If you have an online product or service that falls under the financial services category, there’s a wealth of opportunities for you to expand your business by using Google ads.
With Google Ads, you can easily reach customers wherever they are on the internet, whether in blog posts, on top of search results, or even on maps.
However, governments across the globe have set regulations to monitor and control how advertisements are made, especially for businesses offering financial services. That is why you need to at least familiarize yourself with some of these regulations.
These rules can be a little bewildering, especially considering they vary greatly between countries. But don’t worry.
As long as you invest in a qualified marketing agency that has a lot of expertise in marketing financial products and services, you’re good to go. Because they’ve been dealing with financial adverts for a while, they know everything about financial regulations and how to stay compliant. They know what works best for promoting financial services and how to pass the sniff test of legal compliance.
As we mentioned earlier, google ads are an excellent way to drive quick traffic to your financial service business. Even though we highly recommend that you allow a digital agency to handle your financial services brand, this post would help you with a quick guide on how to run Google Ads successfully if you want to handle that yourself.
True, Google Ads can be an effective way to maximize your marketing budget. Yet, if you’re new to the world of paid search, it can sometimes feel overwhelming.
We’ll show you some best practices for setting up and running your ad campaigns and give you a few tips on how to avoid legal trouble.
First, let’s take a look at the condition of financial service advertisements.
The Advertising Landscape of Financial Services
The advertising landscape for financial services is highly regulated. This means that there is a list of government regulations that regulate financial service advertisements. If you want to promote your brand and reach potential customers via Google Ads, you need to be aware of the regulations around doing so. There are strict laws around who can advertise, the kind of products and services to advertise, and where you can run those ads.
Because of these regulations, every ad through Google Ads would have to be vetted and approved by an agency authorized by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
But what at all does financial service marketing mean?
What is Financial Service Marketing?
Financial service marketing is a broad term that covers several different types of marketing strategies.
It’s most often used to promote financial products and services like investment and brokerage, but can also be applied to other industries such as insurance or real estate.
Just as marketing in any niche helps create awareness around a brand and boost sales, financial service marketing plays an important role in helping customers learn about your brand, products, and services.
It’s critical for establishing your company as one that offers high-quality solutions to people’s financial needs.
Even though we told you earlier that google ads are our recommended method for promoting financial services, there are other marketing channels that can help build a buzz around your brand.
Alternative Channels for Financial Service Campaigns
Apart from Google Ads, you can also consider advertising via email marketing, paid search on Bing and Yahoo!, social media ads on Instagram, and Twitter, print advertisements in magazines and newspapers, TV commercials, and more.
We keep mentioning the ads because ads are more targeted to what your customers are searching for online.
With google ads, it is so easy to build brand awareness and draw several eyeballs to what your business is offering. Here’s the bottom line when using ads;
Google Ads can help you advertise your business. However, it is important to know how to use them legally and responsibly.
Now that you know why google ads are your best shots when it comes to brand awareness, let’s go over a quick guide to using them.
Creating Your First Ad
Since you’re contemplating running Google Ads, we can assume that you’ve already created and set up your Google Ads account. Once you have your account, it’s time to create your first ad.
Here’s how you’ll do it;
- Go to the Google Ads homepage and click on “Campaigns.”
- Click on “Create Campaign” and then choose either “Search Network only” or “Search Network with Display Select” (depending on where you want your ads to show up). If you don’t know which option will work best for your brand, ask yourself these questions: Is this primarily an online business? Do I want my ads across multiple devices (desktop computers, smartphones) and networks (search engines like Google Search or YouTube)? If so, then go with Search Network only. If not, then select Search Network with Display Select.
- Next is the campaign objective—the reason why someone clicks on an ad in order to take action! The options are: Brand awareness; website traffic; lead generation; conversion tracking; sales/conversions themselves
- Choose your campaign type and click on continue
Here are some points to help you run a successful ad campaign;
- Use geo-targeting to narrow down your audience
- Set up an ad schedule so you don’t run out of money before getting results
- Test different creative elements like text or images. Test them separately so they don’t affect each other too much
- Have someone else read through your copy and make sure they understand what it’s saying before launching it live on Google!
Finding the Right Keywords
The first step in creating a successful Google ads campaign is finding the right keywords. Keywords are words or search terms that people type into Google when they’re looking for products or services.
It is critical to make research to find the exact or similar keywords that your customer are typing into their search engines when looking for your services. Otherwise, you’ll end up running ads for words that no one is searching for, even though those keywords relate to your business.
Google Ads offers some great tools to help with this process. We can recommend that you use the Keyword Planner tool, formerly known as “AdWords”.
This tool can show you exactly how many times people search for each keyword every month, helping you understand how popular any given term is and whether it’s worth targeting.
There are two main types of keywords: short tail and long tail.
Short-tail terms are typically single words. These tend to be more competitive because zillions of companies target those keywords. Hence, it’ll be difficult for your ad to stand out.
Also, short-tail keywords are less likely to convert because people searching with short-tail search queries tend not to be ready to buy at that moment of search. They may be searching for general information or something similar.
Long-tail terms are worth targeting. They are search terms that include multi-word phrases. These kinds of keywords are less competitive because they’re used less frequently but represent higher-quality traffic because visitors using long tails often know exactly what they want before clicking an ad!
We now know how to create the first ad. We also know how to select the right keywords for your Google Ads campaign. It’s time to optimize things!
Google’s Financial Service Restrictions and Advertising Policies
Google restricts financial service ads to only those who are licensed to offer financial services. This protects consumers from fraud. The US government has regulations around how businesses advertise their products and services, and these policies are designed to protect consumers as well as prevent false advertising in general. This means that you have to be creative when promoting your business online.
Truth be told, the regulations are so many. That’s why an agency would be the most reliable resource for you. Still, as long as you keep your advertisements truthful and show your ads to the right audience, you won’t have too many problems.
Conclusions
If you are planning to run ads for your financial services firm, whether it be a credit counseling service or a brokerage firm, take the time to ensure that you are following the laws and regulations set in place to best protect your clients and yourself.
Avoid running ads that target any keywords related to illegal activities like gambling or counterfeit money. And always make sure that you fully understand how Google works before committing either time or resources towards their paid advertising programs.
The most important thing to remember is that your strategy must adhere to the regulations set up by the government.
As a business owner, you also want to maintain a good reputation with your customers. Putting in place an excellent online advertising campaign can be helpful as you increase brand awareness and attract new customers, but it should not be done at the expense of violating any regulations.
We hope this was a helpful guide to getting started with Google Ads for financial services.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Google Ads can help your business, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us! We’ll help you develop an effective strategy and set up campaigns that drive results.
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