Social media can offer advisors opportunities to connect with potential clients while fostering relationships with existing clients. About 40% of advisors use social media as a marketing tool, according to a 2024 Kitces report titled “How Financial Planners Actually Market Their Services.”1 A social media marketing plan template offers a starting point for developing, implementing and monitoring outreach campaigns.
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A template is a customizable document that serves as a framework for developing plans. For marketing, templates can help advisors develop the specific details of their campaigns, including:
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Who they hope to attract (i.e. their ideal clients)
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What marketing strategies do you want to incorporate?
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Key metrics to monitor the success of your campaign.
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Budget details to implement the campaign.
Using templates, whether for social media marketing, email marketing, or content marketing, can make the planning process easier and improve lead generation results. Customization and shareability are key, as it’s important to use templates that you can adapt to meet the needs of your business and that are accessible to key members of your marketing team.
While the format may vary, social media marketing plan templates for advisors typically include the same elements. Here are some of the key focus areas to consider:
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Executive summary/objectives: Identifying clear objectives is essential for effective social media marketing. Including a summary of your goals or objectives at the top of your template ensures that all team members reviewing it are on the same page.
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Target audience/buying persona: Understanding the needs, challenges, and wants of your ideal customer is critical to any marketing plan. If you have developed an ideal customer avatar or buyer persona, you can include it in your social media marketing template. And if you don’t already have these tools, you may want to spend some time thinking about who you want to attract to your business and where you are uniquely positioned to serve them.
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Detailed breakdown of goals: Before you can implement a marketing plan, you need to know what you hope to achieve. For example, do you want to increase your social media followers to 5,000 people? Increase the engagement rate of your posts by 20%? Get five new leads per month through social media? The more specific, measurable and achievable you can make your goals, the greater the likelihood of achieving them.
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Marketing strategies: The essence of your social media marketing template is your strategy. That includes the social media channels you plan to use, how often you plan to post on each of them, what type of content you plan to share on each, the start and end dates of specific marketing campaigns you plan to develop, and how critical tasks will be assigned. You’ll also need to think about the message you want to convey to potential customers and what your brand voice should sound like.
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Budget/costs: One of the benefits of social media as a marketing tool is that it can be very low cost. You can set up your accounts for free, and if you create all the content yourself, you don’t have to worry about any additional costs. However, you may decide that you want to spend money on digital advertising campaigns or outsource social media management to a marketing agency or virtual assistant. If you factor those kinds of things into your budget, you can include them in your marketing template.
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Metrics/tracking: Establishing a social media marketing plan can help your business grow, but you’ll need some metrics to measure that growth. Adding some key performance indicators (KPIs) to your marketing template can help you track what’s working and what’s not in individual campaigns or your marketing strategy as a whole. For example, you can measure engagement rates, click-through rates if you’re trying to drive traffic to your website, opt-in rates for lead magnets you offer through social media channels, and follower counts.
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Calendar/content schedule: A content calendar is key to staying organized when launching and managing social media marketing campaigns. Your content calendar allows you to see at a glance what content will be published, on which channels, and when. This can be especially useful if you plan to repurpose content or want to keep track of seasonal content, such as year-end financial planning tips that you want to share with your audience.
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Task assignment: Once you’ve worked out the details of your social media marketing plan, the last step is determining who will do what and when. Adding a list of tasks or responsibilities, along with a realistic timeline, can make it easier for you and your team to track the implementation of your plan.
