How much does Google Ads cost for pension advice keywords?

Google Ads for UK pension advice keywords costs between £8 and £22 per click on typical "pension advice", "pension review" and "pension consolidation" terms, rising to £25 to £45 on high-intent transfer-specific terms. Platinum Prospects pension-advice campaigns currently run at £25 to £50 per cold lead on achievable campaign floors, with typical mid-market campaigns landing at £70 to £130 per lead.

The expensive clicks are concentrated in a small pool of keywords: "pension transfer advice", "defined benefit transfer", "pension consolidation advice", "lifetime allowance advice" and location-modified variants. These attract institutional bidders including SJP, True Potential, consolidators, price-comparison sites and lead aggregators, which sustains elevated bid floors.

Cheaper pension-advice pipeline is available on four alternative routes. Microsoft Advertising (Bing) delivers equivalent intent at 20 to 40 per cent lower CPL, and skews to an older demographic (50-plus) that is particularly relevant to pension advice. Google Display with in-market pension audiences produces far lower CPL but weaker conversion, and needs tight retargeting discipline. YouTube pre-roll targeting "retirement planning" or "pension consolidation" interests runs at £15 to £40 per lead with long view-through conversion windows. Organic content and thought-leadership SEO compounds over 12 to 24 months and ultimately produces the cheapest pension-advice lead of all at near-zero marginal cost, but requires sustained investment.

Compliance constraint: Google restricts UK pension-transfer advertisers to FCA-authorised firms, and requires advertiser verification plus a specific financial-services certification for any pension-transfer-related creative. Without verification, campaigns are auto-paused within 48 hours.

See the full benchmarks for pension-transfer CPL, the pension-transfer marketing answer and the case study on pension advice Google campaigns.