Marketing an ETF is more complex than it looks. Between compliance, product nuance, ad platform variation, and investor skepticism, even experienced fund issuers make simple mistakes that quietly erode campaign performance. After running campaigns for dozens of funds across YouTube, LinkedIn, Google, Reddit and more, we’ve seen the same errors repeat – and they’re all avoidable.
Here are five of the most common ETF marketing mistakes we see (plus one bonus insight that can make or break your digital strategy).
1. Landing Pages That Confuse Rather Than Convert
It should be clear to every ETF marketer what investors are looking for, yet many fund pages still fail to prioritize the most important information. Basic things like performance, yield, fund description, holdings, are often included, but might be buried below the fold or hidden behind downloads. Often overlooked is clearly explaining why investors should choose the fund… who it’s for, and how it differs from competing products.
For retail investors especially, fund pages must engage like consumer product pages, with clear visuals, plain language, and a message hierarchy that feels designed for people, not institutions. The goal isn’t to oversimplify the content, but to make it usable: a clean layout, intuitive navigation, and strong calls-to-action (“View holdings,” “Explore performance,” or “Download the fact sheet”).
A fund landing page should be built to perform before any advertising begins. Optimizing your landing pages first ensures maximum value from every click from paid traffic. No campaign can outperform a bad user experience. In other words, it makes good sense to tidy up the place before you invite guests over.
2. Letting Google “Do Its Thing”
Google Ads can be a powerful driver of ETF awareness, but it’s also easy to lose control. Many issuers lean too heavily on automation (using Performance Max or broad-match campaigns) and assume the algorithm will find the right audience. In practice, it often does the opposite: showing your ads to people searching for unrelated products or general investment terms.
Another issue is how Google dynamically assembles ad text. When responsive ads are used, the platform can mix and match your headlines and descriptions in countless combinations. The result? Messaging that often lacks cohesiveness – and in financial marketing, that’s a compliance problem. Legal teams need to review ad copy exactly as it will appear, not as a shuffled experiment.
The fix is simple: maintain structure and oversight. Use tightly themed ad groups, build clear negative keyword lists, and regularly review your search term reports. Automation works best when guided by informed human input.
3. Flying Blind on Traffic Analytics
Knowing where your website traffic comes from is essential, but raw visitor counts aren’t the whole story. What matters most is engagement: how deeply visitors interact with your content once they arrive.
In Google Analytics 4, engagement rate is one of the most valuable metrics for ETF marketers. It shows not just who’s visiting, but who’s actually interested. Engaged users explore additional pages, view fund details, download resources, or spend meaningful time on your site.
Tracking these behaviors allows you to compare channels beyond surface metrics like clicks or impressions. For example, LinkedIn traffic may have a higher cost per click than Google Search, but if its engagement rate is twice as high, the quality of that audience more than justifies the spend.
Segment visitors by source and measure their downstream actions. The insights you’ll gain into where high-quality investors come from will reshape how you allocate your budget.
4. Ignoring Creative Performance
It’s common for issuers to write off an entire channel – “LinkedIn doesn’t work,” “YouTube isn’t worth it” – without ever testing what might be missing from the creative. The truth is that underperforming channels often need better creative strategy, not abandonment.
ETF ads require precise alignment between message, format, and audience. A static image may underperform where a short explainer video would excel. A performance headline like “Position for the Energy Transition” might outperform “Invest in Energy Leaders.” Without testing, you’ll never know.
Creative should be treated like a portfolio: diversified, measured, and rebalanced. Continuously test variations of headlines, visuals, and calls-to-action. Monitor CTRs, view-through rates, and engagement metrics, then re-invest in what performs best. Over time, this discipline compounds into significant efficiency gains. We’ve seen small edits to video ads shift ad performance dramatically.
5. Playing the Short Game
The “short game” mindset is one of the biggest traps in ETF marketing, especially on lead-generation platforms like LinkedIn. These channels can be highly cost-effective but only if you approach them as a long-term funnel, not a quick win.
Turning a potential investor into someone who genuinely trusts your firm’s expertise takes time. A strong digital strategy moves prospects through three stages: awareness, understanding, and trust. Early content should educate and provide value, not sell. White papers, webinars, and guides demonstrate your knowledge and consistency, positioning you as an authority before the first sales contact is ever made.
There’s also a difference between a lead who downloads your guide and one who fills out a “contact me” form. The first may not be ready to invest today, but with proper nurturing, they can become far more valuable over time. The key is to analyze lead quality, not just quantity — looking at roles, companies, and fit with your target investor profile.
In every industry, long-game marketers win because they build relationships before asking for transactions. Set the expectation that not everyone who downloads an asset from your site wants to hear from you immediately…
BONUS: You Probably Can’t Do It All In-House
Finally, even the best internal marketing teams rarely have the bandwidth or platform expertise to manage every aspect of a modern ETF campaign.
Trusting professional digital marketers with the tactical execution of your campaigns gives you the best chance of success — and ensures your advertising is done efficiently and transparently. Working with an experienced ETF marketing agency means you’re applying best practices to strategy, setup, measurement, and optimization.
The fees paid to an agency are often a small fraction of the upside they deliver — in improved performance, better data, and ultimately greater investment in your funds. Specialized expertise doesn’t replace your internal team’s vision; it multiplies it.
The Bottom Line
ETF marketing is a precision game. Success depends on clear communication, disciplined campaign management, and a willingness to learn from data. The firms that get it right aren’t necessarily spending more, they’re just executing better.
If you’d like to see how your ETF marketing stacks up, we offer a free audit and custom marketing plan. No obligation, no sales pitch, just practical insights from a team that’s helped dozens of issuers grow awareness, engagement, and AUM through smarter digital strategies.
Contact us to get started.
