Advertising and Retargeting: Does it Work for Advisors?

This article first appeared in Advisor Perspectives on March 12th, 2021, and can be found here. 

We’ve all experienced it. You’re shopping online for something new and decide against the purchase. Suddenly, your browser is full of ads for the product you were just looking at!

This is “retargeting” in action; it’s a strategy businesses have been using for a while. And, pending any voluntary regulation freezes by the SEC, retargeting will become available to advisors on May 4, once the new SEC Ad rule is in full effect.

But how does retargeting work? And what advantages does it bring to advisors? Read on to learn more and to find out how to use retargeting in your marketing efforts.

What Is retargeting?

Retargeting is a form of automated advertising that distributes ads to users who failed to convert while visiting your website. The process starts when a user visits your site, explores a few pages and then leaves. Retargeting tracks that the user who visited the site but never took action. Afterward, when the user is visiting a different website, relevant ads for yours will appear. These ads are designed to focus on where your visitor left your site.

Approximately 97% of users will not convert after visiting a website. Most people need to see an advertisement multiple times before they act. The magic number marketers have for the number of visits before a purchase occurs is seven, but this can fluctuate depending on industry and brand. And since this strategy is new for advisors, this number will be flexible.

What are the benefits of retargeting?

Retargeting is an active reminder to previous visitors. Unlike a blog or social media post, which requires a level of intent to be seen, retargeting makes ads appear on other websites users visit.

Better yet, retargeting has been shown to increase the conversion rate of new visitors by 33%. However, the effectiveness of any retargeting campaign will largely depend on your ad design and content (its “creative”).

Should financial advisors use retargeting?

Retargeting is an excellent tool for retailers, but for financial advisors, it will depend. If your firm has the time and resources to create retargeting ads, then there are a few specific situations where they could prove beneficial:

• New services: Is your firm providing a new service that it did not have in the past? Retargeting ads build awareness, allowing the news to spread faster and attracting those who are interested.
• Increase conversions: Retargeting is all about context. Sending an ad highlighting customer testimonials is going to be different from an ad that talks about a new service. Create your ads to address where your visitors stopped in the marketing funnel.
• Free content: Your firm most likely creates free content for clients and visitors, blogs, whitepapers, webinars, etc. Retargeting can promote this content without asking for an immediate purchase, catching the user’s attention and reducing the cost of clicking.
• Cost savings: Someone who visits your website is already aware of your brand. Retargeting saves advertising costs by focusing on a smaller, but more likely to convert.

How to create a retargeting ad

There are a variety of options when creating your own retargeting campaigns. At Twenty Over Ten, we use Adroll. But there are many other options depending on your focus, especially if you have a specific platform you want to focus on, like Facebook.

The next step is to create your ad. Canva and Creatopy are both affordable options and provide great flexibility to design the ad you want. Design multiple ads for different situations. Not every ad is going to be the same, because not every visitor’s exit point on your website will be the same.

Once your ad is up and running, give it some time to see how each type of ad performs. Even if you launch your campaign with incredibly strong creatives, running with the same set of ads for months on end will result in a lower-performing campaign.

According to a ReTargeter study, clickthrough rates decrease by almost 50% after five months of running the same set of ads. After seeing the same ads again and again, a user’s interest is no longer piqued, and the ads are more likely to blend into the background. By rotating your ad creative every few months, you can easily avoid experiencing these dips in performance.

This will allow you to cut ads that do not provide a return on investment. But it will also show where your marketing funnel is weakest, allowing you to adjust your website to provide the information that might be missing to ensure conversion.

With the new SEC Ad rule on the horizon, advisors can take advantage of marketing strategies that were not available to them previously. As one of these strategies, retargeting can convert past visitors and grow your client list. But whether retargeting will be worth it will depend on your time investment and the type of retargeting advertising you choose to create.

Consider the benefits and drawbacks above, and make sure to consult with your compliance team before adopting any new marketing strategy.