Best Practices for Financial Services Search Ads

Live Search delivers millions of searchers seeking financial services information and products. By advertising with Microsoft adCenter, marketers can reach these highly active shoppers who account:
More than 4 million unique users per month.
More than 11 million searches per month.

Live Search visitors are more likely to have shopped and purchased online for investments, credit cards, banking, mutual funds, and stocks versus the online population. This means that you have a higher propensity to reach them on Live Search than with the competition.


Financial Services Demographics
Microsoft adCenter demographic data reveals that most searchers on financial services terms are female. Females not only see more impressions in financial services categories but they are more likely to click on ads.


Improving Your Performance with adCenter
When planning campaigns, make sure to include current promotions, new product offerings, and offline sales or marketing activity. The following tactics can help you to improve your campaign performance in Microsoft adCenter.


Keyword Expansion
Reach more customers through expanded keyword libraries. You can increase the potential for more traffic and help improve campaign performance in ranking, coverage of targeted terms, and coverage of tail terms.

Ad Copy Optimization
Appeal to consumer purchase behavior by optimizing copy. Using parameters and calls-to-action you can help boost your ROI by driving more click-throughs to your site.

Targeting
Use incremental targeting to be more likely to reach searchers who are looking for financial services information or products: females and 35- to 50-year-olds.

Bid Optimization
Meet your campaign goals through bid optimization and reporting. By optimizing bids, you can help ensure you are prepared for heightened competition, increased demand, and seasonality trends.


Start Today
It’s easy to start your Microsoft search advertising campaign—simply provide your contact details and pay a one-time $5 fee to create your Microsoft adCenter account. Sign up now to see what adCenter can do for you.

http://advertising.microsoft.com/research/financial-services-best-practices