The ClientWise Blog

Expand client marketing via LinkedIn As the premier professional network on the Internet, LinkedIn is a great place to make professional connections and network for potential clients. If your Compliance Department permits social networking and activity on LinkedIn and you aren’t there already, it’s the place to start your social networking journey.

These 15 tips are designed to help you carve out a social networking identity on LinkedIn. Start by creating a LinkedIn profile, then find professionals to connect with and branch out from there. More than 467 million Americans have LinkedIn profiles and it’s a great place to prospect for potential clients.

You can also network with your high school and college alumni friends, professional colleagues in your community and across the country, and hundreds of other people. The possibilities are endless.

As always, it’s important to review and understand your firm’s compliance regulations and approach to social media before beginning any new strategy. Stay current on the industry regulations as with any digital marketing approach, this is a fast moving and ever changing environment.

1 Create a LinkedIn profile: If you’re not already on LinkedIn, it’s one of the best places to begin. Join and create a simple profile listing your current and past job titles and employers, a description of what you do now, your degrees, your skills and links to your firm’s website and your interests. Run that by the Compliance Department, post it and you’re on your way.

2 Update a LinkedIn profile: Go through your contacts and address book to find clients, potential clients, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, neighbors and anyone else in your online and offline networks. Not everyone you know will be on LinkedIn, but as the preferred professional social network, many will be. So start there.

3 Mine the networks of your connections: Once you’ve got some connections, check out your connections’ networks and see what professionals you know in their networks. Then extend invitations to those professionals.

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How three unique firms found common purpose in coming together

Rick Kent (founder of the suburban Atlanta-based Merit Financial Group) was actively seeking to grow his business – both organically and acquisitively. The former approach was yielding tremendous success, while the latter was proving to be a far more difficult challenge.

There’s no question that mergers and acquisitions of advisory practices are complex and emotionally-charged undertakings. Keep in mind that the seller is considering relinquishing control not just of an asset, but essentially of their life’s work. In many instances, their practice is tantamount to an adjunct family member. It’s a stumbling block that Kent had become all too familiar with. “The seller wants a deal to come together, but psychologically there’s a deep seated fear that when they pull away from the business, everything’s going to crumble,” according to Kent. “It’s far less about the money and price of the deal, and far more about the psychological impact of selling the business. There needs to be an extraordinary amount of trust established for any deal to succeed.”

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Far too many advisors and wholesalers view strategic networking solely as an opportunity to build a funnel of professional referrals – rarely venturing beyond the occasional golf outing with one or two close attorney or accountant friends and pressing for introductions. They overlook the critical importance of strategic relationships in expanding and strengthening their wealth management offering. These vital professional partnerships, whether formal or informal, can bring a host of expanded capabilities to broaden and solidify your existing relationships – from trust and estate planning to business succession and tax planning.

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At ClientWise, we frequently address the importance of practice management. Practice management involves several elements of your business that are covered in our Professional Advisory Model™ (PAM™). The PAM™ includes areas such as organizing priorities, marketing approach, client acquisition strategy, team development and creating a professional advocate network. At its core, all of these elements work together in support of one thing—your ability to connect with your clients.

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The social media space can be an overwhelming environment, especially in an industry in which it’s just becoming “acceptable” or commonly practiced. Even our marketing team and digital community managers at ClientWise are constantly commenting on how much they do to keep up with the latest and greatest in the world of social media.

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Sometimes we have to break the rut of our networking to find any new successes. If you’ve run into the same people at the past three networking dinners or non-profit events with little to no success, it might be time to diversify your approach a bit. These basic techniques and perspectives will allow you to capitalize on your potential for client acquisition (and hopefully with less effort than previously necessary).

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Did you ever consider that an untapped asset in your corner could be those people whom you view as your greatest competition? A mistake many advisors make when building out their center of influence and professional advocate networks, is that they fail to consider including the people who do the very same thing that they do within their network of resources.

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There are seemingly endless opportunities for financial advisors to receive referral introductions from attorneys, but this doesn't mean they are easy to come by. As a financial advisor, it’s important to differentiate yourself from the slew of other advisors who are after similar professional advocate relationships with the attorneys in their networks. Like yours, an attorney’s time is precious and it’s often difficult to get the return on relationship you desire without a little extra effort.

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