The phone is still a crucial sales and marketing tool, especially for IFAs.
If you work in this sector, chances are your target audience are largely of an older generation. This demographic is becoming more open to getting in touch with IFAs via web forms and social ads. However, one of their main preferences is to reach for the phone when establishing contact with you.
As a result, our financial marketing services tends to incorporate a blend of conversion actions, to generate leads for our financial adviser clients – including phone calls and web form submissions.
The former is also increasing in importance with the rise of mobile devices, particularly amongst over 55s. Nowadays, pensioners and would-be retirees are turning to the search engines on their mobile phones, in order to find a financial adviser. Consequently, those financial firms which prominently display their brand name and phone number in these search results will be at an advantage.
One of the most potent tools available, in this respect, to financial marketing services is Google AdWords. By paying Google a set budget to display your ads in the search engines, you can push your adverts towards the top of your audience’s searc results, and generate calls to your business.
In this article, we’re going to lay out 6 simple ways financial marketing services can improve their AdWords game, in order to increase the number and quality of their inbound phone calls.
#1 Use Call-Only Ads & Call Extensions
Within Google AdWords, you can set certain adverts to run preferably on mobile devices rather than on desktop devices. Since these users are more likely to make a call as their conversion action, it makes sense to try a “Call Only” campaign which target mobile users.
When you create your campaign, just make sure you tick the box saying “Search Network only – Call-only” prior to saving and starting on your ads:
Just make sure you remember that you don’t need to worry about creating a landing page for these types of ads, or directing your users towards one. The user’s only available action is to call your business, not visit your website. So if you are an IFA with an outdated financial website but want to try your hand at Google AdWords, this one may be especially interesting to you!
#2 Mobile-Targeted CTAs on Landing Pages
Call to actions (CTAs) are usually buttons which direct your target audience towards a particular course of action, such as downloading your report or submitting an enquiry via a web form.
One other obvious CTA in financial services marketing is “call now”, or some variation of this. A good place to put this is in the header of your landing pages, but also consider placing it strategically throughout the body of your web page as well so people see it as they read along.
This is particularly important if your AdWords campaign is directing mobile traffic to your landing pages. Many target audiences for IFAs simply do not want to fill out a web form, especially on a small mobile device screen. So it’s especially important these people clearly see the option to call your business, to chat through their enquiry with a “real person”.
#3 Analyse & Exploit “Peak Call Times”
With Google AdWords and Analytic, it’s fairly straightforward to identify the prime days and time when people tend to call your business via your paid online ads. Make sure you also check the quality of these calls, as well as the quantity.
From here, you can increase the amount you’re willing to spend on your advertising during these optimal time periods, to increase engagement and enquiries.
#4 Track Your Calls
This requires a bit of marketing know-how. However, if you are able to track the important data relating to your AdWords-generated calls, you will have immense power to improve your campaigns.
- Link your AdWords and Analytics accounts, so you can see how your website visitors from “Call Only” campaigns are engaging with your site (bounce rate, exit rate etc.).
- Track which keywords are producing the highest numbers of impressions, clicks and conversions at the lowest cost per click.
- Use the AdWords conversion tool, or Google Tag Manager, to dynamically-create special phone numbers for your website in order to track the quality and quantity of your calls.
#5 Split Test Your Landing Pages
Financial services marketing works best when you are actively split-testing different versions of your web pages, in order to determine which ones produces the most engagement and leads.
Consider altering the colour, headlines, call to actions and layout of these pages in order to improve your results. Just be careful to split test only one or two variables on a landing pages at any given time, in order to avoid obscuring what actually brought you better results in the even of improvement!
#6 Optimise For Location
Many IFAs are locally-focused businesses, so this may not be as relevant for you. If, however, you have a more regional or national focus (say, you have multiple offices across the country), then also consider optimising for location within your AdWords campaigns.
You should regularly check your location targeting regardless of your goals or business size, because you will want to tidy up your targeting if your ads start appearing in undesirable locations.
