Paid Search Trends in Financial Services for 2024

Paid search trends for 2024 evolve around maximizing discovery and effective spend to capitalize on the enduring consumer popularity of the channel.

This report digs into both legacy banks’ and challenger banks’ strategies within paid search in the financial services landscape, with a focus on best keyword practices, competitive conquesting strategies, and a deep dive into ad copy that maximizes website traffic. Furthermore, it provides a high-level spend analysis among top financial services competitors, analyzing annual and quarterly trends across keywords and conquesting initiatives.

Download the report to read more on our key takeaways:

• Success lies in discovery keywords
  Discovery-based keywords are pivotal in paid search, providing an opportunity for brands to enhance visibility and align with consumer interests. In 2023, economic trends influenced keyword strategies, with challenger brands competing against industry leaders to increase their brand awareness.
• Brands are conquesting against Discover and Chase
  Brands strategically looked to find the balance between protecting their brand name and navigating conquesting efforts. Brands, most notably Capital One, used most conquesting investments to beat out highly visible players Discover and Chase. Other brands like One Finance looked to these brands to increase their own brand equity.
• Ad copy highlighting incentives outperformed spend
  Brands leveraged descriptive ad copies to enhance their digital presence and drive increased website traffic. Themes featuring bonus offers over-indexed in terms of traffic to spend, while the mentioning of product fees underperformed, emphasizing the importance consumers place on financial incentives.

Want to gain more insight into the complex and ever-changing world of the paid search market, paid search marketing strategy, the tactics of other active marketers in this channel, and the benefits of paid search marketing? Book a demo or download the report!