Financial Advisor Paid Advertising Strategy

Exploring Online Paid Marketing Opportunities for Financial Advisors

Online paid marketing opportunities for financial advisors include:

Pay Per Click Marketing
- Google AdWords, Bing Search / Yahoo
Paid online directory listings
- Angies List, YP.com, Yelp.com, etc
Paid Lead Services
- Financial Engines, Senior Leads

Why Most Pay-Per-Click Campaigns Fail

Most PPC campaigns fail or don’t reach their full potential for the following reasons:

Use of only ONE ad group for all services (retirement planning, business exit planning, estate planning, etc.)
No specific text ads and landing pages for groups of keywords
No strong call to action or OFFER on the landing page

Understanding How AdWords Works

These are some key things to remember about Google AdWords:

Highest Bid Does Not = Top Ranking
Google MUST serve the most relevant results
Quality Score Drives your Positioning & Cost Per Click

How does Google Determine Quality Score?

Quality Score is a factor used by Google that can influence both your ad rank and cost per click (CPC). To determine the order in which ads are listed, each ad has the following formula run against it: bid * Quality Score.

The following factors are considered in the quality score:

Clickthrough Rate
Relevance
Quality of Landing Page

What is an Ad Group?

An ad group consists of the following elements:

Ad Copy
Group of Keywords
Specific Landing Page

Which Ad Groups should you use?

These are some common ad groups that are effective for financial advisors:

Retirement Planning
Estate Planning
Business Succession Planning
Investment Advisory Services
Business Exit Planning
Charitable Planning
Risk Management
Tax Planning
Cash Flow Planning
Asset Protection
Etc, Etc, Etc

Simple Ad Group Template

When you are creating ad groups, make sure you review and pay proper attention to each of these areas:

Keywords – List of keywords pertaining to ad group. These keywords are what people are searching for on Google and will trigger you ad to display.

Text Ad – Should match the keyword, address the need of your potential client & offer an incentive for visiting your website.

Landing Page – Should be matched to a specific page on your site that speaks to a specific need, i.e. www.yoursite.com/<your city>-tax-planning

Landing Page Content – Should reflect the text used in your ad and reiterate the searchers’ need. Here’s an example: Are you in need of tax planning services in the Atlanta area? Contact the experts at XYZ Financial Advisory Services for immediate & comprehensive service at 554-555-5533. Then, restate your value proposition, experience, link to reviews, video or text testimonials, etc. Also, don’t forget to include an offer, like “Sign up today for a free 30 minute consultation”

To see a real life example of an ad group, including keywords, ad text, and landing page content, read below:

Ad Group: Tax Planning

Keywords

tax planning services atlanta
financial and tax planning services
strategic financial and tax planning services

Landing Page – www.abcadvisors.com/atlanta-tax-planning

Text Ad – Strategic Tax Planning. Free 30 minute consultations. Call today!

Landing Page Content – Are you in need of tax planning services in the Atlanta area? Contact the experts at XYZ Financial Advisory Services for immediate & comprehensive service at 554-555-5533. We provide comprehensive tax planning services and have been doing so for the past 15 years. We work clients from a variety of backgrounds and tax planning needs. Sign up today for a free 30 minute consultation!

Expert Paid Advertising Tips

To wrap up this article, please keep the following in mind when building out your online paid advertising campaigns:

Focus on keywords with buying intent
Use dedicated landing pages
Use call tracking numbers
Use ad extensions (phone number, map, offer, etc)
Test with different ad formats & platforms