How A Commercial Truck & Fleet Lender Used Full Service ... Financial SMB Case Stu… · move to a...

Full-Service Client Case Study

We’ve never seen more leads coming in than we have over the last 3 months.-Chief Marketing Officer, Mission Financial

How A Commercial Truck & Fleet Lender Used Full Service Lead Generation Service To Spark Rapid Growth

Mission Financial Services Group Corporation

is a commercial vehicle lender headquartered in

Arizona with offices in Georgia, Louisiana, Indiana

and California. With over 20 years of industry experi-

ence, Mission Financial’s leadership has continually

grown their stake in the national lending market for

commercial vehicles thanks to their hands-on guid-

ance and incisive decisionmaking.

Mission is a financial partner for dealers across the

country that’s also focused on direct loans for in-

dependent truck owners. For this reason, quantity

of leads has always been their single most import-

ant Performance Indicator. When a supplemental

source of online leads began to stagnate a few years

ago, leadership at Mission Financial immediately

took action as a result. With booms in e-commerce

and steady growth in the freight industry, the only

direction Mission Financial should be heading is Up,

which is why SEO My Business was brought in to

assist— offering services to help Mission Financial

move to a new level of growth.

With a full-service marketing solution now in place,

Mission’s revenue is up year over year, growing force-

fully and rapidly in March, April, and May of 2020,

while their competitors have struggled to react to

the changing economic climate.

BEFORE SEO MY BUSINESS

Leads Fell Out of Sales Funnel Without Explanation

Local Web Overhaul

Email Marketing Campaign

Full SEO & Lead Gen Services

74% more deals get closed on average every month.

SOLUTIONS DELIVERED FINAL RESULT

Seo My Business for Mission Financial 01

When Mission Financial’s number of monthly loan applications started to

lag behind their expectations, they had a lot of options. Plenty of busi-

nesses in this position would double down with their current mar-

keting tactics and infrastructure without hesitation, increase their

spend, and hope that increased total visibility would corre-

spond to an increase in applications. That fix is something

that sounds like a great solution on face value— get more

applications by getting your name on more screens— and

it’s advice that our firm has given countless clients when

that’s the clear-cut solution.

A testament to Mission Financials’ leadership is that

they didn’t pull the trigger without having the full pic-

ture first. Mission took their usual, level-headed ap-

proach, and decided to measure twice and cut once

before they went all-in on a costly marketing solution.

Through a personal connection, they got in touch

with the founder of SEO My Business, having heard on

good authority that we’d solved exactly the problem

they were experiencing for countless other clients.

Mission gave our team everything we could need to

investigate what was making their leads dry up, and in a

matter of months things had already begun to pay off.

Full-Service Marketing and Remarketing Services Create Consistent and Reliable Lead Flow

The Power of Trust Between Professionals


Bringing in Outside Problem Solvers Did the Trick.

Before we began work with Mission, the specialists at SEO My Business had

ample time to confer with their COs and establish a model marketing

strategy that would offer the best return once their flow of leads resta-

bilized. Based on their revenue sources, lead-generation would

be a clear lynchpin in their marketing strategy, and we began

updating all the elements that leads would encounter on

the journey to becoming qualified for financing. Even still,

things weren’t adding up. While there was some work to

be done on their previous lead-gen strategy, it wasn’t

broken, especially not enough to explain why their in-

flux of leads had recently plateaued.

There’s no question that our technicians could have

boosted site traffic, but their total level of organic

traffic, including CTR and pageviews were all quite

respectable compared to their competitors. Traffic to

their “Apply for a Loan Now!” page in particular was

easily high enough for their revenue stream to stay

healthy in the green for the past months. Why then,

weren’t people applying for loans? Every piece of data

available was indicating that leads had arrived at their

website looking for exactly what Mission Financial was of-

fering, but only a small percentage of those leads turned into

actual loan applications.

With all the time and information needed to investigate this problem

available to SEO My Business, explanations were systematically ruled

out until there was only one place where leads could be getting lost, and

that was in the form itself.


With the Problem Solved, their most Important KPI was 3.6 times greater than it was two months ago.

Forms are not created equal, and everyone has found

themselves at the start of a 9 and a half-pager that has

the look and feel of 1999 (and not in a good way). Forms

like these— whether they’re lengthy, frustrating, or just

plain hard to use— often become graveyards for promis-

ing leads, and we had begun to suspect this might be the

cause of Mission’s troubles.

To our surprise, the form itself was well-crafted and easy to

navigate, but after just a little bit of digging, it was easy to

see that there was something very, very wrong with it.

Solving the ProblemNow that SEO My Business could track the number of

conversions gained from leads filling out the form, the

most likely explanation of the drop in leads was that the

third-party group that had supplied the application form

(which included disclosure of credit information that

needed to be kept secure), was not delivering all of the ap-

plications that were being completed to Mission Financial.

Once SEO My Business supplied a replacement form, that

theory was immediately confirmed.

After two months with the new form, credit applications

had increased by 361%. Yes— applications had more than

tripled once a third party provider was removed from the

system.


With Mission Financial’s sales pipeline fully repaired, more

traditional marketing spends would surely start to return

a great ROI. We went back to the lead generation side

of their operation, and doubled down on the number of

eyes driven to Mission’s application page. We employed a

full-service marketing solution that included Lead Genera-

tion, Email, SEO, Social, Paid, and Programmatic Advertising.

Putting spends in the right areas paid off. One year after

a large-scale marketing campaign was launched, web

traffic exploded. Their site was seeing a 104.67% increase

in Organic Traffic, with a corresponding 53.59% increase in

Pages per Session. Bounce rate was reduced by nearly half.

104.6%Increase in

Organic Traffic

In less than a year, their bounce rate was nearly cut in half.

And what do stats like that give you?

Mission’s May revenue is up

51% YoY.

With Leads Viewing

53.6% more Pages Per session

Pipeline Patched— Now It’s Time to Optimize


Mission Financial now had a full-service marketing solution

through a partnership with SEO My Business, and tons of

traffic arriving at their site, which meant that our firm was

free to explore the most effective marketing spends for driv-

ing up their revenue. Reporting data gathered from the new

credit application form and launch of new Email Marketing

and Social Media Campaigns indicated that a significant

number of applicants who had been approved for a loan

never got in contact with Mission to accept the money.

Mission’s business model expects to see 10 percent of appli-

cants accepting the loan they’ve been offered, but all kinds

of market and social events across the world can impact a

lead’s likelihood to accept their loan. Before a fully-fledged

re-engagement plan was launched, close ratios were fluc-

tuating rapidly at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, with

some months like January dipping as low as 6%.

Our Content Team saw this and began brainstorming the

best way to encourage truck drivers and dealerships to

accept the money from the loan that they’d been approved

for. First, we increased visibility to informative blog posts

written by experts at SEO My Business, offering their audi-

ence a great way to stay informed about whether it was a

good time to enter the industry. The second step was to find

vernacular that encouraged prospective clients to finalize

the decision they had started on.

Phrasing that emphasized the deadline for each applicant

for accepting their loan before it expired proved especially

effective. For leads that seem to go dark, we launched an

Re-Engagement Campaigns Proved to Be a Difference-Maker

email remarketing campaign, delivering messages to approved

clients two weeks before their application expires, letting them

know their money won’t be available for much longer.

Only two months later, Mission Financial saw one of their

best closure rates in recent years, with 12% of clients accept-

ing their offer. Close rate has continued to climb for Mission

financial, and they’re expecting to reach 15% close rates in

the coming months.


From the perspective of any marketing firm, Mission Financial

made one of the best decisions available to a company of

their size. As a business without a large marketing team in-

house, allowing for every element of their marketing struc-

ture to be managed in the same place resulted in a stark

reduction of pain points that included the details of cam-

paigns being overlooked. Before their business employed a

holistic marketing solution, one industry professional would

have been tasked with all sorts of marketing work across

multiple campaigns, allowing for work to pile

up in the long term.

Mission Financial’s Chief Marketing Officer says their new

digital presence is “invaluable.”

“Before January of 2018, a large part of our marketing strat-

egy was old school. We’d drive down to dealerships a couple

times per month, and that’s where our best deals were

being made and continue to this day, Dealer relations have

always been a priority with Mission Financial,” he said.

“But now we’re committing to becoming more electronic,

and there’s no question that it’s paying off. It’s made a huge dif-

ference that our clients always know exactly where to find us”.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck America, leadership

at Mission was able to focus on the logistics of their business

model in its entirety, and leave SEO My Business with the

You Can’t Put a Price on The Stability of a Full-Service Marketing Infrastructure

task of keeping financing applications coming in. Both tasks

are easier said than done, and plenty of businesses languished

or outright failed in accomplishing them.

Email campaigns have generated new leads and helped

Mission with gaining back previous customers, and custom-

er satisfaction is greatly increased due to new email cam-

paigns informing their customers and dealers about new com-

pany information, hours and how to get in touch with them.

With the workload split between capable hands, our team

had the freedom and flexibility to change our strategy within

days of the pandemic, rolling out topical content that was

specifically referential to what truck owners were experienc-

ing day-to-day.

Before January of 2018, a large part of our marketing strategy

was old school. We’d drive down to dealerships a couple

times per month, and that’s where our best deals were

being made and continue to this day, Dealer relations have

always been a priority with Mission Financial. But now we’re

committing to becoming more electronic, and there’s no

question that it’s paying off. It’s made a huge difference that

our clients always know exactly where to find us.


“

Mission Financial is doing better than it ever has, with total revenue for 2020 being on

track to increase by roughly 45% from last year. The power of enlisting a strong marketing

partner is, effectively, the multiplication of your company’s adaptability.

Every business will have its own speed of course correction, and it’s important to know that speed.

For businesses across America, COVID-19 was an iceberg on the horizon, and a lot of big ships

couldn’t turn in time. If you’re a large or enterprise-level business, use all the tools at your

disposal — choose a partner that can help you course correct in time and always come out on top.

Interested in Learning more about ABM?

Contact us with questions about what a full-stack marketing agency can do for you.

Mission Financial Has Never Been in a Better Place to Grow

678-592-5398 [email protected]


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