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Every day, consumers visit your website, use your app, or walk through the front door of your financial institution in hopes that you’ll be able to provide them with personal loan funds to help them achieve a goal, meet a milestone, or even cross an item off their bucket list.
From auto loan prospects to first-time homebuyers, these customers continue to play a vital role in your FI’s long-term success — especially in today’s volatile marketplace. On the one hand, May 2020 Federal Reserve survey results revealed that half of the banks reported more robust demand for mortgages in every category — but two-thirds of banks reported falling demand for credit card loans (while nearly half said demand fell for car loans.)
Loan demand is still there — even if it seems to be drying up. You just need to know where to look for it and allot your marketing budget accordingly.
“Marketing dollars are not endless; using target marketing based on demand, needs, and anticipation to purchase can make your spending more effective,” said Raddon’s Becky Summers.
What does that mean for you? A little strategic thinking, planning, and preparation can go a long way.
On any given day, online and mobile internet users initiate more than three billion Google searches (yep, that’s with a B) on a wide variety of topics. That’s a lot of web traffic. Want to know the best way to make your community bank or credit union’s personal loan products stand out to the people that matter?
SEO is the answer. Online marketing guru Neil Patel defines search engine optimization as the process of optimizing your website’s content so that search engines like Google and Bing like to show it as a top result for searches of a particular keyword.
Let’s take a quick look at how SEO works.
Once you begin your search, your search engine quickly returns a list of paid search results (they’re usually marked “Ad” or “Sponsored,” followed by another list. These organic results occur naturally without a mortgage lender paying a premium to advertise on the results screen.
Where does your financial institution rank in the results you see? As the old saying goes, if you’re not first, you’re last.
In fact, studies show that the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks. Beyond that, the fallout is significant — #6-#10 account for just 3.73%.
So, you might think, “paid ads are the way to go, right?” Not always.
Additional research indicates that “71.33% of searches resulted in a page 1 Google organic click. So, focus on winning organic searches.
We wrote about this same topic as it pertains to commercial loans, but it bears repeating here: As a community bank or credit union, you don’t need to attract a worldwide audience to your site. Instead, you want to increase business lending leads on a local level.
From listing all your branch locations and hours to mentioning the names of nearby towns and cities in page copy, SEO will help you rank higher in organic search results for personal and mortgage lending options within the region you serve.
Here are a few more tips:
SEO isn’t just about generating more traffic to your website. Greater visibility for each of these pages leads to more traffic on your site, which in turn yields higher conversions on these product pages.
Simply put, content marketing goes beyond your product pages and direct advertising collateral. Marketing experts agree that it’s the best way to turn your product, no matter how common, into something that stands out from the rest in ways that are identifiable by search engine algorithms and human beings alike.
There’s no shortcut here — you can’t just buy third-party content or churn out aimless content with no rhyme or reason. Neither will help attract traffic to your platform. To be successful, you must first identify your goals and develop the personas you want to reach. Only then can you create content that effectively guides your readers through various stages to the personal lending products you’re offering.
The key is to make your content yours. From general blog content to testimonials, expert Q&As, financial education programs, and even community-centric highlight pieces, the content you create will boost your digital standing as a credible, authoritative resource on topics that matter to potential customers in your region.
Create blog content that aligns with your goals, and covers topics prospects will be searching about. If you don’t want someone landing on your site, don’t create the “answer” to the question they’re searching for.
