Leveraging Digital Channels To Enter New Markets

COMMERCIAL-GRADE COMPETITION:

Mortgage lenders pay some of the highest cost-per-click fees in the business, with CPCs as high as $45 commonly seen. Lending-related CPCs are no walk in the park either, routinely posting CPCs in the low-to-mid 40s (only insurance-related keywords are higher than those for mortgages and lending, with top CPCs as high as $55). The high-profit margins of these services leave plenty of room for companies in these industries, and it shows in the sky-high CPCs bid in auctions on related keywords.

Knowing that it would be a challenge to keep customer acquisition costs under control—and with no prior experience in commercial lending—it was imperative for Legions Capital to have a bulletproof paid search strategy in place before entering this new market to give themselves the best shot at profitability right out of the gate.

With no prior experience in commercial lending to leverage, Legions Capital needed a comprehensive marketing partner acting as a fully integrated part of the campaign to assist with everything from market research to ad production—and they found exactly that in Kobe Digital.

SNAIL MAIL SURVIVES:

Compared to many other industries, the world of lending remains relatively old-school in many respects—and with that in mind, we turned to the tried-and-true channel of snail mail as a complement to the digital channels chosen to kick off Legion Capital’s marketing campaign.

Sending mailers promoting a limited time loan offer proved to be a natural pairing with the decision to leverage a proprietary B2B email platform to deliver email drip sequences to decision makers at businesses for whom Legion Capital’s commercial lending service could be a good fit.

The email platform utilizes AI-driven machine learning to send emails when they’re most likely to be opened and engaged with, while automating the reply review process and facilitating the delivery of one-on-one cold emails at scale.

The high engagement rate enabled by the B2B email system—coupled with the relatively low cost of email contact records—resulted in an ROI of over 800% over the course of a 4 month period.

SOUNDING OFF WITH PANDORA:

Combining the targeting capabilities of Pandora’s first-party user data with demographic and interest-based targeting made available by third-party data providers allowed for an incredibly precise internet radio campaign that facilitated deep market penetration and exposure to Legion Capital’s most critical audience segments.

Kobe Digital handled all aspects of the internet radio campaign, including rate negotiations and production of a 30-second audio spot. Once the campaign launched, our marketing experts continued to oversee all aspects of performance monitoring and ongoing optimization.

The Pandora campaign resulted in over 10,000 site visits, providing the foundation for a remarketing campaign that would serve to reinforce Legion Capital’s brand recognition among its most qualified potential customers at affordable impression costs.

The ability to inexpensively generate large amounts of site traffic in a short period of time provided fodder for the next step: marketing automation.

MAGIC WITH MARKETING AUTOMATION:

Marketing automation is a tool that allows advertisers to largely automate the process of guiding prospective customers through each stage of the sales funnel, providing strategic email delivery at key milestones in a value-added way.

By implementing marketing automation software, we were able to track users across devices and monitor how and when they engaged with the Legions Capital website. Then, depending on the action taken—for instance, viewing a certain web page—an email would be sent to that site visitor with relevant information and a call to action.

As a small business with limited resources and an undermanned sales department, the ability to automate follow up with every single pre-qualified website visitor allowed Legions Capital to handle a larger lead pipeline than would otherwise have been possible; in fact, several marketing channels that were previously unprofitable for the company became top performers once email follow-ups were automated. The net result: an increase in lead generation to the tune of over 400%.