Nobody likes financial planners to approach them, worse still, if you’re a friend of ours. There are tons of financial planners already doing direct outreach, and if you do the same thing as them, you’re just another one in an absolutely packed crowd.
It’s like watching 100 dogs fight over a bone, not a pretty sight at all. You never ever want to make these mistakes as a financial advisor. Hence, let’s go through how social media can shift you from approaching to attracting your clients.
Your current & future audience is on it
Now, I understand that older prospects will usually result in higher premiums for you, at the same time, everyone is fighting for the same piece of the pie and they’re not going to last you for your entire career. Take a look at the social media users statistics by Oberlo
Instead of fighting it at the backend, the beauty of social media is that you’re getting the front end, so that you can reap the rewards later on. Now, if you look at the stats, you’ll realise that tons of millennials (26-40) are constantly on social media. And tons of gen x (41-55) are on it as well.
The truth is this, if you’re not on social media, then your prospects are dealing with your competitors who are on it. So if you have plans to be on social media, you might want to start executing on it.
Up to date industry insights
Up to date industry insightsThe easiest way to stay relevant is by asking directly to customers themselves. It’s definitely not easy to gather a group of people in real life and start asking them for their opinions. Hence, social media can be smartly used for surveys.
You don’t even have to come up with google forms or google sheet, you just got to post a question of “what’s your worry with regards to insurance agents?” And you’ll see tons of answers.
But what’s so great about understanding our customers? Well, it gives us the ability to know what are their exact problems and give them what they want. No more guesswork or beating around the bush, just straight to the exact problem.
Here’s how we use the polling feature to gather feedback when we are trying to create new content:
You can also use social media to stalk your competitors and see what they’re doing well or bad in. My team and I honestly take time to study the different perspectives that others are saying in the market to get a broader picture of how the social media landscape is changing.
This is also how we stay up to date to thought leaders in the industry. What you can do is to look at the leaders in your market and see what are some great elements that you can learn from.
The leaders in your market are usually up to date with trends that are going on, so don’t just watch what they say, but watch what they do.
It’s cost-saving
Building a brand doesn’t cost cash. Yes, it definitely costs you some time and manpower. But all the sales that we’ve gotten for ourselves and our clients cost a huge total sum of $0.
I’m not saying this to brag, but to show you the actual capability a social media brand has. Would you rather pay for an ad that might convert, or not pay for a brand which might convert as well?
When you create a brand, you stop playing the traditional sales and marketing game of going to people. Instead, you get people going towards you.
Humanise your brand
You’re probably part of a huge company or agency, and grooming a company brand is not an effective option for you.
Along with the rising ROI in influencer marketing and more companies placing budgets for influencers to advertise, it just goes to show the importance of personal brands. Instead of spending cash on others, why not build your brand so that you can spend it for yourself?
More importantly, people rather follow a person than a company brand. So, developing your own social media brand gets people buying from your character, rather than the product. It’s also much more relatable and approachable, which you don’t usually get with your company’s brand.
Nurture & build trust
Have you seen ads that make you go “urgh” and think of it as spammy? Well, that’s what most financial planners’ ads look like.
The simplest way to be unseen as spammy is for people to know you before they see your ad.
Your social media brand isn’t just use to sell. It’s used to attract and nurture your cold prospects to hot clients that are ready to buy from you.
In order for one to buy from you first, they got to know, like and trust you for what you do. And that’s what your brand does for you.
If the first impression that your prospect gets from you is through selling on an ad, that is what they’ll remember you for. Hence, ads become spammy especially once we see an ad over and over again.
However, if their first impression was due to a value-adding content from your brand, they’ll see you as a value-adding brand. What social media branding does is to create the best first touchpoint that your prospect will receive. And this will go hand in hand with running ads.
Once they know who you are, like who you are and trust what you do, you can run ads that easily convert because they are no longer totally cold traffic.
Marketing is kind of like hitting golf balls close to the hole. Branding is like placing the golf ball close to the hole. When you combined both of them, you’ll get a ton more sales.
Conclusion
With that being said, you don’t exactly need ads to nurture and convert. We don’t spend on ads at all, because our brand attracts, nurtures and converts for us. If you’re wondering how we do that, read the 5 steps to automate & generate consistent leads here.
If you’ve read till the end of the article and you still think that social media branding isn’t the future and it doesn’t’ benefit you, that just means my writing sucks.
In fact, I can probably think of 20 more reasons as to why it benefits you, but 5 is all that’s needed because I rather you getting of this article right now to build your brand than to continue reading.
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