Connecting the Audience With Financial Advisors Using Digital Advertising

Key Findings

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Competitors Are Moving Away From Covid-19-heavy Ads To Ads Promoting Help Articles And Financial Advice: As bank branches start reopening, companies are switching focus from online banking options to encouraging clients to make appointments with their financial advisory team

Using Direct Call-to-actions And Blog Posts Are Favoured Amongst Competitors For Getting Customers To Make Appointments: Campaign landing pages all have multiple touchpoints to encourage conversion, usually ending off with an “appointment booking” widget. 

What Brands Should Be Thinking About

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Consider using Facebook Lead Ads to maximize conversion on appointment booking: Facebook Lead ads work like traditional Facebook ads but with the added feature of being able to collect information about your customer in-app. By using the instant form feature, you can collect names, email addresses, phone numbers, and more directly on the Facebook app. Combined with other services like automated emails or text messages, financial advisors can easily get in touch with these warm leads.

Go a step further and tie in all digital channels towards the same goals: As seen in this case study and several other ones, like Servus’ Feel Good campaign, competitors are tying together paid, email, blog, and landing pages to convey their message. Make sure when launching a campaign that it has several avenues available. Be it launching a campaign on social media then promoting it on an email newsletter and subsequent landing page and blog, make sure each step is tied in and has information that supports the other channel.

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Prior to the pandemic, RBC’s ad spend focused on promoting their service and product offerings, including a video ad series on their RBC x Music initiative, an initiative that supports emerging Canadian artists.

Spend: $425K | Impressions: 16M | CPM: $26.56

Although majority of those promotions didn’t end until much later, such as their Airpods and Avion promotion, RBC promptly turned off those ads on March 15th, switching to ads focused on their response to COVID-19.

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This trend carried into April and May until late May, when RBC started a series of Facebook ads targeted towards getting clients to make video call appointments with their financial advisors.

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RBC took several different routes with their financial advisory promotions, including direct approach (Book a Video Call campaign).

Ad copy directly communicates a call-to-action for clients to book a video appointment with an advisor. Landing page is simple, and only has one objective - to get customers to sign-up for a call. Landing page has one primary objective only, which is the sign-up form

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Another direct call-to-action ad series aimed to get clients talking with an advisor. This time, RBC used creatives with real employee faces to humanize their service. This service is cross-promoted with a blog series.

Landing page included:

• Simple reasoning as to why clients might want to schedule a call
• Question prompts to help clients make up their mind about whether they need a check-in call or not
• Multiple options to check-in and to make an appointment
• Conversion opportunity for non-clients
  

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Even when advertising for a separate service, RBC made sure to include access points to appointment booking on their landing pages. Both ad and landing page advertises one service, which is RBC’s digital advisory product; however, landing page adds in several callouts to their phone/video advisory service as well 

Landing page sections breakdown:

• Landing page focuses primarily on the benefits and features of MyAdvisor
• Inserts callout to video or phone service, “no obligation, just support.
• Phone information easily accessible and designed to have attention drawn towards it
  

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For their mortgage advisors, they built a tool that helped clients identify a specialist at a branch near them. Campaigns like this could be simplified using Facebook Lead Ads. One of the top areas of financial concern during this pandemic is mortgage payments and affordability; RBC dedicated an ad series just for mortgage advice from their specialists.

Landing page sections breakdown:

• Feature that lets you enter in your area of address to find the right mortgage specialist for you
• List of specialists available; including information such as language spoken, photo, phone number, and link to individual bio
  

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On top of all that, RBC also created a blog series that promoted their check-in service by alleviating some of the concerns around booking an appointment. RBC launched their “check in” service, which centers around the idea of a casual conversation between client and advisor, a “how are you?” chat to keep connected. To support this service, RBC published a series of blog posts.

The “Stress Relief” blog post content breakdown:

• Research behind the importance of social connection, supporting why clients should connect with an advisor
• Additional reasoning as to support “checking in” and examples of topics that can be discussed during the call
• CTA for clients to easily make an appointment
  

RBC used these vlogs to reassure clients that these check-ins are not sales pitches and provided topic starters that are relevant to today’s financial landscape. RBC launched their “check in” service, which centers around the idea of a casual conversation between client and advisor, a “how are you?” chat to keep connected. To support this service, RBC published a series of blog posts.

The “Stress Relief” blog post content breakdown:

• Reassurances as to the nature of these check-ins, that they are not sales calls or calls about investments only
• Topic starters that give clients who are on the fence about these calls ideas to think about that further “debunk” the purpose of check-in calls
  

In a similar fashion, several other brands have also started promoting financial advising, including BMO, who started their own “check-up” series.

BMO launched a “check-up” series of blogs aimed at helping clients navigate their finances during the pandemic and regain control of their money; topics range from financial planning advice to ways to save money.

Landing page sections breakdown:

• Give out advice without forgetting to plug service offerings that tie into the blog topics; hyperlinked for easy accessibility
• Comparison tools to make decision-making easier for clients
• Quick access for clients to make an appointment or find a branch near them
  

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Coast Capital Savings launched display ads to promote their financial advisory service, building a landing page that includes FAQs and a personalized video message from an advisor.

Landing page sections breakdown:

• Greeting video from branch manager for a personalized touch; phone number and “book an appointment” above the fold
• Relevant articles to get clients spending more time on site; ability to answer more FAQs
• Additional touchpoint for clients to book appointments at the bottom of page
  

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NBC continued to update their “Answer Bank” campaign from last month with new material on their landing page. NBC continued their “Answer Bank” campaign from May where they used FAQs to encourage clients to click onto their landing page where they compiled all their help articles and videos.

Landing page sections breakdown:

• Questions used in ad copy are prominent and above the fold; minimizes chance for frustration for clients who can’t find the answer they were looking for
• Use of embedded video to convey information and to keep clients on the same webpage
• Additional touchpoint for clients to book appointments at the bottom of page