Are you curious about how to get small business loan leads? Or about how to generate business loan leads? Fed up with trying times with obtaining business financing? If someone would tell you how to get small business loan leads — what would be your reaction? Probably more and most likely a better position for financing.
For small enterprises, it is also about financial assistance for establishing or expanding their operations. There are companies that can provide these needed funds in the form of bank loans or business finance. Banks and government financing arms provide loans and grants for a variety of businesses and other operators.
With landing pages, carefully crafted emails and custom-tailored marketing strategies, most small business loan leads fall into your lap. But some businesses and salespeople lose track of why they’re doing the work to find small business loan leads in the first place: The company’s growth is flat and you want to find more small business loans to keep your cash flow moving.
Small business loan leads can be gained through many ways. This is because you are already in the position of having a small business and thus you are more likely to apply for a loan for your business when you need money. This is for a fact that most lenders who offer loans do not target individuals.
Generating leads for free in 2022
All of the 22 methods above are tested and proven to produce new leads for free, but the best techniques change quickly. As consumer technology and preferences continue to evolve, what are some of the up-and-coming ways to generate leads for free?
- Maximize your business listing: In 2022, there are plenty of places you can list your business for free to help prospects find you. Create or claim listings on Bing Places, Google Business Profile, Yelp, Apple Maps, TripAdvisor, and Yahoo. Of course, don’t forget your social media outlets, with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn being four of the most important. These are also some of the best places to accumulate glowing online reviews, which are still critical in 2022.
- Host webinars: We’ve mentioned webinars throughout the article, but this relatively new sales technique will continue to grow in 2022. The right webinar will help you reach a large audience for a small cost. You can provide real value, thus building a relationship with prospects, while also placing calls-to-action throughout the webinar to boost sales. Some of the best tools include Livestorm, Demio, or Zoho, and provide free trials.
- Offer freemiums: Freemiums, aka a free trial period or another temporary free offering, is one of the best lead generation strategies for 2022. Successful businesses like WordStream, Grammarly, and Hulu all provide free trials to let their leads get acquainted with their products. Worried you won’t see any conversions from freemiums? Actually, one study suggested companies that utilize free trials see an average of a 66% conversion, and with more businesses offering them, many consumers now have the expectation of a freemium. If a freemium costs your business too much time and money, consider coupons, discounts or other methods to attract leads.
1. Pick a Target Market
One of the hardest things to do is the comment to a target market. You can’t be everything to everyone. The key to generating your own business loan leads is to create separation from the big guys like Paypal and Wells Fargo. You can do this by dominating the target market. When it comes to business loan leads the best way to choose a target market is by industry type. Examples would be coffee shops, auto detailing shops, or sawmills.
2. Pick the right audience
After you pick a target market, you need to make sure you can find the audience that needs business loans. You can research on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google to find the audiences that you can market to. If you can’t find the audience then it’s not going to work, so do your research up front and avoid any headaches down the road.
3. Use the tribe methodology
This is going to be an essential mindset to have. The tribe mentality works, probably too well. You only have to look at today’s politics to understand how effective this is. People want to do business with others that are like them. An example is when a coffee shop wants to work with the coffee shop financing expert rather than a big bank. Use this to your advantage when you are picking your target market and creating the content for your business.
4. Focus on solving a problem
Most lenders like to brag about how fast they can fund a loan or how much money a business they can get can get the business. You have to be different and create separation from the rest of the lenders out there. You can do that by solving the borrower’s problems.
The truth is the business owners you talk to don’t care about you; they care about themselves. They have problems that need to be solved, and if you can give them a solution, you will win the business.
An example of a problem is getting the money for equipment so they can win a bid for a government contract, or perhaps it’s to purchase new furniture for their restaurant. Whatever the case is make no mistake about it the borrower is not going through the loan process because they think it’s fun, they are doing it because they have a problem that needs to be solved.
5. Customer focused website
We have already talked about solving a problem, and now it’s time to create the content around that concept. You simply make the website about your customer and not about you.
Many lenders brag about how they have been in the business for a long time, all of the significant accomplishments they have achieved, and all of the outlandish loans that they have done to people with only one name. How fast and how much they have done. Really it’s just bragging and promising, that no longer works.
Make your website about how you will serve the customer and how you will solve their problems. Do that, and you will have created a position in the market that separates you from all the other lenders out there with websites that focus on themselves and not the customer.
6. LinkedIn for free leads
Linkedin is one of the best places to make connections, and you can do it for free. If you have followed the steps before this one, you will have content and a website that is focused on solving your target markets problems.
Now you can start to build your LinkedIn profile, so it reflects your customer focused lending business. You know what problems you can solve and whom you can solve them for, right?
Search for people that fit your target audience and start to invite them to your network. Not all will except but the ones that do send a private message telling them what problem you solve and how you can help them if they ever need a business loan.
7. Create a CTA
Nothing good is going to happen if you don’t have a call to action.
First, what is a call to action? Its when you ask a visitor to do something or take an action. Simple, right!
Not so fast. You are going to find many people out there telling you that you need funnels and popups and fancy stuff that takes money and time. Please don’t spend much time at the beginning on all of the plugins and expensive software solutions to a simple problem, getting a visitor to give you their name, email, and phone number. You can start MailChimp and a few free plugins and accomplish what you need to achieve.
You could take it one step beyond that and ask them to schedule an appointment with you using a free Acuity Scheduling program.
8. Use the bulls-eye framework
What is the bulls-eye framework? It’s straightforward, work on one or two, no more than three, marketing tactics at one time. Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you want to generate business loan leads from LinkedIn and Facebook. If you are following the bulls-eye framework that is as far as you will go with marketing tactics.
Why? Because if you focused all of your marketing efforts on a small set of tactics, you would get terrific at those tactics. If you took the opposite approach, say you advertised on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Google PPC, and sent postcards, passed out flyers at the local chamber of commerce, and ten other things, you would be jake of all trades and a master of none.
9. Create a Business Page
You are going to need a business page on Facebook and LinkedIn. These two platforms are a must for small business. Facebook is a necessity because everyone is on it and many business owners will want to communicate with you through Facebook.
LinkedIn is also a must. It’s known as the social media platform for business. Some people will look you up on LinkedIn to see if you are a real person with an actual business page. Don’t let this step go undone. It’s essential for credibility and generating leads.
10. Market on Facebook
This is somewhat obvious, and we already talked about how everyone is on Facebook, well not everyone, but close.
This is where all the hard work you have done so far pays off. If you made sure you could find the audience on Facebook and built everything around that, then you are good to go here.
Take some time to learn the AdManager platform and start to create ads and test them out. Keep in mind it is a learning process, and it will take a little grit and determination to master the art of Facebook ads.
11. Use Google PPC
If you have been around a while, you already know that Google PPC is out of reach for most business lenders. The cost per click on head terms for business loans can be 50, 75, or even 100 dollars.
However, you are not like the rest of the lenders out there. You have picked a target market and are focusing on an industry. When you use a modifier the cost per click drops, a lot. What is a modifier? It’s when you take a major keyword, like business loans, and modify it to your target market. Her is an example, if your target market were used car lots, the keyword would be business loans for used car lots. “Used car lots” is the modifier, “business loans” is the head term.
When you use modifiers, it drives the cost per click down to the point where it could be very profitable to run a PPC campaign.
12. Create a sales script
Don’t forget to create a sales script. I know what you may be thinking, “I’ve been in sales all my life, I don’t need a script to talk to people.” If you take that approach, you will most certainly lose out on many sales.
Take some time and create a script, and then practice it. Keep track of what works and what doesn’t. Believe me; this can make all the difference in how successful you are in this business.
13. Track everything with GA
GA stands for Google Analytics. It’s a free program and is vital to keeping up with how your website and conversions are going. You will want to do this before you start to advertise.
If you are not accustomed to using analytics, start by keeping things simple and learn as you go.
Keep in mind that even if you never look at the numbers, someone in the future will. Not having this analytical setup and tracking could cause you headaches down the line.
14. Set up a CRM
Let’s be clear; you need this!
If nothing else you should have a way of storing everyone that has filled out a form on your website so you can send emails to this list. So many lenders don’t send out newsletters or keep in contact with potential borrowers that it does affect the bottom line.
An email list should be your bread and butter, a way to generate new leads from work you have done in the past. When things get slow, and they will, you will have a list of past customers and potential borrowers that you can reach out to for next to nothing that will generate interest.
Low-cost options for advertising online
As you’ve read above, there are many ways you can advertise your company and its products without paying a dime.
While these strategies work, paying to run ads is still effective because it helps you reach people who might not otherwise see your content.
That’s why we’ve included this section. It covers four low-cost options for paid online advertising. You can advertise on these sites without breaking your budget.
Amazon Ads
If you sell a physical product, Amazon ads are perhaps the most cost-effective way to get it in front of more people. The cost per click for these rarely goes above $0.35 – one of the best rates of any platform.
On top of that, people go to Amazon because they already want to make a purchase. The same isn’t true on many other platforms you might pay to advertise on.
That means with Amazon ads you’re accessing a group of highly motivated buyers at a highly affordable price point. PSA: This strategy might not work if you sell a digital good like software.
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads can also be affordable to run. The average cost per click on the platform is $1.76. But that cost varies based on the industry you’re in and the specific audience you’re targeting.
For example, the average cost per click on Facebook for an education company is just $1.06. That means you may be able to run ads on Facebook at a competitive price point.
Plus, Facebook has the largest active user base of any social media network. That doesn’t just mean you have a bigger potential pool to target with your ads; it means you can get more specific about defining your ideal ad audience.
Google Banner Ads
Google Banner ads are another cost-effective way to expand your marketing reach. These banners are run on ad-enabled websites, including most sites you visit. A Google banner ad’s average cost per click is under $0.58.
Google Shopping Ads
Google Shopping ads are great for selling physical products like clothes, pet supplies, and outdoor gear.
These advertisements pop up when you perform a Google search and click on the “shopping” tab on the results page. When you pay for a Google Shopping ad, your product goes up to the top of that page.
This strategy lets you reach a motivated group of buyers at an affordable price. The average cost per click for Google Shopping ads is just $0.66 – but your exact CPC will depend on your industry and your keyword bidding strategy.
Conclusion
The Internet has changed so much about how we live and do business these days. Technology has transformed our world in ways we could not have ever imagined before the advent of computers. It is virtually impossible now to conduct website marketing or advertising without counting on the Internet in some way, shape or form.
If you spend some time upfront and follow these steps, you will set yourself up for success. Contrary to popular belief, the business loan space is competitive. You have to create separation and do things differently than everyone else. You can dominate your target market and create a highly successful business if you learn to generate your own leads.