Google Ads for Loan Brokers: How To Setup An Effective Campaign

Google Ads is the best digital strategy for loan brokers that are looking for low cost leads that are of the highest quality. It allows you to target people as they search online and this makes it a highly targeted platform.

Whether you are a commercial or personal loan broker, Google Ads is the best platform to reach your audience online.

You can spend as little or as much as you like and you only pay for performance. So, you only pay when people click through to your website because it’s a pay per click (PPC) platform.

First you will need to create an account if you don’t have one already and you can do that at ads.google.com. Next, you’ll create a Google Ads campaign and below I’ve included instructions on how to do that.

 

Campaign objective

The first feature you set when creating your Google Ads campaign for loan brokers is Campaign objective. There are at least five campaign objectives you can select from and the most relevant for a loan campaign is “Leads”.

When you select an objective you’ll see suggested settings aimed to help you achieve that objective. Your campaign can only have one objective and it should be the main thing you want to achieve for your business.

 

Campaign type

Next, you’ll set the campaign type that will help you reach your objective. The Leads objective presents you with at least five campaign types, and the Search one is the most relevant.

It focuses on reaching people and businesses that are actively searching for loans online and then you can reach them with your text ads. So, you’ll create some text ads and add keywords to target those searches.

 

Budget

The keywords related to loan searches can be very expensive because of the high level of competition in the industry. So, setting a budget that is too low will result in low click volume and you won’t be able to achieve your goals.

However, you can start with a lower monthly budget and then increase it as performance improves. A good budget to start with is $1300 or £1000 for the first month and then increase it each month as your targeting gets better.

To set your daily budget, take your monthly budget and divide it by the average number of days in a month (30.4 days).

 

Bidding

It’s important for your ads to appear at the top for most of your searches. Because there will be many advertisers bidding on the same keywords, you will have to bid higher to achieve these high positions.

An automated bid strategy will do this more effectively and efficiently. It will set the bids automatically at auction time based on the search context and will save you a lot of time, compared to a manual bid strategy.

The Maximise Clicks bid strategy is a good one to start with because it works to get you as many clicks as possible for your budget.

 

Keywords

A Google Ads strategy for loan brokers should begin with thorough keyword research. This helps you to find targeted keywords that will help to drive relevant search queries for your business.

The Keyword Planner tool is a useful tool for you to use and it helps you build a complete keyword list and do forecasting to see the potential spend for those keywords.

You should also add match types to your keywords to control the searches that you get. The two best match types to use at the beginning are phrase and exact match and below is an example keyword in these two formats and you can do the same for all your keywords.

“small business funding” – phrase match keyword
[small business funding] – exact match keyword

Later you can add broad match keywords to increase your search volume by targeting searches that your exact and phrase match keywords are not reaching.

 

Text ads

Google Ads presents you with a number of ad types that you can run for your campaign. There are Responsive search ads, dynamic search ads, and call-only ads. But the most relevant for loan brokers especially when just launching a campaign, is the Responsive search ad format.

It provides you with 15 headlines and four description lines to promote your business. And in there you can include as many benefits and features as you like, to promote your loan solutions.

Later, you can create some Dynamic search ads to target searches that your keyword-based ad groups are not targeting. This type uses the content of your web pages to match users searches by targeting relevant search queries.

 

Locations

Country targeting is one of the popular location settings that loan brokers set. It gives you a wider audience to reach and means you have more impressions and clicks to target, which means more leads. However, you can narrow this down to specific cities or towns you want to target.

 

Ad schedule

Businesses and individuals look for loans at all times and it’s important to reach them when they are searching. So, running ads on all days and hours is important and you can leave the Ad schedule in the default settings which runs the ads 24/7.

And with more data and as you analyse your traffic, you can update the Ad schedule to target people when you are more likely to get the best results.

 

Where your ads appear

When you run a Search campaign, your ads are eligible to appear on Google. If you’ve opted into the Search Network, your ads will appear on Search partner sites that include hundreds of sites that have partnered with Google to deliver ads

Your ads can also appear on the Display network when you opt into that. But they will only appear there when you have budget still left over from the Search Network on each day. However, targeting the Display network in a Search campaign is usually not a good idea and it’s better to setup a different campaign for it with the relevant targeting options.

On Google, your ads will appear at the top or bottom of the search results page. For loan brokers, appearing at the top is important because this is a competitive sector and you may have to bid higher for that.

 

Case Study

The Funding Store is a commercial finance company that helps businesses find competitive loans. They are in a competitive sector and their campaigns were not performing and their average position was low. I setup a new Search campaign for them which helped push their ads to the top about 50% of the time and increased conversions by 22%. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

Want to learn more about how a Google Ads campaign that’s suited to loan brokers could help your business? Use the form below to contact me to discuss your requirements.