Facebook has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 2004 as a college networking platform. Since 2006, however, Facebook has been available to the general public and has grown to an astonishing 2.91 billion users monthly. And with that growth has come enormous opportunities for marketers to get their products and services in front of consumers.
For financial advisors, marketing on Facebook offers the opportunity to reach users that have a higher likelihood of being interested in financial advisor services. The catch? How to find these Facebook users and most importantly – get them to take notice.
While Facebook marketing can seem intimidating to financial advisors getting started with marketing on the platform, here are some important tips that can help get them going on the right path to Facebook marketing success.
Use this definitive guide, which includes social media for financial advisors.
This article will help you have an overview understanding of:
- Organic vs. paid Facebook marketing
- Understanding important Facebook metrics
- Targeting audience options
- Facebook for financial advisors: marketing tips
What is organic vs. paid Facebook marketing?
Before getting too deep into the nuances of Facebook marketing, it’s important to separate organic Facebook marketing and paid Facebook marketing.
Organic Facebook marketing is anything happening outside of Facebook ads. This can be posted to your financial advisor business page, event postings, videos, and the like. The major difference between organic and paid Facebook marketing (besides the cost) is that organic marketing relies on your network of followers to share content outside of your financial advisor page.
Facebook ads are paid placements for your financial advisor content that is shown to a specific audience based on designated attributes such as income, demographics, and profession to name a few.
This can be in the form of a promoted post from your financial advisor Facebook profile feed, carousel ads with multiple images, videos and even simple headlines and copy with a CTA. These paid campaigns often provide access to members of your target audience and are intended to get users to take the desired action, such as click on the link.
What are important Facebook metrics?
Facebook provides metrics for both organic and paid content, with more detail being provided for paid campaigns. And when it comes to these metrics, there are a handful to keep a close eye on:
- Reach: The number of people who see your post.
- Impressions: The number of times your ad was shown to an audience.
- Engagement: How many times people interacted with your ad (i.e., likes, comments, shares, mentions).
- Clicks/Click-Through-Rate: The number of times people clicked on a link in your content. This is the main goal of the ad campaign, so this metric is very important. However, one single metric rarely tells the whole story, so it should be analyzed in conjunction with other campaign metrics instead of as a standalone number.
A note about audience targeting options
Facebook has as times come under scrutiny for how it handles user data. This isn’t surprising given just how much data Facebook knows about its users based on how they interact with and use the Facebook platform. In the past, Facebook made much of this behavioral data available to advertisers directly in the ads platform.
However, Facebook has now limited who can access this information and is now allowing only specific 3rd-party data companies to access this data and provide it to advertisers. This extra step requires more work (and more costs) to advertisers and can make it difficult for financial advisors to use these targeting options without extensive knowledge and experience working with marketing data. Because of this, many financial advisors are turning to digital marketing partners to help manage this process.
These digital marketing firms can work directly with data providers to take the guesswork out of the audience targeting process and, in the end, result in more cost-effective and successful targeted Facebook campaigns.
What are some Facebook marketing tips for financial advisors?
Focus on one campaign at a time.
As we’ve already established, Facebook marketing can be overwhelming for financial advisors just getting started. A good tip is to start with one campaign and one audience. Even though you likely have different groups you eventually want to reach, it’s easier to get started and learn the ropes when you can simply focus on one.
Define what a conversion means to you.
While this may sound obvious, it’s not always clear what constitutes a “conversion.” This can vary from business to business – and even vary depending on the campaign you’re running. For example, a campaign with the objective of getting website clicks has a different defined conversion than a campaign designed to increase newsletter subscription signups.
Focus on high performing content
Take a look at your financial advisor content and see what pieces have performed better than others. You’ll probably notice some themes and patterns, and from there you can decide which content you should be producing and sharing more of.
Run A/B tests (especially with images)
Within the ads platform, Facebook allows the option to A/B test ad elements. It’s considered a best practice, especially when it comes to images. Why?
Different images appeal to different people — even if the message is the same. Knowing what types of images get the attention of your target audience can make your financial advisor Facebook marketing that much more effective.
Use facebook marketing to generate leads and traffic elsewhere.
While Facebook is a great source for reaching your financial advisor firm’s target audience, the real key to turning that prospect into a client is to move them into your own financial advisor sales funnel.
While it’s great to have engagement on Facebook, that’s not where your financial advisor business is conducted. It’s a great place to get started and generate leads, but the trick is to use quality content such as a white paper or eBook that will incentivize them to fill out a lead form.
Once you have that piece of the puzzle, you have successfully moved that lead from a 3rd-party platform to your own financial advisor database. From there, you have total control over the communications they receive from you and are able to nurture that lead without the assistance of a 3rd-party platform where you have less control.
