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Lead generation can be an important part of a commercial lender’s business’s strategy. The first step in closing a commercial loan, after all, is to find business owners who want to borrow money.
But what’s the best way to find those business owners? There are many ways to acquire sales leads. Here are some of the most popular.
How to Find Business Loan Leads
Search Advertising
Through Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, business lenders can purchase ads that will appear in Google and Bing search results when users search for specific keywords.
Pros: Search engines are often the first place consumers go when looking for information about a product or service.
Cons: “Loans” is one of the most expensive keywords to advertise for in search engines.
Search Engine Optimization
Instead of paying directly for advertising, businesses can invest in advertising indirectly by creating website content designed to rank highly in search engine results.
This investment may include hiring SEO experts and writers or subscribing to a software platform that helps companies create competitive, search-optimized content.
Pros: If a prospective borrower sees a commercial loan result high in the search rankings, clicks through, and finds valuable content at the destination website, a relationship can begin that may generate a lead immediately or down the line.
Cons: Ranking highly for top keywords is challenging because there is so much competition. Also, if the prospective borrower clicks through on a top search result and finds junk at the destination website, they will leave without providing the contact information that’s essential to lead generation.
Facebook Ads
Facebook allows businesses to move beyond text advertising and incorporate images and videos. These media can create a stronger emotional connection with prospective business loan leads.
Pros: Facebook provides more ways to fine-tune the target audience for ads than search engines do. Businesses may find that the return on investment for their ad dollars is higher as a result. And Facebook is widely considered an affordable platform for online advertising.
Cons: Fake user accounts can waste a lender’s advertising dollars.
Instagram Ads
The social media platform that began as a photo-sharing app now lets users share videos and create multimedia stories.
Pros: Similar to Facebook (which owns Instagram), businesses can target ads toward users in specific locations, with certain interests, in a certain age range, and so on.
Cons: While popular, Instagram is not as widely used as search engines, email, or Facebook. It’s also a highly visual medium, but business loans are not a visual product. It will take some creativity and a good graphic designer to create an eye-catching Instagram ad that generates business loan leads.
Email Marketing
Sending emails to businesses that might want to borrow money is another way to generate leads.
Pros: Sending email is free. The cost of professional email marketing services and email lists may be lower than the cost of a search engine or social media campaign. Emails can be scheduled to arrive at certain days and times to optimize open rates and response rates.
Cons: The strength of an email marketing campaign depends on the quality of the business’s email list and how well the email is written. It must not be redirected to the recipient’s spam folder. And marketing emails must comply with spam laws.
Affiliate Marketing
Instead of acquiring its own leads, a commercial lender can hire someone else, called an affiliate, to do it for them.
Commercial loan companies can focus on the lending side of their business and outsource the marketing part to an affiliate. A specialized affiliate may have greater expertise in lead generation than the lender itself does.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to earn money with affiliate marketing, LeadsMarket.com has one of the best payday loan lead networks in the industry. Check out the website for more information to find out how you can start making extra cash.
Conclusion
Closing loans is what allows commercial lenders to earn money. They may earn fees from borrowers and interest on loan payments; they may also turn a profit by selling loans to investors.
But before any of that can happen, lenders need to identify potential customers. Acquiring leads through search engine advertising, SEO and content marketing, social media, and affiliate marketing are all popular ways to start that process.
