Social media gets a bad rap for being ‘social’. Many advisors with whom I speak see it as a noisy distraction — its social-ness getting in the way of doing real biz-ness.
…stands on a soapbox: And that’s a HUGE mistake. It’s precisely the social-ness of social media that’s able to identify your ideal prospects, connect them to your content engine, and find the hooks to prepare them to become clients.
How investors buy financial services in today’s market
I’ll explain: readers of my AdvisorInsider newsletter have learned about what I call the learn-try-buy cycle of today’s financial services. Motivated prospects first encounter an advisor online, reading investment opinion or financial planning advice (learn). This enables them to quickly gauge whether there is a good client/advisor fit (try). Lastly, successful advisors are able to guide prospects to pick up the phone or email to secure an account opening or at least a first meeting (buy).
My learn-try-buy framework of how investors buy financial services is super simple which is why I liked Christine Candell’s post on Forbes, Social Media Solves the Demand Generation Riddle.
Candell uses what she calls a Buyer’s Journey to describe the process of how marketers can attract interested prospects.
There are four major steps that buyers typically go through before they purchase: Enablement stage: Problem Definition, Solution Search, Evaluation and Validation.
Buyers begin their Journey not by looking for a vendor but by understanding the issue’s root cause, exploiting best practices, and learning how peers have addressed the need. In the Problem Definition stage, buyers are doing the homework necessary to decide if and how they might want to approach solving their problem. In the Solution Search step the organization agrees on target outcomes and success metrics, the desired approach, and any particular constraints that need to be addressed.
In a way, for advisors, social media is a doubly-useful tool. Sure, advisors can use it to communicate their USP and value proposition, stand-out from their peers, and all that jazz. But to be used effectively, social media becomes a powerful listening and learning tool — enabling service providers to join the conversation already happening in their prospects’ heads.
What are you doing to listen? To communicate?
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