Myths
There’s a perception held by some that social media posts and advertising will transform your business and instantly give you a flood of new customers.
Sadly, this is rarely the case, and a much better view is to think of social media as another tool in your arsenal, alongside word of mouth, affiliate recommendations, general websites, and both online and offline advertising. Social media has the power to reinforce your brand message and provide another mouthpiece to engage with your customers alongside existing paid channels that you may already be using.
Which social media platform is right for my business?
Social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat all have different ways of showcasing your business to different audiences. Think carefully about who you are trying to appeal to, and the kinds of messages you want to share.
Some platforms are more suited to your business than others, while there may be opportunities to experiment with others for certain messages.
- Facebook is the most-developed of today’s popular social media platforms, and a great starting point for setting up a dedicated page for your business. Add in your key details and some logos to kickstart your presence, and this can then act as a ‘base’ for promoting your business online. Facebook hosts a wide range of local community groups in which small businesses can be showcased to an audience comprising of local residents.
- LinkedIn is a business-orientated network, a place for professionals to engage and discuss a wide range of predominantly work and lifestyle related topics, and much like Facebook, it’s advisable to set up a business page to act as a place to ask people to head to when discussing your business online, or as a place where customers can leave reviews.
- Twitter is mainly a text-based application, historically good for voicing opinions in no more than 280 characters. Many larger businesses use Twitter as a means for customers to directly contact them, raising concerns or ‘tweeting’ praise. Hashtags (#) are traditionally used to categorise content.
- Instagram is an image-based platform, where your audience can ‘favourite’ appealing images, and you have the opportunity to post an image accompanied by a business or lifestyle message to gain reactions from both your existing followers, and attract new followers to your page.
- TikTok is a newer entrant amongst the most popular social media platforms of the moment, allowing users to post short videos of their choosing, and content is categorised using hashtags, with users building up a following over time if content appeals to an audience.
- Snapchat is a well-established video & picture sharing application, typically images are shared between friends and followers for a few seconds at a time before disappearing. The transient nature of the images can add an element of drama & mystery, for example a business may use it to give away clues about a forthcoming key product announcement to their followers. App user volumes have declined in recent years, however.
It’s important to know your target audience and think about which kinds of social media platforms they use themselves, or are secondarily exposed to through other mediums, such as parents supervising their children online for example. The messaging can also be tailored to be most appropriate for the platform itself, with LinkedIn featuring a message aimed at professionals, which may be different to the way you’d talk about your business on a local Facebook community group.
Online Reviews
It’s never been more important to ensure that your business has online credibility to back up your website and social media efforts. Think like a customer and put yourself in their shoes – when buying a house, you’re about to undertake the biggest purchase you’ll ever make, so you want a trusted adviser who you know is going to be a safe pair of hands, with a portfolio of good customer recommendations behind them.
Google My Business – Google reviews are free to setup and a great starting point for getting some good customer testimonies going. Visit Google.com and signup to start verifying your business as a genuine concern, and this will give a platform for customers to start leaving reviews. After a successful transaction, you can encourage your most satisfied customers to leave a review, and help them out by providing a direct web link for them to do so.
Facebook Reviews – via your business’ page on the social media platform, customers have a place to leave reviews and write testimonies, these drive further customer confidence in your brand as more than just a Facebook page – real customers with real stories can be found. An enterprising adviser might like to go further to draw content from customer testimonials by getting in touch with customers who are happy for their photograph and story to be used on your Facebook page as a promotional story.
TrustPilot Reviews – these actually have a cost – a TrustPilot account will cost several thousand pounds to set up before you can invite customers to leave reviews and scores, but if you have a well-established business and looking to gain competitive advantage, then the numbers can stack up, and showcase your business as coming highly recommended by others.
Online Forum Reviews – there are numerous other forums and websites where your industry and business may be discussed – places as diverse as MoneySavingExpert through to random hobby and special-interest sites. Search your own brand online to see who’s talking about you, and where. Do a little research to scope out your target market and how they found out about you – with some effort you can track down some of these specialist websites and take the feedback on board about how you can tailor your service to get even better reviews and recommendations.
Negative Reviews – are they a problem?
By facilitating reviews and ratings to be left for your business, it’s only natural that now and then you may get the odd negative or neutral review. As the old saying goes – you can’t please all of the people, all of the time – it’s important not to get too concerned, in fact it shows a more human side to the business and demonstrates that the reviews are independent and not purely a list of fake 5-star reviews staged by the business owner and their friends.
Customers want someone they can trust, so the odd negative review isn’t a bad thing, and where you can, see if you can try to show a remedy to the situation too. Some reviews allow businesses to have a right-of-reply follow up, so you can give some context for other customers to see. However, generally it’s best to avoid replying with anything too sassy unless you want your brand to be known for than just mortgage advice!
Driving Customer Engagement
It’s natural human behaviour to spread the message about a bad service you’ve received far more than a good one, so when a customer does receive fantastic service, you can remind them that they can leave a message on your Facebook or Google pages, leaving a convenient link for them to do so.
Similarly, encourage your customers to like your social media page and if they wish, share details to their friends online. Some businesses run monthly competitions requesting users to like & share certain social media postings to help increase the reach of their marketing messages. This can be worth exploring, but remember that care must be taken to ensure the incentives given are compliant, affordable and cost effective compared to the benefits delivered.
Check in with our HLP Compliance team for some ideas of what kinds of social media incentives could be acceptable at compliance@hlpartnership.co.uk and seek approval before running any competitions here.
Tailoring your Marketing Message
Your message is very important if you are to succeed with your target audience. Spend time researching who your prime audience may be, think about your past customers and ask them how they found out about you. Prepare messaging in their own language – and remember some useful tips:
- People want a house not a mortgage – your customers aren’t coming to you because they love mortgages. Think about what’s important to them, they are looking to you to help facilitate them moving to a house, the product-related elements can be held back and left to your website and when going through the detail with them.
- Think of the real world benefits – if you specialise in remortgages, later life lending, equity release or bridging loans for example – find a way to talk about what it actually means for a customer. If your customer seeks an equity release loan – the ‘hook’ to mention is that a large amount of cash is being released towards something important to them – whether it’s a home renovation or a lump sum for giving to children for a house purchase or helping grandkids through university – think laterally and put yourself in their shoes.
- Engage with lifestyle content – if you’re posting online, build customer engagement by talking about more everyday features that are of interest. Think of social media as a brand-building exercise rather than a pure sales channel. Engage your customers on a daily or weekly basis, and when the time’s right for a house purchase – they’ll come to you. Don’t push house sales or products on them regularly or you’ll soon be unfollowed.
- Keep it short and sweet – a social media platform is alive with a plethora of content, people will scroll past content in less than a second if it doesn’t interest them – think about your message and get it across succinctly.
- Use powerful imagery – let your messages stand out by using relevant images to reinforce the message itself. Avoid cheesy stock imagery where possible and if customers value your brand and who you are – make sure your pictures align to this, consider asking a professional photographer to do an imaginative shoot of you and your team at work – be different and stand out.
- Be positive – in all that you do, be upbeat and use positive messages – buying a home is aspirational, and even products like income protection, critical illness cover can be explained to show the benefits and peace of mind given, without being all doom and gloom.
- Build a personality – make your business stand out from others by showing your unique personality online. You are your business’ greatest asset – show your customers who you are and your service attitude to win them over – you can especially succeed in this area vs a larger business with a sanitized, bland corporate face.
- Keep it regular – the complex computer algorithms that power the social media networks favour those posting content on a regular basis. You’ll be pushed higher up your customers newsfeeds and appear more regularly than if you post once in a blue moon. With users following so many different pages and brands, sometimes it’s a challenge to appear at all.
- Get your flair across – we’ve supplied some template examples of postings you can use – but be creative and put your own stamp on them, it’s your natural flair that customers see when you’re working for them, so show that wherever you can.
Social Media Advertising
There are opportunities to advertise across the platforms, such as paying for sponsored posts on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram for example, or using Google Ads to get leads to your sites based on key search terms. Before proceeding, it’s worthwhile creating an effective presence on the respective social media networks that you are wanting to promote your brand on, to give customers reassurance that the brand can be trusted.
It is also worthwhile getting a solid understanding of the costs involved, how to cap the costs, and that you’re open to running a brief trial to see what kind of results can be generated.
Advertising across social media can be much like most other channels in that there is not necessarily a clear link between advertising spend and the volume of customer leads generated, with more complex factors at play such as the state of the housing market, the economy or the time of year, for example.
It’s wise to start slowly and experiment advertising using different creatives, keywords or search terms, to see what results these can bring in. On Google Ads, sometimes the more obscure search terms will be cheaper but may yield more relevant traffic to your website than other more common, yet expensive search words. Monitor performance and fine tune as required, rather than jumping in both-feet-first with a large investment and being disappointed if it doesn’t transform your business overnight.
Compliant Financial Promotions
Always ensure that your content has been signed off by the Financial Promotions Team. To do this, please email your content to compliance@hlpartnership.co.uk with a description of how you intend to distribute the content.
As a top tip, think about preparing groups of social media postings for HLP Compliance approval, that way you can benefit from creating a ‘bank’ of content that you have ready to post whenever you need.
