Pure Commercial Finance asked Liberty to help launch their brand and take on the finance giants.

The Challenge

Pure Commercial Finance is a finance brokerage. Founded by two commercial finance specialists, they were experts in arranging finance deals but lacked marketing knowledge and experience. They were entering a very competitive market that saw them come up against household name banks, trusted comparison websites and well established direct rivals. However, they felt their expertise and personal approach could create a successful company that could excel in the market.

Our Approach

As Pure Commercial Finance were brand new to market, they had no marketing strategy and little idea as how to best approach potential customers. We suggested a PPC trial to help formulate an effective ongoing strategy. This trial included:

• Split testing adverts to find out what sales messages the market responded to
• Split testing landing pages to find out what messages and Calls to Action were most effective
• Benchmarking initial KPI data across the entire product suite of the company

The trial gave the company a wide range of accurate data that allowed Liberty to put together an actionable marketing strategy. For example, data collected about the number of searches and market demand for the range of products influenced important priorities for future marketing activity. Also, key data such as CTRs and conversion rates for different sales messages in search ads informed the ongoing tone of voice for the company.

The PPC trial also proved that many initial assumptions made by Pure Commercial Finance about their USP were in fact incorrect. Whilst they first thought that their USP was their specialist knowledge across the entire market, split testing advert copy and understanding conversion data showed that what mattered most to their market was a quick service and professional advice. This again helped to shape the ongoing overall business strategy and approach for the company.

By working closely with Liberty and by testing out in this way, the business was able to quickly learn a lot about their market and make sure that future activity was based on proper data.

Current Strategy

Whilst the company has gained business through reputation and SEO, 80% of their work is still won via AdWords which has an incredible ROI of over 10 to 1! AdWords has been so successful that Pure Commercial Finance have increased their AdWords investment by 1150% since starting in 2014.

The specialist nature of the service has meant that there is limited search volume for target keywords and the company are running at a high impression share. To further improve performance through AdWords, the focus has been on increasing CTR. To do this, the Liberty team has relied on newer and advanced features in AdWords such as Ad Extensions, Structure Snippets and Site Links. Since implementing these advanced features, the ads are now occupying more real estate on the results page and the CTR has increased by almost double.

With higher click rates and the team are also looking to now use remarketing and RLSAs to attract back visitors who have not converted.

Current Situation

Pure Commercial Finance now employs 20 finance specialists and is now one of the biggest commercial finance companies in the country. They have won and been nominated in a number prestigious of awards including:

• Winner of Best Financial Services 2016 Wales Startup Awards
• Winner of Best Startup at 2016 Cardiff Business Awards
• Highly Commended for Moneyfacts Development Finance Broker of the Year
• Finalist in SFI Awards for Bridging Broker of the Year

In 2016-2017, Pure Commercial Finance secured £500m worth of funding for a wide range of projects across the country. This is now a significant and well respected business in the UK finance market and this is largely thanks to AdWords traffic and effective advert management.