You're listening to Financial Advisor Marketing, the best show on the planet for financial advisers who want to get more clients without all the stress. You're about to get the real scoop on everything from lead generation to closing the deal. James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisers grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard. [00:31.7]
James: What’s going on financial advisors? This week's episode is inspired by a question from an inner circle member. I thought it was so good that I decided to turn it into an entire podcast episode because I think it can help a lot of people. And I think it can clear up some of the myths that are out there about getting clients with social media. If you want to subscribe to the inner circle newsletter, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, and that's all I'll say about that. The question is, can financial advisors get clients with nothing but social media? My answer is yes, but why would you? Because there are so many different marketing strategies that compliment social media and make social media more effective. Plus, most of the time, people want to see more than just your social media anyway. [01:22.8]
For example, there's a study called, Advisor Value Propositions. I've cited it many times on this show, and it found that Google is the most used tool for investors to find information about financial advisors. Specifically, 41% of investors use Google to search for information and 26% of them rank Google as the most important place to get information. Next, we have LinkedIn. 27% of investors use LinkedIn to search for information about financial advisors and 12% of investors rank LinkedIn as the most important search tool. When I share that stat with financial advisors, they are a little bit taken aback. They don't believe that the 12% of investors, they use it as the most important search tool. So right away, we can see that Google is more important than LinkedIn as a search tool for financial advisors. [02:19.0]
Now, of course, one can make the argument that Google search will show the financial advisors and LinkedIn account anyway, and that is true when someone searches your name as a financial advisor, if you're Joe Smith and somebody searches, Joe Smith, financial advisor, Lincoln, Nebraska, or something to get more detailed, your LinkedIn account, if you're Joe Smith in Lincoln, Nebraska is probably going to show up in the first page of search results. So, it's a little misleading to have this sort of percentage, this sort of statistic, because it's likely much higher. And that's why, if you're someone who solely wants to use social media to get clients, even though I recommend multiple strategies, I want to equip you with the material you need to succeed. So, in that same study Advisor Value Propositions, they fleshed out what investors wanted from financial advisors, LinkedIn account, what they wanted to find when they got there. [03:15.0]
So, here's what investors were looking for in order of importance, I'm going to give you the top five. Number one, the most important thing that they wanted to get from a financial advisors, LinkedIn account is work experience. So, this is the advisor’s company, how long the advisor has been at that company, that sort of thing. Number two is the specialty. This is so ridiculously important that I created an entire product about this called Deep Dive into Niche Marketing, which you can find over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/niche, TheAdvisorCoach.com/niche. People are literally looking for your specialty. So, make sure you A) have one and B) make it known. Because just because you have a specialty, doesn't mean you're making it known, doesn't mean that when people get to your LinkedIn account, they know who you serve. Like, it seems so obvious, but a lot of people still don't do it. But yeah, number two, most important thing that people are searching for when they get to a financial advisor’s, LinkedIn account is a specialty. [04:16.9]
Number three is certifications, awards, and recognition. So, if you have any of those, make them known as well. Again, nobody knows you have them until you make them known. Yes, in the past a different podcast episodes, I've talked about how certifications aren't as important as you think they are. And they're definitely not as important as you think they are, but when financial advisors see them on your LinkedIn profile, they act as a deal breaker. So, if you're a generalist financial advisor without as many certifications and without as much experience, and you're going up against another generalist financial advisor who has more experience and more certifications, that person is probably going to beat you for the client essentially. But remember number two is specialty. So, if you're a financial advisor who specializes in working with dentists and you don't have as many certifications and you don't have as much experience, and you're going up against a generalist financial advisor, you've got a bit of a fighting chance because if a dentist, I was looking to hire a financial advisor, you're going to be given more weight because, well, it just makes sense. And also in this study, number two, your specialty is higher than number three, certifications, awards, and recognition. So, number two, beats number three, and that's how the cookie crumbles. [5:35.6]
Number four is location, make sense? You want to, if you're looking for financial advisor and your nearby area, it makes sense that you're looking for location. And number five is investing approach and philosophy. This is something a lot of financial advisors leave out of their profiles to their own detriment. So, if you don't have anything on your link, then profile about your investing approach and philosophy, make sure you add it because investors are looking for it. [6:00.1]
Now, here are the top five things in order. Once again, that investors are looking for when they search Facebook for a financial advisor, we just covered LinkedIn, now we're going to cover Facebook. Number one is location. So, on LinkedIn, number four of his location on Facebook location is much more important, that's what they want to see on Facebook. They want to know where you are. Number two is personal information they want to learn about you. Do you have any cats, Dogs, kids? You, are you married? Do you have a wife? Do you have a husband? What do you do? What are your hobbies? Do you go fly fishing? Do you go hunting? Are you into grilling and chilling like I am? They want to know about you personal information, but be careful because one in three investors have looked at advisors, personal Facebook pages, and more than half of them, more than half decided not to work with the advisor as a result. So yes, there is a balance here between sharing personal information, so you can build rapport. You can come off as a friendly, warm kind, genuine human being, but you don't want to take it too far. You don't want to have pictures of yourself at your neighbor Joe's party where you just, I don't know, hanging upside down over a Keg or something. I don't know what you do, would you crazy animal? I don't know what you crazy animals do on the weekend. So, number two is personal information. [7:18.7]
Number three is certification awards recognition, Again, this is just pretty basic stuff. Number four is areas of specialty. So, this is interesting. Number two was areas of specialty in LinkedIn. Number four is areas of specialty on Facebook. So, people really want to see your specialty. It's not as important on Facebook as it is on LinkedIn, but people want you to have a specialty. If you are a financial advisor out there and you are not broadcasting a specialty and you're not specializing in something like, what are you doing there? You're working against the grain. And number five is work experience. So, if you have those things, you greatly improve your odds of getting clients with just social media. Because when people check out your social media accounts and they're looking for those five things and you check all of those boxes, your chances are much better. [8:07.8]
But here are some other ways that I've seen financial advisors do it. Facebook groups, that's one way. There is an inner circle member who said that he's been getting clients with Facebook groups, and I'm not sure if he means that he has his own Facebook group, or if he has just been involved in other people's Facebook groups. I've seen both of them work. There are a lot of FIRE groups on Facebook. So, FIRE is financial independence or financially independent retire early. And there's FAT FIRE, which is basically fire, but taken up to a whole another level. People who don't want to sacrifice their lifestyle will be super frugal. So, there are fire groups or a Fat Fire groups, coastal fire, lean fire. These are people who talk about money and financial advisors chime in, whenever it makes sense. I've also seen real estate investment groups work well for people who do infinite banking bank on yourself, family banking, Reagan's secret account. There's a million different names for this thing, but it's essentially high cash value dividend paying whole life insurance. You can borrow from it and it's non-direct recognition, it continues to grow as if you never touched it. Real estate investors love that stuff. Real estate and infinite banking goes together like peanut butter and jelly. [9:23.3]
Hey, financial advisors – if you’d like even more help building your business, I invite you to subscribe to James’ monthly paper-and-ink newsletter, The James Pollard Inner Circle.
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Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more. [9:45.9]
So this whole, get clients with Facebook groups, things started in the marketing world. If I'm not mistaken with real estate agents, because what these agents used to do is they rejoined Facebook groups in their local areas and begin networking there. For example, if a real estate agent served the Tampa Bay market, that agent would join Tampa Bay, Facebook groups like what's happening in Tampa Bay. What's going there in Tampa Bay, bad drivers of Tampa Bay. I'm just guessing at this point; I'm just making up names for Facebook groups. I've seen similar Facebook groups in other areas. I don't know if it's in Tampa Bay, but you get the idea. There are a bunch of Tampa Bay specific Facebook groups where people from Tampa Bay join. Shocker, right? [10:31.4]
So, the real estate agents would start sharing information, answering questions. Somebody might ask about some of the best restaurants in Tampa Bay. The real estate agent would chime in and everyone would see the agent. It would just be a lot easier to get clients that way. It used to work really well for them, and it probably still does. I've seen some real estate agents start their own Facebook groups. If there is a specific group that isn't made and they see a need for it, they can create the group and invite people from other groups to join that group, to ask specific questions. If there's a group like, what's going there in Tampa Bay, where people will post about, oh, there's a Chick-fil-A coming next August or a furniture store is opening up where the old grocery store used to be. They post those type of questions in that group. But if they have a question about restaurants or where to get oil changed and that sort of thing, they would need a different group because you can't really ask those questions in what's going there. So real estate agents have seen those sorts of opportunities and they have created their own Facebook groups. And they've gotten people there. [11:36.0]
I don't know why I went off on a tangent about real estate agents, but that's the history of the Facebook group thing. Financial advisors hope you, I hope you got a little inspiration from that, that you can take something from that. Direct messaging has also worked well for financial advisors. Although I'm not hearing as success stories anymore. I think it's a mixture of both. It's not working as well anymore, and a lot of people have been abandoning the direct messaging approach, but it would be foolish of me to ignore the fact that financial advisors have gotten clients by reaching out and networking with people on social media directly. Of course, they have, because it's a networking site. It has a messaging function for a reason, people respond to messages or at least some people do and it makes sense. [12:20.1]
Something like LinkedIn has a long and storied history of getting clients through direct messages and allowing people to get clients through direct messages. Because think about it this way. People are using LinkedIn as a search engine to find certain things about financial advisors. We've already established that. Well, when you message someone on LinkedIn, all that person has to do is click on your name or your picture and get taken to your profile, that person can see everything there. It's a lot easier. They don't have to go through the search engine. They don't have to search search, search, search, click, click, click, scroll, scroll, scroll. They just click once and they're on your profile. So, they can get to your profile and see if you have those five things there. They can check all the boxes and it just increases your odds. So direct messaging can be amazing. It's been amazing for years. Direct messaging has even worked on me. There have been many times where I've asked questions on LinkedIn and people have privately messaged me with help input. And yes, the ability to sell me a solution to my problem. [13:23.1]
See selling is not evil. We can't continue to treat sales selling as a nasty thing. If I have a problem and I broadcast that problem to the world, it's because I want a solution. And if I want something, chances are I'm willing to pay for it. A few months ago, I asked the almighty LinkedIn network, if there was anyone who could help me with a custom Mercedes sprinter van or any custom van, really lo and behold, someone put me in touch with another man who literally makes custom vans like that's his specialty. That's all he does. He has results on top of results. On top of results. He has different photos of here's this fan that he did. And he tricked it out this way. Here's this van, that's got a table, it's got internet access, it's got lighting. It's like, he's customizing these vans, and this is something that I'm kind of sort of looking into. Cause you know, I'm kind of want to take this show on the road. I have a couple of business ideas where I think a sprinter van can really help. So, I got in touch with this person. I wanted something, you know, I asked for it, it was super specific and the network made it happen. So, I wanted this custom van. I was willing to pay for it and someone came up with a solution to that is, he selling to me who wanted to fulfill my needs, my wants in exchange for money. That's that sounded long fulfilling my wants in exchange for money. Get your mind out of the gutter, James. But you know what I mean? And sales, isn't a dirty word. It is something that makes the world go around. [14:52.7]
So can you get clients with just social media, absolutely, but why would you? Because a much better approach is to use, say with me multiple marketing strategies. It is the king, the holy grail, the latest marketing advice I can ever give you. If you embrace this advice, your business has a much better chance of success. I can't state this enough, have your Facebook profile linked back to your website. If you're using groups, when people click on your Facebook profile, they see that you've answered something and what's going there in Tampa Bay. And someone says what's going where the old McDonald's used to be. And you comment and you say, hi, Joe, I love that McDonald's but what's going there is a Chick-fil-A and Chick-fil-A is going to be great. Do you like Chick-fil-A? And Joe's like, who's this person and Joe clicks on it, your profile and sees your website goes there. It's going to be more effective than just a Facebook profile alone. [15:53.4]
The same thing is true with LinkedIn. When people get to your profile and I see your website, they see your company. They can make the decision to go to your website and engage there. They can learn stuff there. Social media is an amazing tool, it does convert people. But what about all the people it doesn't convert? There's a huge percentage of people who need a little bit more. It's kind of like, well, I talked about the sprinter van, so I've got automobiles on my mind. So, it's kind of like selling a car and there are different levels to selling a car. You have verbal description only. You can ask yourself, well, will people buy with a verbal description? Absolutely. Here you go. Let me say this. I've got a black, 1969 Camaro that is in pristine condition. It's $50,000. Do you want it? Yes. Some people will buy based on that scription alone, just verbal description. People will buy sight unseen, but my odds get better when I throw in a picture. So, I could have verbal description and a picture, more people will buy. I tell them what I'm offering and I throw in a photo. I could even make it better by allowing them to see touch and drive the car. We'll make it even better than that by me personally, standing there selling them on it and persuading them, why it's a good deal. [17:14.2]
So those levels are very similar to getting people, to interact with your other marketing materials. Your other marketing strategies, we'll add depth to you and your business and that depth will get more people to say yes to working with you. So, think about it like this, your profile file alone, your Facebook profile, your LinkedIn profile, whatever is like just the verbal description. And if you really trick it out and you check all five of those boxes that we talked about earlier in the show, then it's like a verbal description plus a photo. Lots of people buy cars based on verbal descriptions and photos, but there's a huge segment of the population who won't. They want to drive the car first. They want to take a test drive. They want to see it in person. They want to touch it. They want to get under the hood. They want to make sure everything's cool. Well, in order to do that, you need something else. Getting under the hood is like getting on your website and getting on your email list. Learning more about you reading your about us page, checking out your contact page, looking at your home page, something like that. Reaching out to you in a different way. Maybe it's getting a handwritten note from you. That's what seals the deal. That's what finally gets somebody to set an appointment with you. This is what I'm talking about. So bottom line, I'm going to say it one more time. Can you get clients with just social media? Yes. For sure. It's been documented. It's been proven people do it all the time every single day, but why would you? [18:35.1]
And that's it for this week. If you want to get on my email list, I've got a special treat for you. It's a free 42-minute video called, How Financial Advisors Can Run Profitable Online Ads? And you can get it over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/ads-training, so TheAdvisorCoach.com/ads-training. So, you opt in and the video will be sent directly to your inbox and I'll catch you next week. [19:03.4]
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