PPC CONVERSION TRACKING FOR
FINANCIAL SERVICES
The Smart Way To Increasing Sales
As a financial services provider, we can assume that you track your sales, and it’s likely that you have a good understanding of your click-through rate from PPC ads.
However you may still be missing a vital and informative piece of the information jigsaw: Understanding which of your client acquisitions or investment leads were a direct result of Google Ads paid traffic.
If you haven’t put those two metrics together there is a distinct possibility that you are overspending in some areas and underspending in others.
For hedge funds and investment managers, this could mean missing out on high-value investors or failing to optimise campaigns that could attract substantial capital inflows.
Google Ads conversion tracking puts an end to uncertainty and allows you to directly target your PPC marketing revenue where it matters most—toward attracting and converting high-value clients.
Maximising ROI in Financial Services
The Importance of Precision in Financial Marketing
For financial firms, the stakes are particularly high due to stiff competition, compliance issues, brand reputation management, and potentially high advertising costs.
This is why tracking and measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns with precision is so essential.
Unlike other industries, where a misstep might result in a minor loss, in the financial sector, every misallocated marketing pound could mean missing out on a client whose lifetime value (LTV) runs into the millions.
PPC conversion tracking ensures that every piece of your marketing strategy is aligned with your financial goals.
Are There Alternatives To PPC Conversion Tracking?
In theory, you could try to track client conversions by surveying your investors and asking how they found you, but this doesn’t work for a number of reasons:
- Limited Information: You won’t get enough detail and will lose valuable information, especially in a field where client trust and data accuracy are paramount.
- Client Uncertainty: Clients won’t be able to remember whether they clicked on a paid campaign or on an organic listing, particularly if they are managing multiple investments or portfolios.
- No Metrics Tracking: You won’t be able to track your conversions using a variety of key financial metrics, such as the profitability of keywords related to financial services.
The good news is that Google Ads conversion tracking can remove the guesswork and give you a selection of accurate and actionable metrics.
While talking to clients is a great idea, they won’t be able to give you the level of detail you need to optimise campaigns effectively and secure the right type of investor.
Optimising Financial PPC Campaigns
Can Google Ads Conversion Tracking Really Help My Financial Services Business?
Creating and updating ad campaigns takes time and costs money. If you are prepared to invest in a campaign targeting affluent clients or institutional decision-makers, it makes sense to take steps to monitor its progress.
If you are committed to a programme of business improvement, you should consider the crucial part PPC conversion tracking could play in the following areas:
- Identifying campaign issues, including fraudulent clicks that could be wasting your marketing budget, and making appropriate changes.
- Analysing the comparative effectiveness of landing and conversion pages specifically designed for financial services, such as pages offering whitepapers, financial consultations, or investment strategy sessions.
- Investigating return on investment (ROI) to ensure that your marketing spend is generating the highest possible yield, particularly for high-stakes financial products.
- Ascertaining your spend per new site visitor, especially those who proceed to engage with services like portfolio management or wealth planning.
- Testing newly launched ads and assessing their need for adjustment, ensuring that each campaign is optimised for the highest conversion potential.
- Identifying high-value leads by tracking user interactions and prioritising affluent clients or institutional investors for follow-up engagements.
- Maximising budget allocation by focusing on ad campaigns that consistently drive conversions for premium financial services, such as wealth management and asset allocation.
- Customising retargeting efforts based on conversion data to re-engage potential clients who have shown interest in high-value services but have yet to convert.
- Supporting long sales cycles by monitoring user behaviour over time, ensuring engagement remains consistent throughout the decision-making process for high-stakes financial products.
Some Additional Benefits To Conversion Tracking
How Conversion Tracking Helps in Audience Segmentation
An often-overlooked benefit of Google Ads conversion tracking is its role in refining audience segmentation.
When understanding which segments of your audience are converting—whether they are high-net-worth individuals seeking wealth management services or corporate entities interested in asset management—you can tailor your future campaigns more effectively.
This granularity allows you to create more personalised marketing messages that resonate with each specific audience, thereby increasing your chances of conversion.
Leveraging Data to Optimise Financial Campaigns
One of the most significant advantages of Google Ads conversion tracking is the data it provides. Financial services operate in a highly competitive environment where data-driven decision-making is critical.
Leveraging conversion tracking data can help you can identify trends and patterns that may not be immediately obvious.
For example, you might discover that certain ad placements or times of day yield higher conversion rates for specific financial products, allowing you to allocate your budget more effectively.
How Does PPC Conversion Tracking Increase Advertising Profit?
When it comes to conversions, it’s the direction visitors take once they have landed on your website that counts.
For financial firms, this could mean tracking how many visitors book a consultation, download a financial report, or sign up for a wealth management webinar.
Knowing which aspects of your Google Ads campaign directly relate to profit will give you the ability to make future marketing decisions on data rather than assumptions so your marketing budget is allocated efficiently to attract high-value clients.
The Role of PPC in Enhancing Client Lifetime Value (CLV)
In the financial sector, maximising Client Lifetime Value (CLV) is crucial for long-term success. Google Ads conversion tracking enables you to identify which ads and campaigns are most effective at not only acquiring new clients but also retaining them.
In focusing on the services and products that drive repeat business—such as ongoing wealth management or financial advisory services—you can increase CLV and ensure sustained growth for your firm.
How To Achieve Successful Google Ads Conversion Tracking
Identifying Key Issues In Your PPC Conversion Campaigns
Perhaps the best way to look at successful PPC tracking is to think about how it could help you to move forward and learn from an underperforming ad campaign.
If your search or social ad campaign has resulted in a disappointing Google Ads conversion rate for your financial services, you need to rethink your tactics and do the following:
- Evaluate Campaign Impact on Lead Quality and CAC: Assess the effectiveness of new ad campaigns on generating high-quality leads and reducing client acquisition costs (CAC).
- Measure Keyword Profitability and Relevance: Review the profitability of keywords and keyword groups that resonate with your financial audience, including hedge funds, asset management, and discretionary investments.
- Check Ad Copy Effectiveness: Review whether the ad copy speaks to the pain points of your financial audience. Ensure the language resonates with HNWIs or institutional investors and clearly communicates value propositions.
- Review Landing Page Alignment: Investigate whether your landing pages are aligned with your ads. A mismatch between ad messaging and landing page content could result in a lower conversion rate, especially in the financial sector.
- Look at Bid Strategy Optimisation: Assess whether your bid strategy is effectively targeting high-conversion terms related to financial products and services. In financial services, specific and competitive keywords require fine-tuned bidding.
- Check Audience Targeting and Segmentation: Evaluate whether you’re targeting the right audience segments, such as wealth managers, hedge fund professionals, or high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), and whether those segments are converting.
- Review Ad Placements and Timing: Analyse the timing and placement of your ads. Are you advertising during times that your target audience is most active? Financial professionals might engage differently based on market hours and events.
You won’t be able to accurately do any of this however, if you haven’t got Google Ads conversion tracking correctly set up.
If you want to pinpoint the source of sales, client registrations, or portfolio inquiries, and track the success of each stage of your marketing funnel, you need to correctly implement the pay-per-click tracking codes to assess the movement of visitors across your website.
This may also include PPC call tracking for phone conversions through the ads, particularly for high-touch services that require direct client interaction.
Getting Started With Google Ads Conversion Tracking
Where Do I Need To Set Up PPC Conversion Tracking?
The first step before adding Google Ads conversion tracking to your Google Ads is to give careful consideration to the actions you want your site visitors to take. Once you have decided this, you will know which types of pages you want to track. These might include:.
- Sales pages promoting investment products or financial planning services.
- Contact forms for prospective clients to request more information about your fund or management services.
- Submission forms for lead magnets such as financial whitepapers or market analysis reports.
- Event sign-ups for webinars on market trends or investment strategies.
- Download requests for exclusive financial guides or portfolio management tools.
In order to avoid information overload and over-dispersal of effort, it is vital at this stage to focus on the key metrics that match your conversion goals.
If client acquisition or lead generation is your current concern, make sure your conversion tracking is set up to give you the information you need to attract and convert high-value clients.
Prioritising High-Value Actions
Not all conversions are created equal, especially in the financial industry. It’s essential to prioritise the tracking of high-value actions that are most likely to lead to substantial returns.
For instance, tracking a form submission for a free consultation may be more valuable than tracking a simple newsletter signup. By focusing your conversion tracking on these key actions, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are aligned with your firm’s financial goals.
How Do I Set Up Google Ads Conversion Tracking?
To save time and manage your PPC conversion tracking more effectively, you might want to defer the whole process to a PPC consultancy specialising in financial services marketing, who can implement measures according to your overall goals.
However, if you want to set up basic tracking yourself, you can do so by following the simple steps below:
- Step 1: Access your Google Ads account by logging in.
- Step 2: Select ‘Conversions’ from the ‘Tools’ tab drop-down.
- Step 3: Click the big red ‘+ CONVERSION’ button.
- Step 4: Choose your conversion type (usually ‘Website’).
- Step 5: Enter a conversion action name, for example, ‘Investment Guide Download.’
- Step 6: Under ‘Value,’ assign a value to your chosen action using the options available.
- Step 7: Under ‘Count,’ choose a count type that suits your requirements. For example, this might be ‘Every’ for sales or ‘One’ for sign-up forms.
- Step 8: Under ‘Conversion window,’ choose the amount of time for which conversions will be counted following a given click or viewing of your ad.
- Step 9: Set categories, for example time segments, to help you customise your performance data to suit your requirements.
- Step 10: Under ‘Attribution Model,’ choose the point at which you want each credit to be assigned, usually following a single or combination of clicks.
- Step 11: Follow instructions to save and customise your conversion tracking tag.
In order to avoid information overload and over-dispersal of effort, it is vital at this stage to focus on the key metrics that match your conversion goals.
It is at this stage that you might need some expert help because your conversion tracking needs to be correctly added to your website. This can either be done via your global site tag or using JavaScript.
Accuracy can be further improved by linking your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account.
Once you have everything setup the opportunities for budget cleanup and improved ad results brought about by PPC conversion tracking are clear. Through accurate conversion monitoring you will see improved ROI on your marketing investment.
Why Work With Flycast Media?
At Flycast Media, we specialise in bespoke and focused PPC conversion tracking based on the results of comprehensive PPC auditing.
With years of digital experience and a deep understanding of the financial sector, we can help you reap the rewards of digital success and see your business flourish.
Whether you’re targeting HNWIs, institutional investors, or looking to grow your wealth management client base, our tailored strategies ensure you’re getting the most out of your marketing budget.
Get in touch today for a free PPC audit and take the first step toward optimizing your marketing spend.
And don't forget about landing pages.
Shane McEvoy is a seasoned SEO and inbound marketing expert with nearly 30 years of experience in advertising. He established Flycast Media, a specialist B2B digital agency, and is a published author of two well-received guides while contributing to several industry publications - read his complete profile here.
