As the old adage goes, it takes money to make money. And while there are many ways to increase the visibility of your financial advisor website and improve traffic, there are times when paid advertising is your best solution
In those instances, Google Ads is a great place for financial advisors to start. Formerly Google AdWords, Google Ads is an advertising platform where users can “bid” on advertising locations to produce leads for their services. For financial advisors, this can be a cost-effective way to produce the right types of traffic to their financial advisor websites.
Before diving into the specifics of how Google Ads works and how it can increase website traffic and lead generation, it’s important to note that Google Adwords should be used as part of a more comprehensive financial advisor digital marketing strategy.
This strategy should include a solid digital marketing foundation: SEO enhancements and monitoring, social media, website content, directories, listings (such as GMB), video, blog content, and eBooks. When used in conjunction with these other digital marketing services, financial advisors can make the most out of their paid advertising campaigns on Google.
Being the world’s largest search engine (72% market share) – try to imagine the amount of information Google has access to. Now imagine having that same information at your disposal when it comes to creating a successful Google Ads campaign. By taking advantage of all the platform has to offer, financial advisors have the ability to customize their advertising campaigns to reach their desired audiences (or multiple audiences) and increase traffic to their websites with the goal of converting them into qualified leads.
The Google Ads keyword planner is a vital part of building a successful Google Ads campaign. This tool leverages the power of Google by giving advertisers suggested keywords based on specific search factors, such as type of business, location, general keywords, or other variables that are chosen by the advertiser.
The Keyword Planner tool then populates real-time information for those keywords, as well as suggested keywords to consider for this ad campaign. If the user is looking for more specific keywords, the planner can broaden or restrict the parameters depending on the settings.
For example, if a financial advisor with a local focus in Dallas simply enters “financial advisor” in the keyword planner, the keyword suggestions are numerous and broad. However, changing the keywords to “financial advisor in Dallas” produces suggested keywords that are much closer to the mark. And, advisors who are seeking local leads, do not want virtual leads.
While keywords are still relevant to the way users search via traditional methods such as on a computer, the advancements made in mobile technology have added another dimension to how searches are performed, thus changing the way advertisers need to focus their efforts to attract them.
Arguably the biggest factor in mobile searches is Google’s use of Semantic Search. As its name implies, Semantic Search goes beyond the traditional keyword matching algorithms and makes informed inferences on the user’s intent rather than the keywords that are actually being used.
This has become more important as Google users have increased their use of voice-based technologies. After all, most people don’t speak in keywords, but rather in phrases and sentences. This translates to how someone “talks” to Google and asks a question or states a phrase and leaves it up to Google’s AI algorithms to make the decision as to what it thinks they want.
Using this information on how users are searching on Google can help financial advisors find the right keywords and phrases for a successful Google Ads campaign.
One of the great things about Google Ads is the ability to set a budget and monitor it throughout the campaign in almost real time. Because advertisers are “bidding” on a finite amount of real estate on the page for each search query, it’s critical to have realistic expectations of what a bid range would be for the specifics of that campaign.
Google’s Performance Planner tool is a free resource that can help financial advisors create a realistic Google Ads campaign budget that drives the right types of traffic to their landing pages or websites.
As with all things related to digital marketing, the need for high-quality content cannot be overstated. As with any other financial advisor marketing effort, Google Ads, when used correctly, will send visitors to your financial advisor website. However, the key is to keep users engaged with relevant, timely, and high-quality content. Without that, any money spent on a Google Ads campaign could have been better spent on other marketing strategies.
Consistent with Google’s goal of getting the best and most relevant information to users at the right time, they established a ranking system to grade advertisers on how they measure up. This score is calculated by several variables, including relevance of keywords, CTR (click-through-rate), ad relevance and the landing page experience.
This score ranges from a 1-10 and essentially helps Google identify the higher-performing (i.e., most relevant, and targeted) advertisers and it is believed that Google rewards those advertisers with lower CPC (cost-per-click) ads and better (higher on the page) ad positions. Bottom line: This score is important for financial advisor ad campaign performance and shouldn’t be ignored.
As with most things Google, its Ads offer detailed reports on ad campaigns that can help guide a current campaign and/or assess the results of a prior campaign to evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs) such as ROAS (return on ad spend), CPA (cost per conversion), and a number of conversions – just to name a few.
The important thing for financial advisors to identify is what metrics are most valuable to them and how to make changes when needed. Pro Tip: Google Ads campaigns can be modified or paused at any time. It’s important that financial advisors not be afraid to make changes mid-campaign if something isn’t working.
Conversely, it’s necessary to give a campaign a chance to gather enough data to make informed decisions. It may take some trial and error, but with the right preparation and monitoring, financial advisors can achieve significant results supplementing SEO with paid advertising campaigns that can generate additional qualified leads in less time.