TRANSCRIPTION

So today we're going to be talking about LinkedIn marketing for financial advisors. And when we think about this, there's three key questions that come to mind straight away. Number one, why should you actually care as a financial advisor? Number two, what not to do? There's tons of people who do it badly. So we're going to make sure that you don't fall into those traps. And finally, how do you do it professionally? So that actually drives good quality results for you as a financial advisor. So why should you care about LinkedIn and LinkedIn marketing as a financial advisor? Well, let me give you a couple of numbers. LinkedIn has got 722 million users on their platform. Okay. And that's based across 200 countries. So if you're in Russia, you're out of luck. Apart from that, the spread of countries is really, really strong. Now, as you probably know, it started life very much as a job on a C V size was mainly used for recruitment, but these days it's evolved into the premiere B to B platform on the internet bearing in mind that these days it's owned by Microsoft. So they've got the pockets to really make it work fantastically well, officially 80% of B to B leads are supposed to come directly from LinkedIn itself. And that makes it a very, very powerful platform. But how does that actually work? Well, let me just give you an idea of people actually go on LinkedIn for a very different reason than they go on sites like Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat, not to say those sites aren't violent. They absolutely are, but people tend to go on LinkedIn with a much more business hat on their head. They tend to be recruiting. They tend to be reading business articles. They tend to be networking with prospects and clients. It's that mindset, which for you, as an advisor, when you're reaching out connecting and building relationships with them is absolutely key. Bearing in mind that with Facebook, a lot of people go on there to chat with their friends and to watch silly cat videos. So what not to do when you're thinking about LinkedIn marketing as a financial advisor, I'm sure all of you have received maybe an aggressive type message or sales approach on LinkedIn, where someone connects with you. And the next thing they say is please buy my stuff. Whatever it happens to be, there's nothing that turns people off quicker. You're thinking, well, who are you? Why would I be interested in buying your stuff? You need to build a relationship with me first. It's basically the equivalent of sleeping with the girl on the first day. So to do it correctly, you need actually have a strategy in place. Okay? The biggest mistake people make is they make it all about themselves. So they're only interested in them, their products and doing sales okay. That on LinkedIn just doesn't work very well. The other thing that works bad beyond LinkedIn is sharing posts and the huge amount of content every single day. Some people on Facebook share up to four or five posts a day. You'll find if you bring that kind of strategy or approach directly over into LinkedIn, that it just won't go down as well. Remember, peak, it's got a more professional hat on their head. So you need to feed into that. You know, if, if you do want to post frequently, I would recommend at not doing any more than one post or article every single day. In fact, a lot of businesses and advisors that I know they do something maybe once a week. In fact, some of them would do it as infrequently as once a month and still get fantastic results from it. So less is more focus on quality over quantity. So how do you approach it professionally and get results as a financial advisor in LinkedIn marketing? Well, first the, you have to position yourself as an expert. This is the foundation of what you need to do. And what I mean by this is you need to position yourself as an expert for a group of people. 95% of the advisors that I meet their marketing strategy is if you have a pulse in some form of a financial need, then come to me and I will help you. That's not a marketing strategy. That's throwing a very broad and vague Nash. So you, the way you stand out from the crowd is very simple. Start to be the big fish in the small pond. So to start, for example, to be the go-to advisor for business owners, with between say two and 20 staff within 40 miles or 40 kilometers of your location already, that's better positioning your messaging to the market is going to be clear. And you'll be able to show that audience understand their problems. And that's really what people want. People don't care your products or your particular services that you're bringing to the market. They want to see that you understand their problems and challenges. And that leads me onto the next point. You have to optimize your LinkedIn profile. Most advisors write their LinkedIn profiles a little bit like a CV or a resume. Okay? Okay. The problem there is, again, your target audience doesn't care so much about what you were doing back in 2001. They just want to see that you understand the problems and challenges, and then potentially that you can bring some form of a solution to the table, which is really going to help them. Thirdly, here you can share valuable content. And what do I mean by valuable content? I mean, posts, articles, videos, and comments, and tips showing again, I understand the problems and challenges of your target audience. Look to add value, look, to help them look, to solve the problems and questions that are already kind of rattling in the back of their head. And people say to me, well, where do I start with this pole? Well, where you could start is think about the top three, four, five questions that you tend to get in your first meeting or your first zoom call with a new prospect or client, and then start by addressing each one of those one by one. Okay. So look to add value less is more it's about quality over quantity. Finally, you actually need to be social bearing mind that LinkedIn is actually a social network and on a social network, you need to interact with people. So a simple way to get started with this is choose a number of people that you like in your market, and you like the content that they share and start to interact with them a little bit like their posts put valuable and useful comments on their posts. That way you're starting to interact within your community. You increase your visibility in the market. People start to see you, which is really what being on a social network is actually all about. So what were the results be of actually doing LinkedIn marketing correctly? Well, one, you're going to grow your connection base on LinkedIn, but not just with random people that you went to school with, or you went to university with. I mean, people who are actually in your target audience and have the potential to engage your services. Bear in mind that not everybody's going to convert as applied within the first two or three weeks of actually communicating with them. But in fact, you, you may, as they see your content over three months, over six months, over 12 months, over 18 months, you've got a huge amount of back-end conversions from that. As they see you positioned as an expert, as you add more value and people start to put up their hand, the second result tends to be warm conversations with people who are in your ideal target audience. And there's a huge difference in marketing terms between a cold conversation on a warm conversation, warm means they already know about you. They know what you're bringing to the table. They've seen that you understand their problems and challenges. It makes for just a much more enjoyable initial conversation. And the likelihood of that prospect converting into a paying client is so much higher for me. That's the real power in LinkedIn is that yes, you can connect to the right people. Yes, you can start these warm conversations. Yes, you can get your positioning, right. And if you could do all of that, the result will be growth in your revenue and more clients and prospects actually coming through your lead pipeline. I hope that helped you today. If you want to learn a little bit more about this, we're going to have a link in the description below or a button below. So you can actually get access to our free training, which will take you through our steps and process that we would use when running a targeted LinkedIn marketing campaign. Thanks for your time.