Client name withheld under NDA.
Financial advisers in Singapore compete for the same working professionals on Facebook and Instagram, and those audiences have seen every version of the free financial review ad. Advertising is also tightly bound. MAS fair dealing expectations and each adviser firm's compliance process rule out promises of returns, and Meta applies its own rules to financial services ads. The ads that win offer something genuinely useful rather than the loudest claim.
This team of nine advisers spent S$6,000 a month on Meta lead ads offering a free financial review. The form asked only for a name and phone number, so it collected 110 leads a month, but many came from accidental taps or people who wanted a freebie. Only 16% booked a consultation, advisers spent their evenings calling numbers that never picked up, and the same two ads had run for four months.
We worked with the team and their firm's compliance reviewer to agree what the ads could and could not say, then replaced the generic free review with specific offers: a retirement gap checklist and a coverage review for young families.
In a regulated category, getting sign-off on a set of approved messages once means new ads can be tested in days instead of waiting for approval each time. It also kept every adviser on the team using the same approved language, which protected the team and the firm.
We set up separate ad sets for young families, mid-career professionals and people nearing retirement, used broad targeting so the creative did the selecting, and excluded existing clients.
Each life stage worries about different things. An ad that speaks to one of those worries clearly does better than one that tries to speak to everyone. Excluding existing clients also stopped the budget being spent on people the advisers already knew.
We added two qualifying questions to the form (life stage and best time to talk), switched to a higher-intent form type and set up an instant WhatsApp confirmation with a calendar link.
A little friction filtered out accidental taps. Fast follow-up then turned more of the remaining leads into booked calls. The WhatsApp confirmation gave each lead the adviser's name and photo, so the follow-up call came from someone they recognised.
We produced short videos of advisers explaining one planning idea in plain language, alongside checklist carousels and simple explainers, and launched four new creatives every two weeks.
People choose an adviser they feel they can trust. A real adviser explaining something useful beat stock imagery by a wide margin. Advisers who had never been on camera got short scripts and a simple phone setup, so producing a new video took less than an hour.
Budget moved to the best-performing life-stage ads, creatives were refreshed before frequency climbed, and the team reviewed lead quality with us every week.
Meta audiences tire quickly in a crowded category. Scheduled refreshes kept costs from creeping back up. Weekly reviews also let the advisers flag poor-fit leads, which fed straight back into targeting and creative choices.
Six months later, the same S$6,000 budget brought in 205 leads a month at S$29 each, and 29% of them booked a consultation. The team went from 18 booked consultations a month to 59 and spent their time with people who had asked to talk. Frequency fell below 3 as fresh creative went live every two weeks. The advisers also reported better first conversations, because people arrived knowing what the consultation would cover and had chosen a time that suited them. Fewer no-shows meant more of each week went to real planning work rather than chasing missed calls.
Approved message bank, new offers and life-stage ad sets live.
Adviser videos became the top performers and cost per lead fell below S$40.
205 leads and 59 booked consultations a month on the same budget.
Agreeing a set of approved claims and phrases with the compliance reviewer upfront meant new ads could go live in days, not weeks. In a regulated category, speed of testing is the advantage.
Two simple questions on the form cut out accidental and freebie leads. Total leads still rose, and the share that booked a call almost doubled.
Short videos of an adviser explaining one idea plainly beat polished stock imagery. The ad is the first chance to show a prospect who they would be talking to.
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