Best practices for lender marketing

 HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Lenders looking to acquire new customers should use a combination of digital and physical tools to maximize their marketing spend. 

Marketing directors at the second annual National Equipment Finance Association conference on March 27 discussed how using a range of methods can reach potential customers and offered tips on best practices to drum up business.  

“There are many tactics in marketing, [and] no one tactic works for every single business,” Kristi Schon, chief marketing officer of Minnetonka, Minn.-based lender Channel Partners Capital, said during a panel discussion.  

Brett Sorenson, vice president of sales and marketing at lender KLC Financial, also based in Minnetonka, added that “marketing for us is a way to create some institutional control over the sales process,” and directly affects any company’s bottom line.  

The panel presented the following best practices for maximizing marketing spend. 

Know everything about your audience 

Ample tools exist to mine data about consumers,” said Blair Dawson, principal at public relations firm Sterling Rose Marketing and Communications Solutions, based in Morristown, N.J.  

All the panelists agreed it is crucial for businesses to understand the “persona” of the potential customer. Demographic information and data about their habits, as granular as what podcasts they listen to or where they shop, are valuable.  

Once the brand has identified its target audience and is sure its mission, strategy and tone are clear, it is important to break the audience into unique segments for targeted marketing. 

Differentiating your own company from others is also crucial, said Kirsten Hawkins, director of marketing at Harrington, Del.-based lender SCJ Commercial Financial Services. In an over-saturated marketplace, making an emotional connection with the audience are useful, she said, noting that “a clear brand identity is what’s going to set you apart from these other companies. You guys all offer similar financing options but it’s the brand that’s going to make you stand out.”  

Make smart tech choices, leverage free tools  

Schon stressed the importance of having the proper resources before investing in expensive customer acquisition or lead generation software, saying she personally has seen software spend go to waste because “I didn’t have the resources at the time … to even leverage it.”

Dawson noted that many free tools exist to mine customer data and allow lenders to better target ads — including a free version of HubSpot with “basic-level [data] scraping” and Monday.com, a free tool for enterprise task management.  

“Social media is free, you can pay for it as you go,” said Mel Vinson, vice president of marketing and development at Northbrook, Ill.-based industry advocacy group the Certified Lease and Finance Professional Foundation. “Leveraging what is available at no cost is a really great place to start.”  

She added that plenty of websites, like Canva, offer free custom logo design, and recommended Facebook advertising as a “really good place to start to get your word out on a platform people are already on.”  

Registrer for the 2024 Equipment Finance Connect, which focuses on best practices in equipment finance, on May 5-7 in Nashville. Learn about the event and free dealer registration at EquipmentFinanceConnect.com.