A firm that specializes in tech employees with stock compensation does the obvious thing when it starts advertising: it bids on "RSU financial advisor." Then it waits. Keyword Planner shows why the phone stays quiet: in the US, that search gets essentially zero volume. So do "financial advisor for tech employees" and "stock options financial advisor." "Equity compensation financial advisor" manages about 20 searches a month.
The clients exist. They're just not typing what the firm calls itself. They're typing what keeps them up at night: how their RSUs get taxed, whether to sell, what the alternative minimum tax will do to their option exercise. Those are the searches this chapter is about, and the account structure that finds them.
The approach works from the inside out. First, buy the searches you already know bring clients. Then, after the account knows what a signed client looks like, hand Google the search for prospects who phrase it in ways you'd never guess. Search volumes here are US-wide from Keyword Planner. The niche examples come from a Bay Area-heavy specialty, but every advisory niche, from physicians to small business owners to recent widows, works the same way.
"Fiduciary Financial Advisor Near Me" Is a Known Quantity. Exact Match Pays Only for Searches Like It.
The inside of the account is an Isolation campaign. Google has no button by that name; it's our label for exact-match keywords, bid by hand, limited to searches a firm already trusts to produce meetings. "Financial advisor near me" draws about 49,500 searches a month nationally. "Fiduciary financial advisor near me" draws about 3,600. Add the service searches from Chapter 5, the ones that match what your firm actually offers.
Exact match is the right tool here because these searches are predictable. You know what the person wants, you've built the page that answers it, and you want to pay for that search and nothing else. Every dollar in Isolation buys a search you chose on purpose. Your firm's own name sits alongside it in a separate brand campaign, the other set of searches you can predict perfectly.
Keep the list honest. A keyword earns its place in Isolation by producing booked meetings, not by sounding right. If "wealth management near me" never books anyone after a fair trial, it comes out.
What Isolation can't do is find anything new. It only ever buys the list you gave it. For a firm with a niche, that list is uncomfortably short.
Tech Employees Don't Search for an Advisor. They Search "How Are RSUs Taxed."
Here's what the niche looks like in Keyword Planner when you stop searching for the advisor and start searching for the problem. The biggest RSU question, "RSU vs stock options," runs to about 2,900 a month nationally. "How are RSUs taxed" draws about 1,600, "RSU tax" about 1,300, "ESPP tax" about 1,000 and "ISO AMT" about 260.
Clients describe the same thing in their reviews. Of the 522 Google reviews we read from Bay Area advisory firms, 33 mention equity compensation, and 29 of those are for independent planning firms rather than national brands. One reviewer described arriving with "a complex assortment of NQSO, ISO, and RSU grants all with different vested and unvested amounts." Nobody in that situation searches for a job title. They search for the knot they're trying to untie.
The same goes outside the niche. On Reddit, where people ask strangers how to find an advisor, one Bay Area poster wrote that they were "not wildly wealthy but looking for some advice and planning/options on modest holdings." That's a real prospect, described in words no keyword list contains.
Other niches follow the pattern, with one difference. "Financial advisor for physicians" does get searched, about 260 times a month, and "financial advisor for doctors" about 140. Those are real, and they belong in Isolation. But they're small, so the rest of that niche has to be found the same way as the RSU crowd: through the questions physicians actually type.
"Sell RSUs" Bids Up to $47. "How Are RSUs Taxed" Bids Under $8.
Not every niche question is a hiring search, and the auction knows it. Keyword Planner prices "how are RSUs taxed" between $0.15 and $7.84 for a top spot. "Sell RSUs" draws only about 110 searches a month, but its range runs from $7.62 to $47.21. Our reading: a person asking how something is taxed may just want an answer; a person asking how to sell has money in motion and a decision to make.
Some niche searches are just noisy. "Tender offer" draws about 4,400 a month, and it means very different things to an employee of a private startup, a public-company shareholder and a corporate lawyer. A search like that is a reason to let the data decide rather than to bid on it by hand.
The questions still earn their keep elsewhere. A clear page answering "how are RSUs taxed" gives your equity compensation ad group a better landing page, gives Exploration something relevant to send people to, and shows a prospect that you know the subject before they ever call.
This is why niche searches don't go into Isolation wholesale. Most of them are questions. A few are decisions. You can't sort them reliably in advance, which is exactly the job the next campaign is built for.
Broad Match Catches the RSU Question Your Keyword List Never Included
The outer layer is an Exploration campaign, another of our labels. Think of it as Isolation's scout. It starts as a copy of Isolation and carries only the three to five keywords that already signed clients, now set to broad match, and Google bids for it automatically under Maximize Conversions, aiming at a cost per acquisition you set from Isolation's track record.
Broad match does what its name says. Google's own description: ads may show on searches related to your keyword, including searches that don't contain the keyword's direct meaning. Seed it with "financial advisor for stock options" and it can reach a person who types something like "should I exercise my ISOs before the IPO," a phrasing no one would think to bid on.
The target cost per acquisition is the guardrail. Broad match on its own will happily spend on loosely related searches; a target tells Google's bidding what a conversion is allowed to cost, so it chases the searches that look like the clients Isolation already found. Say Isolation books intro meetings for roughly $850 apiece, the Chapter 3 illustration. Set the scout's first target there, then let its own first month of results move it. That's why Exploration only works after Isolation has produced real conversions to learn from.
In our experience, this outer layer is also where most of the volume lives. The searches nobody predicted, added together, outnumber the ones on your list, and that's where an account grows.
Broad Match Modifier Is Gone. Google Folded Its Reach Into Phrase Match.
If you've read older Google Ads advice, you've seen broad match modifier, the plus-sign keywords that sat between phrase and broad. It no longer exists. Google's help page explains that starting in February 2021, the behavior of broad match modifier was merged into phrase match, and by July 2021 the two matched searches the same way in every language. Google now calls broad match modifier "discontinued."
What's left is three match types: exact, phrase and broad. Our method uses two. Exact match runs Isolation, where control matters most. Broad match, paired with a conversion target, runs Exploration, where reach matters most. Phrase match sits in between, and in our experience it buys neither the precision of exact nor the discovery of broad. If you find old plus-sign keywords in an inherited account, they're now behaving as phrase match. Don't leave them there by default: move the ones that bring clients into Isolation as exact match, and let Exploration's broad match do the discovering they were meant to do.
Broad Match Waits Until Exact Match Has Taught Google What a Client Looks Like
Exploration doesn't launch on day one. What sets it off is volume. Once the tracking from Chapter 1 shows something like 30 quality conversions every month, Exploration is ready. For most firms that's around months 2-3; firms spending more get there sooner. Read the calendar as typical, never as the trigger.
Once it's running, it needs daily attention for its first 30 days. Open the search terms report each morning, read what people actually typed, and add negatives for anything that isn't a prospect, starting from the list in Chapter 5. Broad match will find the student researching RSU taxation for a class, and only you can tell Google that's not a client.
The search terms report is also a shopping list. Picture Exploration surfacing a pointed question about selling company stock that keeps booking meetings. Move it into Isolation on exact match, price it by hand, and if it keeps paying off, build it a page.
Over time the two campaigns trade places. As Exploration finds and converts the long tail, some Isolation keywords may stop earning their keep and can be paused. If Exploration starts losing position on a search that matters, turn the Isolation keyword back on to reclaim it.
Next: A $79 Bid Needs a Ceiling You Set by Hand
Now you know which searches to buy and how to find the ones you can't predict. Chapter 7 puts prices on them: hand-set bids for Isolation, the impression share numbers that tell you whether you own the searches that count, and how to pick Exploration's target.
All chapters are on the guide's home page.
When we build advisory accounts through Google Ads management, the niche shows up in the Exploration search terms within weeks, and those terms become the next round of exact match keywords. If your account only bids on your job title, start there.
