Meta vs LinkedIn vs Google Ads: which one fits your practice
Who each platform reaches, what a realistic budget looks like, and why ads and seminars work best as a cycle.
Paid advertising is the fastest way for an advisory practice to start conversations with people it has never met. It’s also the easiest place to spend money badly. This explainer compares the three platforms that matter for financial advisors, financial planners, wealth managers and insurance advisors in Canada, describes what a realistic budget looks like, and explains why we almost always pair ads with a seminar.
First, what ads can and can’t do
Nobody chooses a financial advisor from a single ad. That’s not a flaw in advertising, it’s how trust works. What a good ad does is start a sequence: someone downloads a guide, sees your name a few more times, registers for an event, and eventually books a meeting. Judge ads by whether they start that sequence with the right people, not by whether the click itself turned into a client.
Meta (Facebook and Instagram)
Who it reaches: almost everyone, including the pre-retirees, business owners and families who make up most advisory practices’ ideal clients. Meta’s targeting by location, age and interest is still the most precise available for consumer audiences, and its costs per lead are the lowest of the three.
What works: a specific offer to a specific person. “A retirement income checklist for people within ten years of retirement in Durham Region” will outperform “Book a free consultation” every time. Video of you talking plainly about one topic tends to beat polished graphics. Seminar and webinar registration campaigns perform especially well here because the ask is concrete and the event has a date.
Watch for: lead quality. Meta will happily deliver cheap leads who aren’t serious. A form with a little friction, a phone number and one qualifying question, filters them out. A Peterborough advisor who had run seminar campaigns before told us his previous ones attracted mostly bots. His campaign with us drew 19 registrations in six days, more than the room could hold, and he added a second date. The difference was targeting and the form, not the platform.
Who it reaches: professionals, by job title, industry, seniority and company. If your practice specializes in physicians, lawyers, engineers, executives with equity compensation or business owners in a particular sector, LinkedIn is the only platform where you can target them that precisely.
What works: credibility-led content. A guide on tax planning for incorporated professionals, an invitation to a webinar on stock options and RSUs, a plain-language post about a planning problem specific to their profession. LinkedIn users are in a working frame of mind and respond to expertise more than urgency.
Watch for: cost. LinkedIn leads typically cost three to five times what Meta leads cost. That’s fine if each lead is a surgeon with a corporation and a pension decision to make. It’s expensive if you’re reaching a general audience that Meta would have reached for less.
Google Ads
Who it reaches: people actively searching right now. “Financial advisor Barrie.” “Retirement planning near me.” Google Ads puts you at the top of that results page immediately, while your SEO catches up.
What works: tightly matched keywords and a landing page that answers the exact search. Someone who typed “fee-only financial planner Kitchener” should land on a page about fee-only planning in Kitchener, with a way to book. Google Ads is less about creativity and more about relevance and follow-through.
Watch for: competition and cost per click. “Financial advisor” terms in large cities are expensive because banks and national firms bid on them. Google Ads is not a central part of what we do, but we offer it, and it makes most sense as a bridge while SEO builds or as a supplement in a market where search volume is high. We charge $500 a month for management, plus the ad budget.
Which one is right for your practice
- You serve pre-retirees, families or a general local market: Meta first. It reaches the most people for the least money and it fills seminars.
- You serve a professional niche: LinkedIn for targeting, often alongside Meta for retargeting the same people at lower cost.
- You’re in a market where people search a lot and your SEO is early: add Google Ads as a bridge.
- You’re not sure: start with Meta and a seminar. It’s the fastest way to learn what your market responds to.
What a realistic budget looks like
We split the cost into two parts because they’re genuinely different. Our management fee covers strategy, audience research, offer and lead magnet development, ad copy and creative, landing pages, nurture emails, daily optimization and reporting. The ad budget is what the platform charges to show your ads, and it’s set with you based on your market and your goals. A small market with a narrow niche needs less; a large city with broad targeting needs more.
Paid advertising management is $1,200 a month. Google Ads management is $500 a month. Seminar and webinar promotion is $2,000 per event. All three are plus ad budget. Full details are on our paid advertising page.
Why we pair ads with a seminar
Two months of lead generation warms an audience up. They’ve downloaded your guide, seen your name a few times, maybe read a post. Then a seminar gives them a second, stronger reason to engage: an hour in a room, or on a webinar, with you. Then the process repeats. Almost nobody books a meeting from one touch; most people book after the third or fourth. Running ads and seminars as one program means every prospect gets more than one opportunity to say yes, and the seminar catches everyone the ads warmed up. Averaged across the two lead generation months and the seminar month, that is $1,467 a month plus ad budget, and it keeps repeating for as long as you want a full pipeline. We explain the reasoning in more depth in The two-month, one-seminar cycle explained.
What results look like
An Oshawa advisor invested about $15,000 in a Meta lead generation campaign and SEO. In under three months that produced more than 30 leads from Meta and five from search, and three new clients worth roughly $1.5 million in combined assets under management. Your numbers will depend on your market, your niche and how fast you follow up. Leads contacted within five minutes convert far more often than leads called the next day, and the best campaign in the world can’t fix a slow reply.
Compliance
Ad copy, landing pages, lead magnets and event materials go through our compliance process and your dealer’s review before anything runs. We write without performance claims and we build approval time into the launch schedule, which is why campaigns typically go live two to three weeks after kickoff rather than two days.
If you want help choosing a platform, book a meeting. Tell us who you want more of and we’ll map out the plan.
Frequently asked questions
Do you charge the ad budget separately?+
Yes. The management fee is fixed. The ad budget is what Meta, LinkedIn or Google charges to show your ads, and we set it with you based on your market and goals.
How quickly can ads start?+
Typically two to three weeks after kickoff, allowing for offer development, creative and compliance review.
What if I only want a seminar?+
Seminar and webinar promotion is available on its own at $2,000 per event plus ad budget. It works best if you already have a pipeline to invite.