In this article, we’ll discuss 2 powerful benefits of pay-per-click or PPC advertising as a part of your investment management firm’s ETF marketing campaign.
Is your asset management company looking for a more effective ETF marketing strategy that will bring you more investors and grow your assets under management (AUM)? Pay-per-click or PPC advertising might be just what you’re looking for.
This is a type of paid search model that relies on ads that you pay for only when users click on them. Because of this and other benefits, PPC ad campaigns are a must-have ammunition in your ETF marketing arsenal.
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Your Current Competition in the US ETF Market
Exchange-Traded Funds (or ETFs) pool funds from your investors and track an index, sector, commodity, or other assets. Similar to mutual funds, ETFs enable investors to diversify their investments; but unlike mutual funds, ETFs are traded on an exchange just like individual stocks. However, unlike stocks, an ETF includes different types of investments, such as stocks, commodities, bonds, or a mixture of those. And compared to mutual funds, ETFs are generally more cost-effective and more liquid. All of these make ETFs attractive to a diverse range of investors.
As a result, it’s not surprising that roughly 16.1 million (or around 12 percent of US households) had ETFs in 2022, and that there were already nearly 200 ETF providers in the United States alone by the end of 2022.
With many other investment management firms offering ETFs, how can you make your asset management company stand out so that you can keep growing your business?
Enter PPC ads.
How PPC Advertising Can Help in Your ETF Marketing
As more and more people around the globe are getting connected to the Internet (at least 5 billion people as of January 2023, according to Statista), the more companies need to ensure that their business is effectively promoted online. This goes beyond just having a website for your investment management company. Although you can get your prospects to find your website through organic methods like search engine optimization, that is usually not enough to rise above your competition, both literally and figuratively.
Setting up a PPC ad campaign can help boost your website to the top pages that your target customers look at and push your ETF to the top of their minds until they’re all set to invest.
PPC ads are a special type of online advertising in which your business (as the advertiser) pays every time a user clicks on your ad. By bidding for ad placement in search engine results pages (SERPs) and other websites, you can be seen by thousands or even millions of potential investors who are actively looking for ETF products such as those that you offer. The more users see (and the more often they see) your PPC ads, the higher the potential number of investors who can learn about your ETFs, and the higher your chances of converting them into your ETF investors as well.
When aspiring ETF investors type search terms related to ETFs on Google or other search engines—like “best low-cost index funds,” “safest ETF for investment,” “highest return ETF,” and so on— search engines will show them a page that lists both organic and paid results. When you’re running a PPC ad campaign, you bid on relevant keywords with the hopes of getting a good Ad Rank, which means a good position at the top of those search results. Naturally, the higher your page ranking, the better your click through rate (CTR) would tend to be, since most people only look and click at the top search results. This means a greater chance of getting new investors.
PPC ads can empower ETF providers to advertise to a greater number of potential investors and to convert a greater number of them as well.
2 Powerful Benefits of Embracing PPC Advertising in Your ETF Marketing
PPC ads for ETF providers are a targeted advertising tool that enables investment management firms to spend their online marketing budget efficiently by showing their search ads to the right people (i.e., people interested in ETFs) at the right time (i.e., when those people input search terms related to ETF investing in search engines).
Here are the two most powerful benefits of PPC ads in promoting ETFs:
More and Faster Business Growth Through Highly Targeted Traffic
To grow your investment firm’s AUM, you either need to get a lot more investors investing low to moderate amounts, or get even just a few new investors who each invest a substantial amount in your ETFs.
Whichever tactic you go with, you’ll need to make sure you’re advertising to the right people. Although online marketing is, as a whole, far more cost-effective and targeted than traditional marketing avenues like newspaper ads or TV commercials, you’d want to make sure that your advertising dollars are spent on ads that are shown only to interested ETF investors.
One of the remarkable things about PPC ads is that they enable you to target users with the highest likelihood of actually investing in your ETF offerings. You’ll get to set the demographics of your target audience and bid on the keywords that you consider relevant to your business. This will help you ensure that your ETF ads are shown only to users who are eager to invest in ETFs because they’re actively searching for information about this topic.
Because of this targeting feature, PPC ads help drive traffic that’s of high quality to your investment management firm’s website (or your ETF’s landing page, if that’s where your ads point to). This can substantially improve your conversion rate and increase your total AUM in no time. As mentioned earlier, you can drive traffic to your site using organic marketing methods like SEO, but with PPC ads, you’ll potentially get a lot more users—at a much faster rate!
Digital ads are considered more effective and more cost-effective than traditional ads, but PPC ads are even more so.
Better Return on Ad Spend Through Cost-Effective Online Ads
Thanks to its amazing targeting feature and efficient use of your ETF advertising budget, PPC marketing campaigns deliver a much better ROI compared to many other marketing channels, even digital ones. By advertising to users who are most likely to become interested in investing in your ETF, you can significantly lower your customer acquisition cost (CAC) while increasing your return on ad spend (ROAS) and overall ROI.
Just like other marketing tools, PPC ads require some investment. However, the amount of money that you’ll spend on a PPC campaign is likely to be more cost-effective than other marketing tactics you’ve used before since you only have to pay for what you’ll get (i.e., clicks). This can be particularly helpful for smaller ETF providers that don’t have large advertising budgets for expensive marketing channels like TV commercials or print ads. However, there’s no reason for bigger ETF providers not to take advantage of the high returns that PPC ads can offer.
Raise Your Investment Firm’s AUM With Targeted, Cost-Effective PPC Ads
Truth be told, setting up a PPC campaign is not that difficult. However, if your investment management firm wants to really make the most out of your online advertising budget, it’s best to entrust this task to experts in PPC campaigns.
One good option is Zero Company, a trusted online advertising agency with more than 20 years of experience in providing effective digital marketing services— including PPC marketing services—to businesses of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including ETF providers.
Book a free consultation with our PPC advertising experts today to start gaining the benefits of PPC ads to your ETF marketing!
