Journal of Financial Planning: September 2019
Tricia Stone is owner and CEO of Stone Marketing Strategy LLC. She has over 17 years of combined traditional and digital marketing experience, including six years as a marketing executive in the financial services industry.
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Yes, it’s true. Social media can indeed be an effective way to market your business. Promoting your brand and your content on various social media channels can increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your site, and generate leads. Among the different channels in the social media space, Facebook remains the largest and is often my top recommendation to financial advisers as the first place to start their social media marketing efforts.
Although Facebook has had a rough couple of years—with privacy issues that have resulted in hefty fines from the Federal Trade Commission and a settlement with the SEC—it is still the world’s biggest social media platform. Given the recent scandals, Facebook has been making a lot of changes, which may ultimately alter the way businesses advertise on Facebook. It’s going to be interesting to see how Facebook changes over the next year, but to date, here are some important things financial advisers should know about Facebook.
Facebook Is the Top Business Platform
Facebook is the world’s third-most-visited website, after Google and YouTube, according to data from Alexa Internet. Pew Research Center data shows that 68 percent of Americans use Facebook. When you compare that to 35 percent of Americans using Instagram, 29 percent using Pinterest, and 24 percent using Twitter, Facebook is the top choice for reaching the broadest audience.
On average, people check Facebook eight times a day (according to the Pew Research Center). Facebook users access the platform more often than any other social network. Knowing this, it’s important that you refresh your Facebook content more frequently than other social channels.
Facebook remains the leading platform for both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) business. Ninety-eight percent of the B2C businesses surveyed in Hootsuite’s 2018 Social Media Barometer Report indicated it as the top platform for their market. As a financial adviser, your business will benefit from having a Facebook page, especially if you are posting content that resonates with your audience.
You’ll want to separate your Facebook business page from your personal one, so be sure to open an account on Facebook Business Manager, which is Facebook’s free tool for managing ads and content on your business page.
Tips to Boost Organic Reach
As reported on SocialMediaToday.com, the average organic reach for a post is 6.4 percent of a page’s likes. So if your page has 100 likes, and you’re posting organically (meaning you’re not paying to push people to the content), on average six people are going to see that post. Although organic reach has been declining on Facebook for the last few years, you can still take advantage of organic traffic.
Boost organic engagement on your Facebook page by humanizing it. Include team photos, pictures of people in your office, pictures of clients (if they agree), inspirational graphics or quotes, posts that showcase the human side of your practice, or posts that show your funny or creative side. Approach your Facebook page from the mindset of building a community, because that’s what Facebook is trying to get back to. Also vary your posts to include different types of content, such as authority-building posts, lead-nurturing posts, and personal posts, but humanize it as much as you can within your comfort zone.
I recommend posting to Facebook once a day. And if you’re looking for ways to create graphics and infographics, I recommend using canva.com, which has a free membership or a low-cost professional membership that provides more options and functionality.
Tips for Effective Facebook Ads
Facebook ads have become the new advertising medium as newspapers and magazines ads decline. The average Facebook user clicks on eight ads per month, according to data compiled by Hootsuite. That number goes up to 10 for women and drops to seven for men. It has declined somewhat since 2018, but that’s not necessarily bad news because not all ads require a click to be effective. And in fact, not all ads will get a click, even though they are effective. A consumer could see your ad on Facebook, then go to your website to learn more.
Facebook is highly effective at reaching a large number of people for a fraction of the cost that used to be spent on TV ads and magazine ads. Data compiled by Hootsuite also shows that marketers spend 20 times as much on TV ads to reach around twice the audience as their Facebook videos (see blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistic for more).
Test and adjust. Facebook ads require testing, optimizing, and adjusting based on what is working and what is not. They are not a one-and-done or plug-and-play strategy. Don’t just put up one ad aimed at one audience and expect to get results. You can test different creative, different copy, different offers, and various audiences. If you’re concerned about the budget, set a lifetime budget and then create as many different ads as you can within that lifetime budget. Different ads will let you zero in on what messages are working with your target audience.
Whatever ads are performing better, those are the ones you keep and you put more money behind. For example, run a test campaign with $100. That could be five ads, and see that two of them perform really well. After one week, remove the three that aren’t performing, and move your budget over to the two that are.
Stay on budget. When you are running Facebook ads, setting a budget is essential. The cost for Facebook ads really depends. At this time, there’s not a high cost associated with Facebook ads, unless you want there to be, and cost will depend on your market.
Facebook has a very sophisticated targeting system that allows you to target by interest, ZIP code, income levels, and a number of other ways. The ultimate cost of your Facebook ads will depend on the competition for that particular market, but generally speaking, it’s affordable.
For example, if you have an advertising budget of $200 a month, you can certainly start running Facebook ads. With that budget, test a couple of different ads based on copy and audience. Once the results start coming in, you’ll see what the cost per click is. This is information that’s broken down for you by Facebook through the Facebook Ads Manager, so you can determine the success of your campaigns and if you need to increase your ad spend.
It’s All About Engagement
Of course, Facebook is not the only game in town. Once you have your business Facebook page up and running, you can move on to Twitter, Instagram, and even Pinterest. You want to be engaging with your audience on whatever platforms they choose to use. And “engaging” means responding to comments, following your followers, and liking their content.
At the end of the day, Facebook and other social media platforms are really about engagement. That’s how your business can humanize itself and have a “personality” that clients and prospects will want to connect with.
Learn More
FPA members can learn more about social media marketing from Tricia Stone in her FPA Business Success Knowledge Circle presentation, “Developing and Implementing Your Marketing Strategy.” Also learn from Mari Shirley, FPA’s digital marketing manager, in her FPA Latino Knowledge Circle presentation, “Social Media for Your Business.”