As a loan officer in a competitive environment, you are inevitably looking for ways to increase your leads. More importantly, you are looking for ways to generate high-quality leads that have reasonable conversion rates. How to achieve that can feel daunting!
Paid ads are just one way of achieving those leads, and it can be a scary prospect to spend your hard-earned ad budget. You want to make sure that the money you’re investing produces the kind of results that you need. We are going to explore how Google Ads can be an effective way of boosting your leads.
There is a great strategy that works for a broad range of budgets is keyword targeting. Even on micro-budgets—think $20 a day—you can have a real and targeted impact and generate leads from the very start. Let’s take a look at how this can be achieved through keyword targeting.
High-Intention Keywords
High-intention keywords are about tapping into those people who are explicitly in need of services or products. These might include words like “service” or “consultant.”
For example, customers who are ready to make decisions about products or looking for consultations might search with keywords such as “loan officer service” or “loan application consultant.”
In contrast, research or low-intent keywords are about gaining more information about something like a product or company. These can be accompanied by how-to searches.
What you want your high-intention keyword to do is to take potential leads to landing pages for your services. You’re creating a direct link between the services you provide as a loan officer and the search intent of your potential customers.
Sound good? Let’s work through how you can make this a valuable asset to your business as a loan officer.
- Which Words?
Your first and most important task is to identify the relevant keywords to you. There’s no point trying to use keyword targeting if you’re not sure which keywords are going to work in your favor! Taking the time to hone in on which keywords are essential to you as a loan officer will bear fruit.
Tools such as Google Keyword Planner, a keyword search tool using AdWords, and Google Trends will help you see which keywords will be profitable. The best thing about these tools? They’re free to use!
- Which Landing Page?
Once you’ve pinpointed the keywords relevant to you, you need to make the connection between them and your landing pages. Matt Ackerson at Auto Grow recommends a funneling approach here: arranging your landing pages in the order of your sales funnel.
It means starting with the landing pages that give your potential customers all the information they need about you as a loan officer and about the services you provide. You follow up with your commercial landing pages, which drive the potential of sale even further.
Finally, you have your transactional pages, including pricing, service features, contact forms, and checkouts.
Making Google Ads Even More Effective
Three strategies can make your Google Ads even more powerful, on top of your keyword targeting.
First, matching your ad copy with your landing page copy. What does this mean? It means ensuring that the message you’re promoting across your landing pages and your ads matches. It’s not about creating an identical copy; it is about making sure that your messaging is consistent and engaging.
The second strategy to making your Google Ads performance even more powerful is to invest in A/B testing. If you have a limited ad budget, then three versions of your ad are the golden number in extracting a suitable amount of data. Simply put, if you’ve got a small ad budget, then you’re not going to achieve huge numbers of impressions every day. Keeping the number of ad variations limited means you’ll identify the best-performing ad copy in a short amount of time while still making sure that the analysis is meaningful.
Finally, use ad extensions! Pictures, contact information, or links will make your ads stand out even more. Not only do you generate more leads, but you also give potential leads more details about your services as a loan officer. It’s a win-win!
