PPC for Loan Brokers: 7 Tips for Exceptional Campaign Management

PPC marketing for loan brokers is one of the most effective ways to target people and businesses that are looking for loans online. It allows you to reach your audiences at those important moments when they are looking for a loan provider.

However, it’s a very competitive area as you may know and there are many other loan brokers targeting your locations. So, budget requirements are often higher than other industries.

If you’re currently running a Google Ads campaign, the following seven tips will help you to manage it for exceptional results. And feel free to reach out to me below if you have any questions.

 

1. Setup conversion tracking

If you want to know which ads and keywords are driving conversions in your PPC campaigns, you’ll need to setup conversion tracking. This tracking will help you see which PPC assets are driving leads and conversions to your business in Google Ads.

And with this data you’ll be able to stop any that are not converting and increase exposure for the best performing ones.

You can setup tracking in Google Ads or Google Analytics. It’s best to choose one and not both. I recommend setting up goal tracking in Analytics because this will track all your traffic sources and not just Google Ads clicks. And you can also import these goals into Google Ads for conversion tracking.

Go to the Admin in your Google Analytics account and click Goals and then use one of the many templates there to create your goal tracking.

 

2. Check Recommendations

On the Recommendations page you’ll see a list of opportunities to improve your campaigns. These recommendations are sent by the machine learning system which looks for opportunities to improve your campaigns. So, you have a choice to apply or dismiss them based on your requirements.

Check that the recommendations are relevant for your business and if they are then apply them. If not, you should dismiss them and select the correct reason for that. That helps to improve the recommendations that you get in the future.

 

3. Find new keywords

PPC marketing for loan brokers is most effective when the right people and businesses are being targeted. So, it requires a good list of keywords to target your audiences as they search on Google and other related search engines.

This means you should continue to look for keywords to add to your campaigns. A good tool that helps you with this is in your Google Ads account and it’s the Keyword Planner tool. Use it to find new keywords and carry out some forecasting to see how much you’re likely to spend per month.

Also, you’re likely to see some recommendations to add new keywords on the Recommendations page. First, check that they are there and relevant and if you find any, add them. And dismiss those that are not relevant.

 

4. Update bid strategy

Another recommendation you’re likely to see is for your bid strategy. As a loan broker, an automated bid strategy has advantages over manual bidding because it saves you time and means you can leverage the power of auction-time bidding – which updates automatically according to context.

When you first setup your PPC campaign in Google Ads, start with Maximise Clicks to try to get as many clicks as possible. Later when you have more conversions you should consider switching to a Smart Bidding Strategy like Maximise Conversions with a target cost per acquisition (CPA).

 

5. Do competitor analysis

PPC advertising for loan brokers should include checking what competitors are doing. As a very competitive sector with high average cost per click rates, it helps to know what other loan brokers and lenders are spending each month and which keywords they are bidding on

And there are some impressive platforms and tools to help you with this. One of these is SERanking which includes a suite of tools that power your online marketing efforts. Their Competitor research tool is the most important for competitor research and it helps you see what they are doing in their Google Ads campaigns.

 

6. Consider broad match type keywords

Consider adding broad match versions of your phrase and exact match keywords. This helps to increase click volumes if you’ve been running your ads for some time and are looking for some new opportunities.

This will also help you target other search queries like long tail searches that you won’t have been reaching with your other keyword match types. Just make sure you have an extensive negative keyword list to block searches that are not relevant.

You can also check for opportunities in the Recommendations page. The system may find some broad match keyword recommendations to add to your campaign. But like other recommendations, first make sure they are relevant for you before adding them.

 

7. Check Quality Scores

Quality Score is an important keyword metric that shows how your ads, landing pages and keywords are performing. This score ranges between 1 and 10 and the higher the better.

To improve these scores, you should work on the contributing factors: Expected Click Through Rate, Ad Relevance and Landing Page Experience.

For example, to improve Ad Relevance you should update your ad headlines and descriptions and make them closely related to the keywords. And to improve landing page experience make sure you improve your web content and improve page loading times.

 

Case Study

The Funding Store is a commercial finance provider that operates in a very competitive sector. Average cost per click for each keyword is very high and often requires a high budget. When they contacted me they were struggling to manage their campaigns and achieve a good ROI. I setup a new Search campaign and conversions improved by 22%. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

My PPC advertising services for loan brokers helps to drive the best leads and enquiries for businesses. If you would like to learn more or to receive a proposal and quote, please contact me below.