4 Ways to Modernize Insurance Sales by Adopting Social Selling
The insurance industry is built on — and amazing at! — assessing risk. But the industry’s risk aversion has put insurance marketers between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, modern customer expectations mean agents need to leverage their relationship-building skills to gain ground online. On the other, unfamiliarity and fears about compliance are driving slow social selling adoption across the industry. While the concept may seem novel to some insurance leaders, that doesn't mean their competition is standing on the sidelines. After all, rival carriers aren’t twiddling their thumbs; many are jumping headfirst into social selling strategies and generating the new business to show for it.
The good news is that adopting social selling doesn’t mean the industry has to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it should feel natural because this kind of digital communication is simply an extension of what agents are already doing. Instead of viewing digital marketing and social selling as an entirely new strategy, remember that it’s built on the same bread-and-butter relationship skills that trusted insurance advisors have always used with their customers. Insurance leaders must acknowledge social media as a sales channel, just like cold calling and in-person meetings, and must integrate social selling into the fabric of their organizations.
How to Advocate for Social Selling
Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and learning new things. This means intermediaries have to be there, too. Insurance agents need to reach their clients and prospects alike on social media, and the carriers and agencies they’re part of can help.
With this in mind, insurance marketers and leaders must advocate for social selling throughout the organization. And everyone has a role to play. While marketers will stay busy coordinating paid ad campaigns to reach new target audiences and managing the branded social media, agents and other representatives of the brand must be on board as well: They need to be posting, liking, and replying to build relationships and bring a human touch to the broader social media strategy. Getting this buy-in means bridging the gap between sales and marketing — and educating them on why social selling works. If you're ready to sell-in social selling, here are four ways to get started:
1. Get Everybody on the Same Page
While some marketers may already be comfortable with the concept, social selling is still a recent marketing innovation for the insurance industry. Marketers need to get up to speed on strategy and execution, while also educating the organization (especially intermediaries — have we mentioned how important they are?).
Start by defining social selling. This is our shorthand definition:
Social selling is using social media to sell a product or service. It’s using social to:
· Showcase thought leadership
· Engage with potential customers
· Interact with existing customers
· Build trust and relationships
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the execution can be trickier — think balancing paid and organic advertising, tracking analytics to calculate ROI, and overseeing the social media accounts of all the intermediaries — starting simple helps ease everyone into the process. This is especially important for advisors with limited social media experience. Lead with empathy to help them adjust to the new face of insurance marketing.
2. Speak Their Language — With Stats to Back You Up
Intermediaries want to build relationships and drive results — and social selling can help them do it — but only if they understand its potential. Highlight the value social selling has for both the company and individual intermediaries. Thankfully, this is one of the easier parts of selling social selling: The stats can do all the heavy lifting.
Gather good information from trustworthy sources. If you’re going to be persuasive, you have to paint the picture of what social selling can do. Some of our favorite data comes from LinkedIn. Sales reps scoring higher on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index experience:
· 45% more sales opportunities
· 51% higher likelihood to hit quotas
· 78% outselling peers who don’t use social media
And don’t be afraid to share the success you’ve had with brand social media, too. Brand social media and intermediary social selling, paid social ads, and organic social media content: All of these are chapters in the greater narrative of successful digital marketing strategies.
3. Seriously, Bring Up the Data
Raw numbers are well and good, but case studies marry data and narrative in a uniquely compelling way. Countless other industries have had success with social selling, and insurance needs to pay attention. Share these stories about what social selling has accomplished for so many other businesses. The housing industry, for one, has been particularly astute with social selling in recent years, especially when it comes to mortgage lending.
In addition to formal case studies, bring the concept to life with experiences anyone can understand or has likely seen in their personal social media feeds. Local real estate agents are great examples of an industry that’s exemplary at utilizing social selling tools. Instead of starting from scratch, look to adjacent regulated industries to guide the way.
4. Create a Culture of Q&As
Don’t assume leaders know that social media is a sales channel — but also, don’t talk down to them when explaining the state of digital marketing. This means creating safe spaces where pros can ask questions (and not feel silly). Have a coffee; grab lunch. Give someone permission to be vulnerable and learn. Their aversion is likely rooted in misunderstanding. And remember, more experienced professionals may never have used social media for anything other than personal sharing. Empathy is your best friend. Walking alongside leaders and agents as they dip their feet into social selling will be so much more effective than talking down to them from the podium of knowledge. Building a strong foundation of understanding and a desire to learn will go a long way toward activating a social selling strategy.
Social media marketing for insurance intermediaries may seem like a radical concept, but it’s more radical to not be using social as a sales tool. Sure, it may be new and feel risky, but educating the team and arming them with resources will make social selling feel not only prudent but necessary. To learn more about how social selling can help you reach your audience, request a demo today.
4 Ways to Modernize Insurance Sales by Adopting Social Selling
The insurance industry is built on — and amazing at! — assessing risk. But the industry’s risk aversion has put insurance marketers between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, modern customer expectations mean agents need to leverage their relationship-building skills to gain ground online. On the other, unfamiliarity and fears about compliance are driving slow social selling adoption across the industry. While the concept may seem novel to some insurance leaders, that doesn't mean their competition is standing on the sidelines. After all, rival carriers aren’t twiddling their thumbs; many are jumping headfirst into social selling strategies and generating the new business to show for it.
The good news is that adopting social selling doesn’t mean the industry has to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it should feel natural because this kind of digital communication is simply an extension of what agents are already doing. Instead of viewing digital marketing and social selling as an entirely new strategy, remember that it’s built on the same bread-and-butter relationship skills that trusted insurance advisors have always used with their customers. Insurance leaders must acknowledge social media as a sales channel, just like cold calling and in-person meetings, and must integrate social selling into the fabric of their organizations.
How to Advocate for Social Selling
Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and learning new things. This means intermediaries have to be there, too. Insurance agents need to reach their clients and prospects alike on social media, and the carriers and agencies they’re part of can help.
With this in mind, insurance marketers and leaders must advocate for social selling throughout the organization. And everyone has a role to play. While marketers will stay busy coordinating paid ad campaigns to reach new target audiences and managing the branded social media, agents and other representatives of the brand must be on board as well: They need to be posting, liking, and replying to build relationships and bring a human touch to the broader social media strategy. Getting this buy-in means bridging the gap between sales and marketing — and educating them on why social selling works. If you're ready to sell-in social selling, here are four ways to get started:
1. Get Everybody on the Same Page
While some marketers may already be comfortable with the concept, social selling is still a recent marketing innovation for the insurance industry. Marketers need to get up to speed on strategy and execution, while also educating the organization (especially intermediaries — have we mentioned how important they are?).
Start by defining social selling. This is our shorthand definition:
Social selling is using social media to sell a product or service. It’s using social to:
· Showcase thought leadership
· Engage with potential customers
· Interact with existing customers
· Build trust and relationships
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the execution can be trickier — think balancing paid and organic advertising, tracking analytics to calculate ROI, and overseeing the social media accounts of all the intermediaries — starting simple helps ease everyone into the process. This is especially important for advisors with limited social media experience. Lead with empathy to help them adjust to the new face of insurance marketing.
2. Speak Their Language — With Stats to Back You Up
Intermediaries want to build relationships and drive results — and social selling can help them do it — but only if they understand its potential. Highlight the value social selling has for both the company and individual intermediaries. Thankfully, this is one of the easier parts of selling social selling: The stats can do all the heavy lifting.
Gather good information from trustworthy sources. If you’re going to be persuasive, you have to paint the picture of what social selling can do. Some of our favorite data comes from LinkedIn. Sales reps scoring higher on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index experience:
· 45% more sales opportunities
· 51% higher likelihood to hit quotas
· 78% outselling peers who don’t use social media
And don’t be afraid to share the success you’ve had with brand social media, too. Brand social media and intermediary social selling, paid social ads, and organic social media content: All of these are chapters in the greater narrative of successful digital marketing strategies.
3. Seriously, Bring Up the Data
Raw numbers are well and good, but case studies marry data and narrative in a uniquely compelling way. Countless other industries have had success with social selling, and insurance needs to pay attention. Share these stories about what social selling has accomplished for so many other businesses. The housing industry, for one, has been particularly astute with social selling in recent years, especially when it comes to mortgage lending.
In addition to formal case studies, bring the concept to life with experiences anyone can understand or has likely seen in their personal social media feeds. Local real estate agents are great examples of an industry that’s exemplary at utilizing social selling tools. Instead of starting from scratch, look to adjacent regulated industries to guide the way.
4. Create a Culture of Q&As
Don’t assume leaders know that social media is a sales channel — but also, don’t talk down to them when explaining the state of digital marketing. This means creating safe spaces where pros can ask questions (and not feel silly). Have a coffee; grab lunch. Give someone permission to be vulnerable and learn. Their aversion is likely rooted in misunderstanding. And remember, more experienced professionals may never have used social media for anything other than personal sharing. Empathy is your best friend. Walking alongside leaders and agents as they dip their feet into social selling will be so much more effective than talking down to them from the podium of knowledge. Building a strong foundation of understanding and a desire to learn will go a long way toward activating a social selling strategy.
Social media marketing for insurance intermediaries may seem like a radical concept, but it’s more radical to not be using social as a sales tool. Sure, it may be new and feel risky, but educating the team and arming them with resources will make social selling feel not only prudent but necessary. To learn more about how social selling can help you reach your audience, request a demo today.
Employee advocacy is past; social selling is now. Whatever you call it, brands have long relied on employees to promote their offers, whether by word of mouth or incentive programs. But modern employee advocacy tactics that rely on employees sharing preapproved content fall short in one crucial arena: trust and authenticity.
Reposting brand content isn’t enough. Sure, it gives clients and prospects access to reliable financial advice from trusted sources. Still, it’s no way for financial advisors or wealth managers to build relationships on social media. Reposting is better than nothing but lacks the human connection to transform everyday transactions into meaningful exchanges. Today’s social media users know better.
Half of investors say social media influences who they hire as their financial professionals. Advisors need to post purposefully and make their social profiles an extension of themselves, not just a brand repost feed. The solution? Increase your reach, humanize your brand and build relationships with clients and prospects with social selling.
What Is Social Selling?
Social selling is a savvy marketing strategy where brand intermediaries (financial advisors and wealth managers) post authentic content on their social media accounts. Social selling lets you leverage associates’ networks to showcase thought leadership, engage with clients and build trusting relationships. These authentic touchpoints increase the chances of lead conversion by making the most of advisors’ relationship-building skills online.
You get it: In financial services, products go to market through intermediaries. The same goes for social media. Consider this: Employees have 10 times the reach and double the click-through rate than brand pages have. Social selling can humanize your brand and transform social media into a revenue driver for your institution.
Moreover, social selling enables clients and prospects to meet your advisors on whichever social channels they prefer. They don’t have to take time out of their day and come into an office just to get to know their advisor or start financial planning. Social media has no office hours, so advisors and clients can interact on their terms and time.
At this point, you might be wondering how to pull off social selling in a heavily regulated industry like wealth management. Compliance is the key, not just to staying open for business but also to building trust with your prospects and clients. Luckily, compliant social selling is manageable at scale with supportive tech, teamwork and training.
So, how do you develop and scale a social selling program for your financial institution?
1. Push social selling internally.
Social selling is everyone’s responsibility, not just marketing. It’ll take a group effort to get the initiative started. Unless you win the support of others—including leaders and intermediaries—your social selling vision won’t thrive. Prepare your pitch by gathering data that proves intermediaries can reach your audience. Offer examples of how social selling can amplify your messaging. Create a test group of intermediaries, then gather data to bolster the case.
Compliance is another top concern. Your pitch must clarify that you’ve considered the risks/rewards and the guardrails needed to maintain compliance. Building support for your social selling venture will be the foundation for any momentum going forward. Marketing and compliance teams must work together to get early buy-in.
2. Find the right technology.
Once you’ve got buy-in from internal teams, start finding the right social selling tech. When searching, find a platform that creates efficiencies for your people. Does it leverage organic and paid capabilities? Look for a partner that understands your industry and all its nuances and regulations.
Compliance should be another top priority when considering tech options. How do you ensure content is compliant? Manual labor is an option, but it’s slow. To ensure complete compliance, look for a tech solution to streamline approvals and offer compliance protection at every step. The right tech should support your compliance needs, increase efficiency and empower users to make an impact through social selling.
3. Train and launch.
Once your group of social sellers is ready to go, it’s time to train them. Depending on skill, training could mean starting from the basics or jumping right into strategy. A solid social selling platform will include training on the basics of social selling and how to maximize its potential.
Training intermediaries to understand their role in compliance is another priority that shouldn’t be ignored. Instruct your intermediaries on responding to messages, getting content approval and archiving communication. (Hint: The right tech will help support your training.) Compliance is key to trust-building, so every associate should be empowered to participate.
Next, it’s time to launch. Alert everyone in your institution that your social selling program is live and tell them how they can help. A simple like, share, or follow can help boost your social selling efforts. With the organization behind you, you can start creating and posting branded content with support and momentum.
It might look different, but social selling includes the best parts of employee advocacy. Where it differs is how much farther it can take you toward meaningful relationships with clients and prospects. Social selling allows organizations (like yours) to leverage authenticity, grow thought leadership, ensure compliance and get to know clients on a new level. Don’t wait to get started.
This article originally appeared in Wealth Management on April 27, 2023.
As social media becomes more important for financial services, employee advocacy has become a buzzword for many marketers and their tech providers. Simply put, employee advocacy means the promotion and awareness of an institution by the employees who work there. For example, an employee could share a post on LinkedIn about why they love working at their bank or insurance agency. The focus is at the brand level, and often marketing teams provide their employees with pre-written messages or graphics to share on the company’s behalf.
However, employee advocacy is only surface level and does not truly get to the heart of human interactions and customer relationships that drive the industry. As consumers spend more time online and their expectations evolve, social media is quickly becoming a main channel for interactions with financial professionals. This is particularly true with young people, as Generation Z are almost five times more likely to get financial advice from social media. Instead of employee advocacy, marketing teams should be empowering their agents, loan officers, and advisors with a social selling strategy to drive real, authentic relationships.
What is social selling? It’s just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product
or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales. Social selling offers a better, more effective solution that empowers producers like loan officers, agents, and advisors to have a voice on social and build their networks.
Not sure how to tell the difference? Let’s take a look at a few reasons why social selling is more effective than employee advocacy.
- Social selling gives intermediaries a voice. With social selling, loan officers, agents, and advisors can find their voice and create authentic relationships with their customers. It means much more than a marketing team putting words in their mouth or posting generic brand content. Financial professionals have the opportunity to build thought leadership and even become financial influencers in their communities with social selling. For the marketers that run social selling programs, it also takes the pressure of constantly generating content off their shoulders, giving their teams room for individuality.
- Social selling fosters real relationships. Essentially, social selling is just bringing those all-too-important in-person human connections online. In an age where financial professionals have to meet customers where they are, they can stay in close touch and communicate on multiple channels. All of those interactions work together to build trust and showcase authenticity. It all adds up, too: for instance, half of investors say that social media plays a vital role in who they choose as an advisor. The more that intermediaries get comfortable with social media, the more community they will be able to grow. The opportunity is there, too: 80% of young adults get financial advice from social media.
- Social selling puts a focus on sales. At the end of the day, closing business is the top priority for professionals. It’s called social selling for a reason: intermediaries can engage with prospects at various touch points to move them along the customer journey from start to sale. Social media can be a powerful catalyst for that next step. Over time, institutions can clearly see how much revenue and business social media can bring in based on social growth. Don’t believe it? See how this bank drove a 230% increase in its audience in just a few months of activating a social selling program. The more successful an institution’s agents, advisors, or loan officers are, the stronger it will be as a whole. Social selling is truly a win-win for intermediaries, their institutions, and the customers that will feel valued and heard as a result.
While employee advocacy can be an important first step in getting employees excited about and comfortable with social media, it’s just one part of the puzzle. To truly unlock the power of social media and build relationships that matter online, institutions should look to social selling as a more robust option. Though it can seem overwhelming to take on, building a social selling program can be done with the right tools and resources. See how it works with our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Institutions.
It’s not easy out there this spring – for lenders or for buyers. As you consider your marketing strategy, don’t underestimate the potential in social media.
Between market volatility, ever-changing rates and low inventory, there’s plenty of uncertainty. But one thing is certain; market conditions are making it that much more competitive. That means investing in relationships matters more than ever. And today, that means loan officers need to be proactive and stay in touch via social media.
Considering 77% of borrowers move forward with the first lender they speak to when they’re looking for a loan, showing up in a prospect or existing clients’ social media feed can not only build trust, it can help you close more deals.
After months of economic headlines and the break-neck pace of rate change, loan applicants are discouraged. This is a critical time for loan officers to educate prospects about loan options and the realities of today’s market. By doing so, you can strengthen relationships, build trust and communicate your expertise, all of which can create short and long term ROI.
Social media is an essential channel to create connectivity and trust with prospects. Whether you’re just getting started with social selling or are a well-oiled social selling team, it’s important to be aware of present market conditions and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Here are a few tips to stand out on social this spring buying season:
Be an empathetic person, not a brand
This is not an easy market for buyers or sellers. Homebuying is inevitably emotional and as many buyers navigate complexity and uncertainty, they may be understandably frustrated. This is why it’s so important that loan officers show up as humans on social media, not just logos.
Relationships are the heart of the business – people buy from people, after all. You should be a friendly face and trusted confidante on social media.
It’s about more than having a social media profile. Loan officers need to be their authentic selves when posting too. It’s not enough to share brand content, you need to post personalized content. In other words: be a real human on social.
You should extend the same humanity and empathy on social media as you would to applicants in real life. Acknowledging their frustrations is a great place to start. Ask about their concerns. Provide reassurance.
Educate applicants
Use social media content as an opportunity to educate applicants. While you might hang on every rate update, everyday applicants are likely confused and overwhelmed by changing mortgage news. Social selling can help establish loan officers as thought leaders.
You should be on social talking about what’s happening in the market this spring, but remember to use plain, conversational language with the aim to educate followers. In doing so, you’re not only providing value to followers, but also showing off your expertise.
In practical terms, this could mean posting a current news article on Facebook with a “what it means” POV in the caption. Alternatively, you could share a commentary on a rate change in a quick Instagram video. Regardless of the format, loan officers will have success on social media when you personalize the content and simplify complex concepts for followers.
Consistently be part of the conversation
If the past few years in the housing market have taught us anything, it’s that things change fast. The same holds true this spring and that means you need to be there for all the ups and downs on social media too. Consistency has always been key for social media success, but when navigating changing market news, it’s more important than ever.
Social media algorithms favor those who post often and with consistency. That doesn’t mean you have to post every day or try to time the algorithms, but does mean you should stay active and in the conversation. It’s not a set it and forget it kind of thing.
Don’t be afraid to try something new
The marketplace is unpredictable and social media can be too. When it comes to your social selling strategy, don’t be afraid to try something new. This season may be the perfect time for loan officers to adopt a new social media network, like Instagram for example, or try out new post formats. If you’re not seeing the desired results, try mixing it up.
Social selling is a critical strategy to keep loan officers competitive in a tight lending environment. Not sure where to start with social selling? Check out our Denim Social guidebook, How to Launch a Social Selling Program for a Financial Institution.
This article was originally published in MBA Newslink.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
In today’s competitive insurance and financial advice marketplaces, it’s impossible to deny the impact of social media on business — and, quite frankly, social media in general. A 2022 Pew Research study showed that consumers in every age group are shifting to digital, especially younger generations. Many are looking for crucial guidance online, including insurance and financial advice. In fact, Gen Z is five times likelier to get financial advice on social media than people age 41 and over.
While Millennials and Gen Zers may not dominate your book of business yet, they are the clients of the future, and every generation is increasingly digital. Social media marketing for your firm and your advisors is no longer optional -- it’s necessary. A genuine, consistent, and engaging social strategy can make your brand and team members all the more trustworthy, relevant, and reliable in the eyes of prospective and current clients.
The good news is that creating and maintaining a social strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. Follow these dos and don’ts to optimize your activity, build relationships with new and existing customers, and bring your brand to life with social selling.
Relationships are the foundation of both the insurance and financial services industries. A client has a relationship with a person and not a logo, after all. While it’s important to maintain brand social media pages that communicate your firm’s values and mission, the actual value of social media lies in the humans behind it. So…
DON’T rely solely on brand pages. Social sell instead.
If your brand is active on social media, you’re off to a great start -- but you’re leaving an opportunity on the table if you’re not empowering agents and advisors to share content on social.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging socials to showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
A good social selling program puts agents and advisors at the center of your social media strategy. The good news is that these intermediaries can approach their prospective clients on social media the same way they would in person: finding ways to solve their problems through informative, authentic posts that humanize your brand.
DO encourage authenticity.
Advisors and agents can help make your social media more authentic by being themselves.
Think about it this way: If an agent wouldn’t have the conversation in real life, don’t have it on social media. For instance, if an intermediary engages with a prospect and solely promotes themselves instead of learning about the client, the conversation is probably too sales-heavy; tactics like these might deter people from committing further to your brand.
Instead, encourage your agents to connect with clients and prospects on a more practical and personal level. Showing them that you’re listening and want to help solve their problems goes a long way toward building trust and conversions.
DON’T forget the basics of profile optimization.
Excited to get your agents and advisors posting? Don’t forget the social media fundamentals. Before your advisors click post, check your brand page (and social sellers’ profiles) for consistent messaging, profile images, cover images, and about sections.
Profile images should be professional and current, cover images should be on brand, and information — including hours of operation, phone numbers, and contact emails — should be accurate. Customers must view your brand and intermediaries as cohesive, consistent, and up-to-date.
DO empower agents and advisors to create content.
Social sellers not only need to post regularly but also with purpose. Agent and advisor social profiles should be an extension of who they are in real life. They should use their personal content to tell a story about what they do and why. Authenticity always wins in social media, and you’ll quickly see that your advisors’ personal stories and content garner the most engagement.
Potential clients want to know your brand’s image isn’t just a formula but genuine people — it’s your job to help intermediaries peel back the curtain (and do the same on your brand social pages!).
DON’T mess around with compliance.
Anyone in the insurance or financial services industry understands the importance of compliance. All social media must be compliant, from your brand pages to individual posts from intermediaries. If the idea of intermediaries posting themselves gives you the marketer night sweats and compliance jitters, remember that authentic content drives social selling’s success. The more transparent your sellers are, the better their outcomes will be.
If you’re unsure about what kind of posts are or aren’t allowed in your firm’s social selling strategy, work with a trusted platform that ensures compliance at every step.
DO use the best tools.
Whether you need to generate compliance-approved content, engage in social listening, or integrate your content and advertising efforts, plenty of digital partners can help your social selling and social media efforts succeed. Just be sure to find someone who aligns with your company’s values, understands your industry, and is as committed to communicating your authentic brand voice as you are.
Maintaining an effective online presence is critical for showing clients you are relevant and reliable. Showcase your authentic brand voice, empower social sellers to become active promoters (of themselves and the firm), and follow these other dos and don’ts to better engage with current and potential customers.
Reprinted with permission from the April 3, 2023 issue of PropertyCasualty360.com, ©2023, ALM Global, LLC. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
Connect & Convert on Social
4 Ways to Modernize Insurance Sales by Adopting Social Selling
The insurance industry is built on — and amazing at! — assessing risk. But the industry’s risk aversion has put insurance marketers between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, modern customer expectations mean agents need to leverage their relationship-building skills to gain ground online. On the other, unfamiliarity and fears about compliance are driving slow social selling adoption across the industry. While the concept may seem novel to some insurance leaders, that doesn't mean their competition is standing on the sidelines. After all, rival carriers aren’t twiddling their thumbs; many are jumping headfirst into social selling strategies and generating the new business to show for it.
The good news is that adopting social selling doesn’t mean the industry has to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it should feel natural because this kind of digital communication is simply an extension of what agents are already doing. Instead of viewing digital marketing and social selling as an entirely new strategy, remember that it’s built on the same bread-and-butter relationship skills that trusted insurance advisors have always used with their customers. Insurance leaders must acknowledge social media as a sales channel, just like cold calling and in-person meetings, and must integrate social selling into the fabric of their organizations.
How to Advocate for Social Selling
Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and learning new things. This means intermediaries have to be there, too. Insurance agents need to reach their clients and prospects alike on social media, and the carriers and agencies they’re part of can help.
With this in mind, insurance marketers and leaders must advocate for social selling throughout the organization. And everyone has a role to play. While marketers will stay busy coordinating paid ad campaigns to reach new target audiences and managing the branded social media, agents and other representatives of the brand must be on board as well: They need to be posting, liking, and replying to build relationships and bring a human touch to the broader social media strategy. Getting this buy-in means bridging the gap between sales and marketing — and educating them on why social selling works. If you're ready to sell-in social selling, here are four ways to get started:
1. Get Everybody on the Same Page
While some marketers may already be comfortable with the concept, social selling is still a recent marketing innovation for the insurance industry. Marketers need to get up to speed on strategy and execution, while also educating the organization (especially intermediaries — have we mentioned how important they are?).
Start by defining social selling. This is our shorthand definition:
Social selling is using social media to sell a product or service. It’s using social to:
· Showcase thought leadership
· Engage with potential customers
· Interact with existing customers
· Build trust and relationships
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the execution can be trickier — think balancing paid and organic advertising, tracking analytics to calculate ROI, and overseeing the social media accounts of all the intermediaries — starting simple helps ease everyone into the process. This is especially important for advisors with limited social media experience. Lead with empathy to help them adjust to the new face of insurance marketing.
2. Speak Their Language — With Stats to Back You Up
Intermediaries want to build relationships and drive results — and social selling can help them do it — but only if they understand its potential. Highlight the value social selling has for both the company and individual intermediaries. Thankfully, this is one of the easier parts of selling social selling: The stats can do all the heavy lifting.
Gather good information from trustworthy sources. If you’re going to be persuasive, you have to paint the picture of what social selling can do. Some of our favorite data comes from LinkedIn. Sales reps scoring higher on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index experience:
· 45% more sales opportunities
· 51% higher likelihood to hit quotas
· 78% outselling peers who don’t use social media
And don’t be afraid to share the success you’ve had with brand social media, too. Brand social media and intermediary social selling, paid social ads, and organic social media content: All of these are chapters in the greater narrative of successful digital marketing strategies.
3. Seriously, Bring Up the Data
Raw numbers are well and good, but case studies marry data and narrative in a uniquely compelling way. Countless other industries have had success with social selling, and insurance needs to pay attention. Share these stories about what social selling has accomplished for so many other businesses. The housing industry, for one, has been particularly astute with social selling in recent years, especially when it comes to mortgage lending.
In addition to formal case studies, bring the concept to life with experiences anyone can understand or has likely seen in their personal social media feeds. Local real estate agents are great examples of an industry that’s exemplary at utilizing social selling tools. Instead of starting from scratch, look to adjacent regulated industries to guide the way.
4. Create a Culture of Q&As
Don’t assume leaders know that social media is a sales channel — but also, don’t talk down to them when explaining the state of digital marketing. This means creating safe spaces where pros can ask questions (and not feel silly). Have a coffee; grab lunch. Give someone permission to be vulnerable and learn. Their aversion is likely rooted in misunderstanding. And remember, more experienced professionals may never have used social media for anything other than personal sharing. Empathy is your best friend. Walking alongside leaders and agents as they dip their feet into social selling will be so much more effective than talking down to them from the podium of knowledge. Building a strong foundation of understanding and a desire to learn will go a long way toward activating a social selling strategy.
Social media marketing for insurance intermediaries may seem like a radical concept, but it’s more radical to not be using social as a sales tool. Sure, it may be new and feel risky, but educating the team and arming them with resources will make social selling feel not only prudent but necessary. To learn more about how social selling can help you reach your audience, request a demo today.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
4 Ways to Modernize Insurance Sales by Adopting Social Selling
The insurance industry is built on — and amazing at! — assessing risk. But the industry’s risk aversion has put insurance marketers between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, modern customer expectations mean agents need to leverage their relationship-building skills to gain ground online. On the other, unfamiliarity and fears about compliance are driving slow social selling adoption across the industry. While the concept may seem novel to some insurance leaders, that doesn't mean their competition is standing on the sidelines. After all, rival carriers aren’t twiddling their thumbs; many are jumping headfirst into social selling strategies and generating the new business to show for it.
The good news is that adopting social selling doesn’t mean the industry has to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it should feel natural because this kind of digital communication is simply an extension of what agents are already doing. Instead of viewing digital marketing and social selling as an entirely new strategy, remember that it’s built on the same bread-and-butter relationship skills that trusted insurance advisors have always used with their customers. Insurance leaders must acknowledge social media as a sales channel, just like cold calling and in-person meetings, and must integrate social selling into the fabric of their organizations.
How to Advocate for Social Selling
Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and learning new things. This means intermediaries have to be there, too. Insurance agents need to reach their clients and prospects alike on social media, and the carriers and agencies they’re part of can help.
With this in mind, insurance marketers and leaders must advocate for social selling throughout the organization. And everyone has a role to play. While marketers will stay busy coordinating paid ad campaigns to reach new target audiences and managing the branded social media, agents and other representatives of the brand must be on board as well: They need to be posting, liking, and replying to build relationships and bring a human touch to the broader social media strategy. Getting this buy-in means bridging the gap between sales and marketing — and educating them on why social selling works. If you're ready to sell-in social selling, here are four ways to get started:
1. Get Everybody on the Same Page
While some marketers may already be comfortable with the concept, social selling is still a recent marketing innovation for the insurance industry. Marketers need to get up to speed on strategy and execution, while also educating the organization (especially intermediaries — have we mentioned how important they are?).
Start by defining social selling. This is our shorthand definition:
Social selling is using social media to sell a product or service. It’s using social to:
· Showcase thought leadership
· Engage with potential customers
· Interact with existing customers
· Build trust and relationships
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the execution can be trickier — think balancing paid and organic advertising, tracking analytics to calculate ROI, and overseeing the social media accounts of all the intermediaries — starting simple helps ease everyone into the process. This is especially important for advisors with limited social media experience. Lead with empathy to help them adjust to the new face of insurance marketing.
2. Speak Their Language — With Stats to Back You Up
Intermediaries want to build relationships and drive results — and social selling can help them do it — but only if they understand its potential. Highlight the value social selling has for both the company and individual intermediaries. Thankfully, this is one of the easier parts of selling social selling: The stats can do all the heavy lifting.
Gather good information from trustworthy sources. If you’re going to be persuasive, you have to paint the picture of what social selling can do. Some of our favorite data comes from LinkedIn. Sales reps scoring higher on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index experience:
· 45% more sales opportunities
· 51% higher likelihood to hit quotas
· 78% outselling peers who don’t use social media
And don’t be afraid to share the success you’ve had with brand social media, too. Brand social media and intermediary social selling, paid social ads, and organic social media content: All of these are chapters in the greater narrative of successful digital marketing strategies.
3. Seriously, Bring Up the Data
Raw numbers are well and good, but case studies marry data and narrative in a uniquely compelling way. Countless other industries have had success with social selling, and insurance needs to pay attention. Share these stories about what social selling has accomplished for so many other businesses. The housing industry, for one, has been particularly astute with social selling in recent years, especially when it comes to mortgage lending.
In addition to formal case studies, bring the concept to life with experiences anyone can understand or has likely seen in their personal social media feeds. Local real estate agents are great examples of an industry that’s exemplary at utilizing social selling tools. Instead of starting from scratch, look to adjacent regulated industries to guide the way.
4. Create a Culture of Q&As
Don’t assume leaders know that social media is a sales channel — but also, don’t talk down to them when explaining the state of digital marketing. This means creating safe spaces where pros can ask questions (and not feel silly). Have a coffee; grab lunch. Give someone permission to be vulnerable and learn. Their aversion is likely rooted in misunderstanding. And remember, more experienced professionals may never have used social media for anything other than personal sharing. Empathy is your best friend. Walking alongside leaders and agents as they dip their feet into social selling will be so much more effective than talking down to them from the podium of knowledge. Building a strong foundation of understanding and a desire to learn will go a long way toward activating a social selling strategy.
Social media marketing for insurance intermediaries may seem like a radical concept, but it’s more radical to not be using social as a sales tool. Sure, it may be new and feel risky, but educating the team and arming them with resources will make social selling feel not only prudent but necessary. To learn more about how social selling can help you reach your audience, request a demo today.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
4 Ways to Modernize Insurance Sales by Adopting Social Selling
The insurance industry is built on — and amazing at! — assessing risk. But the industry’s risk aversion has put insurance marketers between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, modern customer expectations mean agents need to leverage their relationship-building skills to gain ground online. On the other, unfamiliarity and fears about compliance are driving slow social selling adoption across the industry. While the concept may seem novel to some insurance leaders, that doesn't mean their competition is standing on the sidelines. After all, rival carriers aren’t twiddling their thumbs; many are jumping headfirst into social selling strategies and generating the new business to show for it.
The good news is that adopting social selling doesn’t mean the industry has to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it should feel natural because this kind of digital communication is simply an extension of what agents are already doing. Instead of viewing digital marketing and social selling as an entirely new strategy, remember that it’s built on the same bread-and-butter relationship skills that trusted insurance advisors have always used with their customers. Insurance leaders must acknowledge social media as a sales channel, just like cold calling and in-person meetings, and must integrate social selling into the fabric of their organizations.
How to Advocate for Social Selling
Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and learning new things. This means intermediaries have to be there, too. Insurance agents need to reach their clients and prospects alike on social media, and the carriers and agencies they’re part of can help.
With this in mind, insurance marketers and leaders must advocate for social selling throughout the organization. And everyone has a role to play. While marketers will stay busy coordinating paid ad campaigns to reach new target audiences and managing the branded social media, agents and other representatives of the brand must be on board as well: They need to be posting, liking, and replying to build relationships and bring a human touch to the broader social media strategy. Getting this buy-in means bridging the gap between sales and marketing — and educating them on why social selling works. If you're ready to sell-in social selling, here are four ways to get started:
1. Get Everybody on the Same Page
While some marketers may already be comfortable with the concept, social selling is still a recent marketing innovation for the insurance industry. Marketers need to get up to speed on strategy and execution, while also educating the organization (especially intermediaries — have we mentioned how important they are?).
Start by defining social selling. This is our shorthand definition:
Social selling is using social media to sell a product or service. It’s using social to:
· Showcase thought leadership
· Engage with potential customers
· Interact with existing customers
· Build trust and relationships
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the execution can be trickier — think balancing paid and organic advertising, tracking analytics to calculate ROI, and overseeing the social media accounts of all the intermediaries — starting simple helps ease everyone into the process. This is especially important for advisors with limited social media experience. Lead with empathy to help them adjust to the new face of insurance marketing.
2. Speak Their Language — With Stats to Back You Up
Intermediaries want to build relationships and drive results — and social selling can help them do it — but only if they understand its potential. Highlight the value social selling has for both the company and individual intermediaries. Thankfully, this is one of the easier parts of selling social selling: The stats can do all the heavy lifting.
Gather good information from trustworthy sources. If you’re going to be persuasive, you have to paint the picture of what social selling can do. Some of our favorite data comes from LinkedIn. Sales reps scoring higher on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index experience:
· 45% more sales opportunities
· 51% higher likelihood to hit quotas
· 78% outselling peers who don’t use social media
And don’t be afraid to share the success you’ve had with brand social media, too. Brand social media and intermediary social selling, paid social ads, and organic social media content: All of these are chapters in the greater narrative of successful digital marketing strategies.
3. Seriously, Bring Up the Data
Raw numbers are well and good, but case studies marry data and narrative in a uniquely compelling way. Countless other industries have had success with social selling, and insurance needs to pay attention. Share these stories about what social selling has accomplished for so many other businesses. The housing industry, for one, has been particularly astute with social selling in recent years, especially when it comes to mortgage lending.
In addition to formal case studies, bring the concept to life with experiences anyone can understand or has likely seen in their personal social media feeds. Local real estate agents are great examples of an industry that’s exemplary at utilizing social selling tools. Instead of starting from scratch, look to adjacent regulated industries to guide the way.
4. Create a Culture of Q&As
Don’t assume leaders know that social media is a sales channel — but also, don’t talk down to them when explaining the state of digital marketing. This means creating safe spaces where pros can ask questions (and not feel silly). Have a coffee; grab lunch. Give someone permission to be vulnerable and learn. Their aversion is likely rooted in misunderstanding. And remember, more experienced professionals may never have used social media for anything other than personal sharing. Empathy is your best friend. Walking alongside leaders and agents as they dip their feet into social selling will be so much more effective than talking down to them from the podium of knowledge. Building a strong foundation of understanding and a desire to learn will go a long way toward activating a social selling strategy.
Social media marketing for insurance intermediaries may seem like a radical concept, but it’s more radical to not be using social as a sales tool. Sure, it may be new and feel risky, but educating the team and arming them with resources will make social selling feel not only prudent but necessary. To learn more about how social selling can help you reach your audience, request a demo today.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
4 Ways to Modernize Insurance Sales by Adopting Social Selling
The insurance industry is built on — and amazing at! — assessing risk. But the industry’s risk aversion has put insurance marketers between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, modern customer expectations mean agents need to leverage their relationship-building skills to gain ground online. On the other, unfamiliarity and fears about compliance are driving slow social selling adoption across the industry. While the concept may seem novel to some insurance leaders, that doesn't mean their competition is standing on the sidelines. After all, rival carriers aren’t twiddling their thumbs; many are jumping headfirst into social selling strategies and generating the new business to show for it.
The good news is that adopting social selling doesn’t mean the industry has to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it should feel natural because this kind of digital communication is simply an extension of what agents are already doing. Instead of viewing digital marketing and social selling as an entirely new strategy, remember that it’s built on the same bread-and-butter relationship skills that trusted insurance advisors have always used with their customers. Insurance leaders must acknowledge social media as a sales channel, just like cold calling and in-person meetings, and must integrate social selling into the fabric of their organizations.
How to Advocate for Social Selling
Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and learning new things. This means intermediaries have to be there, too. Insurance agents need to reach their clients and prospects alike on social media, and the carriers and agencies they’re part of can help.
With this in mind, insurance marketers and leaders must advocate for social selling throughout the organization. And everyone has a role to play. While marketers will stay busy coordinating paid ad campaigns to reach new target audiences and managing the branded social media, agents and other representatives of the brand must be on board as well: They need to be posting, liking, and replying to build relationships and bring a human touch to the broader social media strategy. Getting this buy-in means bridging the gap between sales and marketing — and educating them on why social selling works. If you're ready to sell-in social selling, here are four ways to get started:
1. Get Everybody on the Same Page
While some marketers may already be comfortable with the concept, social selling is still a recent marketing innovation for the insurance industry. Marketers need to get up to speed on strategy and execution, while also educating the organization (especially intermediaries — have we mentioned how important they are?).
Start by defining social selling. This is our shorthand definition:
Social selling is using social media to sell a product or service. It’s using social to:
· Showcase thought leadership
· Engage with potential customers
· Interact with existing customers
· Build trust and relationships
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the execution can be trickier — think balancing paid and organic advertising, tracking analytics to calculate ROI, and overseeing the social media accounts of all the intermediaries — starting simple helps ease everyone into the process. This is especially important for advisors with limited social media experience. Lead with empathy to help them adjust to the new face of insurance marketing.
2. Speak Their Language — With Stats to Back You Up
Intermediaries want to build relationships and drive results — and social selling can help them do it — but only if they understand its potential. Highlight the value social selling has for both the company and individual intermediaries. Thankfully, this is one of the easier parts of selling social selling: The stats can do all the heavy lifting.
Gather good information from trustworthy sources. If you’re going to be persuasive, you have to paint the picture of what social selling can do. Some of our favorite data comes from LinkedIn. Sales reps scoring higher on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index experience:
· 45% more sales opportunities
· 51% higher likelihood to hit quotas
· 78% outselling peers who don’t use social media
And don’t be afraid to share the success you’ve had with brand social media, too. Brand social media and intermediary social selling, paid social ads, and organic social media content: All of these are chapters in the greater narrative of successful digital marketing strategies.
3. Seriously, Bring Up the Data
Raw numbers are well and good, but case studies marry data and narrative in a uniquely compelling way. Countless other industries have had success with social selling, and insurance needs to pay attention. Share these stories about what social selling has accomplished for so many other businesses. The housing industry, for one, has been particularly astute with social selling in recent years, especially when it comes to mortgage lending.
In addition to formal case studies, bring the concept to life with experiences anyone can understand or has likely seen in their personal social media feeds. Local real estate agents are great examples of an industry that’s exemplary at utilizing social selling tools. Instead of starting from scratch, look to adjacent regulated industries to guide the way.
4. Create a Culture of Q&As
Don’t assume leaders know that social media is a sales channel — but also, don’t talk down to them when explaining the state of digital marketing. This means creating safe spaces where pros can ask questions (and not feel silly). Have a coffee; grab lunch. Give someone permission to be vulnerable and learn. Their aversion is likely rooted in misunderstanding. And remember, more experienced professionals may never have used social media for anything other than personal sharing. Empathy is your best friend. Walking alongside leaders and agents as they dip their feet into social selling will be so much more effective than talking down to them from the podium of knowledge. Building a strong foundation of understanding and a desire to learn will go a long way toward activating a social selling strategy.
Social media marketing for insurance intermediaries may seem like a radical concept, but it’s more radical to not be using social as a sales tool. Sure, it may be new and feel risky, but educating the team and arming them with resources will make social selling feel not only prudent but necessary. To learn more about how social selling can help you reach your audience, request a demo today.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
4 Ways to Modernize Insurance Sales by Adopting Social Selling
The insurance industry is built on — and amazing at! — assessing risk. But the industry’s risk aversion has put insurance marketers between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, modern customer expectations mean agents need to leverage their relationship-building skills to gain ground online. On the other, unfamiliarity and fears about compliance are driving slow social selling adoption across the industry. While the concept may seem novel to some insurance leaders, that doesn't mean their competition is standing on the sidelines. After all, rival carriers aren’t twiddling their thumbs; many are jumping headfirst into social selling strategies and generating the new business to show for it.
The good news is that adopting social selling doesn’t mean the industry has to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it should feel natural because this kind of digital communication is simply an extension of what agents are already doing. Instead of viewing digital marketing and social selling as an entirely new strategy, remember that it’s built on the same bread-and-butter relationship skills that trusted insurance advisors have always used with their customers. Insurance leaders must acknowledge social media as a sales channel, just like cold calling and in-person meetings, and must integrate social selling into the fabric of their organizations.
How to Advocate for Social Selling
Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and learning new things. This means intermediaries have to be there, too. Insurance agents need to reach their clients and prospects alike on social media, and the carriers and agencies they’re part of can help.
With this in mind, insurance marketers and leaders must advocate for social selling throughout the organization. And everyone has a role to play. While marketers will stay busy coordinating paid ad campaigns to reach new target audiences and managing the branded social media, agents and other representatives of the brand must be on board as well: They need to be posting, liking, and replying to build relationships and bring a human touch to the broader social media strategy. Getting this buy-in means bridging the gap between sales and marketing — and educating them on why social selling works. If you're ready to sell-in social selling, here are four ways to get started:
1. Get Everybody on the Same Page
While some marketers may already be comfortable with the concept, social selling is still a recent marketing innovation for the insurance industry. Marketers need to get up to speed on strategy and execution, while also educating the organization (especially intermediaries — have we mentioned how important they are?).
Start by defining social selling. This is our shorthand definition:
Social selling is using social media to sell a product or service. It’s using social to:
· Showcase thought leadership
· Engage with potential customers
· Interact with existing customers
· Build trust and relationships
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the execution can be trickier — think balancing paid and organic advertising, tracking analytics to calculate ROI, and overseeing the social media accounts of all the intermediaries — starting simple helps ease everyone into the process. This is especially important for advisors with limited social media experience. Lead with empathy to help them adjust to the new face of insurance marketing.
2. Speak Their Language — With Stats to Back You Up
Intermediaries want to build relationships and drive results — and social selling can help them do it — but only if they understand its potential. Highlight the value social selling has for both the company and individual intermediaries. Thankfully, this is one of the easier parts of selling social selling: The stats can do all the heavy lifting.
Gather good information from trustworthy sources. If you’re going to be persuasive, you have to paint the picture of what social selling can do. Some of our favorite data comes from LinkedIn. Sales reps scoring higher on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index experience:
· 45% more sales opportunities
· 51% higher likelihood to hit quotas
· 78% outselling peers who don’t use social media
And don’t be afraid to share the success you’ve had with brand social media, too. Brand social media and intermediary social selling, paid social ads, and organic social media content: All of these are chapters in the greater narrative of successful digital marketing strategies.
3. Seriously, Bring Up the Data
Raw numbers are well and good, but case studies marry data and narrative in a uniquely compelling way. Countless other industries have had success with social selling, and insurance needs to pay attention. Share these stories about what social selling has accomplished for so many other businesses. The housing industry, for one, has been particularly astute with social selling in recent years, especially when it comes to mortgage lending.
In addition to formal case studies, bring the concept to life with experiences anyone can understand or has likely seen in their personal social media feeds. Local real estate agents are great examples of an industry that’s exemplary at utilizing social selling tools. Instead of starting from scratch, look to adjacent regulated industries to guide the way.
4. Create a Culture of Q&As
Don’t assume leaders know that social media is a sales channel — but also, don’t talk down to them when explaining the state of digital marketing. This means creating safe spaces where pros can ask questions (and not feel silly). Have a coffee; grab lunch. Give someone permission to be vulnerable and learn. Their aversion is likely rooted in misunderstanding. And remember, more experienced professionals may never have used social media for anything other than personal sharing. Empathy is your best friend. Walking alongside leaders and agents as they dip their feet into social selling will be so much more effective than talking down to them from the podium of knowledge. Building a strong foundation of understanding and a desire to learn will go a long way toward activating a social selling strategy.
Social media marketing for insurance intermediaries may seem like a radical concept, but it’s more radical to not be using social as a sales tool. Sure, it may be new and feel risky, but educating the team and arming them with resources will make social selling feel not only prudent but necessary. To learn more about how social selling can help you reach your audience, request a demo today.
When trusted relationships are the bedrock of the industry, most smart financial services marketers see the opportunity in social media. A corporate social media presence is the norm, and many brands are investing in paid social media campaigns — but that’s only scratching the social media surface. For teams looking to transform social media into a sales tool, it’s time to start social selling.
Social selling is so much more than encouraging your sellers to have a social presence. Having a company page on Facebook and a LinkedIn profile are table stakes. If Instagram, Twitter, or even TikTok make sense for your business, it’s important to be there, too. But social selling is so much more than just “being there.” Financial services marketers who embrace social selling empower their teams of intermediaries, such as agents and loan officers, to create lead-generating content that builds trust. Brands that get social selling right can expect to see a 45% increase in sales opportunities and a 51% higher chance of hitting sales goals, according to LinkedIn.
So, why haven’t all financial services marketers launched social selling for their institutions yet? For one, many marketers are hesitant to jump into a process that involves monitoring and amplifying social media content for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of intermediaries. Even for seasoned marketers, it can seem intimidating. (Spoiler alert: With a platform like Denim Social, it’s much easier than it sounds!)
Social selling also takes time. Organic social media growth ramps up over time, no matter how many social sellers a brand activates at once. But just because you might not see an immediate jump in KPIs doesn’t mean you’re not moving the needle. With patience and investment in the right social selling tools, social selling can transform your institution’s marketing strategy and results.
You’re ready to launch social selling for your brand, but where do you get started? Check out these helpful tips from our team of experts at Denim Social:
1. Identify internal social selling champions.
Social selling needs widespread buy-in between marketing, sales, and other key departments. The most effective way to encourage buy-in is to get influential players in these groups on board with social selling. Explain to them how social selling works and its social media reach potential — and how to use the right social selling tools to protect compliance.
By cultivating cheerleaders within your financial institution, these motivated individuals can be an example for their peers and showcase the value of social selling. The more buy-in you can get to your overall social selling program, the faster you’ll be able to demonstrate how valuable social selling is as a marketing strategy. Have patience and stay the course; your determination will pay off as you earn the support of more internal champions.
2. Pick a solid social selling platform.
Managing a social selling strategy could be your full-time job as a marketer, but it doesn’t have to be. The right social selling tech solution will help optimize your efforts without tossing another burden onto your team. We designed our platform to meet these needs with extensive compliance features, a library of preapproved content, and streamlined workflows that make publishing as easy as clicking a button. A social selling platform should make life easier for all its users; if it doesn’t, it’s not the right platform for you.
When evaluating social selling tools, keep a few critical questions in mind: Does the vendor understand the nuances of the financial services industry? What kind of compliance coverage does the platform offer? How will you create content, and how will the platform help you do that? Asking these questions will point you in the right direction so that you can find a social selling platform that works best for your institution’s needs.
3. Spend time training your social sellers and their support teams.
The loan officers, agents, advisors, and other producers who will become your social selling team might or might not be familiar with how to be present on social to grow their business. Even if they’re active on social media personally, they might not understand the concept of social selling or how to make it work for them. It’s your job to teach them (you’re the expert, after all!).
Keep in mind that social selling isn’t only the responsibility of your localized producers. It’s important to loop in anyone in your organization who supports your sales efforts. This means sales executives, regional sales leaders, and even marketing leadership. As part of your social selling launch, take the time to train your broader social selling support group, regardless of their department.
Broadened education and buy-in mean stickiness and support for the folks your organization is relying on to drive business at the local level: your true social sellers. Start with social channel basics and regular organic posting. Then, you can teach them how to feel comfortable generating their own content and engaging with their social networks. Does this mean all your employees need to become social media experts? Not even close. But a deeper understanding of social media in general lays the foundation for successful social selling as your teams get comfortable using it every day.
At Denim Social, we’re passionate about helping your financial institution drive business results with social selling. Not only have we designed our platform to make administering a social selling program easy, but we also provide strategic support from day one, helping you educate and support your sales teams.
Our platform offers several essential features that will help drive your ROI: (Hint: They can also help you implement the above three steps.)
- Customized Onboarding and Team Training. Onboarding onto a new platform shouldn’t be a cookie-cutter process; every team and marketer is different. Tailoring our onboarding and training means that your team (and execs) know they’re getting a bespoke experience for the institution’s specific needs. When you’re getting started, Denim Social can help craft vital internal communication to encourage adoption, leaving no questions unanswered. Once you’ve got the basics down and your first champions are ready to dive in, you can check out our train-the-trainer sessions or our online academy to further grow your team’s expertise. From start to finish, you’ll have an invested partner.
- Content-Rich, Customized Libraries. How will you keep up with content just for your social sellers? Denim Social works with you and UpContent to develop an extensive library of ready-to-use content for your social sellers’ unique needs and interests. Your teams will always have something to say on social, keeping them top of mind with their networks — with the peace of mind of staying compliant.
- Scalable Paid Advertising. Though the foundation of your social selling strategy starts with empowering your intermediaries with organic social content, the most robust social selling programs also integrate localized paid advertising. Although the organic content you cultivate through your individual champions will work to add nuance and humanity to your brand, putting your ad dollars behind your producers will reach consumers looking to connect with real, local humans who can guide them through their next financial decisions. We recommend that marketers drive this side of the social selling strategy, and our platform makes it easy. With Denim Social, one marketer can launch and scale tailor-made paid social campaigns delivered on behalf of your local producers to their local communities.
- Compliance-Focused Features. When you work in financial services marketing, you’re guided by numerous rules, regulations, and laws. Denim Social is engineered to find and flag compliance-related issues before any content goes live. This robust filtering proactively recognizes potential problems so you can sleep better at night.
As part of our compliance-driven culture, our platform provides continuous compliance training through constant feedback. As your team notices which posts are approved or unapproved, they’ll gain valuable insights into the nuances of social media compliance for the industry. Plus, your team can rely on the curated, preapproved content within your Denim Social library, so you can be sure everything posted is compliant (and compelling). An added upside to our compliance feature is that our social selling platform tracks and records all published content, so it can be used for audits whenever you need it.
Are you curious and looking to level up your digital marketing strategy? Or maybe you’re ready to dive in head-first and experience the benefits of social selling firsthand? Either way, social selling is a great way to get started empowering your team and increasing your reach.
Check out Denim Social’s comprehensive social selling guide to learn more!
As a financial marketer, you know that the past 12 months have been a prime time for social selling. Social media usage has been on trajectory to rise 7.8% in 2022, with steady growth expected to continue over the next five years. This growth is fueled by consumers increasingly consulting social media for help making decisions — a habit that offers big opportunities for financial institutions.
As the new year rapidly approaches, it’s a great time to plan your future social selling strategies with the latest social media trends in mind. Wondering what’s popular on social networks? How should trends inform your social selling strategy in the coming year? Here’s what you need to know as you plan for 2023 and beyond:
1. Video content is taking over.
Videos, particularly shorter clips, are having a major moment on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels. Social users are increasingly consuming short-form (call it “snackable”) content, even on legacy social networks. For example, bite-sized videos earned 57% of YouTube views in the second quarter of 2022, versus just 21% the year before.
Many of these videos attract viewers by seamlessly blending education and entertainment. Financial concepts are perfect for the “edutainment” treatment, too. Think about it: With more than 89% of TikTok users actively trying to learn more about finance, it only makes sense to add financial video “edutainment” into your social selling strategy.
That said, not every social selling post needs to contain a video, and not every video needs to be a highly produced affair. Easy-to-consume content is the name of the game, so think short and concise. Quick, pithy videos such as selfie commentaries or quick tips from your social sellers can make your content feel more authentic. No matter what video style you pursue, short clips will stop scrollers and make them more likely to engage with your intermediaries’ posts.
2. Financial advice influencer culture opens up social selling opportunities.
Social media probably seems like the last place most people would turn to for advice about money, yet finance-focused influencers are attracting lots of interest, particularly from younger social media consumers. Gen Zers are five times likelier than older Millennials and Generation Xers to get their money management suggestions on social media. With consumers seeking answers to their business and personal questions via online influencer personalities, you can’t afford not to put your intermediaries on social media to engage these audiences thirsty for (and often unable to find) credible information.
If you haven’t already, plan to empower your producers (agents, loan officers, financial advisors, and other rock stars at your organization) to share their expert advice on social media. When they do, your social sellers’ audiences can build up their financial literacy with insights from qualified professionals. Those prospects’ and customers’ lives will improve, and their loyalty will grow.
Note that your social selling team members don’t have to become superstar influencers for this strategy to work, either. Micro-influencers in their communities also gain plenty of loyalty — and sales as a result. Because social algorithms favor individuals over brands, it’s time to get more of your brand representatives to highlight their expertise on social channels.
3. Social networks as search engines enhances discoverability.
Social is the new search engine. Almost 40% of Generation Z searchers go to apps such as Instagram and TikTok first for search capabilities. In other words, they bypass Google in favor of social networks. That’s huge. And we at Denim Social think this online behavior is sure to catch on across generations. We also think the best way to make use of this trend is to have social sellers active on social media. When more of your employees are on social networks, you’re more discoverable.
Another surefire way to take advantage of the social search trend is to make sure your social selling strategies include both organic and paid tactics. When organic and paid elements work together, you can be where consumers need you at the time they need you.
Otherwise, optimizing for search on social isn’t much different from any other SEO work you’ve encountered. A fast way to enhance the discoverability of social selling copy is to ensure that it incorporates strategic hashtags, including nods to trending topics. Remember, it’s fine for social posts to include numerous hashtags, as long as they all make sense. SEO keywords can also fit nicely into social selling content and ad copy, just as they do in website copy and blog posts. All that optimization drives the social media search engine, ensuring users find your content when they’re seeking information that could lead them to decisions.
Social media has changed the game for marketing and has made person-to-person communication (and selling!) an essential strategy. As with any social media strategy, being up to date on trends is critical for social selling success. Guiding your intermediaries to add short videos, credible advice, and search-boosting features to content will strengthen your social selling strategy for 2023.
A financial conversation is already happening online, and your institution needs to be part of it. It’s time to launch a social selling program if you haven’t already. And if you have, let these trends be a clear sign that it’s time to expand your efforts. People are choosing to work with financial professionals they find on social media, and your intermediaries can meet them there. Want more insider knowledge about applying social selling techniques? Download our exclusive 2023 Denim Social Trend Report today.
Smart financial marketers know social media and social selling are essential to effectively reach and build trust with today’s consumers. But how does your digital marketing strategy measure up against competitors?
Denim Social is here to help. We collected social media data from 177 institutions across banking, mortgage, wealth management and insurance to help you get the pulse on the social media performance. Take a look and see how your institution stacks up.
Ready to learn how you can adopt these trends? Book a demo to learn more.
People buy from people. That fundamental truth is the cornerstone of the insurance industry and is holding true even as the insurance value chain becomes more and more digital. But in a world where customers increasingly avoid in-person interactions — McKinsey’s 2020 U.S. Insurance Agent Survey saw a 65% drop in face-to-face conversations in 2020, with a slow recovery — how do agents adjust? The answer is to meet customers where they are - online.
Insurance professionals likely view social media as a necessary evil, but social media can be a powerful sales tool, putting agents right in the path of their clients and prospects. It’s more than just posting content into a digital void; it’s taking what agents have done for decades to build their business and bringing it to life within the social media landscape. Consider this: GWI research suggests online consumers around the globe spend almost 2.5 hours scrolling through social sites daily.
Putting energy into social media as a sales tool means attracting those eyes and winning more chances to interact with prospects and customers. But where do you start? Here are a few things to consider before leaning into social selling.
- Learn exactly what social selling is (and isn’t)
Social selling is using social media to showcase thought leadership and industry expertise, build relationships and, ultimately, connect with new prospects while maintaining trust with existing ones. But a social selling strategy requires much more than having a Twitter account; it requires the same attention as any sales methods do. It’s taking social beyond simply posting regularly. It’s using social as a connection point to identify life events and points of connection with your community. And the good news is, you should see the returns. LinkedIn’s Social Selling data notes that 78% of social sellers outshine their peers who aren’t using social media as a sales tool.
- Take stock of your social media accounts
If you hope to capitalize on social selling, you must first take stock of your existing social media accounts and look for opportunities to strengthen your overall social presence.
Whichever social channel mix you’ve decided is right for your business (it’s OK not to be on every social platform!), you always want to make sure your brand is consistent and robust across each channel. That sounds easy, but there are a few things to consider to ensure that your identity is clear and consistent:
- Profile images: Whether it’s a professionally taken photo, a well-lit high-resolution image taken on a smartphone or your company logo, make sure your profile images reflect how you and your company look today. (For example: Don’t use your headshot from 15 years ago.)
- Cover images: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all have a space for a cover or background image. Be sure you have a cover image that is consistent with your brand and that you have the rights to use that image.
- “About” sections: Today’s consumers use social media for information searches like they use Google, so your bios and “about” sections pages are more important than ever. Sections can vary across social channels, but your information should be accurate and reflect your business on each channel. Pay special attention to your business description, location information and hours of operation.
Rather than jump right into the heavy stuff, it’s important to get these social media ducks in a row first.
- Make a plan for posting, engaging and amplifying.
After your social accounts are up to speed, it’s important to have a plan. Regularly posting content is only the foundation of social selling, but it will help keep you top of mind with your followers and give you a place to interact with them. It also sets you up well when you’re ready to start putting money behind your posts with paid social advertising.
Beyond posting, it’s important to keep an eye on those who interact with your posts. Comment back, connect with them or, better yet, give them a call. Social selling really comes to life when you can weave social into your everyday sales practices. Either way, prioritize social just as you would other crucial facets of your business. Post regularly and have a plan for responding and engaging with your existing and potential clients. Then turn those engagements into sales opportunities.
- Leverage your resources.
You’re not the only one flexing your social selling muscles, so look to others – even insights from competitors - for help. A good way to begin is to look at the social accounts of others in and out of your sector. What are they writing about? What posts seem to engage followers? How are they branding themselves to be trustworthy experts? Use the information you gather to help you plan your own social selling and content strategy.
The question shouldn’t be if you should start social selling, it’s when. Your existing and potential clients are there, waiting for you. You only must give social selling the time and energy it deserves. As someone in a profession built around risk, you’ll find that social selling is a safe bet.
This article was originally published in Insurance Newsnet.
In today’s origination and refi environment, most mortgage loan officers are finding it’s no longer fish in a barrel. That means every loan officer needs to consider their competitive edge. And when bargain-basement rates are no longer the decision driver for prospects, relationships matter more than ever.
Everyone knows a successful sales strategy is focused on building long-term, trusted relationships, but today, that means building relationships online. Social media has long been regarded as a brand builder, but the real power of social is using it as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to deals.
An active social selling strategy can not only help build ongoing relationships, but keep you top of mind with contacts when opportunities open up – and in this rate environment, that can be short-lived.
Social selling requires continual care and management, but it’s worth the investment of time, and effort when you’re using social to drive business results. A daily social selling routine helps loan officers in so many ways and managing a program doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Here’s where to start:
Optimize Your Profile
Before you even get to posting, it’s important to take a look at your profiles to ensure your brand is consistent across channels. Ensure you have a current and easily recognizable profile picture. If you haven’t already, upload a cover image and update the about section to be your descriptions, location and hours are current.
Post Meaningful and Relevant Content
It’s not only important for you to be posting regularly, you need to be posting with purpose. Your social profiles should be an extension of who you are in real life. Authenticity always wins in social media.
There is no magic formula for how often you should post, but consistency is key. Successful social selling programs offer a variety of organic content. The mix looks different for every loan officer, but commonly a healthy and informed mix includes brand, industry and most importantly, personal/community content.
Interact with the Community
Social media is a two-way conversation and that means you need to be interacting with followers. In other words, don’t post and ghost. Social selling is about listening, responding and engaging. It’s a conversation, so you should be promptly responding to comments and direct messages, showing connections that their inquiries and concerns matter.
When every deal matters, so does every relationship. If you’re looking to build trust and connection with customers and prospects alike, make sure your profiles are up to date, post regularly and interact with your followers. A social selling strategy can help you make the most of social media opportunities in a competitive environment.
This article was originally published in MBA Newslink.
The insurance industry is built on managing risk — but an aversion to risk may leave executives hesitant to support your more modern (and more effective!) marketing strategies. But failure to adapt means resigning yourself to falling behind competitors.
Even for carriers who ride the digital wave, reliance on legacy systems could be holding them back. For insurance marketers to adopt modern digital strategies — like integrated organic and paid social selling through intermediaries — they must educate decision makers and effectively make the case to adopt supportive technology.
This means marketers must take on the role of educator. The reality is, while many companies may think they already have integrated social strategies, they're often conflating social selling with brand-level social media — and they're leaving opportunity on the table in the process. It's up to marketing leaders, like you, to create a culture around social selling, differentiate from brand-level social, nurture top performers, and adopt the right technology. Sound overwhelming? Here's where to start.
Enabling Intermediaries to Leverage Social Selling
Why is social selling so necessary for insurance agents? It's simple: Social media brings us together. It's where people blend their real lives with their digital lives. While everyone loves a good dancing cat video, social channels facilitate so much more than fleeting entertainment. They serve as a resource for creating connections, building trust, and strengthening relationships. Their connective power makes them the perfect avenue for leveraging insurance marketers' best resource: agents. People buy from people, and enabling insurance agents to use social media as a sales tool not only amplifies your brand-level marketing but allows for deeper, more localized relationship-building.
While it's understandable that some insurance leaders worry about how regulation factors into online activity, remind them that social media doesn't bring a new set of rules to learn. Can't do it in real life? Then don't do it on social media. Though social media is a unique setting, it doesn’t require a new playbook. Your agents' social media behavior shouldn't be any different from how they interact via email or in person. They should be authentic. Let the agents be advisors — just bring them to a new medium.
If you’re a social media marketer in the insurance world, you’re in a great position to advocate for organizational change and bring social selling to your company. By using these strategies, you'll be able to shift your company's view of social selling and overcome long-held misperceptions about social media marketing while also improving your metrics.
1. Build a culture from the inside out.
Want your insurance agents or intermediaries to love social selling? You won’t make inroads until you can show them what social selling is and what it can do. Social in any regulated industry can feel scary and risky, so weaving social selling into sales processes that have “always been done a certain way” will feel like a huge change, both internally and externally. Remember: This is a marathon, not a sprint. Build a solid internal foundation before launch.
For example, we talk about agents or intermediaries being on social to drive business, but sales and marketing teams need to be there as well. Everyone across sales and marketing needs to be present on social, understand how to optimize their profiles, and participate in the greater digital discourse. People need to use it to understand its value, and people who understand its value will be more encouraged to adopt it. In time, your colleagues will see social selling’s benefits, and you’ll have a better chance at launching a more widespread social selling initiative.
2. Educate your colleagues and intermediaries on social branding versus social selling.
Most insurance professionals understand on some level that digital marketing is important for amplifying brand messaging. What they may not realize is that social selling is a nonnegotiable sales tool in today's digital world. It's up to you as the marketer to take ownership over shifting this narrative — holding the importance of brand messaging in one hand and relationship-building in the other. Social media enables both, and you must utilize both aspects to get the most out of your digital marketing strategies.
While you do this, keep in mind your co-workers' level of digital literacy. Would it be helpful to host general training on social media? Don’t assume that everyone uses it personally or understands its role in business.
A good starting point to drive home the importance of taking social selling seriously is to talk about the next generation of insurance customers. Today, Millennials and Generation Z make up the biggest buying cohort for insurance products. Because they’re more likely to be active on social media, social selling is a natural fit.
3. Find and nurture internal social selling champions.
Building and nurturing an internal culture of social selling puts much of the onus on you, so it's essential to find internal cheerleaders to help get the culture shift started. These internal champions will support your education and promotion efforts and will expand your range of influence. Good places to look for influencers are among your sales leaders and partners who are hungry to try any tactics that will improve lead generation and conversion rates.
Be ready to buy those internal champions a coffee and have conversations about social media. Get them comfortable with it — and give them space to ask questions. Make it feel accessible and understandable. Once you get them in your camp, they'll help you advocate for something bigger. And once your social selling fans are in place, you can work with them to implement social selling into their workflows with social selling tools.
4. Advocate for the tools to make social selling successful.
When brand-only social media and social selling aren't differentiated, neither are the tools used to manage them. Marketers can feel like they have one hand tied behind their backs if they're using the wrong social media management tool for a social selling program.
The easy solution? To launch a true social selling program, companies must invest in the right technology. We don't mean building your own digital tools — though that may be an option for a Fortune 100 company, it's often more trouble than it's worth. Bespoke options are nice, but hiring a whole team of developers to create new software and keeping them on the payroll to maintain it can be a huge sink of resources. While it's understandable to be wary of outside vendors — and wonder whether they can understand the industry and the business's specific challenges — the right platform can ensure that content sourcing, approval workflows, and compliance are easy and scalable for your social selling program.
With an educated team, an open culture, and the right tools, social selling can become a true avenue of business growth. As your agents grow into everyday social sellers, your leads will grow, too. Relationships are your greatest asset; make sure you're utilizing them with social media.
Want to learn more about social selling in the insurance industry? Book a Denim Social demo today.
Connect & Convert on Social
4 Ways to Modernize Insurance Sales by Adopting Social Selling
The insurance industry is built on — and amazing at! — assessing risk. But the industry’s risk aversion has put insurance marketers between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, modern customer expectations mean agents need to leverage their relationship-building skills to gain ground online. On the other, unfamiliarity and fears about compliance are driving slow social selling adoption across the industry. While the concept may seem novel to some insurance leaders, that doesn't mean their competition is standing on the sidelines. After all, rival carriers aren’t twiddling their thumbs; many are jumping headfirst into social selling strategies and generating the new business to show for it.
The good news is that adopting social selling doesn’t mean the industry has to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it should feel natural because this kind of digital communication is simply an extension of what agents are already doing. Instead of viewing digital marketing and social selling as an entirely new strategy, remember that it’s built on the same bread-and-butter relationship skills that trusted insurance advisors have always used with their customers. Insurance leaders must acknowledge social media as a sales channel, just like cold calling and in-person meetings, and must integrate social selling into the fabric of their organizations.
How to Advocate for Social Selling
Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and learning new things. This means intermediaries have to be there, too. Insurance agents need to reach their clients and prospects alike on social media, and the carriers and agencies they’re part of can help.
With this in mind, insurance marketers and leaders must advocate for social selling throughout the organization. And everyone has a role to play. While marketers will stay busy coordinating paid ad campaigns to reach new target audiences and managing the branded social media, agents and other representatives of the brand must be on board as well: They need to be posting, liking, and replying to build relationships and bring a human touch to the broader social media strategy. Getting this buy-in means bridging the gap between sales and marketing — and educating them on why social selling works. If you're ready to sell-in social selling, here are four ways to get started:
1. Get Everybody on the Same Page
While some marketers may already be comfortable with the concept, social selling is still a recent marketing innovation for the insurance industry. Marketers need to get up to speed on strategy and execution, while also educating the organization (especially intermediaries — have we mentioned how important they are?).
Start by defining social selling. This is our shorthand definition:
Social selling is using social media to sell a product or service. It’s using social to:
· Showcase thought leadership
· Engage with potential customers
· Interact with existing customers
· Build trust and relationships
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the execution can be trickier — think balancing paid and organic advertising, tracking analytics to calculate ROI, and overseeing the social media accounts of all the intermediaries — starting simple helps ease everyone into the process. This is especially important for advisors with limited social media experience. Lead with empathy to help them adjust to the new face of insurance marketing.
2. Speak Their Language — With Stats to Back You Up
Intermediaries want to build relationships and drive results — and social selling can help them do it — but only if they understand its potential. Highlight the value social selling has for both the company and individual intermediaries. Thankfully, this is one of the easier parts of selling social selling: The stats can do all the heavy lifting.
Gather good information from trustworthy sources. If you’re going to be persuasive, you have to paint the picture of what social selling can do. Some of our favorite data comes from LinkedIn. Sales reps scoring higher on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index experience:
· 45% more sales opportunities
· 51% higher likelihood to hit quotas
· 78% outselling peers who don’t use social media
And don’t be afraid to share the success you’ve had with brand social media, too. Brand social media and intermediary social selling, paid social ads, and organic social media content: All of these are chapters in the greater narrative of successful digital marketing strategies.
3. Seriously, Bring Up the Data
Raw numbers are well and good, but case studies marry data and narrative in a uniquely compelling way. Countless other industries have had success with social selling, and insurance needs to pay attention. Share these stories about what social selling has accomplished for so many other businesses. The housing industry, for one, has been particularly astute with social selling in recent years, especially when it comes to mortgage lending.
In addition to formal case studies, bring the concept to life with experiences anyone can understand or has likely seen in their personal social media feeds. Local real estate agents are great examples of an industry that’s exemplary at utilizing social selling tools. Instead of starting from scratch, look to adjacent regulated industries to guide the way.
4. Create a Culture of Q&As
Don’t assume leaders know that social media is a sales channel — but also, don’t talk down to them when explaining the state of digital marketing. This means creating safe spaces where pros can ask questions (and not feel silly). Have a coffee; grab lunch. Give someone permission to be vulnerable and learn. Their aversion is likely rooted in misunderstanding. And remember, more experienced professionals may never have used social media for anything other than personal sharing. Empathy is your best friend. Walking alongside leaders and agents as they dip their feet into social selling will be so much more effective than talking down to them from the podium of knowledge. Building a strong foundation of understanding and a desire to learn will go a long way toward activating a social selling strategy.
Social media marketing for insurance intermediaries may seem like a radical concept, but it’s more radical to not be using social as a sales tool. Sure, it may be new and feel risky, but educating the team and arming them with resources will make social selling feel not only prudent but necessary. To learn more about how social selling can help you reach your audience, request a demo today.
Employee advocacy is past; social selling is now. Whatever you call it, brands have long relied on employees to promote their offers, whether by word of mouth or incentive programs. But modern employee advocacy tactics that rely on employees sharing preapproved content fall short in one crucial arena: trust and authenticity.
Reposting brand content isn’t enough. Sure, it gives clients and prospects access to reliable financial advice from trusted sources. Still, it’s no way for financial advisors or wealth managers to build relationships on social media. Reposting is better than nothing but lacks the human connection to transform everyday transactions into meaningful exchanges. Today’s social media users know better.
Half of investors say social media influences who they hire as their financial professionals. Advisors need to post purposefully and make their social profiles an extension of themselves, not just a brand repost feed. The solution? Increase your reach, humanize your brand and build relationships with clients and prospects with social selling.
What Is Social Selling?
Social selling is a savvy marketing strategy where brand intermediaries (financial advisors and wealth managers) post authentic content on their social media accounts. Social selling lets you leverage associates’ networks to showcase thought leadership, engage with clients and build trusting relationships. These authentic touchpoints increase the chances of lead conversion by making the most of advisors’ relationship-building skills online.
You get it: In financial services, products go to market through intermediaries. The same goes for social media. Consider this: Employees have 10 times the reach and double the click-through rate than brand pages have. Social selling can humanize your brand and transform social media into a revenue driver for your institution.
Moreover, social selling enables clients and prospects to meet your advisors on whichever social channels they prefer. They don’t have to take time out of their day and come into an office just to get to know their advisor or start financial planning. Social media has no office hours, so advisors and clients can interact on their terms and time.
At this point, you might be wondering how to pull off social selling in a heavily regulated industry like wealth management. Compliance is the key, not just to staying open for business but also to building trust with your prospects and clients. Luckily, compliant social selling is manageable at scale with supportive tech, teamwork and training.
So, how do you develop and scale a social selling program for your financial institution?
1. Push social selling internally.
Social selling is everyone’s responsibility, not just marketing. It’ll take a group effort to get the initiative started. Unless you win the support of others—including leaders and intermediaries—your social selling vision won’t thrive. Prepare your pitch by gathering data that proves intermediaries can reach your audience. Offer examples of how social selling can amplify your messaging. Create a test group of intermediaries, then gather data to bolster the case.
Compliance is another top concern. Your pitch must clarify that you’ve considered the risks/rewards and the guardrails needed to maintain compliance. Building support for your social selling venture will be the foundation for any momentum going forward. Marketing and compliance teams must work together to get early buy-in.
2. Find the right technology.
Once you’ve got buy-in from internal teams, start finding the right social selling tech. When searching, find a platform that creates efficiencies for your people. Does it leverage organic and paid capabilities? Look for a partner that understands your industry and all its nuances and regulations.
Compliance should be another top priority when considering tech options. How do you ensure content is compliant? Manual labor is an option, but it’s slow. To ensure complete compliance, look for a tech solution to streamline approvals and offer compliance protection at every step. The right tech should support your compliance needs, increase efficiency and empower users to make an impact through social selling.
3. Train and launch.
Once your group of social sellers is ready to go, it’s time to train them. Depending on skill, training could mean starting from the basics or jumping right into strategy. A solid social selling platform will include training on the basics of social selling and how to maximize its potential.
Training intermediaries to understand their role in compliance is another priority that shouldn’t be ignored. Instruct your intermediaries on responding to messages, getting content approval and archiving communication. (Hint: The right tech will help support your training.) Compliance is key to trust-building, so every associate should be empowered to participate.
Next, it’s time to launch. Alert everyone in your institution that your social selling program is live and tell them how they can help. A simple like, share, or follow can help boost your social selling efforts. With the organization behind you, you can start creating and posting branded content with support and momentum.
It might look different, but social selling includes the best parts of employee advocacy. Where it differs is how much farther it can take you toward meaningful relationships with clients and prospects. Social selling allows organizations (like yours) to leverage authenticity, grow thought leadership, ensure compliance and get to know clients on a new level. Don’t wait to get started.
This article originally appeared in Wealth Management on April 27, 2023.
As social media becomes more important for financial services, employee advocacy has become a buzzword for many marketers and their tech providers. Simply put, employee advocacy means the promotion and awareness of an institution by the employees who work there. For example, an employee could share a post on LinkedIn about why they love working at their bank or insurance agency. The focus is at the brand level, and often marketing teams provide their employees with pre-written messages or graphics to share on the company’s behalf.
However, employee advocacy is only surface level and does not truly get to the heart of human interactions and customer relationships that drive the industry. As consumers spend more time online and their expectations evolve, social media is quickly becoming a main channel for interactions with financial professionals. This is particularly true with young people, as Generation Z are almost five times more likely to get financial advice from social media. Instead of employee advocacy, marketing teams should be empowering their agents, loan officers, and advisors with a social selling strategy to drive real, authentic relationships.
What is social selling? It’s just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product
or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales. Social selling offers a better, more effective solution that empowers producers like loan officers, agents, and advisors to have a voice on social and build their networks.
Not sure how to tell the difference? Let’s take a look at a few reasons why social selling is more effective than employee advocacy.
- Social selling gives intermediaries a voice. With social selling, loan officers, agents, and advisors can find their voice and create authentic relationships with their customers. It means much more than a marketing team putting words in their mouth or posting generic brand content. Financial professionals have the opportunity to build thought leadership and even become financial influencers in their communities with social selling. For the marketers that run social selling programs, it also takes the pressure of constantly generating content off their shoulders, giving their teams room for individuality.
- Social selling fosters real relationships. Essentially, social selling is just bringing those all-too-important in-person human connections online. In an age where financial professionals have to meet customers where they are, they can stay in close touch and communicate on multiple channels. All of those interactions work together to build trust and showcase authenticity. It all adds up, too: for instance, half of investors say that social media plays a vital role in who they choose as an advisor. The more that intermediaries get comfortable with social media, the more community they will be able to grow. The opportunity is there, too: 80% of young adults get financial advice from social media.
- Social selling puts a focus on sales. At the end of the day, closing business is the top priority for professionals. It’s called social selling for a reason: intermediaries can engage with prospects at various touch points to move them along the customer journey from start to sale. Social media can be a powerful catalyst for that next step. Over time, institutions can clearly see how much revenue and business social media can bring in based on social growth. Don’t believe it? See how this bank drove a 230% increase in its audience in just a few months of activating a social selling program. The more successful an institution’s agents, advisors, or loan officers are, the stronger it will be as a whole. Social selling is truly a win-win for intermediaries, their institutions, and the customers that will feel valued and heard as a result.
While employee advocacy can be an important first step in getting employees excited about and comfortable with social media, it’s just one part of the puzzle. To truly unlock the power of social media and build relationships that matter online, institutions should look to social selling as a more robust option. Though it can seem overwhelming to take on, building a social selling program can be done with the right tools and resources. See how it works with our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Institutions.
Every social circle contains a few people whose ideas seem to carry more weight and gravitas. These people are influencers. They just seem to know what they’re talking about, and others actively seek their thoughts and opinions.
The same goes for digital social circles. If loan officers from your institution can establish themselves as thought leaders—specifically in loan origination—they can become sought-after sources for financial advice. Thought leadership demonstrates to readers that the person is knowledgeable and trustworthy, which will influence current and prospective clients.
When done right, a thought leadership strategy can be incredibly impactful. In a 2021 LinkedIn-Edelman survey, 65 percent of respondents said a piece of thought leadership content changed their perception of a company for the better, and 64 percent said thought leadership is a more trustworthy basis for gauging capabilities and competencies than marketing materials and product sheets. For banks especially, financial services thought leadership is a powerful way to foster trust and rapport with prospective clients.
The combination of thought leadership and social media augments these effects considerably. Unfortunately, banks tend to use social channels solely for marketing purposes and basic customer service.
Social selling is the use of social media to sell a product or service. It leverages social channels to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers and ultimately build sales-encouraging trust and rapport. It’s not enough to just “be online;” social selling empowers loan officers to become thought leaders, share with their networks and add humanity and authenticity to branded content.
Why should social selling techniques matter to your bank?
There’s a lot of bad financial advice online. Building thought leadership (especially in finance) allows loan officers to demonstrate that they are trusted, credible experts with clients’ best interests at heart. Prospective clients want to know they can trust your loan reps as human beings. Providing helpful, educational content is a great way to show them your business cares about delivering real value and connection. As a marketer for your brand, it’s your job to empower loan officers to start building those relationships through social selling.
Here are three tips for how to leverage social selling in your bank’s thought leadership strategy:
1. Build trust with prospects
Finance is a deeply personal business, and prospects want to know they can trust loan officers before feeling comfortable talking financial situations and goals. Social selling allows the brand’s loan officers to build direct, personal relationships with customers and prospects.
In times of market volatility or transition within a client’s life, the right thought leadership strategy can really connect. For instance, a blog post or LinkedIn video about debt consolidation loans could resonate with prospective clients who need help organizing their expenses. Or a reassuring Instagram reel about taking out a mortgage in a time of rising interest rates could be just what a first-time homebuyer needs to hear. Empowering your officers to start building these relationships via social selling content is one of your most important jobs in marketing for a banking brand.
2. Stay top of mind with clients
Financial services thought leadership helps your bank stay top of mind and engaged with existing clients. While there aren’t enough hours in the day for your brand’s loan officers to check in with every single client, social selling techniques can help them stay connected and deepen relationships without overworking. Social selling content can provide value to customers while loan officers are doing other vital work to close more loans.
Plus, when marketers help loan officers continually demonstrate their expertise online, the chances of gaining client referrals just increases. For example, offering services for business owners might encourage a social seller to post a guidebook about business loans and prompt an existing client to consider a loan to cover expansion. This guidebook can then serve as a handy piece of content for referrals.
3. Help intermediaries build expertise
While it’s not easy to confront, there is significant personnel movement in every industry today. Loan officers are concerned about their long-term career plans, and thought leadership is a great way to build your team’s reputation—regardless of where they work. Thought leadership content retains its value, even if employees move to another bank or financial institution. You might not be able to allow them to take their book of business, but their expertise and social media networks are intangible.
For these reasons (and more), thought leadership is essential to remaining competitive in today’s marketplace and building trust with clients. By leveraging social selling for loan officers, you’ll amplify your brand-building efforts with prospective clients, other industry experts and even potential employees. A solid thought leadership strategy through social selling will help build brand recognition, support lending teams, and establish lending officers as industry experts. Don’t wait to get started.
This article was originally published in ABA Banking Journal.
It’s not easy out there this spring – for lenders or for buyers. As you consider your marketing strategy, don’t underestimate the potential in social media.
Between market volatility, ever-changing rates and low inventory, there’s plenty of uncertainty. But one thing is certain; market conditions are making it that much more competitive. That means investing in relationships matters more than ever. And today, that means loan officers need to be proactive and stay in touch via social media.
Considering 77% of borrowers move forward with the first lender they speak to when they’re looking for a loan, showing up in a prospect or existing clients’ social media feed can not only build trust, it can help you close more deals.
After months of economic headlines and the break-neck pace of rate change, loan applicants are discouraged. This is a critical time for loan officers to educate prospects about loan options and the realities of today’s market. By doing so, you can strengthen relationships, build trust and communicate your expertise, all of which can create short and long term ROI.
Social media is an essential channel to create connectivity and trust with prospects. Whether you’re just getting started with social selling or are a well-oiled social selling team, it’s important to be aware of present market conditions and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Here are a few tips to stand out on social this spring buying season:
Be an empathetic person, not a brand
This is not an easy market for buyers or sellers. Homebuying is inevitably emotional and as many buyers navigate complexity and uncertainty, they may be understandably frustrated. This is why it’s so important that loan officers show up as humans on social media, not just logos.
Relationships are the heart of the business – people buy from people, after all. You should be a friendly face and trusted confidante on social media.
It’s about more than having a social media profile. Loan officers need to be their authentic selves when posting too. It’s not enough to share brand content, you need to post personalized content. In other words: be a real human on social.
You should extend the same humanity and empathy on social media as you would to applicants in real life. Acknowledging their frustrations is a great place to start. Ask about their concerns. Provide reassurance.
Educate applicants
Use social media content as an opportunity to educate applicants. While you might hang on every rate update, everyday applicants are likely confused and overwhelmed by changing mortgage news. Social selling can help establish loan officers as thought leaders.
You should be on social talking about what’s happening in the market this spring, but remember to use plain, conversational language with the aim to educate followers. In doing so, you’re not only providing value to followers, but also showing off your expertise.
In practical terms, this could mean posting a current news article on Facebook with a “what it means” POV in the caption. Alternatively, you could share a commentary on a rate change in a quick Instagram video. Regardless of the format, loan officers will have success on social media when you personalize the content and simplify complex concepts for followers.
Consistently be part of the conversation
If the past few years in the housing market have taught us anything, it’s that things change fast. The same holds true this spring and that means you need to be there for all the ups and downs on social media too. Consistency has always been key for social media success, but when navigating changing market news, it’s more important than ever.
Social media algorithms favor those who post often and with consistency. That doesn’t mean you have to post every day or try to time the algorithms, but does mean you should stay active and in the conversation. It’s not a set it and forget it kind of thing.
Don’t be afraid to try something new
The marketplace is unpredictable and social media can be too. When it comes to your social selling strategy, don’t be afraid to try something new. This season may be the perfect time for loan officers to adopt a new social media network, like Instagram for example, or try out new post formats. If you’re not seeing the desired results, try mixing it up.
Social selling is a critical strategy to keep loan officers competitive in a tight lending environment. Not sure where to start with social selling? Check out our Denim Social guidebook, How to Launch a Social Selling Program for a Financial Institution.
This article was originally published in MBA Newslink.
Our team recently attended the Global Insurance Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa, which is an educational and networking opportunity that brings together over 500 insurance and financial professionals, along with technology solutions. It was clear that tech-enablement is top of mind for insurance leaders and providers, as the demand for tools and resources that enhance digital customer communications increase.
As a compliant platform that empowers insurance intermediaries on social media, Denim Social is a perfect solution for carriers and agencies that are ready to take the next step toward a modern marketing strategy. As their expectations shift to digital, so should the industry .
Coming out of the GIS conference, our team saw three big trends at the intersection of insurance and technology.
- Uncertain economic conditions are creating new challenges for the industry at large. Now more than ever, agents need to be equipped to be resilient and available to their clients across multiple communications channels.
- Client education is vital. With more and more prospects looking to social media for financial and planning advice, agents have a unique opportunity to educate their communities on basic financial literacy.
- As online insurance transactions grow in popularity, agents must double-down on relationships to avoid losing out.
Despite these changes, insurance agents and agencies that make the client experience their top concern will thrive. No technology can replace the human interaction and care between an agent and their client. To counteract an impersonal approach, agents can find a solution in meeting clients and prospects where they are, when they need it. Social media is essential for doing this in an ever-connected world. By creating personal (and helpful) networks, agents can find that their relationships are stronger than ever.
See how to give agents a voice on social media with this practical guide on Social Selling for Insurance. It’s a non-negotiable for any modern marketing strategy.
Insurance leaders know the value of agents when it comes to product distribution, but smart marketers should be making the case to invest in digital enablement at the agent level. This means extending social media efforts beyond the brand and to the intermediaries building relationships at the local level.
Helping agents feel comfortable on social media and weaving it into their everyday sales mix is much different than managing a social presence at the brand or company level. But when your business goes to market through intermediaries, empowering them on social media is crucial.
Unsure where to start with a social selling program? It can feel daunting, but Denim Social can help. Learn how to set the right tone, train, create content and more in the latest guide from Denim Social: Guide To Social Selling for Insurance.
Connect & Convert on Social