you want to use.
  • Included the keywords in strategic places.
    • In the title tag
    • In the meta description
    • In the image ALT tags
    • In the blog’s content
  • Added internal links.
  • Made sure the page load time is fast (compress the images if they are taking too long to load).
  • Created a Business Listing on Google and added a book button.

Don’t forget to use SEO tools


4. Track Analytics and Reports

Tracking your progress will help you realize where you’re lacking and if you can initiate any changes to overcome those gaps. 


A) Identify Your Social Media Marketing Metrics

Social media metrics provide data on the success of your posts and how they affect your prospects and clients on various platforms. 

The key metrics financial planners should look out for are:

  1. Engagement: This is the number of clicks, comments, likes, and replies you get on your social media posts. Basically, how many people are engaging with your content.
  2. Reach and profile visits: Reach is the population that has viewed any content connected to your account, and profile visits are the number of people who have opened your social media profile.
  3. Followers: This is the total number of people who have followed you.
  4. Impressions:  It represents the total number of times a post from your profile or page is seen, regardless of whether or not your audience clicks on it. 
  5. Video views: This is the number of views your videos get.
  6. Mentions: The number of times viewers have mentioned your profile.
  7. Tags: This is when a member of your audience annotates another post with the name of your business profile or your hashtag.
  8. Reposts and shares: This is when your viewers or followers share a piece of your content on their profile with their network.

Don’t forget to choose appropriate metrics for each of your social media accounts!


B) Track Your Performance

After you’ve identified the metrics you want to track, the next step is to find appropriate tools to track them. Every social platform has its own analytics or insights tool.

  • Twitter uses Twitter Analytics to analyze the metrics
  • Facebook offers a comprehensive insight into your Facebook page
  • Instagram gives a detailed analysis of the impressions, shares, reach, etc.
  • LinkedIn gives basic analytical data on your website for free, but with a premium account, you get access to full analytics software
  • YouTube uses the YouTube analytics dashboard

If you’re wondering how to use social media to bring in a new client, you can start by making a report of the data collected over a period of time and drawing conclusions based on the insights. 

Don’t forget to track your number of appointments every month, your monthly sales, client satisfaction, and your productivity with Appointy’s Reporting & Analytics feature!


5. Amplify Advertising

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does” – Steuart Henderson Britt


Can financial advisors advertise on social media? Yes, according to Forbes, social media advertising is critical because it allows you to hyper-target specific users, build an audience database, and directly track your return on investment.

What are you still waiting for? Start from the basics.


A) Include Influencer Endorsements and Social Proof

Reading the headline, you might be wondering what exactly an influencer endorsement is. To ease it out for you, influencer marketing is a type of marketing campaign in which media influencers who are experts in their niche promote your services.

They can use any social media platform to advertise their services. Social media networks are very important. Consider reaching out to banking influencers, as they frequently collaborate with financial advisors.

A banking influencer shooting a social media endorsement with a financial advisor

Now, moving on to social proof, which is testimonials and reviews from your clients. But why do advisors need reviews? Because not only do they eliminate the doubts that tend to pop up in the heads of viewers, but they also help in spreading the word about your extraordinary services.

You can get in touch with your clients and ask if they are willing to write a testimonial or recommend you to their colleagues. Include case studies in your Instagram highlights so that whenever someone opens your account page, they see all the positive reviews about you and your firm in one place.

Don’t forget to tag your clients on social media if you can!


B) Run Advertising Campaigns and Paid Ads

No one likes the word “paid” unless you’re the one who’s getting paid. Paid social media ads for financial advisors do guarantee reach, but only when they are correctly used.

It allows you to target a specific audience according to your client persona. Target people on the basis of their interests, behavior, demographics, and many more. With digital video advertising growing at a rate of 25% every year worldwide, it has become one of the most popular forms of advertising.

Moreover, promoted LinkedIn ads look just like posts in your feed and can be a really strong way of advertising your firm to professional clients. Adding value and promoting your posts on Facebook and Instagram can yield a good amount of ROI. 

Benefits of paid ads you may ask?

  • It helps you reach a larger audience.
  • It increases online visibility.
  • It maximizes your incoming leads.

Don’t forget to refer to your budget before spending on paid ads.


Over to you! 🤝

We understand it can be daunting to start something new, but we hope this blog has provided you with the insights you needed. You just need to put some orderly work into these strategies, and you’ll be far ahead of the game when it comes to social media marketing for financial advisors.

Never forget that omnichannel integration is essential! Appointy’s scheduling software for financial advisors can take care of all the core administrative work so that you can focus on providing your customers with best-in-class advice.  

Now that you have a gist of how to do your social media marketing campaign, we wish you all the best!


About Appointy

We at Appointy, help business owners grow and run their businesses with our online scheduling software. This blog was a part of our ‘Manage your Business’ category, where we provide expert tips, and resources, or simply talk about the challenges that small and medium businesses face every day. 

If you have any thoughts on this blog or would like to chat about your business struggles and achievements, let us know in the comments below. 

We love a good talk!