10-second summary:
- Pay per click advertising is one of the most effective forms of lead generation for equity release providers.
- Use sophisticated audience targeting tools to serve your ads to people highly likely to be interested in your support.
- Track campaign performance and optimise your ad spend over time.
Finding the right equity release leads is crucial for your business to thrive. Here’s how you can get more of them.
Equity release: for you it’s a home from home. But it’s also a super competitive market to work in.
Perhaps in the past you’ve resorted to purchasing leads. But there’s a far more effective way to make sure your business has a steady and scalable stream of people enquiring about your equity release expertise.
In this article we will give you a quick introduction to the need to knows.
But first…
Make more money doing what you do best…
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“Delighted! I’ve worked with numerous firms over a long period of time in mortgages and would 100% recommend Adbetter. Their in-depth and analytical knowledge of lead generation is something that would take us millennia to master – and thankfully we have nothing like that capacity due to the consistent stream of enquiries Adbetter is generating for our business.”
– Desmond O’Hara, Principle Adviser, Prime Lifetime
What’s the best way to generate equity release leads?
Equity release leads. Some people turn to print advertising and maildrops. Others hold networking events. And some businesses buy leads from online aggregators.
But there’s one lead generation strategy that, in our opinion, beats all others hands down. And it’s good for your brand. Good for your bottom line. And good for your future growth.
That channel? Pay per click (PPC) digital media advertising.
Here are four reasons why we think PPC is ideal for finding high quality, high intent equity release leads.
1. It’s easy to find the right people
Income. Occupation. Online browsing habits. Hobbies. Geographic location. Pay per click platforms give you sophisticated audience targeting options.
Obviously one of the most important selection variables for equity release is age – and it’s easy to prevent your campaigns from being served to people below the age of 55.
But that’s the tip of a large iceberg in terms of specifying the type of audience that you want your ads to be served to.
You can even feed your existing customer data into a pay per click platform and it will find a ‘lookalike audience’ that shares certain characteristics with people who have arranged equity release with you in the past.
2. Your leads are YOUR leads
Running your own PPC campaign gives you control. Lots of it. You can build the campaign in your image – utilising your branding, your tone of voice and your own lead nurturing process.
Contrast that with buying leads from an aggregator. Their first exposure to your brand will be when you are trying to sell to them directly. Worse, your competitors will likely be targeting the same people, at the same time.
With your own unique leads, you can build a connected experience for each customer – gently nurturing them towards conversion from the moment they first engage with one of your ads.
That’s great for building trust in your brand.
3. PPC is super accountable
Pay per click: the clue is in the name. You only pay when someone clicks your ad. And why would someone click unless they were at least partially interested in becoming a customer?
It makes pay per click way more accountable than traditional forms of advertising – such as a print ads, where you pay for the placement regardless.
4. You don’t need a huge budget to get results
PPC is one of those things where the more you put in, the more you get out. But by no means do you need a suitcase full of fifties to get going. Even a modest spend will get results when your campaigns are executed properly.
(Too busy? Let us help.)
With most forms of advertising the breakdown of your spend is often opaque. The results are hard to quantify. But with pay per click you see exactly how every penny is contributing to your results with clear data visualisation. It’s also easy to control your budget. Set daily, weekly or maximum budgets. And pause campaigns whenever you want.
Pay per click platforms: what are your options?
The pay per click landscape is vast and varied – encompassing many different platforms and ad media. For equity release leads, the following platforms tend to work very well:
· Google Search Network (and the Google Display Network)
· YouTube
Which should you choose? That depends on many factors: your budget, how quickly you want results, the type of audience you want to target and more.
The main thing to note is that with Google you can target people at the precise moment they are searching for equity release – and that can make the cost per click pretty high.
With social platforms, it’s more about raising awareness of your services. You also have to be a bit smarter with your targeting to find the people who are likely to be interested in equity release.
Equity release leads: 10 tips for effective PPC campaigns
Okay, we’ve established that PPC is one of the best avenues for generating equity release leads. And if you’re still reading, you’re sufficiently intrigued by the opportunity.
Here are 10 tips for creating a pay per click campaign that hits the mark and gets results.
// The planning phase //
1. Get on top of your numbers
If you want to succeed with pay per click advertising, you need to be across key metrics like the average lifetime value of your customers, the cost of new customer acquisition and so on.
Only then can you determine a sensible ad spend to pump into PPC to make sure your profit margins are healthy. Do the commercial calculations before going anywhere near campaign creation.
2. Get the balance right: lead volume vs lead quality
Remember that not all leads are born equal. Casting a wide net can leave you paying to target leads that have a very low likelihood of conversion. Sometimes it’s best to narrow the focus and think very precisely about the type of people who are likely to be considering equity release.
Want to make sure your campaigns attract ONLY the leads who are highly likely to convert? You need to know about Nerchr – the platform we created for managing our own pay per click campaigns. Now available for everyone. Take a look.
3. Remember: it’s not about you, it’s about your reader
Good advertising is about building a connection with the person on the other end. That requires a degree of empathy. Compassion. The ability to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and consider their fears, their doubts, their desires, their ambitions.
Arranging equity release is a huge decision. Your approach with copy and creative should respect that. Think about how you can provide an air of reassurance and peace of mind. Tap into the reasons people consider equity release: such as family gifts, the cost of care or a happier retirement.
Words matter – and finding the right ones isn’t always easy. Especially when you only have a second or two to land a message that captures your audience’s interest.
Take the time to get it right.
// The execution phase //
4. Send leads to a designated landing page
It’s crucial to think about your campaign as a whole.
Your ad – and the click it hopefully generates – is just the first step in your campaign. And what happens after the first click can be the difference between winning a new customer and paying a lot of money for a click that goes nowhere.
The easiest – and most obvious – option is to send your leads to the homepage of your website. But the easiest option definitely isn’t the best.
It’s almost always best to send your audience to a designated landing page that’s unique to the ad they clicked.
It gives your audience a more cohesive experience. It allows you to make sure your messaging is highly relevant to the ad they clicked. And it makes the performance of your campaigns easier to track.
Win, win, win.
5. Take care over your branding
Equity release involves vast sums of money. You need to make sure your brand looks the part and helps to build the perception of a credible, trustworthy expert.
If your branding looks cheap and ill considered, your audience will expect the same of your service.
You can bet your house on it.
6. Be wary of the regulations
As you’d expect, there are lots of regulations regarding the promotion of equity release via pay per click advertising.
The rules are expansive and ever evolving, so it’s important to do your research. But here’s a quick summary of the main things to be aware of.
· Ad copy must be fair, clear and not misleading
· Each ad must provide a balanced view of benefits and risks without needing to click through to the campaign landing page
· Risk warnings must be prominent and not obscured or truncated
· Your ad must clearly state the range of equity release products you can offer
· Your campaign must warn that equity release is a long-term arrangement that requires independent legal advice
7. Utilise social proof and accreditations
One of the best ways to overcome audience doubts is to showcase your industry accreditations and relevant customer testimonials about your service. Make sure they are prominent on your campaign landing pages.
8. Demystify the process
Equity release is a leap into the unknown for most people – even if they have had several mortgages in the past. You can go a long way to overcoming barriers to purchase by simply educating people about the process of arranging equity release with your business.
When you set people’s expectations, it’s easier for them to visualise doing business with you.
// The optimisation phase //
9. Experiment with ad variations
Whatever pay per click platform(s) you use to generate your equity release leads, you will have the option to submit multiple variations of each ad campaign you work up. Treat this as an opportunity to experiment with different wording, images, headlines and descriptions.
Your PPC platform will then algorithmically test your variations on a subsection of your target audience – before preferentially serving the best-performing combinations to the remaining audience. That all helps to make sure your ad spend is as efficient and effective as possible.
10. Track performance and optimise for success
The most important part of your ad campaign is the performance data it gives you. Take the time to interpret it correctly and you can learn the tactics and techniques that are driving the best results for your business.
Let us take care of it for you
Of course, performance tracking isn’t just about what’s happening with your ads, but with all onward clicks. For the really big wins you need to understand behaviour throughout your customer lifecycle.
This tracking can be difficult to set up. That’s why many brands don’t bother. But when you have the right data, you unlock the ability to optimise your campaigns to drive more leads, more conversions and more revenue over time.
That’s where the gold is. And it’s the key to sustained business growth.
And we can help.
In fact we can take care of your entire pay per click activity for you. We specialise in delivering leads to equity release and mortgage businesses. It’s what we specialise in. And we get huge results for our clients. If you’d like to know more about the specific difference we could make for your business, get in touch to arrange a short discovery call.
Rather go it alone? Then take a look at Nerchr. That’s the platform we built for optimising ROI on our client campaigns and managing over £10 million worth of ad spend. And now we’ve made Nerchr available to everyone. Think of it as a nerve centre for PPC activity that automatically optimises your campaigns towards actual sales, not just leads. Take a look.
Frequently asked questions
One of the best types of advertising for getting more equity release leads is pay per click advertising. It gives you sophisticated audience targeting tools – so you can serve ads only to people who are likely to be interested in your services. And you only pay if someone clicks your ad – signalling that they are interested in your services. While the impact of your spend is opaque with many forms of advertising, pay per click platforms give you a detailed breakdown of the results your spend has generated.
Google Search Network, Google Display Network, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube can work well for promoting equity release via pay per click advertising. With Google you can target people at the precise moment they are searching for equity release, while social platforms are better for raising awareness of your services. All platforms offer sophisticated audience targeting tools.
The budget you will need depends on many factors – such as the platform you choose, the length of your campaign and the competitiveness of your keywords. You can also consider working with a pay per click expert that will cover your ad spend, such as Adbetter.
A pay per click advertising expert, such as Adbetter, will be able to take care of your entire pay per click activity, while you concentrate on your day-to-day business. With the right partnership, the service can pay for itself many times over.