PPC for Financial Services: How to Make the Most of Google Ads
If you’re doing research on PPC (Pay-per-click) in financial services, you may be interested in learning:
What are some tips to make the most of PPC advertising?
How can you make sure you get the best results from PPC?
What are some mistakes to avoid with this channel?
If you read any articles online on this topic, most of them give generic advice like “create good landing pages” and “make sure to test keywords”. Although they may be helpful for absolute beginners, we wanted to put together a guide that dives a bit deeper and that can make a meaningful difference to your campaigns.
We work with fintech and financial services companies and help them generate leads with Google Ads and content marketing. When we start working on a new ad account, there are a few common mistakes we see and opportunities for financial services businesses to get a better return on investment from their ads.
In this article we’ll be going through:
Common mistakes to avoid when launching a PPC campaign
How to make the most of Google Ads
The best strategy: using PPC and content marketing together
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Common mistakes to avoid when launching a PPC campaign
1. Targeting too many keywords per ad group
As a financial services company, your PPC strategy is most likely focused on generating qualified leads that you’ll have to assess before onboarding. This means you’re probably targeting very specific and niche keywords, like “expense management for hospitality” or “payment reconciliation”. One of the best uses of Google Ads is to test which keywords bring in the highest quality leads and customers. Once you find those, you can then reach your target audience with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or content to decrease costs – a strategy which we’ll talk about later in this piece.
But you won’t be able to learn which keywords are the right ones for you if you’re targeting a lot of keywords in one campaign, especially if they’re not related. We’ve seen many accounts spending a low budget of $2,000 per month, but spending it on 5 different campaigns, each campaign with 6 ad groups and over 10 keywords per ad group. That can be over 600 keywords! With such a low budget, it’s very hard to get meaningful results.
Ideally, you want to keep the number of keywords you’re targeting to a minimum – especially if you have a low budget. For a budget of $1,000 per month, for example, we’d typically do 2 or 3 campaigns, 1 ad group per ad campaign and only 5 - 8 keywords per ad group. This allows us to monitor closely what keywords are doing well and which ones aren’t, and then tweak the campaigns and targeting accordingly.
Make sure you’re very intentional about the keywords you’re targeting and only targeting a small handful, highly relevant keywords, to get a good understanding of what is and isn’t working.
2. Picking keywords that are not buyer intent driven
The biggest benefit of Google Ads is that you are targeting people who are actively looking to buy and immediately appearing on the first position of Google. This is different to SEO or content marketing, where it could take weeks or even months to get you ranking for these high intent keywords.
If you’re going to spend budget on Google Ads and appear on position 1, then might as well go straight to targeting the “money” keywords: those that indicate a searcher is ready to buy.
One of the mistakes we see in Google Ad accounts is targeting top or middle of the funnel keywords, that don’t indicate someone is ready to buy. For example, if you are a corporate expense company, targeting keywords like “what is corporate expense management” or “types of business cards”.
This is a good way to spend a big proportion of your budget without getting many leads or customer, which can get expensive in the long term. If you want to target more top or middle of the funnel keywords, you’re better off targeting those with content.
3. Having conversion tracking incorrectly set up
This mistake can cause the biggest problems if not corrected quickly. There is no point in spending money on Google Ads if your conversion tracking is incorrectly set up. That doesn’t just mean making sure Google Ads correctly tracks when someone submits a form, it also means ensuring that the contact is successfully appearing in your CRM with the right original source.
Making sure you’re able to track the specific campaign, ad group and keyword a new contact came from is super important to help you assess quality. If one campaign is bringing 20 new contacts per month that are all gmail addresses, and another is bringing 5 new contacts a month that are very high quality – that’s very important to know. And you can only do that if your ad account and CRM are correctly connected.
Some common mistakes we’ve seen:
Importing conversions from Google Analytics rather than using Google Tag Manager’s conversion linker. The latter is more accurate and better to use.
Hubspot’s “original source” isn’t set up correctly so you don’t know where your new contacts are coming from and therefore if your paid ads are bringing in the right type of leads.
Having incomplete triggers or tags in Tag Manager which means your tags are not firing for every form on the website, leading to you missing key data and your campaigns not able to track all conversions.
Not adding UTM parameters to a custom landing page within the ad, making it harder to find key information about where a new contact came from and what keyword they clicked on.
When we first start working with a client, we spend as long as necessary to make sure conversion tracking is correctly set up. It’s a lot harder to get a good ROI on your search ad spend if key tracking is not correctly set up. Once tracking is set up, we closely monitor the CRM to ensure the right kind of contacts are coming in, and tweak the ads according to what we see.
How to make the most of your PPC campaign spend
Once you’ve made sure you’re not making these mistakes and have a strong foundation for your campaign, here are our tips to make the most of the Google Ads channel.
1. If you’re focused on lead gen, start with a small budget
If your company is focused on lead generation, then assessing the quality of conversions is equally, or even more important, than the number of conversions you’re getting.
Sure, you can start with a big budget and focus on getting a lot of conversions, but it’s very likely you’ll get a lot of low quality leads. That’s why when it comes to lead gen, you’re better off starting with a low budget and then slowly working your way up to make sure the conversions are always the highest quality.
For smaller sized fintech companies, we recommend starting with $1,000 per month, and then slowly scaling from there bit by bit when you start seeing results.
If you’re operating a brand new account, then you’re better off starting with a “Maximize clicks” bid strategy, then switching to “Maximize conversions”, and then when you have enough data – around 50 conversions – you can switch to “Target CPA” (Cost Per Acquisition) to ensure you’re getting the best results cost-effectively.
2. Base your keyword research on customer research
A lot of agencies and marketers will pick keywords that their competitors are already bidding or ranking for. But that’s a good way to end up bidding on keywords that are very competitive and therefore more expensive.
Although it is important to factor in what your competitors are bidding on, the bulk of your keyword research should come directly from your customers. That means, spending some time understanding who your best customer is, what their pain points are, how they compare you to others and what product features they care about.
As an external agency, we like to do this by interviewing salespeople at the company, and asking questions about what they’ve heard on sales calls. You can do this as well, or talk directly to customers.
With this approach, we’ve been able to target keywords that competitors never thought of, and get a high conversion rate in the process. You can read our in-depth guide to finding Bottom of the Funnel keywords – applicable to both content and Google Ads – here: How to Do Research for Bottom of the Funnel Content Marketing
3. Start by targeting broad match keywords, but change to exact and phrase match keywords
If you’re targeting broad match keywords, that means you’re targeting keywords and any words related to those keywords. So for example, if you’re targeting “international business credit card”, your ad may also turn up for “international credit card”. This could be a problem if you only want to target businesses and not individuals (which you don’t serve). This is why it’s important to tightly monitor the keywords your campaigns are appearing for.
It does make sense to target broad match keywords when you first start a campaign to get it spending – although make sure to continuously update your negative keyword list so you’re appearing for the keywords you care about.
But as your campaigns keep going, you’ll want to adjust the keywords you’re targeting to exact and phrase match so you make sure you’re targeting exactly the keywords you want to be appearing for.
4. Create custom landing pages for each ad group
It may be tempting to divert each ad to your homepage or a services page on your website. But there are a lot of benefits to creating a custom landing page for every campaign you create. The key benefits are:
You can add keywords on the page that you’re targeting via the campaign, which will help increase your Google quality score and decrease CPC (cost-per-click) costs.
You can add your own form submission at the bottom of the page, add more call-to-actions and remove any other parts of your page that are unnecessary, further increasing the chances of the reader converting.
You can remove the header and footer to further incentivise the user to complete a form.
You can more easily A/B test different copy, graphics and page structure.
You don’t have to completely redesign your landing page for every ad. Duplicating an existing product or services page and tweaking it slightly can be enough, which is a small effort compared with the benefits you get.
5. Continuously monitor negative keywords
Negative keywords are the keywords that you don’t want your ads appearing for. For example, as a business credit card, you don’t want to appear for “personal debit card”. When you first launch a campaign and are targeting broad match keywords, that’s when it’s especially important to continuously monitor your negative keywords and add them to your list.
You can check the keywords your ads are actually turning up for in the “Search terms” report in Google Ads. Make sure to check your negative keyword list 2 - 3 times per week to check you’re coming up for the right terms.
6. Add as much detail as possible in your ad copy
When writing your ad, fill in as many fields as possible. The more fields you fill in, the better, as this allows you to take more space in the search results and make a more compelling ad. Compare these two ads from Moss and Pleo below. To take up as much space as Moss, make sure to fill in ad extensions, sitelinks, callouts, and all the descriptions and headers.
Make sure to fill in:
As many headers as you can, we like to fill in minimum 9.
All the descriptions
Sitelinks
Callouts
Your phone number if that makes sense
The best strategy: using PPC and content marketing together
We’re a content marketing agency, but we also implement PPC Google Ads for clients. Why? Because based on our experience, using the two together is the best way to get the best results from both.
Our main unique selling point as a content marketing agency is that we are focused on lead generation. Whereas most content marketing agencies focus on thought leadership or brand awareness content, we help our clients get leads, customers and revenue from content marketing. We do this by creating Bottom of the Funnel content: content that ranks on Google for terms your ideal customer is searching for when they are close to buying.
But the main issue with ranking content on Google with SEO is that it takes a while. It can often take 6 months to rank on position 1 and to start seeing results. This can also cause problems if you’re not sure whether ranking for that keyword will bring in the results you’re hoping for. And if it doesn’t, then you’ve waited 6 months for something that may not work.
This is where Google Ads come in for two key things:
1. Getting results sooner. We can publish content and leave it to work in the background, knowing it will eventually rank. In the meantime, we can start spending on Google Ads which will allow us to get leads a lot sooner. By paying for Google Ads, this allows us to get to position 1 a lot sooner. You can compare the two roles of Google Ads and content in this graph:
It also allows us to quickly find out which keywords are working well and which aren’t, which further helps us direct our content marketing strategy. Leading us onto the next point…
2. Testing keywords and finding the right ones a lot sooner. For example, say you’re not sure whether to go after “international business credit card” or “no foreign transaction fee business credit card ”. You can bid on both of those keywords with Google Ads and see which gets the most results. If “international business credit card” gets much better results, then you know it’s worth creating a piece of content targeting that keyword rather than the other.
Google Ads and content marketing working together give the best combination, because you can use PPC ads test, and then content marketing and SEO to get long term results.
We like to use this analogy to explain how paid search and content marketing work together: imagine you’re at Costco and you want to buy a coffee machine. To get to the coffee machine, you have to go through a whole maze of corridors and other products before getting to the coffee aisle and then deciding on which coffee machine to buy.
Now imagine that Costco is Google, and your company is the coffee machine company, and you’re targeting the shopper. The shopper knows they want a coffee machine, but what will make them choose yours when they arrive in the aisle and see all the different brands? Unless they already know your brand, they may not know which one to choose.
We use Google Ads to make sure your coffee machine is at the right eye level, in front of them at the right time and captures their attention. We then use content marketing to educate them on the different types of coffee machines, and when your coffee machine works best and makes more sense.
By using both simultaneously, we’re able to capture the attention of the browser / reader as well as convert the reader into a buyer. We use ads and SEO to get their attention, and then content to educate them on your financial product and encourage them to convert.
Why do content marketing at all?
You may be wondering: why do content marketing if we can just target them with a landing page and Google Ads? Isn’t that enough to convert them into a buyer?
There are two key reasons content marketing is a huge part of this strategy and the best way to make the most of both your successful PPC campaigns and SEO:
1. To build trust with potential clients and customers
The financial services industry is a high trust industry. Whether you’re selling wealth management, a bank account or a corporate expense tool, it’s important to the person you’re selling to that they feel they trust you. Managing someone’s money is not like opening a new Facebook account: the stakes are higher, and the consequences of making a wrong decision are dearer.
Content helps build that trust, especially if it’s well-written, is expert-based and easy to read. A financial institution that has spent time and energy producing content that is high quality, educational and for free will signal that they are willing to invest time into educating prospects and potential customers. Readers will see that as a high trust signal and are therefore more likely to continue reading, sign up to the newsletter and potentially convert.
Also, for more complex topics like picking a wealth management solution or a payment provider, the reader is looking for a lot of information. They want to see examples, graphics and explanations of how your product works – which can be hard to do in one landing page. Long form written content allows you to better explain who your product is best for and answer the searcher’s question.
We’ve seen many cases where a new contact has clicked on an ad, didn’t convert immediately, but then read a few pieces of content before finally converting. Content is a key part of the customer acquisition puzzle, particularly in a high trust industry like financial services.
2. To keep customer acquisition growth consistent
As with anything involving paid spend, you’ll eventually reach a ceiling. You’ll eventually reach a point where no matter how much more you spend on ads, you won’t be able to get the growth you were once able to.
When that happens, you’ll want to have another channel that is more long term and that doesn’t depend on what you input to keep growing. This is where SEO and content marketing comes in. Whereas paid spend follows a more linear growth (you get out what you put in), SEO and content marketing is more exponential, as it doesn’t strictly depend on input. Once you’ve got a decent amount of high quality content, you’ll start ranking for more keywords, which will increase the authority of your website, which will allow you to rank for more keywords, and so on. This is what allows SEO and content marketing to bring in better results even if your input remains the same.
Also, depending too much on pay-per-click advertising can be risky if your budget is cut or if for any reason you can’t run campaigns (e.g. Google requires you to complete a financial services authorisation to bid on certain keywords, which happens a lot in financial marketing). Ultimately paid spend is more short term and it’s very important to diversify and not rely too much on the channel.
PPC for financial services: to get the most out of the channel, combine Google Ads with content marketing and SEO
We hope this article was useful and helped you get a better understanding of how to invest in PPC as a financial services company. To make sure you’re getting the most of the channel, check that you’re not making those common mistakes when launching a campaign and implement the tips we’ve listed to make the most of your budget.
And if you want to truly make the most of your digital marketing, then consider combining PPC with content marketing and SEO to get the best results.