4 Inbound Bank Marketing Steps to Generate Commercial Lending Leads

Many banks and financial institutions focus on expanding their commercial lending department, as commercial financing is a high source of revenue. Nurturing current commercial banking customers and cross-promoting commercial lending services to other bank customers can generate some commercial loans. But what about acquiring new commercial lending leads and customers?

A financial institution must acquire new customers to maintain stability and promote growth. Direct mail, email campaigns, and other traditional marketing strategies offer a measure of success in this area. However, one of the most important strategies in all bank marketing campaigns to engage and attract new commercial lending customers should be inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing focuses on creating high quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, instead of bombarding them with outbound messaging they are not looking to engage with. No pressure, hard line sales tactics, or endless phone calls. The qualified leads are drawn in to your bank.

Too good to be true? Let’s talk about 4 inbound marketing steps banks should use for customer acquisition.

Use it to gain a true picture of your buyer.

Before any strategy is executed, inbound marketing campaigns hinge on an accurate buyer persona. The bank’s marketing team must understand who their buyer is, and their main pain points. If this step is ignored, future campaigns are doomed. The commercial lending persona will then be used to conduct keyword research to see how potential leads are searching for your products.

Develop relevant keywords.

Look closely at the type of keywords your ideal customer uses to find a bank or commercial lending product, and integrate these into your content. Keyword research and correct integration increases your chances of being found during an organic search. Accurate keyword research is an integral step in the bank inbound marketing process, as you want your content to be ranking for keywords your persona is actually using when conducting searches.

Create relevant and engaging content.

Once you know your buyer persona and the keywords they use to search for commercial lending banks and products, it’s time to develop blog posts that contain appealing content focused on the main keywords your buyers use. Your blog posts should provide potential customers with the information they are searching for to draw them into your bank and become a trusted source of inforatmion.

Make an offer they cannot refuse.

Potential leads are drawn in with content that appeals to them, but that’s not the end goal. We want their information! Once you have their attention through your blog post, offer them a high quality piece of content such as an informational eBook, a webinar, or a commercial lending consultation. Your offer needs to be valuable enough to entice them to fill out a landing page form with their information to be able to view it. If they do fill out the form to access your offer, you now have their contact information to nurture them as a qualified commercial lending lead.

Inbound marketing initiatives increase and help prove marketing ROI for financial institutions by generating quality commercial lending leads. Inbound bank marketing is a vital element in customer acquisition and retention. By integrating inbound marketing into the overall strategy, financial institutions increase exposure to potential clients, engage leads, and build entire new customer bases. For more information about proving and increasing your financial institution’s marketing ROI, download our free eBook now!