Smarketing Blog

No Pain, No Gain, No Obtain – Qualified Business Loan Leads, That Is

The cliché phrase, “No pain, no gain” probably originated in one of the ubiquitous exercise videos from the early ‘80s. Jane Fonda, anyone? Still, the basic concept continues to apply across lots of different activities.

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No one seeks a gainful solution until the pain of failing to act exceeds the discomfort of remaining in the status quo.

The same “no pain, no gain” logic applies in the business world.

For instance, as a banker, how might this apply to your relative success in efforts devoted to developing a pipeline of qualified business loan leads?

Until a small business owner actually feels a legitimate pain point, he or she is unlikely to pursue a remedy for that pain. Whether it’s a need to increase inventory, a desire to expand, or just a call for an extra shot of working capital, without the business pain, there’s no need for the remedy of the loan.

So the real question is, as a marketer, what can you do to attract and identify more business owners who are currently feeling acute business pain that can only be eased by a loan? Especially when there’s no way, viewing the situation externally, for you to know when someone’s reached the tipping point?

Well, if you have a data-driven web-enabled system delivering targeted helpful business content aimed at a known buyer profile and persona – inbound marketing, in other words – you don’t have to rely on your imperfect senses to find a qualified prospect.

 In a sense, they’ll raise their hands to let you know!

Attract the right, most-qualified business loan prospects with the inbound process.

The inbound sales process to help you identify qualified business loan prospects has four distinct stages:

  1. Attract,
  2. Convert,
  3. Close, and
  4. Delight

Today we focus exclusively on the first step: attracting well-qualified prospects currently feeling the pain of an unresolved business problem.

First, develop the persona.

The first step of the “attract” phase is developing well-crafted target buyer personas; these are crucial to achieving sustainable success. And, a big part of the development process is, through current customer interviews and focused research, identifying known pain points for those personas. Remember, no pain, no gain, and you no obtain good, qualified leads.

Next, you build the content.

Content shaped by the needs and characteristics of your buyer personas. Once you have ideas for what to create, the next step is to transform those ideas into reality. Your content need not be lengthy or elaborate, as long as you’ve created a good plan and are following it.

Keep these best practices in mind when you’re creating content and raise your chances of attracting and delighting qualified prospects.

  1. First, always map your content to your buyer personas and their known pain points. The more specific your content, the better. Sure, broadly written content creates a wider coverage pattern, but specific content targets a narrow slice of prospects significantly more likely to become customers. In addition, it's much more likely to convert a reader to a lead.
  2. Second, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was right: less is more. Your target buyer personas have just as much on their plate as you do. Make it easy for them. Cover the topic and solve the problem. Nothing more. Your readers and prospects will thank you.
  3. Third, avoid obvious promotional product-centric content. This is the time for you to be informational and educational: your buyer personas need information, not fluff.
  4. Finally, worry more about the informational elements of the content and worry less about design and format. Your goal is to create great content, not to make nice-looking designs.

Helpful, targeted content is the hook to attract qualified prospects.

This means keyword-heavy content providing solid, practical business information. The type of information that’ll attract qualified business people who are currently feeling the particular pain your solution can relieve.

It’s the first step. After you've created your content, it can become a blog post, and it can be promoted across social media to amplify its reach and impact. This, in turn, is all part of a structured inbound campaign developed and implemented by a qualified inbound marketing agency.

Use your own data to see how your results could improve.

The Business Banking Marketing ROI calculator can help you see how, with the right KPIs and careful activity measurement, you can model how a small improvement in one or two KPIs can lead to consistent improvements in your overall marketing ROI.

Topics: Blogging ROI Inbound for Financial Institutions