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Lending a Hand to Small Businesses
The Goal
Accord Financial is one of North America’s leading independent finance companies. They provide working capital solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in North America. Its mission is to simplify access to capital to help its clients thrive. They provide a variety of services, including asset-based lending, financing (retail inventory, equipment, lender, media), factoring, and small business loans.
During the pandemic, businesses were hit hard, and Accord Financial wanted to do more to help business communities. Accord Financial’s campaign goal was to target small and medium-sized businesses and generate leads.
Go Broker…Go Home?
The Challenge
Accord Financial has been around for 40 years but has had low brand awareness. Unlike big banks, they weren’t a household name. Sure, they’re known amongst the North American financial industry and have a terrific partnership with the Government of Canada, but they haven’t been able to get the word out on their products directly to business owners.
Accord generates leads through a referral network of brokers and financial advisors. It had always been a reliable channel, but not every small business had an advisor. So, Accord wanted to diversify how they could reach customers – directly.
Accord has a unique customer journey that requires multiple touchpoints, and it could take possibly 10 to 15 steps before someone becomes an actualized customer. They had previously worked with a national media marketing group. However, they found it frustrating to be pushed into a big campaign with a big budget, only to get a cookie-cutter formula and unsatisfactory ROI.
Then, War Room entered the picture. After hearing the frustrations they had experienced, we were determined to customize a digital advertising strategy that would help Accord Financial reach their goal of generating a steady flow of leads with a healthy Return on Investment.
Lead the Way
The Execution
Accord Financial had minimal experience in social media advertising but saw its potential as their competitors weren’t active in the social realm either.
Working closely with their team, we strategized and set up hyper-targeted lead generation campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
We worked closely with the Accord team on deciphering touchpoints in the client acquisition process throughout the campaign. By properly tracking clicks and conversions, we provided them with insightful data attribution, which consequently helped them identify areas of opportunity in their overarching marketing strategy.
The hefty list of leads we’ve helped them generate through the campaigns is extremely valuable to their team. Not only is it first-party data that is proprietary to Accord, they can also utilize it for their other marketing efforts, such as newsletters or remarketing other products. They now have direct contact access to thousands of small businesses!
Banking on Social Success
The Results
On the first weekend of the campaign launch, they saw 50 leads come in. The team at Accord Financial was so shocked, they had to rearrange their priorities to accommodate this big influx of leads.
Accord had a very defined Cost per Acquisition (CPA) through their referral network, and they set it as a benchmark. They were impressed that the overall Cost per Acquisition through Paid Social ads turned out to be 10-15% lower than their referral network!
Seeing the successful results, they offered to double or triple their ad budget. However, we did some research and recommended keeping the original budget. The campaign was the right size and already optimized for the best audience reach possible. If they increased the budget, they would actually see diminishing returns. Accord’s team appreciated our honesty and long-term perspective of our partnership.
For example, throughout the campaign, we helped Accord reach 3 million Canadian small business owners (In a country with 38 million people–the campaign had excellent reach)!
Here are some of the highlights of the campaign:
Accord Financial has been incredibly pleased with its success with War Room’s campaigns. We’ve expanded their audience reach and social presence, and they’ve been able to help hundreds of small businesses with loans, helping them bounce back steadily from the pandemic.
Steady Flow of Leads Throughout the Campaign
Blew the Cost Per Acquisition Goal Out of the Water!
Widespread Campaign Reach
Accord’s mission is to support small businesses, and our mission was to spread the word through paid campaigns. We achieved 3.5 million impressions!
5 Times the Conversion Rate of Finance Industries
“The campaign we conducted with War Room ended up getting our name in front of 3 million people who had some sort of connection with small business – in a country of 38 million people. Without question it was the largest and most successful brand development exercise we’ve ever done.
My number one reason for recommending War Room would really be the alignment of their values with ours. At Accord, we really strive to treat customers fairly to try and put them in situations to succeed and take that long term view. And I felt that War Room really shared those values.
Will we continue using War Room? Absolutely. We’ve had terrific results. We’ve formed a terrific partnership.”
Darcy Kindred
VP of Operations, Small Business Finance, Accord Financial
