With the likelihood that your clients are already on LinkedIn, why (and how) should your brokerage also be? Adinah Brown, content manager at Leverate, discusses.
As the financial trading industry faces enormous disruption, LinkedIn appears to be a marketing platform that is standing strong despite the turmoil swarming around the forex world.
There are a many factors contributing to the success of LinkedIn, primarily being that the ever-evolving market is creating trader expectations for things to happen faster, for there to be a higher degree of personalization and a deeper level of engagement, all of which LinkedIn offers through the digital interaction it affords. For the platform that for a long time was considered more akin to a digital cocktail party for networking opportunities, the social media channel itself, has matured, as it is increasingly becoming a platform for users to consume professional content.
With the likelihood that your clients are already on LinkedIn, clicking away and forming connections, we offer more imperatives of why your brokerage needs to be on LinkedIn (if it isn’t there already).
1. Closeness to your audience
The audience that you tend to find on LinkedIn is that ubiquitous generation, known as millennials. It’s no secret that affluent millennials are on the verge of being on the receiving end of a massive generational transfer of personal wealth. As one of the largest generations in history, they are also the most tech savvy and innovative as they are perpetually on the lookout for new opportunities. Undoubtedly, as time develops we’ll undoubtedly see more and more people of this demographic instigate major changes within the finance industry.
LinkedIn offers the ideal medium in which to reach out to this segment. Already pooled according to their network associations, all your brokerage needs to do is market your offerings, appeal to this generation’s digital sensibilities and capture their loyalty for a life journey that will go on well into the future.
2. Marketing solutions to each journey stage
The benefit of marketing your content on LinkedIn is that you have the means to segment your customers and post appealing content that is relevant to the stage that they are at along the customer journey. According to research conducted by McKinsey, now more so than ever, financial services have to make their content material relevant and embrace this challenge. “Financial services need to craft a compelling customer experience where all the interactions are tailored to a customer’s stage in the decision journey.”
3. Content engagement
One of the biggest challenges faced by digital marketing departments is knowing how much content they need to produce, in what format and through which channel? Taming the content beast is no easy task, it is a mammoth entity with no distinct solution on how best in can be anchored. Through its framework Linkedin provides a solution by placing content into the context of the customer journey. This starts by mapping the customer journey from its beginning at the stage of awareness, then nurture as the client weighs up considerations, then finally to purchase and beyond. By providing your audience with relevant content that provides useful solutions throughout their customer journey, you in effect foster a sense a loyalty and trust. This journey ends up informing the choice of content format and the right channel as it will be based on your customer’s needs at each stage. Additionally, this holistic view also provides a valuable benchmark on which to assess your efforts in terms of the Return on Investment. Which brings us to our next point…
4. Measure and Optimize
After implementing your customer journey, with the right content for the right audience, Linkedin gives you the means to clearly see the impact of your content programs at every stage along the journey. Although it always looks highly impressive, try to avoid vanity metrics such as the number of impressions, number of people who registered for an event or the number of likes scored. These metrics may sound good, but they may entail absolutely nothing for your business’ bottom line. Instead keep your focus on outcome metrics, these are the metrics that non-marketing executives will care about, these are the numbers that convert into real clients and will tie into the core of your brokerage’s revenue and profit results.