‘The more they see you, the more they trust you’: Why advisers need to embrace social media

Rather than sporadically posting, social media needs to be approached through a marketing lens.

Speaking at the Adviser Innovation Summit 2022, Firefly Wealth director and senior financial adviser, and founder of The Savings Squad podcast Adele Martin said licensed financial advisers could reap the success of finfluencers by using social media tools and implementing a marketing strategy.

“When I [was] first doing social, it was to attract clients. Later I realised it was much more powerful than that, it actually got me in front of clients between meetings,” Ms Martin said.

“And now we’re in a world where you have to disclose your fees every year and get people to recommit. Using socials is a way for you to give value to your clients in between those review meetings,” she explained.

“Think about the return on investment, even outsourcing it to someone else, it’s not just the value of new clients, it helps retain existing relationships.”

Ms Martin likened it to the mere exposure effect, a psychological term that refers to our tendency to be inclined towards people or objects we are familiar with.

“The more they see you, the more they know that they can trust you, and that is the power of social media,” she said.

As to how advisers can use social media to educate their clients around finance and investment topics, Ms Martin said practice makes perfect.

“That now takes me an hour a week now that I’ve got it down to a fine art. My strategy includes one piece of content that we also email out, we also do a video.

“Did it take me an hour a week when I first started? No. It took quite a long time, lots of swearing sometimes, and then I just got better. I’m really big fan of progress over perfection.”

Ms Martin swears by creating one piece of content and repurposing it several times.

“One of the things I did last year is I recorded a client meeting, took her out of it so it wasn’t personal and then cut up some of those bits, so you don’t have to create the wheel, you’re already doing this,” she said.

And while social media is key to advisers looking to capitalise on the intergenerational wealth transfer, “retirees are on Facebook too”, Ms Martin said.

“My mum is in a thousand Facebook groups, and she is nearly 80.

“I think the opportunity in the retirement space on Facebook is actually huge. Imagine if during COVID you had a Facebook group just for your retired clients, being able to give them information about what they wanted to know.

“At the moment, most retirees are wanting to travel again, what do they need to travel, what travel insurance covers COVID… We can add amazing value and help them, without it necessarily being all financial,” Ms Martin explained.

And when it comes to the dancing on the fine line between general and personal advice, Ms Adele advised "don't capture personal information". 

"Make sure you've got insurance to cover it, make sure you are not capturing personal information and get your legal advice. Disclaimers are the law."

According to recent research conducted by BT, just under 80 per cent of advisers surveyed by the firm have a presence on social media, however only around a third are converting their social media activities to referrals.

BT found that around 37 per cent of advisers have obtained up to five referrals from social media within the past 12 months, while half had not gained any business. But, questioned about the objective behind their social media use, advisers mostly said they’re interested in increasing brand awareness (40 per cent) and sharing information with clients (39 per cent).

Ultimately, the results collated by BT suggested advisers are trying to get the balance right between engagement and sales activities on social media.