Most financial advisors I have been talking have heard about pay-per-click or at least have seen some of these pay per placement ads on search engines like Google or Yahoo! These ads run on a bidding system that can prove very expensive for advisors trying to compete for keywords like ‘financial planning’ ‘investment advisor’. Over the past few years, a new trend has been emerging, social media advertising.
While systems like Google Adwords only provide limited options to reach target group (geographic and keyword searched), social web platform like LinkedIn offers in-depth access to target groups. This allows you to reach a specific type of prospect while keeping you cost low compared with the traditional search engines bidding machines.
A recent LinkedIn survey by Advisor Websites found that less than 25% of advisors polled used LinkedIn DirectAds (Pay by clicks or impression solution from LinkedIn), and 20% were considering using it. (see chart below)
I have spoken to hundreds of financial advisors across the country and the few that were using LinkedIn DirectAds were extremely satisfied with how it was performing for them. Most found it more effective than Google Adwords (Google’s pay per click program) and had reduced their monthly Google budget in favor of LinkedIn.
How does it work?
The power of LinkedIn DirectAds lies in the way it allows you to drill down the 32 million U.S. based LinkedIn members and let you decide who you want to target. Let’s say your target audience is Lawyers, then you narrow your audience to this specific category (670,000 as of August 9 2010).
Wait, there’s more, what if I told you that you could target even more by only showing your ad to lawyers aged between 35 and 54 (now you have a 50,000 audience) who are working for firms of 500 and more employees (11,000 potential prospects)?
You can see how this type of targeting can help increase the ROI of your campaign.
So how do I get started?
You will need a LinkedIn profile. Then simply go to Linkedin.com/directads and click the ‘start now’ button. You will be prompted to enter a name for your new ad campaign and to write your advertisement. Make sure you use jargon from your target market group inside the copy of the ad.
Using my example below, this is how a good ad could look like:
Headline: FeeOnly Financial Planner
Description: Focused on corporate lawyers. Get your portfolio back on track.
Website: www.company.com
Then you will be asked to select your target audience and finally to adjust your ad campaign budget.
You will be able to select to pay per click (CPC) and define the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click or opt for a pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM) option. I always recommend financial advisors to start with the CPC option and attribute a value of $2.00 per click to get started. If your goal is branding only, then choose the CPM method.
Finally, decide on your daily budget (the minimum authorized by LinkedIn is $10 per day) and submit your ad for approval.
Measure, measure, measure
Once your advertisement piece submitted, you will be able to see:
* Your ad status (on or off)
* How many clicks you received
* How many times your ad was shown across your target audience profiles (impressions)
* Your click through rate (CTR), which is the percentage of users who clicked on your ad compared to the add impressions. Nowadays, a 0.30 % CTR is considered very successful (this has dropped considerably over the years due to increased competition).
* Total spent in dollars
The picture below is an overview of an active campaign and the metrics discussed above. Click the picture to enlarge it.
In order to start seeing some positive results, you need to run your ad long enough. A good suggestion is to run a trial test for 90 days and check your return on investments at the end of that period. Your minimum spending will be $900 for this 90 day test. If a new client is worth $2,000, you will only need half a .45 client to break even.
To increase your chances, make sure you redirect all clicks to a targeted landing page on your site with copy written specifically for your audience and with clear call to action (free consultation, free assessment, book an obligation-free meeting etc.). On the flip side, if you target dentists and only talk about pro golfer son your website, then your conversion rate will be really low…
One last piece of advice
Remember to let your compliance department know that you are about to start a pay per click campaign on LinkedIn, provide them with the text of the ad and let them know what audience you are targeting. They will most likely review your copy and work with you to have it compliant.
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