Are you a financial professional trying to increase your engagement on LinkedIn?
Are you unsure how to best use LinkedIn’s company page and LinkedIn messages to promote your financial services?
This article will explain best practice on how to grow your client base via LinkedIn without having to invest in paid advertising.
Linkedin for financial advisers
LinkedIn is considered an established and trusted environment for financial advice
The huge amount of change currently affecting financial markets and the current uptake of investing is unlike almost anything we’ve seen before.
Against this backdrop, LinkedIn is a trusted and established platform on which wealth management firms can reach new clients and solidify relationships with existing ones.
Various factors make LinkedIn members an attractive target audience for wealth management brands looking to grow their business.
In times of great change, we all look to the places we trust for advice and information. Consumers tend to trust the content they find on LinkedIn.
In fact, the financial services community on LinkedIn continues to grow, and the audience wants to buy and own more financial assets than members on other social media platforms.
The platform continues to see a 49% increase in engagement on topics such as finance, investing, and retirement year over year – making it the perfect platform to promote your financial brand.
How can LinkedIn help you grow your client base organically?
LinkedIn is different from other social media platforms, in that visitors log into LinkedIn expecting to do business more than on other social media sites.
Therefore, when a pitch of services is made on LinkedIn, it should be approached a lot warmer than if done on other social media platforms.
The LinkedIn algorithm also handles links differently to other platforms. Facebook stated they occasionally remove links from posts that could lead people to leave the platform.
They want to keep users on their platform for as long as possible.
LinkedIn, however, has no such mission. LinkedIn doesn’t restrict posts that contain links from outside sources, which makes it easier for you to offer added value and resources to your target audience.
Furthermore, LinkedIn’s audience mindset is already set up for new service opportunities.
This is partly because people log in to LinkedIn expecting to see you offering your services.
This means that brand promotional content can have a higher organic reach via LinkedIn than on other forms of social media.
Best Practice on Linkedin for Financial Advisers
It takes time to establish trust with prospects before they will be willing to work with you.
They need to be exposed repeatedly to your brand before they will take the next step.
Previously, the average number of touch points between a financial brand and a prospect was between 7-12. This average has now increased to nearly 30 over the last few years, a trend accelerated by the pandemic.
A solid LinkedIn Marketing Strategy and clever content plan can help you get your prospect ready to gain trust in your services quicker than they would on other social media channels.
It is important to remember that visitors to your LinkedIn profile and company page fall into one of three buckets: a hot, cold, or warm bucket.
The temperature of the bucket reflects the temperature between you and the visitor.
A cold visitor to your page or profile has never had any exposure to you and your financial brand.
While a hot visitor has had many exposures to your brand, they are therefore more ready to move on to the next step and contact you around their financial needs, maybe even ready to make an appointment to consider your financial service offering.
You should prepare your profile to meet all three buckets.
#1: Tips to engage via your personal LinkedIn profile
These are some suggestions for displaying content that is relevant throughout the client journey.
Cold visitors:
Allow potential clients to get to know you better by sharing a link to a LinkedIn post or article.
Remember, the length and value of your article alone can make a lead warm. Also, it’s all about consistency to warm up a cold visitor – you want them to remember your or your financial firm’s name.
Warm visitors:
Warm visitors have already had some exposure to your brand and you, making them more trustful. Warm visitors can benefit from a link to another resource, or something of value that is not on LinkedIn.
This could be a link to a YouTube video or blog post on your website. This stage is about adding further value.
Hot Visitors
Visitors who are hot have interacted with your brand and you many times before, so they already like, trust, and know you and your values.
They have also seen your content on LinkedIn and other valuable platforms like social media, and they are likely to be engaged with it.
Hot visitors are eager to move on to the next step. They want to learn how to book a call, an appointment, work with you, and use your services.
At this point, we recommend you now share landing page links, calendar booking opportunities, and alternative methods of contact.
Create engaging, added value content for your profile
LinkedIn’s algorithms value all types of content, including videos, blogs, articles, and links.
It works to spread the content as widely and efficiently as possible, to give users the desired value and resources.
LinkedIn does however seem to value the inclusion of your thoughts and values within content. It is also important to consider what content types are high performing within financial services.
When you are creating your content strategy, or curating articles for LinkedIn, you should consider adding your perspective or valuable thoughts along with the link.
This will allow you to add value to the information you share.
You could, for example, post a link to a financial article that agrees with your view and shares it, expanding on your opinion. It’s all about providing extra value.
LinkedIn users will appreciate your perspective, and the LinkedIn algorithm will help push your content further than if it was shared with no additional thought.
After all, it’s a platform built for conversation and thought evoking content.
#2: Tips to engage via your LinkedIn Company Page
Make the most of the space at the top of your LinkedIn business page. Your banner is your chance to visually position your company (a billboard-type space).
The call to action button (Contact Us, Learn More, Sign Up, etc.) gives people an easy way to connect with you on a deeper level.
A banner with a CTA that allows people to click the button can increase conversions for your financial company page.
You can use this button to simply direct visitors to your website or to a landing page where they could sign up to receive your newsletters and regular financial advice content.
LinkedIn also allows company pages to display the top three keywords that you would like to be recognised for, or visible in.
These are called community tags. LinkedIn users can also follow hashtags and click them to view trending posts.
Do some research on what financial keywords are well engaged with, while also relevant to your firm.
Pro Tips
To increase exposure for your page, and your business, have your employees link their personal accounts with your page.
LinkedIn is a great place to find company-branded content.
Their personal profile is placed as an employee of your company, and the featured section contains a link back to your company page.
You can also ask your employees personal following to follow your company page.
To do so, ensure the employee is a page admin, navigate to admin tools on admin view, and choose invite connections.
Each company page can invite 100 connections to follow them each month. You will soon see your following grow!
#3: Engaging through LinkedIn Messages
One of the biggest complaints about LinkedIn is the amount of spam messages people receive.
Many well-intentioned businesses use direct messages from LinkedIn to promote their services.
Direct messaging is, of course, still an effective tool. You should simply pay more attention to your direct messaging strategy to make it work for you.
As with your LinkedIn profile and your LinkedIn company page, you should pay attention to the potential client journey, and what bucket they are in: hot, warm, or cold.
It is not a good idea to send someone a message with a hard sell attached before they are ready. Otherwise, you could lose their business forever.
Don’t ask someone you have just met to set up a consultation, and don’t go straight in with how you can help.
Instead, you can send them a LinkedIn link appropriate for a cold bucket visit, or simply introduce yourself and mention that you hope your content can be of interest to them.
Build rapport first, and then grow from there.
LinkedIn is a powerful platform for financial marketing. LinkedIn members are exactly the types of clients that wealth management brands want to reach.
They are more educated, ambitious, and financially empowered than those on other platforms.
LinkedIn also offers wealth management brands powerful tools to ensure their message is getting to the right audience at the right time.
From engaging ad formats to the ability to match specific messaging with specific audience subsets, LinkedIn is uniquely positioned to deliver competitive advantages. We will delve deeper into paid advertising on LinkedIn, in another blog.
Not only are LinkedIn members a highly desirable audience for your messages, but the LinkedIn platform is built on a foundation of trust.
Combine that with powerful tools and effective ad formats, and LinkedIn is an ideal platform for your wealth management firm to connect with new investors.
We hope some of these tips have helped get you started.
Read our comprehensive guide to marketing for financial advisers in 2022
