How We Helped a Commercial Lender Triple Their Qualified Applications Without Spending More on Ads
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What They Were Dealing With
This commercial finance company had a problem most lenders would recognize immediately: their paid ads were bringing in tons of clicks, but most of the people filling out forms had no business applying for a loan.
They were also basically invisible in organic search. If someone typed in the exact kind of loan they specialized in, this company wouldn't show up anywhere on page one. Maybe page three if they were lucky.
And then there was the compliance issue. Their marketing team was constantly second-guessing every word they wrote, worried about crossing a line with regulators. The result was messaging so watered-down it barely said anything at all.
They needed leads—real ones—without the constant anxiety that their marketing was going to land them in hot water.
What We Did
What We Actually Did
We didn't come in with some revolutionary new tactic. Honestly, what works in financial services marketing is pretty straightforward: be the expert, show up where serious borrowers are looking, and don't say anything stupid that'll get you in trouble.
Step One: Become the Go-To Resource
We started by mapping out every question a business owner asks when they're seriously considering borrowing money. Not the surface-level stuff—the real questions they're Googling at 11pm when they're trying to figure out if they can actually qualify.
Then we built content that actually answered those questions. Detailed guides on equipment financing. Breakdowns of SBA loan requirements. Honest explanations of what to do when your credit isn't perfect but you still need capital.
The goal wasn't to trick anyone into calling. It was to prove this company knew what they were talking about.
Step Two: Show Up Where It Matters
We went after search terms that indicated someone was actively looking for financing, not just browsing. Things like specific loan types, qualification criteria, and comparisons between different funding options.
We also optimized for the way people actually search now including all the AI answer tools that are increasingly where borrowers find information. If someone asked ChatGPT or Google's AI about commercial financing, we wanted this company showing up in those results.
Step Three: Stay Compliant While Still Converting
Financial services marketing has guardrails for good reason. We worked directly with their compliance team to make sure every claim, every call-to-action, every qualification statement stayed within regulatory bounds.
But we didn't let compliance turn the messaging into mush. You can be compliant and still be persuasive—you just have to know where the lines are.
What Changed
Over the next year, things shifted pretty dramatically.
The company went from 12 qualified loan inquiries per month from organic search to 89. That's a 347% increase, and these weren't junk leads—these were businesses with real borrowing needs who actually had a shot at qualifying.
They hit first-page rankings for 83 different commercial finance keywords, including some highly competitive terms they'd never ranked for before. Their branded search volume jumped 156% because more people were specifically seeking them out.
They went from zero featured snippets to owning 31 of them—those answer boxes that show up at the top of Google. Borrowers searching for things like "equipment financing requirements" or "how to get approved with bad credit" were seeing this company's expertise front and center.
Their cost per qualified lead dropped 68%. They pulled budget out of paid ads and reinvested it in building more authority. The leads kept coming, but now they weren't paying for every single one.
And their compliance officer actually thanked us. Every piece of content we created passed legal review on the first try, and they didn't field a single regulatory concern about marketing messaging the entire time we worked together.
Why This Worked
It's simple, really. Businesses don't borrow money from companies they don't trust. Especially in commercial finance where loans are big and the stakes are high.
We built trust first by demonstrating expertise. We showed up in the searches serious borrowers were actually doing. We made it easy for them to understand their options. And we never crossed any lines that would put the company at risk.
Paid ads stop working the second you stop paying. The authority we built keeps generating qualified inquiries every month without needing to keep feeding the ad machine.
Here's the Thing
If you're in financial services and you're frustrated with the quality of leads you're getting, or if you're nervous that your marketing might be creating compliance problems down the road, there's a better way to do this.
LeadValets works specifically with alternative lending and commercial finance companies. We understand how these buyers think, what they're searching for, and how to position you as the trusted expert they want to work with—all while staying completely within regulatory guidelines.
Want to talk about getting better leads without the headaches? Let's see if this approach makes sense for your business.