As footfall at retail outlets continues to fall and people choose to complete more of their purchases and transactions online, from the comfort of their homes, lenders need to respond accordingly.
Thanks in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated the trend for moving online, gone are the days when customers would come into a branch to enquire about securing a loan.
Now, customers will Google a lender, expect to be able to ask questions via email or Messenger and apply online. In a competitive marketplace, if your digital lending or credit union lending business isn’t able to meet these expectations, then your potential customers will go elsewhere for their loan instead.
Increase lending acquisitions with digital marketing
As a lender you are probably online already, with a website and social media channels, but how visible are you? How many of your customers are finding you via this medium? Are potential customers engaging with your social media content? Are your current digital marketing efforts bringing in new leads? Do you know how to measure its success and ROI (Return On Investment)?
Digital marketing is a relatively new discipline, which is continually evolving. Those lenders who invest and keep up with the changes will reap the benefits in terms of acquiring more customers faster and at a lower cost per lending acquisition than through traditional marketing methods.
At Luna Connect we partner with lenders to enhance their product by moving their lending processes online. As we grow, we are seeing a huge appetite from digital lending and credit union lending companies who are also looking to move their marketing online and better understand how to secure prospects through digital marketing.
The 6 cornerstones of digital marketing for lending acquisition
Every digital marketing plan starts with these 6 cornerstones. How many of them have you considered when planning your current marketing strategy?
- Know your audience 👫
- Content marketing 🗞️
- Social media 👍
- SEO 🔎
- Paid media 💸
- Email marketing ✉️
By streamlining and integrating digital marketing, Luna Connect are helping lenders acquire more prospects by providing them with the tools to follow up with potential customers.
1. Know your audience 👫
Before you spend any more time on digital marketing (or any marketing for that matter), you need to make sure you have a clear picture of what your potential client looks like.
It’s imperative to know exactly who you want to reach through your marketing efforts – as the old adage goes, if you’re selling to everyone, you’re selling to no one.
Marketers refer to this process as creating user personas and go as far as to name these fictional dream clients and flesh out every detail about them – their age, marital status, job title, salary, where they live etc. The more detail you can provide about your ideal customer, the better.
Other things lenders should consider when thinking about your audience are:
- What interests them?
- What are their painpoints and challenges?
- Where do they hang out online? And at what time of day?
- What type of content do they like to consume (written, visual or audio)?
- What are they currently reading or listening to?
2. Content marketing 🗞️
Once you’ve answered these questions, you will have a clear idea of who to target your marketing activities at. You can then start creating content that will appeal to them, and publish it in places where they are likely to be looking.
For a lender who specialises in auto loans, for example, your clients will be interested in the latest car news and might be following accounts on Facebook and Twitter to keep informed, while a small business owner may use LinkedIn to look for long-form articles about how to grow their business.
Content marketing comes in many different forms, including blogs, articles, white papers, reports and case studies. It pays to think outside the box and incorporate videos or podcasts into your content marketing as well, if they are right for your audience.
Remember, the key aim of content marketing is to add value for your audience and position yourself as an expert in your digital lending niche. If you specialise in agricultural loans, ask yourself what content would interest farmers? Connect with farming publications and volunteer to write an article for them, or ask to be a guest on a podcast episode.
The end goal of content marketing is to drive potential customers to your website where, with the help of Luna Connect’s integrated platform, you can capture their email addresses and data to further market your online lending solution to them.
3. Social media 👍
Producing standout content is just one piece of the puzzle, however. The next step is to consider how to get that content seen. Social media is a great way to connect with new customers and keep adding value for existing customers.
Choose one or two social media channels that work best for your business and audience and concentrate on just these. It’s far better to do less channels well, than spread yourself too thin.
Good social media accounts build community by sharing relevant news, answering customer questions and commenting on current affairs that might affect their audience. Don’t underestimate the ‘social’ element of social media. Avoid hard selling in favour of starting conversations and sharing your experiences.
4. SEO 🔎
How does your website rank for visibility? If you Google ‘lenders in [your niche/location]’, does your business come up? How many of your competitors show up higher than you in search results?
To improve your chances of being discovered online organically, you must invest in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for your website so people can find you when they are searching for a digital lending company.
Begin by making a list of short- and long-tail keywords that are relevant to your business and then weave these keywords into both the visible content on your site and the back-end architecture.
If you are already producing quality content that is targeted to your audience, then you will likely be using relevant keywords consistently. SEO can be further improved with backlinks, which are links from other web pages that direct people to your website, so this is another worthwhile reason for writing guest blogs for publications in your niche.
5. Paid media 💸
Every social media platform now offers their own advertising platforms, which allow businesses to target specific people. Thanks to detailed targeting capabilities, including by age, location, job title, industry, interests, shopping habits and socio-economic status, paid media spend is a cost effective and efficient way to reach potential new customers.
Paid media also has the ability to upload your own customer list to target with adverts. Luna Connect automatically captures customer data, providing you with the initial customer lists to work from. Social media platforms can then expand your pool wider by using clever AI to find people who are similar to your existing customers and allow you to advertise to them, too.
6. Email marketing ✉️
Building up your email list is an incredibly important part of digital marketing. With email marketing, you as a business own that data, which is valuable. You can contact your prospects and customers directly and don’t need to rely on social media platforms and their mysterious algorithms to nurture your relationships with them.
Again, with email marketing you must keep your audience at the forefront of every email you send, making sure every email adds value, reinforces your business as the expert and includes a call to action to convert them from prospect to customer.
If you don’t already have a mailing list, we recommend you make capturing email addresses your number one marketing priority. Luna Connect are helping our partners do this by capturing data about the customer journey, including email addresses, which lenders can then use for marketing purposes.
Digital marketing made better with Luna Connect
Once your digital marketing plan is in place and you’re beginning to get leads, you need a data-driven system that will give you the information necessary to nurture those leads, which is where Luna Connect comes in.
By automating customer engagement processes, Luna Connect gives you the data you need to make lending acquisitions and manage all digital marketing channels on a single platform. Our innovative lending platform pulls together emails, inbound enquiries, online applications and referrals so you can deal with leads in real time.
Through integration with Google Analytics and all social media channels, we help you understand where your leads are coming from and provide data on what those prospective customers look like.
Luna Connect also provides detailed data about the customer journey and where they are dropping off in the process, so you can use that information to improve internal processes and retain more prospects.
To find out more about how Luna Connect can partner with you to acquire new customers faster, get in touch today for a free, no-obligation chat, hello@lunaconnect.io.
