Enhancing Engagement Through Valuable Content
A Facebook page is more than just a platform for advertisements. It’s an opportunity to build a community around your commercial loan brokerage. By consistently posting lively, valuable, and insightful content, business loan brokers can position themselves as industry experts while fostering trust and encouraging interaction.
Sharing blog articles, industry news, client success stories, and helpful financial tips are excellent ways to keep your audience informed and interested, but they can also become a bit routine. Creating interactive content like polls, live Q&A sessions, or videos can boost engagement and make your page stand out. But commercial loan brokers, like other business owners, benefit the most when they develop a unique brand and an authentic voice for their business and bring that voice to their social media content.
Let’s look at some of the many ways brokers can use Facebook to connect with audiences, whether your goal is to fit in or stand out.
Organic Posting on Facebook
A primary activity of any business intent on building an audience on Facebook is organic posting. By regularly sharing informational content such as blog posts, infographics, or videos about different loan products, business loan brokers can position themselves as knowledgeable experts in their field, and that’s a foundational principle of social media. People that visit your website will often visit your Facebook page and other socials to see what you have to say with more common, everyday content. Organic content that addresses common questions or provides insights into the loan process helps attract potential clients while fostering credibility.
But it doesn’t have to be so formal. Informational and product posts should be a third or less of the content that you post. While it’s helpful, it’s often the least engaged content online.
Many brands outside of the financial sector have drawn on humor to engage and to encourage return visits to their feed. According to Marketing Dive, “Ninety-one percent of people globally prefer brands to be funny, yet 95% of business leaders fear using humor in consumer interactions.”
While standup comedy about closing costs and debt coverage ratios might not be your schtick, there are other ways to offer unique value through Facebook.
The Power of Live Streaming for Brokers
Live streaming in all its formats is a major draw. It can be as simple as introducing a topic, giving a presentation, and inviting people to ask questions while you provide answers. Schedule it regularly like any streaming show on Twitch or YouTube and you can develop an audience and see your page following and social interactions grow.
What’s the benefit? You put your face and your voice out there, and you offer REAL advice. People get a sense of what it’s like to work with you, how you address financing challenges, and what you’re going to do to help THEM when they are stuck in a bind.
Direct Communication with Your Clients
If you’re not the type who is ready to go on camera weekly or daily, put your energy into foundational activities like responding to messages and comments quickly. Allowing notifications on your laptop or mobile device will notify you immediately when someone has commented or messaged you. It’s another way prospects and clients can have an authentic interaction with your business and access the services they need right away.
Another benefit of prompt responses, social platforms like Facebook evaluate response times and reward those who stay active and engage with people right away. Meta wants to serve content from businesses they know will engage with others. Staying active gives you that edge.
The Power of Reviews
Another way to build credibility online is to invite customers to give you an online review. Star ratings and comments help to build your credibility. And don’t fret if every review isn’t perfection. Research suggests that a star rating between 4.2 and 4.5 is often better than 5 stars across the board. When things aren’t perfect they’re more human. You are human, and your customers are too. There’s opportunity for variance and difference of opinion. A five star rating could look like you’ve carefully curated reviews that aren’t actually representative of real human experience.
Expanding Your Reach
Partnerships are a big deal when it comes to social media. When you utilize a business page instead of a personal account you can create posts in collaboration with another business – say a commercial real estate agent and your brokerage highlighting the ability to find and finance properties. Another partnership might be with an accounting firm that refers you deals to secure working capital for businesses. If this strategy sounds like it might be right for you, visit the Meta guide on crafting partner posts.
And as you plan and develop content, think beyond the feed. Facebook and Instagram stories function like TikTok – they are quick, consumable, and popular. Stories often have higher reach than posts, simply because they load above the feed. But stories live for only a limited time on your feed, unless you save them as story highlights.
When you start to save story highlights, the importance of messaging pillars as part of your brand strategy becomes apparent. If you have clear messaging pillars, you can save stories on related content under each theme, adding to the clarity, coherence, and structure of your Facebook and Instagram pages.
Fostering Engagement
Another way to create engagement and to learn from your audience while you interact with them is to create polls and surveys. Polls can give you a quick read on attitudes about the business environment, types of financing, expectations of borrowers, and perceived risk around taking loans. Surveys can give you deeper insights, but often result in fewer participants because they require greater involvement than a simple poll.
Promoting events or special offers is another way to generate engagement. As a business loan broker, it’s often difficult to present a “special offer,” because financing is dependent on so many factors, but a change in financing availability, a lender that has softened rates, or who is financing in a new category provide opportunities to highlight more options. Events can include events you will attend and where you might host a booth, or your own events your brokerage sets up and manages.
Leveraging Facebook Groups to Build Trust
Joining or creating topic-specific Facebook groups provides another avenue for brokers to connect with prospects. Groups can serve as community hubs where you can share value without the overt pressure of traditional advertising, such as answering questions, offering guidance, and providing insights. Over time, this kind of consistent and meaningful interaction can build trust and rapport, making group members more likely to consider your services when the need arises.
You can join or create specialized groups tailored to small business owners or entrepreneurs. Commercial loan brokers can participate in discussions, offer advice, and share valuable resources, establishing connections with prospective clients in an authentic and non-intrusive way. Consistent organic posting also allows brokers to showcase client success stories or testimonials, reinforcing their reputation as dependable professionals in the industry.
Launching and Managing a Group
In addition to providing a platform for community engagement and building relationships, groups can also offer valuable insights and analytics to measure the success of your efforts. Creating a group around an industry you finance and providing valuable content is one way you can connect with an audience and gather valuable insights about your client base. By tracking metrics such as member growth, engagement rates, and post reach, you can gain a better understanding of how your group is performing and make adjustments as needed.
Social media platforms offer built-in analytics tools specifically for groups. These tools allow you to analyze data related to member demographics, post performance, and overall group activity. This information can help you tailor your content and engagement strategies to better resonate with your target audience.
By regularly monitoring these analytics, you can identify trends and patterns in group activity that may inform future content or group management decisions.
Social media groups can also be a valuable resource for businesses. By creating a group specific to their target audience, businesses can engage with potential customers and gather feedback on their products or services. This direct line of communication allows for better customer relationship management and the potential for increased sales.
For the right business loan broker, social media groups can become a tool for connecting like-minded individuals, promoting causes and interests, and even driving business success. With the constantly evolving landscape of social media, it is important to stay up-to-date on the latest features and tools available to maximize the benefits of using social media groups.
Paid Advertising
- Utilize Facebook Ads: Run targeted ad campaigns to reach potential clients based on demographics, interests, and online behavior, ensuring your services are visible to the right audience.
Nielsen, a leading data and reporting agency for all things television, radio, and web reports that there is a “trust gap” when it comes to advertising. Audiences trust reviews more than a company’s own website, and the website more than their advertising
But nonetheless, advertising still plays an important role in informing audiences, influencing awareness, and shaping attitudes that will result in further inquiry. So, while advertising is not a direct line to sales for most brokers, it’s an important tool in putting their brokerage on the map.
Targeted Audience Insights
Paid advertising platforms provide detailed targeting options to reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. Loan brokers can use these insights to test how different audience segments respond to various messages, from brand awareness to loan application, helping them identify their ideal customer base AND the right type of messaging for their audience.
By running multiple ad variations with different messaging, brokers can determine which approach resonates most with potential clients. This experimentation can reveal what type of borrowers or financial needs align best with their expertise. Commonly referred to as A/B testing, most social media platforms allow customers automated tools to test a variety of messaging and visuals to find the best match.
Paid ads come with robust analytics that track metrics such as click-through rates, conversions, and audience engagement. Loan brokers can analyze this data to pinpoint which niche markets are responding most positively to their ads.
Many platforms allow brokers to test ads in specific regions or localities. This is particularly helpful for brokers trying to determine if they should focus on a local market or expand to broader geographic areas.
Running ads for different loan products—such as home loans, small business loans, or debt consolidation—can help brokers test market demand for each category. The response rate can guide them in narrowing down their niche and focusing on high-demand areas.
Investing in paid advertising allows loan brokers to refine their niche more effectively, enabling them to tailor their services to specific client needs, build expertise, and stand out in a competitive industry.
Summing Up: Facebook Strategies for Commercial Loan Brokers
Leveraging organic posts on Facebook is an effective strategy for commercial loan brokers to engage with their audience and build trust, but routine posting isn’t enough. To get the most out of social platforms as part of a broader loan broker marketing approach, brokers need to find ways to network and build connections, just as they would work a room at a business conference or meetup. Organic content that addresses common questions or provides insights into the loan process helps attract potential clients while fostering credibility.
Additionally, Facebook provides an opportunity to join or create specialized groups tailored to small business owners or entrepreneurs and run paid advertising to improve reach and convey brand messages. Brokers can participate in discussions, offer advice, and share valuable resources, establishing connections with prospective clients in an authentic and non-intrusive way with the objective of cultivating lead generation. Consistent organic posting also allows brokers to showcase client success stories or testimonials, reinforcing their reputation as dependable professionals in the industry.