Does Facebook work as a viable marketing channel for IFAs? It depends.
We’ll go over why that is shortly, but assuming Facebook does appear to be a good channel for your marketing – how much should you spend?
The fact is, paid marketing channels like Google Ads and Facebook hold enormous potential for financial advisers. But they can also be tremendously costly in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Let’s look at these two questions in turn:
Should IFAs Use Facebook In Their Financial Marketing?
Part of the answers hinges on what your marketing goals are.
If you are looking to purely generate leads straight off the bat, then most IFAs are going to struggle on their own with Facebook.
The fact is, most people using Facebook are there to get personalised news, and also engage in social interactions with their “friends”.
They aren’t usually on there looking for a product or service. It would have to take something really good for them to want to stop what they were doing, leave Facebook to visit your site, and fill out your contact form or book an initial consultation.
In other words, when your Facebook audience see your ad, the chances are you are catching them earlier on in their buyer’s journey.
In other words, they aren’t really aware in that moment that they have a problem which you, as a financial adviser, can address (e.g. their pension scheme).
With this in mind, Facebook is therefore a great “introductory” tool. It is a great way to build brand awareness, visibility and positive first impressions.
If these are your goals, then great.
However, whether you should use Facebook also partly depends on who your target market is.
Some audiences are more active, or easier to identify and target, than others. You’ll need to drill down into the analytics and demographic targeting to find this out.
In addition, your geographic targeting matters too.
For instance, are you targeting quite a small, rural area? Or a large, urban one?
Or, it could be that you are targeting British expats in particular countries. It might be that Facebook is used widely in some of those places, or it could be unpopular or even banned in others!
How Much Should IFAs Spend?
The good news here is that you have a fair bit of flexibility when setting a budget.
At the moment, you can set a daily budget in the Facebook Ads Manager, or a “lifetime budget”. This latter option allows you to set a total ad budget, to spend over a defined time period.
Which option you go for depends on your preferences, and the kind of campaign you are running.
For instance, if it’s an ongoing ad campaign then probably the first option is appropriate. If you are running a short, “Post Boost” type campaign, then the second might be better.
Of course, how much you spend also depends on your goals, and your budget. However, most IFAs are smaller businesses which cannot afford to simply throw money around on marketing.
With that in mind, we usually recommend starting a Facebook campaign on a small budget. Maybe £5 a day, just to test the waters and see how things perform.
Once the data comes in, and you get an idea of your cost per acquisition (CPA), then you can up the budget. Indeed, you could end up spending considerably more if the ROI is there.
Facebook & Financial Marketing: Some Quick Tips
So, let’s assume you think Facebook would be a suitable tool for your financial marketing. How do you use it, and what costly mistakes should you avoid?
#1 Commit Resources to Ad Creatives
Early on in our development as a financial marketing agency, we quickly realised the perils of the “set it and forget” it mentality when it comes to PPC channels.
When it comes to Google AdWords or Facebook ads, you cannot simply just create a set of adverts, let them run and then wander off. Why? Because people get bored of them.
Not only that, but if people keep seeing the same ad over and over again in their news feed, they can even go beyond that towards outright hostility.
Try and create a new set of ads at least once a month. Pause the old ones, and publish the new ones. Compare their performance, rinse and repeat.
#2 Segment Your Audiences
How will you know whether your ads perform better with women, or with men?
Or, if you are an IFA targeting expats in multiple countries, how will you know which countries have the highest and lowest cost per acquisition?
In all likelihood, you will need to tailor your message to different audiences. Each person will resonate more or less with different value propositions, depending on who they are and their group profile.
It might be, for example, that certain groups or areas are more expensive cost per acquisition, but they have a have a longer life time value. In which case, you may be willing to pay for the higher cost ads.
#3 Link Ads To A Landing Page
At the outset, it might make sense to send all of your Facebook traffic through to your home page, and / or dedicated services pages (depending on the ad content).
Quite soon, however, we’d recommend creating specific landing pages for each ad group.
For instance, if you have a Facebook ad group talking about pension transfers, and another one talking about inheritance tax solutions, then you do not want these going to your homepage.
Eventually, you want to send traffic from the first group to a pension transfers landing page, and traffic from the latter group to a IHT landing page.