How Can Financial Advisors Use LinkedIn To Their Advantage?
LinkedIn can be a potent tool for financial advisors. Most buyers turn to LinkedIn when looking for information on service providers.
Often touted as the business social media platform, LinkedIn has constantly been adding new and advanced features. These features are attractive to clients and offer financial advisors the opportunity to grow their business. It is definitely an impactful financial marketing tool that financial advisors can use to their advantage.
Financial advisors may follow these handy tips to use LinkedIn to their advantage:
· Increase customer engagement
LinkedIn can be an effective way to increase customer engagement and cultivate prospects. One of the simplest ways to engage with customers is by posting content that your existing clients and potential customers can relate to. Use the InMail option to introduce yourself to prospective clients (If you don’t have time to send them yourself either outsource this (contact me!) or use sponsored InMail which often gets a 52% open rate). Like, comment, and share posts made by your connections or simply use the “congratulations” function to improve your customer engagement.
· Use Groups to connect with like-minded people
Currently, there are over 2 million Groups on LinkedIn, with nearly 8,000 new Groups being added every week. The Groups feature allows you to connect with like-minded people and other local organisations in your community. Join Groups where you are most likely to find potential clients. If you are new to this feature, start by joining the Groups that your major clients are a part of.
What if you can’t find a Group of your choice? Simple. Create one. You may create an internal Group for your financial services firm and another one for your community. However, make sure to provide only quality content to these groups as no one likes spam.
And the golden nugget? You can message as many people as you wish within groups without being connected to them!
· Use advanced search
You can use the advanced search option to look for specific people working in a company or in a certain geographical location. LinkedIn’s search options use keywords to help you find the right people. The search tools are constantly evolving and financial advisors must use them to their advantage. Sales Navigator is invaluable for this – you can refine by company headcount, number of years in role and number of years of experience as well as excluding certain features / functions.
· Use targeted ads
LinkedIn allows you to create targeted ad campaigns to reach prospective clients. It may not be a place to sell your services but it is the best place to find high-networth clients and quality leads. LinkedIn is the best site to build trust with your prospective clients and to build your brand. Use the platform to position yourself as an expert and build your authority in today’s competitive market.
When targeting prospective clients, you can use ads in all formats- video, text, and text with images. You can target prospects by:
– Job title or function
– Seniority
– Industry or company size
– Geographical location
· Adjust LinkedIn setting to help prospects connect with you.
LinkedIn offers a lot of different settings to customise your experience as per your requirements. As a financial advisor, you would mostly be using LinkedIn to prospect. You need to adjust your settings in a way that it becomes easier for your prospects to connect with you. You may want to change your visibility settings, who can see your feed, and your activity broadcasts. You can easily make these changes under the settings tab below your name. Most importantly, make sure all your settings are public and your contact details are not only in the Contact Info tab but repeated in the About section (you can even add them to your heading if you wish)
· Generate traffic to your website
Use LinkedIn’s power of link building by posting on this site to drive traffic to your website. You may use the share option to share status updates to your profile, business page, and LinkedIn Groups. Make sure to regularly share original and curated content to your LinkedIn profile related to financial planning, personal finances, and wealth management. Such content can help demonstrate your expertise, attracting more prospects to your LinkedIn page and to your website.
· Use LinkedIn to build your reputation
Did you know that LinkedIn has the most affluent demographics? More than half of all LinkedIn users have a college degree, and nearly 76% of them are executives and key decision-makers. It is also the best place to find high-net-worth clients as nearly 41% of all the millionaires in the world have a LinkedIn account.
A strong presence on LinkedIn consolidates your reputation as a trustworthy, skillful, and well-informed professional. Use the advanced search and Groups features to increase the number of connections on your profile. When you have a substantial number of connections, you appear more frequently in the search results and your posts have a wider reach which can help you generate more leads.
· Showcase your services
Share original and curated content in your LinkedIn posts to showcase your services and specialties like investment, pensions, wealth management, or any other financial service. You can also share similar content on LinkedIn Groups for wider outreach.
A key feature is the “Featured Section” under your heading – are you using this?
To add a featured piece of content to your profile, scroll to the Featured section and click the Add Featured link. When you click on this icon, you’ll see a drop-down menu with the options to select posts, article, links, and media.
Ideas:
1: Feature a LinkedIn Post You Created or Are Mentioned In
2: Feature an Article You Published on LinkedIn
3: Feature a Link to an Off-Platform Resource
4: Upload and Feature Notable Documents
After you add a few items to your featured content, you may want to make some adjustments. You might realise you want to remove some items or perhaps you may want to rearrange the order. LinkedIn allows you to do both.
To adjust your featured content later on, simply click on the pencil icon on the top right of the Featured section.
A box will pop up that lists all of your featured content.
To remove an item from this list, simply hover over the Remove From Featured button in the lower left of the item’s preview and select it.
To rearrange the featured content, find the icon of four stacked lines located in the top right of each item’s preview. When you select this icon, the cursor will change to the “move” tool and you can drag items around to rearrange them. The items at the top of the list will be shown first from left to right.
If you want to grow your business as a financial advisor, LinkedIn is the best place to spend your time and concentrate your efforts. A strong, professional and active LinkedIn presence offers greater visibility, helping you grow your network.
To learn more about using this platform more proficiently to increase your visibility and generate new business, join the LinkedIn Accelerator 30th November – 4th December 2020
