How to Marry Organic and Paid Social Media Advertising Strategies
Financial institutions often play it safe when it comes to marketing — and for good reason. They need to be certain they follow all compliance and governing regulations. But problems can also arise when firms play it too safe with their marketing mix and forgo largely effective modern tactics, such as paid social media advertising.
Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
Organic and paid social advertising work best in tandem. To ensure you're getting the most out of your social selling strategy, check out our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Marketers.
How to Marry Organic and Paid Social Media Advertising Strategies
Financial institutions often play it safe when it comes to marketing — and for good reason. They need to be certain they follow all compliance and governing regulations. But problems can also arise when firms play it too safe with their marketing mix and forgo largely effective modern tactics, such as paid social media advertising.
Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
Organic and paid social advertising work best in tandem. To ensure you're getting the most out of your social selling strategy, check out our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Marketers.
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.
Between market volatility, ever-changing rates and low inventory, it’s hard for lenders to know what to expect and even tougher to craft an effective marketing strategy. But one thing is certain; market conditions are making it that much more competitive for individual loan officers. The deals are out there, but without bargain-basement rates on the table, every application is competitive.
Investing in relationships matters more than ever. And today, that means your loan officers need to be proactive and stay in touch via social media.
How important is staying top of mind with prospects? Consider this: 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 loan officers close more deals.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that social media can help build your brand, but most mortgage marketers have only scratched the surface. To truly unleash the potential of social and keep loan officers competitive in this market, lenders need to empower them to use social media as a sales tool. Want to know how? , Download the latest Denim Social Guide: A Guide To Your Social Selling Strategy for Spring Buying Season here.
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.
Consumers’ relationships with banks have changed a lot in the last decade. EY found that more than a quarter of bank customers worldwide tried neobanks in 2021 alone. According to Capco, 53 percent of millennials moved their funds to different banks from May 2019 to May 2021, and 42 percent of Gen Zers did the same.
Today’s consumers are quick to change services when something does not suit them. Though this shift has the potential to affect customer retention rates, it also provides an opportunity for institutions looking to acquire new customers.
Banks need to be using the most effective, up-to-date tools and tracking metrics if they want to stay competitive and gather valuable intel about conversions. That does not mean banks should be just capturing how many likes or comments their social sellers’ posts receive. They certainly should, but it’s more about shifting understanding of some of these vital metrics to leverage them to convert more customers. Tracking click-through rates, reach and how your offline conversions factor into customer acquisition are all critical for making the most of your bank’s social selling strategy.
Let’s get into the details.
Social selling: Now is the time to start.
First and foremost, if your social media goal is to increase customer acquisition to grow revenue, then a social selling strategy that measures conversions is best. If you are reading this, your bank is probably employing social selling already and you have realized what a boon it can be to your marketing efforts.
For those unfamiliar with social selling, however, it is the process of using associates’ social posts to lay a foundation for your brand and build relationships with customers. People want to communicate with other people (not a corporate account), and social selling allows your officers, advisors and more to connect with your audience on a more human level and engage within their own community networks.
What metrics are important in social selling strategies focused on conversions?
Leveraging a social selling strategy for customer acquisition is all about being able to gather and analyze more data about your customers. The more knowledge you have about how customers interact with your social selling efforts, the easier it is to adjust your approach to get the most conversions. By tracking important metrics and understanding how they impact customer acquisition, that data can inform your social selling strategies and bring in more customers.
To use social selling to its full potential and give your conversion rates a boost, focus on the following metrics:
1. Reach
You might be wondering why we’re talking about such a basic metric, but a combination of reach and following can be a strong measure of your conversion-driving social selling strategy. LinkedIn reports that associates have social networks 10 times larger than most brands.
Access to your social sellers’ connections is part of the beauty of social selling. Naturally, these connections extend your reach. With the right tools, your bank can measure its reach as a brand and as a collective of social sellers and then use that information to shape the social conversation, engage more deeply and drive more conversions.
2. Click-through rate
The click-through rate (or CTR) of any given post might be the most important number to track when it comes to building a social strategy that converts. After all, you want people to not just read your content; you want them to take action by clicking through to your landing page.
So, a good landing page is also essential. Your page should include all the benefits you can offer customers right away. It should also have an easy-to-spot form where users can input their information in return for educational content. The customer gets to download something that improves their business or life, and your loan officers or advisors get their contact information—it’s that easy.
The good news is that social selling can provide a major advantage here, too: Employee posts consistently have double the CTR of corporate brand accounts, according to LinkedIn.
3. Offline conversions
One thing to remember when you’re dialing in your social selling metrics is that your strategy still needs to connect with other tools (such as your CRM) that can tie back to and measure offline conversion and acquisition activities. It’s important to track metrics such as customer churn, net promoter scores and customer retention costs. This data is still vital in conjunction with traditional digital metrics.
Online, this connection to deeper institutional systems allows you to easily monitor and flag important actions, such as downloads, click-throughs and renewal rates. Then, you can create attribution data that ties conversions back to your social selling efforts. Without this connection, you would be unable to accurately measure offline conversions and how those numbers affect your larger social selling strategy.
In today’s tech-savvy environment, banks benefit by using the most effective, up-to-date tools and metrics to drive conversions with their social selling. Customer acquisition is essential to the health of any financial institution and there is no better way to meet those customers than by leveraging your social selling strategy to the max. Tracking critical metrics such as offline conversions, CTRs and overall reach must be part of that strategy if you want to take advantage of insights to convert customers.
This article was originally published in ABA Banking Journal.
Doug Wilber helps financial institutions communicate through social media.
Wilber is the CEO of Denim Social, a Clayton, Missouri-based company that can help life insurers, banks, wealth management firms and other highly regulated clients reach out with ordinary posts and ads on services such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
The company has about 250 clients. In 2021, it attracted $5 million in financing from an investor group that included Fintop Capital.
Wilber has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in business from Penn State University.
He has been involved with financial services marketing and startup management since 2006, when he became a prepaid card marketer at Discover Financial Services. For about 10 years, he has served on the investment committee of SixThirty Ventures, a business development program for financial technology startups.
He took over as the top executive at Denim Social in April 2020.
Wilber answered questions via email about how he thinks financial professionals should go about creating, using and sharing social media content.
The interview has been condensed and edited.
THINKADVISOR: Can efforts to reach out through social media be compatible with all of the compliance concerns that financial professionals face?
DOUG WILBER: Social media compliance keeps people up at night for a reason, but it doesn’t have to.
The right social media management tools can help ensure any post — whether it’s directly from a financial professional or a partner — is compliant.
Look for tools that offer approval workflows and keyword red flags.
What do you think, generally, about financial professionals sharing the content used in consumer awareness and outreach campaigns?
Shared content strategies can be effective, but only if the content is useful and the financial professional is being authentic.
Social media is really about relationships, and that means financial professionals need to engage with their communities online.
If partner content educates investors and showcases an advisor’s expertise, that can be a nice addition to their social feed. But shared content shouldn’t be the only thing they are posting.
Ideally, their social posts would primarily be personal, authentic content, with a measured amount of promotional and partner content.
Just like in real life, advisors need to educate first and sell second.
Are there some situations in which using shared outreach content makes more sense than others?
Shared content can be useful for broader topics, like financial education or market updates.
Financial professionals should avoid using partner content as their sole content source, though. Social media should be an extension of a professional’s real-life relationships.
Think about it this way: If you wouldn’t have a solely promotional conversation in real life, you shouldn’t do it on social media either.
Is creating a post from scratch different from sharing someone else’s post?
Whether a financial professional is creating or sharing a post, they should consider themselves and their firm responsible for the content.
One financial professional’s social media can impact the entire firm brand, after all.
Social media compliance is complex and requires marketing, compliance, and individual advisors to work together.
While we recommend every advisor be active on social media to share thought leadership and amplify the brand, they definitely shouldn’t go it alone or execute a strategy by posting natively to social media networks.
A social media management tool built for compliance can ensure every new and shared post is reviewed and approved by the right experts.
How can financial professionals avoid complaints about use of other people’s content?
Whether it’s financial information or cat videos, it’s good social media etiquette to give credit to the original creator.
The greater risk is a financial professional posting misinformation that could damage the reputation of a firm or non-compliant content that draws the attention of regulators.
What should financial professionals do if they see standard, compliance-approved social media content and want to personalize it?
Financial professionals should definitely be personalizing content. This is a great way to make social media posts more authentic, but an approval workflow in a social media management tool is essential.
Once a financial professional personalizes a post, they can submit it for approval to ensure their commentary is factually correct and compliant.
Without the right tools, scaling a review and approval process is impractical (if not impossible) and opens up a financial institution to risk.
In your opinion, are there any drawbacks to financial professionals using packaged content from outside content? If so, how can financial professionals address those challenges?
Standard and packaged content can be a great tool, but it has to be personalized and useful to be effective. Think about the value a follower is getting from the post. It needs to matter to them.
Today’s financial professionals must be social selling, not just building the brand by sharing content.
Smart financial professionals are using social media 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.
Connect & Convert on Social
How to Marry Organic and Paid Social Media Advertising Strategies
Financial institutions often play it safe when it comes to marketing — and for good reason. They need to be certain they follow all compliance and governing regulations. But problems can also arise when firms play it too safe with their marketing mix and forgo largely effective modern tactics, such as paid social media advertising.
Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
Organic and paid social advertising work best in tandem. To ensure you're getting the most out of your social selling strategy, check out our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Marketers.
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.
How to Marry Organic and Paid Social Media Advertising Strategies
Financial institutions often play it safe when it comes to marketing — and for good reason. They need to be certain they follow all compliance and governing regulations. But problems can also arise when firms play it too safe with their marketing mix and forgo largely effective modern tactics, such as paid social media advertising.
Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
Organic and paid social advertising work best in tandem. To ensure you're getting the most out of your social selling strategy, check out our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Marketers.
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.
How to Marry Organic and Paid Social Media Advertising Strategies
Financial institutions often play it safe when it comes to marketing — and for good reason. They need to be certain they follow all compliance and governing regulations. But problems can also arise when firms play it too safe with their marketing mix and forgo largely effective modern tactics, such as paid social media advertising.
Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
Organic and paid social advertising work best in tandem. To ensure you're getting the most out of your social selling strategy, check out our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Marketers.
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.
How to Marry Organic and Paid Social Media Advertising Strategies
Financial institutions often play it safe when it comes to marketing — and for good reason. They need to be certain they follow all compliance and governing regulations. But problems can also arise when firms play it too safe with their marketing mix and forgo largely effective modern tactics, such as paid social media advertising.
Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
Organic and paid social advertising work best in tandem. To ensure you're getting the most out of your social selling strategy, check out our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Marketers.
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.
How to Marry Organic and Paid Social Media Advertising Strategies
Financial institutions often play it safe when it comes to marketing — and for good reason. They need to be certain they follow all compliance and governing regulations. But problems can also arise when firms play it too safe with their marketing mix and forgo largely effective modern tactics, such as paid social media advertising.
Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
Organic and paid social advertising work best in tandem. To ensure you're getting the most out of your social selling strategy, check out our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Marketers.
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
How to Marry Organic and Paid Social Media Advertising Strategies
Financial institutions often play it safe when it comes to marketing — and for good reason. They need to be certain they follow all compliance and governing regulations. But problems can also arise when firms play it too safe with their marketing mix and forgo largely effective modern tactics, such as paid social media advertising.
Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
Organic and paid social advertising work best in tandem. To ensure you're getting the most out of your social selling strategy, check out our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Marketers.
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