TLDR;
- Stop wasting money on "Brand Awareness" campaigns. They're designed to find people who will never buy. You need to run conversion-focused campaigns from day one, even with a new app.
- Your target customer isn't a demographic; they're a person with a financial problem or goal. Define them by their pain (e.g., "scared my savings are losing value to inflation") not their age.
- The most important metric you're not tracking is Lifetime Value (LTV). Our interactive calculator inside will show you how to calculate it and figure out how much you can *really* afford to pay for a new user.
- Your offer is probably wrong. "Download our app" is not an offer. You need to give immediate, tangible value, like a free stock, a portfolio simulation, or an exclusive guide, to earn their trust and their download.
- Apple Search Ads and high-intent Google Search are your best friends to start. They capture people already looking for a solution like yours, which is the lowest hanging fruit for any investment app.
Right, let's have a frank chat about advertising your investment app. I see a lot of founders in this space making the same costly mistakes. They get a bit of funding, design a slick-looking app, and then proceed to set fire to a pile of cash on vague ad campaigns that go nowhere. They chase downloads, celebrate vanity metrics like 'reach', and then wonder why their user base is full of people who deposit a tenner once and then vanish forever.
The truth is, marketing a product that asks for someone's hard-earned money and trust is a completely different beast. You're not selling a t-shirt; you're selling financial futures. The usual playbook of "boost post" and run a massive awareness campaign is not just ineffective; it's actively harmful. You're training the algorithm to find you the worst possible customers. But the good news is there's a much better way. It's about thinking less like a marketeer and more like an investor: making calculated bets, understanding your real returns, and focusing ruthlessly on acquiring high-value users who will stick around, not just fleeting installs.
Is Your "Awareness" Campaign Just an Expensive Habit?
Here’s the first bit of tough love. If you're running campaigns on Facebook or Instagram with the objective set to "Brand Awareness" or "Reach," you might as well just transfer that money directly to Mark Zuckerberg's account. When you select that objective, you are giving the algorithm a very simple, very literal instruction: "Find me the largest number of eyeballs for the lowest possible price."
And the algorithm does its job perfectly. It goes out and finds the people inside your targeting parameters who are the cheapest to show ads to. Who are these people? They're the ones who endlessly scroll but never click. They never engage, they never visit a website, and they certainly don't go through the faff of downloading an app, connecting a bank account, and depositing funds. Their attention is cheap because they are not in demand by other advertisers. You are paying to reach an audience that is pre-qualified to ignore you.
Awareness is a byproduct of success, not a prerequisite for it. Real awareness comes when a user has a brilliant experience with your app and tells their friends. That only happens if you get the right people to sign up in the first place. This means you must, from day one, optimise for conversions—actual, meaningful actions like a completed registration, or even better, a first-time deposit. Yes, it will look more expensive on paper initially, but you're fishing in a pond of potential customers, not just a sea of passive scrollers.
The Wrong Way (Burning Cash)
The Right Way (Building Value)
Who Are You Really Talking To?
Forget the generic customer persona. "UK males, 25-45, interested in finance" is not a target audience; it's a guess. It's a description that includes everyone from seasoned day traders to students who just watched a TikTok about crypto. Your ad messaging will be so diluted trying to appeal to everyone that it will resonate with no one.
Instead, you need to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by their specific, urgent pain point or their deep-seated aspiration. What is the financial 'nightmare' that keeps them up at night?
- Is it the Ambitious Beginner who's seeing their savings get eaten by inflation and feels like they're falling behind their peers? They're terrified of making a stupid mistake and losing their nest egg.
- Is it the Savvy Optimiser who's already investing with a competitor like Hargreaves Lansdown but is getting sick of the high fees and clunky interface? Their pain is inefficiency and lost returns.
- Is it the Ethical Investor who wants their money to do good in the world but finds it impossible to navigate the world of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing? Their pain is a conflict of values.
Once you know who you're talking to, your ads write themselves. For the Ambitious Beginner, you don't talk about 'diversified portfolios'; you talk about 'getting started with just £25' and 'investing without the jargon'. For the Savvy Optimiser, you show a direct comparison of your fees versus a competitor's. For the Ethical Investor, you highlight your green-rated funds. This is how you stop shouting into the void and start having a conversation with someone who is already primed to listen.
How Much Can You Actually Afford to Pay for a User?
This is the single most important question, and almost nobody I talk to knows their number. They're obsessed with lowering their Cost Per Install (CPI) or Cost Per Lead (CPL) without knowing what a good customer is actually worth to them. Without this, you're flying blind. This is where calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) becomes non-negotiable. Knowing your LTV is the key to unlocking an actually profitable paid ads strategy.
The formula isn't that scary. It looks like this:
LTV = (Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
- ARPU: How much revenue, on average, does a user generate for you each month? This could be from platform fees, trading commissions, subscription fees, etc.
- Gross Margin %: What's your profit on that revenue after direct costs? For many apps, this is quite high, maybe 80-90%.
- Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your active, funded users do you lose each month? This is a critical health metric.
Let's run a hypothetical. Say your average user generates £15 in revenue a month (ARPU), your margin is 85%, and you lose 5% of your users each month (Churn).
LTV = (£15 * 0.85) / 0.05 = £12.75 / 0.05 = £255
Suddenly, things look different. Each customer is worth £255 to you over their lifetime. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is often cited as 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £85 (£255 / 3) to acquire a single, quality customer. That £15 Cost Per Registration that scared you before? It now looks like a bargain if you know that 1 in 5 people who register go on to become a funded, active user (giving you a final CAC of £75).
This is the maths that allows you to scale aggressively and intelligently. To help, I've built a simple calculator for you below.
Finding Your Investors: A Channel-by-Channel Breakdown
So, you know who you're looking for and what they're worth. Now, where do you find them? The answer is not "be everywhere." You need a methodical approach, starting with the channels where user intent is highest. Pouring money into the wrong platform is one of the fastest ways to fail, which is why having a solid channel selection framework is so important for fintech apps.
1. Apple Search Ads (ASA) - Your Number One Priority
If you have an iOS app, this is non-negotiable. ASA is the single most powerful user acquisition channel for apps, period. You are catching people at the exact moment of intent: when they are literally in the App Store searching for a solution. They are primed to download. The competition is fierce, but the quality of user is unmatched. You should be bidding on your competitor's brand names, generic terms like "investing app" or "stocks and shares isa", and problem-oriented terms like "how to buy tesla stock". I can't stress this enough; if you want to get serious about app growth, you need to master this platform. For a full breakdown, you should read our complete guide to Apple Search Ads.
2. Google Ads (Search) - The Next Best Thing
Similar to ASA, Google Search captures high-intent users. People are actively typing their problems into a search bar. Your job is to be the answer. Again, focus on keywords that signal commercial intent. "best investment app uk" is gold. "what is the stock market" is a complete waste of money for a conversion campaign. You need to target people looking for a tool, not an education (unless your tool provides that education). One campaign we ran for a software client got 3,543 users at just £0.96 per user by focusing relentlessly on high-intent search terms. It works.
3. Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram) - The Scalable Engine
This is where you go after you've started to tap out the high-intent channels. Meta is powerful but requires more skill. You're interrupting someone's social feed, so your creative and targeting have to be spot on. Forget broad interests. Target users interested in The Financial Times, The Economist, or specific finance authors and podcasts. Create Lookalike Audiences based on your best customers—people who have already deposited funds. This is how you find more people like them. We grew one app to over 45,000 signups at under £2 per signup by combining Meta with other channels and using this highly-targeted approach.
4. Other Channels (LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit) - The Specialists
These platforms can work but are more niche. LinkedIn can be fantastic for targeting high-net-worth individuals if that's your game, but it's expensive. I remember a B2B software campaign where we achieved a $22 CPL for decision makers, which was great value, but it's a different world. TikTok can be used to reach a younger, perhaps more risk-tolerant audience, but requires a very different, native style of creative. Treat these as experiments once your core channels are humming.
"Download Now" Is Not an Offer. It's a Demand.
Here's another massive stumbling block. You've done the hard work of finding the right person on the right platform, and your call to action is... "Download Now"? That's not an offer; it's a demand. You're asking for their time, their phone space, and their trust without giving them anything of value first. For a financial app, this is an especially hard sell. Why should they trust you over the established players?
Your offer's only job is to provide an "aha!" moment of undeniable value. It must de-risk the decision and give them a compelling reason to act *now*. You must solve a small problem for free to earn the right to manage their money.
What does a good offer look like for an investment app?
- The Freebie: This is the classic. "Get £10 of free stock in Apple when you sign up and deposit £1." It's simple, tangible, and directly related to your product's value. It lowers the barrier to entry and gives them a reason to complete the onboarding process.
- The Simulator: "Use our free tool to see how a £500 investment in the S&P 500 would have performed over the last 10 years." This gives them a taste of investing success without any risk. It sells the dream, not the product.
- The Exclusive Content: "Download our free guide: 'The 3 Biggest Tax-Wrapper Mistakes UK Investors Make'." This positions you as an expert and builds trust. You collect their email, warm them up, and then invite them to use your app as the solution.
- The First Month Free: If you have a subscription model, this is a no-brainer. Let them experience the full value of your premium features. Once it becomes part of their routine, the sale is much easier.
Notice that none of these are just "Download our app." They all give something first. This is how you change the dynamic from you selling to them wanting to buy. The creative needs to reflect this too. Instead of just showing your logo, show the offer. A graphic saying "Your First Stock is on Us" is infinitly more powerful than one that just says your brand name.
Your Final Action Plan
Getting this right is a process of systematic testing and optimisation. It’s not about finding one magic bullet, but about building a machine with several interlocking parts that work together. You need to identify your ideal user, calculate what they're worth, find them on the right channels with the right offer, and then scale what works. It's a lot of work, and there are many regulations and pitfalls along the way, especialy in the UK market.
To make it simpler, here is a summary of the core actions you should take, starting today.
| Action Step | Why It's Important | First Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Kill "Awareness" Campaigns | They attract low-quality users and waste budget. You need users who will take action. | Pause all Reach/Awareness campaigns. Create a new Conversion campaign optimising for Registrations or App Installs. |
| 2. Calculate Your LTV & Target CAC | This tells you how much you can afford to spend, enabling intelligent scaling and stopping you from panicing about high CPLs. | Use the calculator in this article. Get real figures for your ARPU and churn rate from your data team. |
| 3. Master High-Intent Channels First | This captures the 'low-hanging fruit' – users already looking for a solution like yours – providing the best initial ROI. | Launch an Apple Search Ads campaign bidding on 5 competitor brand names and 10 generic "investing app" type keywords. |
| 4. Create a Value-First Offer | It overcomes trust barriers and gives a compelling reason to choose you over established competitors. | Decide on one simple, valuable offer (e.g., £10 free stock). Make this the headline of your ads and landing page. |
| 5. Build Lookalike Audiences | This is the key to scaling on platforms like Meta. It lets the algorithm find more people like your best customers. | Once you have 100+ depositors, create a 1% Lookalike Audience in Meta Ads and test it in a dedicated ad set. |
Executing this strategy effectively requires expertise, time, and a relentless focus on data. It involves navigating compliance, writing compelling copy, creating effective ads, and constantly analysing performance to make smart decisions. For many founders who are busy building a product and a company, it can be overwhelming.
If you've read this far and feel like you need a dedicated expert to help you implement this kind of rigorous, results-driven strategy, then it might be worth considering professional help. We specialise in this. We work with app founders to build and manage paid advertising systems that acquire high-value users, not just downloads. If you'd like to discuss how we could apply these principles to your specific situation, feel free to schedule a free, no-obligation strategy session with us.
