Finance PPC Agency

What is Paid Ads Management for Financial Firms?

PPC management for financial advisors refers to creating and optimizing paid advertising campaigns. That is an incredibly simple explanation though, so let's dive a little deeper.

To provide expert PPC management, a paid ads agency for financial advisors should get to know you and your goals. Since the way you approach PPC advertising for a local financial firm is much different than how you would for a nationwide financial advisor ecommerce brand, this information helps determine the next steps.

Local financial firms, for example, are often only looking for contact form submissions or calls. This can be accomplished through paid advertising that builds traffic to an optimized landing page or sales funnel. We recommend Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms if those pages/funnels don't exist or need to be reworked.

In contrast, ecommerce-focused financial firms are most likely to be interested in online sales. This can be accomplished through PPC advertising that boosts traffic to an optimized product page or category page. You might even want to include Google Shopping Campaigns in some cases. Our team has even used sales funnels to help sell products and subscriptions.

To optimize and scale financial advisor PPC campaigns, it's important to understand what metrics will be used. For some financial firms, that means looking to platforms like Google Analytics. However, there are other options out there too, like Wicked Reports, Triple Whale, or Northbeam.

Your financial firm should use a variety of advertising strategies and marketing tools to be successful with PPC advertising. For example, the best financial firm paid advertising services will include tactics to:

• Promote your digital assets (websites, sales funnels, etc.) via search engines, social channels, and third parties.
• Make your financial firm more profitable by acquiring qualified leads or selling online.
• Integrate third-party attribution tools to better understand ad attribution.
• Showcase social proof through case studies, white papers, video testimonials, and other factors.
• Engage users in story creation, email collection, and user generated content.
• Place ad creatives across various ad placements and media formats to see which performs best.

Tips for Managing PPC for Financial Advisors

With in-depth knowledge of the latest paid ads trends for financial firms and other industries, we are a team of paid ads experts.

Here are some of our best tips to follow for keyword research, audience research, landing page / sales funnel optimization, conversion rate optimization, and ad creation.

1.) Keyword Research Tips

In the context of PPC advertising, keyword research for financial advisors largely relates to Google Ads and Bing Ads search campaigns. After all, Bing and Google only show ads based on what people search for that your financial firm is targeting.

For example, a person searching for a financial firm nearby might search "local financial advisor" on a search engine. It wouldn't be necessary to conduct extensive keyword research to target that exact phrase.

However, what if the exact match keyword isn't generating enough search volume and the financial firm needs to expand their advertising reach? The solution would require keyword research.

After discussing options, the next step might involve the paid ads manager talking with the financial firm about what products / services they want to target more often and where. There may also be a need to broaden the keyword targeting.

Suppose the PPC manager discovers that there is high traffic volume for "nearby financial firms" or even "financial advisor services." The first phrase is targeting a type of business or organization in the area. In the second phrase, a service is being targeted, which might result in a more lucrative conversion opportunity.

Negative keyword lists can also benefit from keyword research. Negative keywords are used to stop your paid advertising from showing in search queries that you know won't bring in clients.

For example, an individual searching for "free services from financial firms" or "when to advertise to financial advisors" is unlikely to convert. They might see your paid advertising if you use broad keyword targeting without any negative keywords like "free" or "advertise".

You can see that as you scale your ads and reduce wasted ad spend, the needs for keyword research become more complex.

2.) Audience Research Tips

Audience research is often mentioned as part of scaling social media ads on Facebook and Instagram for financial advisor paid advertising campaigns. Google Ads and Bing Ads also offer audience targeting options.

Let's go over a little history on audience research and targeting within the Facebook Ads platform.

Financial firm PPC advertising managers used Facebook's custom audiences extensively in the past. As a matter of fact, one of the most attractive features of Facebook Ads was its ability to collect data on users, which advertisers flocked to take advantage of.

A number of factors, including data privacy and machine learning, have had an impact on custom audiences over time.

When Apple released its iOS 14.5 update, they included a pop up message that allowed users to easily opt out of personalized ad tracking. The change negatively affected Facebook's ability to track user behavior. This even affected the accuracy of ad attribution reporting.

Then came improvements to their machine learning algorithms, which greatly diminished the need for custom audiences and lookalike audiences for most ad agencies for financial advisors. With such sophisticated algorithms, it's often more harmful to choose your own interests compared to letting Facebook figure it out for you.

Though there will still be plenty of financial firm paid advertising firms using custom audiences, the trend is moving toward broad targeting. Don't take our word for it though. If you've been involved in the creation of Facebook ads, you've probably noticed the removal of interest-based targeting options here and there. Maybe you've even seen changes to how "Advantage Detailed Targeting" is recommended during the setup process.

This blog article from Social Media Examiner does a good job of talking about recent changes to audience targeting, if you'd like a second opinion.

It's not to say audience research and targeting are going away. There will always be targeting options that can be manipulated within financial advisor ad campaigns to squeeze a little extra performance.

3.) Landing Page Optimization Tips

The quality of your landing page will be a big factor in the success of your financial firm PPC advertising campaigns.

When we take on the management of a paid advertising campaign for financial advisors, we start by looking over the landing pages to see if they follow best practices. Here are some of the factors we look for in this review:

• Is there a benefit-focused headline?
• Are there any images above the fold?
• Is the content written in a compelling manner?
• Am I able to find a lead form right away?
• Are the call to actions easily noticeable?
• Does the page load quickly?
• Is there social proof?
• Am I able to load the page on a mobile device?

There are so many factors that come into the design and development of a quality landing page. Here is a great blog article about what makes a results-driven landing page.

Please, don't spend money on paid ads until you have a landing page that follows best practices! Ideally, you should never consider your landing page to be finished. Try running A/B testing every few months to continue refining your sales pitch.

4.) Sales Funnel Tips

As an alternative to a landing page, you might want to consider building out one or more sales funnels. We rely heavily on sales funnels for lead generation, email audience building, and even online purchases.

For example, we have a client that promotes an online fitness challenge that you could even join from your local area. While managing their digital advertising we built multiple sales funnels within Click Funnels. Here are some of the funnels we made:

• We used squeeze pages to help capture email addresses while building awareness for the program.
• We used lead magnets to provide people with healthy eating tips, fitness tips, webinars, and sneak peaks in exchange for an email address.
• We used application funnels to push people toward the idea of wanting to apply to participate in exclusive programs.
• We used sales letter funnels to serve as the registration system for the online program.

There are many different types of funnels, so your financial firm isn't limited to only these options. Just keep in mind these can be incredibly helpful for gauging interest in a product or service, building out an email subscriber base, and selling a product or service online.

5.) CRO Tips

Having a clear understanding of your conversion rate is critical to making informed advertising decisions. The average conversion rate is between 1-3%, but that varies greatly between industries, products, and services.

Let's run through a basic scenario to help illustrate the impact of conversion rates.

1. You sell a $100 product or service on your website.
2. You have a 1% conversion rate, meaning for every 100 people who visit your website you sell 1 product or service.
3. You have a $1.00 average cost per click (CPC), meaning for each person who visits your website you spend $1.00.
4. To sell 1 product or service, you need 100 clicks from PPC advertising, which would cost you $100. This is known as your cost per acquisition (CPA).
5. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) would be 1x, meaning for every dollar spent in paid advertising you get one dollar in return.

For most financial firms, this return on ad spend wouldn't be acceptable. Sadly, we often see this type of ROAS when jumping into new client accounts.

To improve the situation, you hire a paid ads agency to modify your campaign settings, ad creatives, and landing page experience.

Let's assume those improvements bring your conversion rate up from 1% to 2%. That means for every 100 visits to your website you now sell 2 products. This is twice the return on ad spend! You might be profitable now selling that product or service, if your margins are good.

Understanding your conversion rate, and knowing how to improve it, can be crucial to the management of your paid advertising.

6.) Ad Creation Tips

This is potentially one of the most important aspects of a Facebook Ads account, but it also applies to Google Display Ads.

When you run Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads for financial advisors, you are mostly targeting a cold audience that is more interested in quickly scrolling by advertisements in favor of seeing what their friends and family are up to online.

You should develop an understanding of how to capture someone's attention in a split second.

To do this, you need to build out beautiful ad creatives that make someone stop for a second and say to themselves, "wait a second, what...?"

This doesn't happen by running the same ad creative over and over and over again. Even if it is a great ad, it will eventually become stale. You should change things up frequently, even if you are just targeting people nearby.

If you don't change out your ad creatives and test new ideas, you'll suffer from what is called "ad fatigue." This is the state in which your target audience has already seen your ad so many times that they instinctively scroll by it without ever interacting with your brand.

Don't be caught in this situation. You should understand when to pause an ad because it isn't performing as well as it once did. You should understand when to test new ideas, especially if you are emotionally attached to an ad that you spent a lot of time making.

Pricing for Financial Firm PPC Management

The cost of our PPC ads management plans is calculated based on the monthly time allocation you request for your campaigns. Our paid ads management services start at the price listed below, however, we are open to discussing an increased budget if your ad spend or service requirements are higher.

Types of Paid Ads for Financial Firms

The options for running PPC advertising for your financial firm are numerous. Let's discuss some of the most common paid advertising being run for financial firms.

1.) Local Marketing

Local ads for your financial firm can be run through nearly any advertising platform. One platform may be more effective for your localized financial firm than another. It is important to try out every available option to see which works best for your needs. Now let's discuss some local advertising options.

Google is going to offer two options.

The first is to run traditional Google Ads, potentially using their newer campaign type of Performance Max. The Google algorithm finds the best combination of headlines, images, videos, and service locations to bring you local customers using this type of dynamic ad campaign. Local professionals such as accountants, lawyers, dentists, and physicians frequently use Performance Max campaigns.

Google's second option for qualifying businesses is their Local Service Ads. The Google Local Service Ads offers a pay-per-lead model, which means you get charged a flat fee for each lead the platform provides you. Home service contractors, such as plumbers, electricians, roofers, and heating installers, frequently use Google Local Service Ads.

Facebook Ads can also be used to target people in the area. This is a little more straightforward, since it just involves setting up a campaign that has ad sets with geographic restrictions. Nearby Facebook Ads are often used by financial firms of all types.

2.) Social Ads

Almost all online ads you see on social networks qualify as social media ads.

The trick to social media advertising is keeping the ad creatives fresh. The performance of your campaign will gradually decline if you do not rotate your ad creatives every couple of weeks. It might be necessary to look at weekly ad creative modifications for campaigns with higher spending.

The best part of social ads is you can target audiences that have never thought of your product or service, or perhaps just aren't thinking about it now. It's quite the opposite when you run search ads since you only get to show them when someone searches for what your financial firm offers.

It can also be a curse, as conversion rates often drop when people aren't closer to making an immediate purchase.

3.) Search Engine Ads

If you know people are looking online for the products or services you offer, you'll want to invest in search advertisements.

In some circles, this is referred to as financial firm Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. An advertisement that appears on the search results page of a search engine is called a search ad, which are above the organic SEO placements.

If you've been running search engine advertising on Google for a while and have been successful at it, we suggest considering copying the campaigns over to the Bing Ads platform. In an October 2022 study from StatCounter, Bing was the primary search engine used by approximately 3.57% of online users.

4.) Display Ads

Many different message boards, chat rooms, game lounges, news websites (even local news stations), gossip sites, and more run display advertisements.

These are commonly used within the Google Ads and Bing Ads platforms.

With display ads, all you need are a few different sizes of ad creatives. It also helps to have a general idea of your target audience, but both ad platforms have their own algorithms that help you produce results from your ad spend.

5.) Retargeting Ads

Not everyone is going to convert during their first experience with your financial firm website, landing page, or sales funnel.

It is almost always recommended to set up retargeting ads to help bring people back to your website after they've had time to think through different options.

You can run retargeting ads on any ad platform, too.

6.) Shopping Ads

This type of search ad was popularized by Google Shopping Campaigns.

To get started with Google Shopping, you just need an ecommerce website, a product feed (CSV or TXT), a Google Merchant Center account, and a Google Ads account for your financial firm.

With these tools in place, you'll be able to provide Google Ads an updated list of all your accurate product data, including the title, SKU, image, price, and availability. From there, they will be able to find the right types of search queries to display your products at the top of the search results page.

7.) Video Ads

You can run video ads on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and other social networking websites.

If you are interested in running YouTube Ads, you'll just need to set up a video ads campaign in Google Ads.

To run video ads in Facebook or Instagram, you'll need a working Facebook Ads account.

Both ad platforms offer excellent conversion opportunities with video ads. We frequently use video ads to showcase product launches, custom services, personal introductions, and more!

If you have the budget to support ad creatives in video format, look to implement them into your paid advertising campaigns.