Aberdeen

The client 

Aberdeen is a wealth and investments group headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. Originally named after the city of Aberdeen, the company is a well-recognised name in the UK financial sector.

Aberdeen provides a platform used primarily by financial advisers, both independent and otherwise, to help them make better investment and financial planning decisions on behalf of their clients. As well as its adviser-facing platform, Aberdeen offers a range of solutions spanning personal investing, pension planning, funds and investment trusts.

In 2022, the business underwent a significant rebrand. It temporarily adopted the vowel-free moniker “abrdn” – before reversing course when the change negatively impacted brand recognition and organic search performance. By the time Hallam began working with them, Aberdeen was in the process of restoring its identity and rebuilding its digital presence.

The challenge 

Aberdeen came to Hallam at a critical moment. Their rebrand had disrupted their organic search rankings, and with two websites requiring migration, the business was under pressure to act quickly. They needed paid media to fill the gap and drive traffic and generate leads while the organic recovery was underway.

Aberdeen hadn’t done a significant amount of paid advertising before partnering with Hallam, so there was limited historical data to draw from. Their initial audiences were small – largely existing customers segmented into “keep”, “grow”, and “engage” lists – making efficient paid delivery challenging, particularly on a platform like LinkedIn where audience size directly drives cost efficiency.

After an initial ABM approach stalled, both teams agreed to refocus efforts on a specific, campaign-ready objective: promoting Aberdeen’s Self-Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) product to financial advisers via LinkedIn.

What we did 

With a three-month campaign budget signed off, Hallam ran a full-funnel LinkedIn campaign for Aberdeen’s SIPP product. The campaign combined single image ads, carousel ads, and lead generation ads – with lead gen forms proving the most effective format for this audience.

Two lead magnets were used: a long-form guide to personal pension planning, and a practical toolkit for setting up a self-invested personal pension. The guide outperformed the toolkit, having been live for longer and offering more depth – by the time the toolkit launched, the guide had already established itself as the stronger asset.

A key strategic decision came mid-campaign. Aberdeen’s existing audience lists were too small to pace efficiently against the budget, and cost-per-click rates were high as a result. Rather than accepting underperformance, Hallam recommended enabling LinkedIn’s audience expansion feature – a tactic not used as standard, as it reduces granular control, but one that made sense given the constraints.

Aberdeen agreed to the recommendation. The results were immediate: budget pacing improved, CPCs fell, and the campaign generated more clicks and conversions than originally forecast.

Throughout the campaign, Hallam maintained weekly updates to the Aberdeen team – a simple cadence that ensured the client had visibility on pacing, performance against targets, and any optimisation decisions being made. Even small recommendations were communicated clearly and actioned collaboratively.

The results 

The SIPP campaign delivered strong results across the three-month period, with the audience expansion recommendation proving to be the standout strategic win.

8.2% lead gen conversion rate

Lead generation forms achieved a 8.2% conversion rate – a strong performance by any measure for LinkedIn, and one that exceeded what would typically be expected from this format on the platform. Achieving 8.2% demonstrated both the quality of the targeting and the relevance of the content being promoted.

15% reduction in CPL

Compared to Aberdeen’s previous average CPL, the campaign saw a 15% decrease in CPL, achieving a £232 cost per qualified lead from BoFu activity, which is impressive in a niche B2B sector.

162% of traffic target achieved

Prior to enabling audience expansion, the campaign was under-pacing which a direct consequence of targeting audiences too small for the budget at hand. Following Hallam’s recommendation to expand targeting, the full budget was utilised, we drove 3.4k visits from a relevant TA to site – a 162% increase on the target.

Be chosen before the search begins

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