Social media marketing remains an attractive yet often elusive strategy for financial advisors seeking to build their client base. Its low cost of entry and potential for wide visibility give it a strong initial appeal. However, as the latest Kitces Research on How Financial Planners Actually Market Their Services shows, it is also one of the least efficient and most time-consuming marketing tactics in practice. While social media ranks as the fourth-most-used tactic among advisors, the research reveals that acquiring a client through social media can cost advisors an average of $16,700 when factoring in both hard and soft costs. These soft costs – time spent on content creation, adapting to shifting algorithms, trend monitoring, and building an audience – can add up quickly, particularly when advisors struggle to consistently produce high-impact content.
A central challenge with social media is that success often hinges on two distinct but rarely simultaneous goals: reach and conversion. One post may generate likes, comments, and new followers (reach), while another might prompt newsletter sign-ups or webinar registrations (conversion). Expecting a single post to achieve both is unrealistic, and the constant push to meet these divergent goals can lead to an exhausting and unsustainable content creation cycle. Making matters more difficult, social media platforms are increasingly saturated, making it harder for advisors to stand out without significant time investment or specialized skills in content strategy.
In this article, Sydney Squires, Senior Financial Planning Nerd, discusses how advisors can overcome this issue by using evergreen content, which retains its relevance regardless of current events or seasonality, and offers a scalable solution to the high soft costs of social media. A guiding principle in evergreen content strategies is harnessing what's called the "long tail" effect: a small percentage of content often generates the majority of results. In practice, this means that only about 10% of an advisor's posts will drive most of the engagement and conversions, while the rest produce little return. This dynamic poses a significant burden for advisors who feel they must constantly create fresh content in hopes of striking gold. However, recognizing and leaning into the long tail can be a turning point. By identifying which posts already perform well, advisors can repurpose top-performing content – especially evergreen content that remains relevant over time – and avoid the burnout of perpetual reinvention. Reposting content is not only efficient but also effective – audiences are unlikely to recall seeing a post months earlier, and repeated exposure often strengthens a message's resonance.
The success of evergreen social media content ultimately depends on strategic planning and performance tracking. Each post should be assigned a clear objective – either engagement or conversion – and performance should be measured accordingly. Tools like UTM codes and Google Analytics can help advisors track which posts are driving website traffic, while social media platforms and schedulers often provide data on in-platform engagement. Over time, advisors can refine their evergreen libraries through regular audits, removing outdated or underperforming content and adding newer, high-performing posts. Leveraging AI or working with copywriters can further streamline ideation and content creation without compromising the advisor's unique voice.
In sum, while social media marketing is often labor-intensive and inefficient when approached haphazardly, advisors can dramatically improve their return on time and effort by leaning into evergreen content. This strategy not only mitigates the pressure of constant content creation but also maximizes the value of high-performing posts. By developing and maintaining a well-curated library of reusable, relevant content, advisors can build a more consistent and scalable marketing pipeline that highlights their personality and expertise – helping them connect with prospective clients more meaningfully over time!
