You might have heard of Pay Per Click advertising (PPC). But what is display advertising, and what sort of potential does it hold for finance marketing?
Simply put, display advertising is advertising which occurs on website banners, headers and sidebars across the internet. This means you could put an advert for your finance company up on another relevant website to your target audience, and generate further traffic and brand engagement.
Traditionally, brands such as yours would approach these sorts of websites individually to display their adverts in their headers and sidebars. Whilst this still occurs, an increasingly popular route today is to go via Google for display advertising.
How does this work? Google has a network of websites across the globe which permit Google to display adverts on their headers, sidebars and other advertising spaces.
In turn, companies such as yours can approach Google and pay them to display ads within these spaces which have been assigned to Google.
Sounds great doesn’t it? Certainly, there is a lot of potential here for finance marketing.
Imagine you’re a loan company to small businesses. Wouldn’t it be great if you could promote your loan application calculator to small business owners via the websites they frequent?
However, the key to seeing if this works for your finance company will involve first setting up your campaign correctly, and then measuring success as your start things off.
You will also need to carefully consider your audience’s demographics and psychographics as well.
Assuming the latter shows positive potential for engaging your buyer personas, you’re ready. Let’s dive in a little deeper…
Setting Goals For Your Display Advertising
What does “success” look like for each of your finance marketing ads? It’s important to get that clear in your mind before you spend any money on a campaign!
Which performance indicators do you intend to track? How will you judge your success rate, in real time?
First of all, avoid this common mistake in finance marketing: using the same “success metrics” at each stage of your marketing campaign.
For instance, the first stage in practically all of your finance marketing will be the “awareness” stage.
This is the top of the sales funnel. It’s where your potential buyers search for information, look for answers, and seek out resources to help them in their purchasing decisions.
So what kinds of KPIs and metrics will be important at this stage of your finance marketing?
Usually, traffic and clicks will both be big ones. The number of pages viewed can be another, along with the session duration of your users.
The middle of the funnel is your “consideration stage”. This is the point in their decision-making where they weigh-up whether your service is right for them, compared to other available alternatives.
At this point, the kinds of metrics you want to focus on will probably centre around “conversions.”
For instance, did your visitors fill out your contact form? Did they download that key report you were advertising? Did they request a consultation, or make some form of online purchase?
The last stage is the bottom of the funnel, and this is where the “decision stage” lies. At this point, you are looking at your “close rate” metric. I.e. How many of your leads are actually turning into clients?
In summary, to judge the success of your display advertising, your finance marketing should clearly delineate what “success” means at each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Other “Success Factors” in Display Advertising and Finance Marketing
Here are some other “success” factors you’ll want to include in your assessment of any display campaign you are running:
ROI (return on investment)
A simple calculation you will be familiar with. Simply compare the amount you spent on the display marketing campaign against the amount of money it generated.
LTV (lifetime value)
This looks beyond the initial transaction which the display campaign produced.
Instead, it looks at the typical period of time a customer from a display campaign will stay with your firm, and how many transactions – and at what cost – will occur during that time.
Phil Teale is the Sales & Marketing Manager at MarketingAdviser, an agency specialising in marketing for financial services – and especially for financial advisers. Along with our sister company, CreativeAdviser, we also provide bespoke website design, branding, graphic design and video production services to financial clients.
Contact us on 01923 232840 or email me: phil@creativeadviser.co.uk