Financial services pros beginning to see returns from social selling

Social selling of financial services continues to gain traction as advisors refine both the use of technology and the content of messages.

“In some ways, 2021 was the year social selling grew up,” said Leslie Leach, chief marketing and strategy officer for Hearsay Systems. “Financial services professionals began to see higher returns by focusing on the quality of their posts and through greater personalization.”

A CNBC report features financial advisor Brittney Castor who uses social media sites such as TikTok to reach female prospects. She says it lets her expand her client base, as well as acquire more followers, and she encourages other financial advisors to utilize the platform. In fact, a report at The Drum on a roundtable of social media experts suggests that TikTok is ripe for use by “micro-influencers” in niche subject areas, such as financial services, who are able to build “authentic connections with their audiences through specialist knowledge and engagement.”

Still, Facebook and LinkedIn remain the mainstays for social selling. These also are the most mature social outlets for financial professionals, because they have been in place for several years, and best practices for compliance have been established. Within these channels, there was a noted shift toward more-targeted, higher-quality posts.

Instagram is an up-and-coming channel for financial services, underscoring how much quality and personalization matter to audiences. It yielded high levels of engagement — higher than LinkedIn and Facebook combined — despite low publish rates. This largely was because of content that reflected the empathy and authenticity that clients and prospects crave. Instagram also opened a new door to connect with younger audiences, which are more likely to seek financial-related content from social media than across other channels.

By learning across channels and considering which media, content types and combination of medium and content types meet client needs, financial services professionals can maximize the potential of social selling and generate greater returns from social programs. It helps organizations and professionals to pay attention to what’s working on each medium and why.

Hearsay Systems’ 2022 Social Selling Content Study noted several additional trends:

Content earns client trust. Clients and prospects turn to advisors and agents for guidance, and they want to feel like their financial professional and the company he or she works for has deep knowledge that addresses their needs. Therefore, a steady diet of financial education and corporate branding content worked well for establishing credibility.

Not the only game in town. Other types of content may be more effective for cultivating and sustaining the trust of clients and prospects, however. Consistent with last year, principles-based messaging — focused on ESG, diversity and inclusion, and women — drove the highest engagement rates. Although slightly improved over last year, it was still the least suggested type of content at 4 percent and least published at 2 percent.

Balance is the key. After consistent publishing rates are achieved, quantity can take a backseat to quality as the social program strategy naturally pivots to a greater focus on results. This often manifests itself in a more-potent mix of content types. As social programs mature, they should strive toward a balance of what they need to convey with what clients and prospects find most interesting.

And the winner is… Overall, the channel favored by most publishers was LinkedIn, which claimed 48 percent of all posts, followed by Facebook, which had 40 percent of posts. However, Instagram was the most-productive channel for financial services professionals in 2021, even though it represented only 1.4 percent of all posts.

Choose the right messenger. Just as there are different types of content, used for different purposes, the various social channels at financial professionals’ disposal lend themselves to convey messages in certain ways. For example, links, commonly leveraged in LinkedIn and Facebook posts, were by far the most used components of social posts. These were followed by images, text and video.

Unfulfilled promise of profiles. By all accounts, today’s financial professionals have yet to check off the most basic step of successful social selling: A complete profile. Complete profiles should be the cost of entry for any financial professional who participates in their firm’s social selling program — the first step toward creating a memorable personal brand.

“While there has certainly been a lot of progress, there is still plenty of room for everyone to up their game,” Leach said.