As of late 2016, LinkedIn claimed well over 100 million unique monthly users, making it by far the most popular business social media network serving the Western Hemisphere.
Perhaps more importantly for financial services firms, LinkedIn’s audience is unusually affluent for a mainline social media network’s. According to Hootsuite, some 75 percent of LinkedIn users had incomes above USD$50,000, and nearly 50 percent had incomes over USD$75,000. Both figures significantly exceed the U.S. average — and, indeed, income averages for most developed and developing states around the world.
In short, LinkedIn is a fantastic place for financial services firms to prospect. But many such firms, particularly those with limited resources to devote to marketing and customer acquisition, fall short on LinkedIn or ignore the platform altogether.
Avoid their fate and follow these four LinkedIn marketing tips for financial services firms.
- Complete Your Profile (And Make Sure It’s Accurate)
First up, a quick fix: completing and fact-checking your profile. If you have not updated your LinkedIn profile in some time, you may find that some of the information on it — including important details, such as links to your website and contact numbers — may be out of date. Fix any errors, quickly.
- Drop a Pin on Your Office(s), If Any
If you have a physical office, use LinkedIn’s mapping feature to display its location. This tactic is evident in the LinkedIn profile for trust and corporate services provider Asiaciti Trustauto. Even if a prospective Asiaciti Trust client is not in Singapore at the moment, they know where to find the firm’s offices the next time they’re in the neighborhood.
- Engage With Thought Leaders Regularly (10 Minutes Per Day)
Devote 10 minutes per day to “liking” and commenting on other financial industry thought leaders’ posts. It sounds trite, but simply engaging with more prominent voices in your niche is a fantastic way to boost your overall visibility — including to prospective clients who might know the professionals and firms with whom you’re engaging, even if they have no idea who you are.
- Pursue Strategic Alliances With Appropriate Client Vectors
Another benefit to engaging with thought leaders: the real possibility that fruitful partnerships will arise out of the effort. If you can demonstrate some mutual benefit for prospective partners, you’ll begin to develop the outlines of an affiliate network that could substantially lower your client acquisition costs.
Slow and Steady Wins the LinkedIn Marketing Race
No matter how extensive your resources, you simply cannot do everything outlined above in a single day — nor a single week, if we’re being honest.
With so much else competing for your attention on a daily basis, and so many other sales channels to cultivate and maintain, it’s imperative that you keep the faith and understand — truly — that “slow and steady” is better than “fast and sloppy” when it comes to LinkedIn marketing.
You can create a truly exemplary LinkedIn marketing apparatus. It will take time. And your company will be better off for it. Automation on LinkedIn reduces the time you spend on repetitive and mundane tasks that bots can and should handle
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. In this case, slow and steady really does win the race.
