How GDT Agency Helped Gentian Financial Cut CPL 45% on TikTok Ads

Scaling a financial services brand on TikTok is never easy. Between strict policy compliance and a skeptical audience, many firms find their Cost Per Lead (CPL) skyrocketing before they even find their footing. This was the exact situation for Gentian Financial before they partnered with GDT. By shifting their ad infrastructure and refining their creative approach, GDT Agency helped Gentian Financial to cut their CPL by 45% while actually increasing lead quality. Here is the step-by-step breakdown of how we did it.

About Gentian Financial

Gentian Financial is a U.S.-based wealth management firm headquartered in Mequon, Wisconsin, that focuses on helping individuals and families plan for long-term financial security, especially around retirement.

The firm provides a full range of services, including retirement income planning, tax strategies, investment management, and estate planning, with an emphasis on aligning financial decisions with personal life goals rather than just maximizing assets.

Challenges With Gentian Before Working with GDT Agency

Before working with GDT Agency, Gentian Financial managed its own paid ads, mainly on Facebook. The team aimed to generate consistent leads, but the cost kept rising month after month.

On Facebook, the financial niche created intense competition. The Genitian’s team saw CPL increase to $45+, which made scaling almost impossible. Every attempt to increase the budget caused performance to drop, and the account struggled to stay profitable.

That is the main reason Gentian Financial decided to move from Facebook to TikTok to find a more cost-effective channel. The team expected lower costs and better reach, especially with short-form video content. However, the switch did not immediately solve the problem.

After the first few weeks on TikTok, the team still faced several issues:

• Unstable delivery and frequent performance drops
• Slow ad approval and limited spend capacity
• Weak creative performance due to a lack of platform-specific strategy
• CPL remained high at around $35 – $40, which was still far from profitable

Gentian’s team realized that TikTok worked differently from Facebook, and the same approach could not deliver the same results. At the starting point, here are the metrics of Gentian Financial:

Gential Financial did not lack budget or effort. The team lacked a system that matched how TikTok actually worked. That’s also the reason why Gential Financial decided to work with GDT Agency.

What Does GDT Agency Do To Help Gentian Financial?

After gathering the essential information about Gentian Financial, together, we have analyzed and built a structured 90-day optimization plan to solve the issues through 3 phases. Here’s exactly what we do:

Phase 1 (The First 30 Days): Stabilize and Reset the System

The first thing we did was move the campaigns from standard personal accounts to TikTok Agency Ad Accounts in the first week. These accounts are whitelisted by TikTok, offering:

• Zero Spending Caps: Allowing us to scale winning ads instantly without “resetting” the algorithm.
• Priority Support: Faster ad reviews and direct access to TikTok’s internal team to resolve policy flags.
• Global Targeting: The ability to reach high-value financial audiences that are often restricted to basic accounts.

And these accounts immediately showed better delivery consistency and faster approval times (down from 6-12 hours to under 2 hours).

Challenges in the first 10 days

Even with whitelisted agency accounts, TikTok’s automated moderation is aggressive toward financial services. Within the first 48 hours, Gentian saw 40% of its initial creatives flagged for “Misleading Claims” or “Sensitive Financial Content,” despite being fully compliant.

To fix this, instead of fighting the automated system, we guided them to utilize the Priority Support channel (available only to Agency Accounts) to request manual human reviews for all flagged ads. This bypassed the “bot-loop” and got 100% of the ads approved within 4 hours.

Then we guide them to start with “Broad Targeting” (Age 45+, U.S. Only) with minimal interest layering to allow TikTok’s pixel to gather data without being restricted by small audience sizes during the sensitive first week.

Campaign Actions in First 30 Days

During these first 30 days, we advised Gentian not to focus on high volume but to focus on building a stable foundation instead.

• Structure: Reduced from 12 ad groups to 4 core ad groups.
• Creative testing: Launched 25 creatives per week and tested 3 main angles: debt relief, financial freedom, and quick approval
• Bidding: We advised them to use Lowest Cost bidding to allow the system to find the “floor” of the market price for retirement-related leads.
• Budget control: Started with $500/day and increased slowly by 20% every 3 days
• Creative Rotation: We advised them to use a “7-day refresh” cycle. Even if an ad was performing well, they swapped out the first 3 seconds (the hook) to prevent creative fatigue and keep the CTR from dipping.

Result After 30 Days

By the end of the first month, the system wasn’t just running, but it was running stably. Here is the result after the first 30 days:

Phase 2 (Day 31th – Day 60th):

Once the infrastructure was stable, the goal was to bridge the gap between TikTok’s high-energy environment and the serious nature of wealth management.

The Challenge: The “Financial Skepticism” Wall

By day 35, we noticed a trend: while CTR was improving, many users were dropping off the landing page. In the financial sector, TikTok users are notoriously skeptical of “get rich quick” schemes.

Gentian Financial’s initial ads looked too professional, and they felt like high-budget TV commercials, but on TikTok, “too polished” often equals “untrustworthy” or “advertisement,” leading users to swipe past immediately.

Campaign Actions in Phase 2:

Creative:

We advised Getian’s team to stop trying to “sell” retirement planning and start “teaching” it. We moved away from stock footage of happy couples on beaches and replaced it with three specific content pillars:

• The Green Screen “Expert” Hook: A Gentian advisor standing in front of a trending financial news headline or a 401k statement. This positioned them as a real-time authority.

• The “Myth-Buster” Series: Videos titled “Why your 401k might be lying to you” or “The hidden tax trap in retirement.” These addressed specific fears of the 45+ demographic.

• Low-Fi “Walk and Talk”: Simple, handheld phone footage of an advisor walking through the office, explaining a complex concept like estate planning in plain English.

Structure:

We also guided them to utilize Automated Creative Optimization and provided TikTok with 5 hooks, 3 body videos, and 2 Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons. The algorithm then mixed and matched these to find the “Winning Combination” for different segments of the 45+ audience.

Budget increase:

• Focused budget on top 20% performing creatives
• Produced variations of winners instead of fully new concepts
• Increased spend from $600/day to $1,200/day

Result After Phase 2:

This is where we saw the most significant “efficiency” gains. By making the ads feel like native TikTok content, the engagement rates soared, which rewarded us with even lower CPMs.

Phase 3 (Day 61th – Day 90th):

Phase 3 is the period of Aggressive Scaling focused on efficiency and long-term sustainability. With the infrastructure stable and the creative message resonating, the final goal was to maximize lead volume while driving the CPL down to its lowest possible point.

The Challenge:

On TikTok, when you suddenly double your budget, the algorithm often “panics,” searching for more users outside your target profile, which usually causes CPL to skyrocket. Gentian Financial needed more leads, but they couldn’t afford to go back to the $38+ baseline.

Campaign Actions in Phase 3:

We took the data from the 300+ high-quality leads generated in Phase 2 and built a 1% Lookalike Audience. This allowed Gentian to stop guessing interest categories and start targeting users who “acted” exactly like Gentian’s existing clients.

At this stage, the advanced creative strategy is focused on storytelling and social proof. We also recommend that they use real customer scenarios, improve landing page clarity, and add stronger call-to-action messaging.

We advised Gentian to move away from “Lowest Cost” and shifted 70% of the budget to Manual Cost Caps, set at $21.50, and reduced spend on underperforming segments. This forced the algorithm to stay disciplined. It would only spend the budget if it found a lead at that price or lower.

Final Results: The 90-Day Transformation

By the end of the 90-day period, the combination of agency-grade infrastructure, native content, and disciplined scaling hit the 45% reduction target.

Conclusion

The success of Gentian Financial on TikTok proves that even “serious” industries like wealth management can thrive on short-form video platforms, provided they have the right infrastructure and strategy in place.

By partnering with GDT Agency, Gentian Financial moved from a stagnant, high-cost environment on Facebook to a predictable, high-growth engine on TikTok.

GDT Agency provides access to TikTok agency accounts to help businesses run more stable and scalable advertising. Contact our team today to see how we can help improve your results.

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