Rehab Financial Group Uses Content Marketing To Educate Prospects and Generate Leads
Rehab Financial Group relied on referrals and return business for its first few years in business.
Susan Naftulin, RFG’s president, knew there was an opportunity to reach a larger audience with better marketing, but she didn’t have the time or expertise to develop the strategy or implement it on her own.
- Services:
Digital Marketing
Web Design
The Goal
Increase Quality Loan Approvals.
Initially, Brolik guided Rehab Financial Group’s blogging efforts and improved RFG’s online advertising campaigns. In the first few months, Brolik was able to increase website visits by 101% and call-in leads by 41%.
However, the influx didn’t come with better quality at first. Susan was receiving more calls and application submissions, but loans weren’t being approved at the rate she had hoped.
It was time to dig into the data and optimize for approved loans.
The Optimization Process
Over the next few months, we identified the channels that were bringing the best leads to the website, and we focused our energy and budget on them. Loan approvals began to increase, and after six months, Rehab Financial Group had increased their loan approvals by 20%.
Susan realized that her customers were spending their liquid cash on classes to learn about flipping and were left with nothing to put towards a loan down payment. Educating customers would keep money in their pockets and increase the percentage of loan approvals.
Hypothesis: Educational content would turn prospects into informed, loyal customers.
After a successful first year, Susan chose to renew her contract with Brolik. With a focus on increasing Rehab Financial Group’s organic traffic and quality leads, Flipping Houses 101 was created.
Flipping Houses 101 was built as a content hub to educate first-time house flippers. With Flipping Houses 101 as a resource, Susan’s customers would be better prepared to manage rehab projects, leading to more successful projects and more return business for RFG.
We turned to social media to promote Flipping 101
Facebook Ads performed in the 99th percentile.
RFG’s total page likes tripled over the course of our relationship with RFG.
Using a funnel approach, we developed a list of:
3,500 email subscribers, which made up
9% of site traffic in 2015 and had a
4.71% visitor-to-lead conversion rate
There Was Still Much To Gain...
While we were seeing consistent growth, there were a lot of potential leads that we weren’t reaching because of a limited budget.
Susan decided it was time to double down. We increased RFG monthly ad spend and began an aggressive digital PR campaign, positioning Susan as a thought leader in the real estate lending industry.
Doubling Down Was the Right Call
Rehab Financial Group’s incoming leads spiked with the budget increase and Susan decided to open up lending in a handful of new states.
Rehab Financial Group’s leads per month in 2015:
The Problem
We hit a point in 2014 where the website was clearly underperforming. Our marketing efforts were driving leads, but the website was not converting them into loan customers at a high enough rate.
It was time to redesign the website to improve performance.
- Services:
Digital Marketing
Web Design
Web Design
We went for a light-hearted, illustrated design style to separate RFG from the drab, stock-photo laden real estate industry. We built a custom Leverage site, with better aesthetics and load time. We also made the pre-qualification process more user-friendly and developed an algorithm to qualify potential customers through the site.
Visuals
Rehab Financial Group's Homepage
The Goal
Because of our existing relationship with Rehab Financial Group’s business, our approach to the website redesign was more specific in scope. We had two main goals when designing and developing the website.
- Quickly and easily prequalify (or disqualify) potential customers.
- Position RFG as a thought leader focusing on educating potential customers.
The first goal was our bread and butter. We had already been collecting leads for several months on the old website, so we were able to simplify the form to quickly establish if the customer was a good lead or not. We made sure that RFG was receiving only qualified potential customers, thus saving time and resources.
The second goal, educating customers, was an initiative that started on Rehab Financial Group’s old website. We built a house flipping learning center as well as general information about rehab loans, frequently asked questions, and resources pertaining to the flipping industry.
Show Success
Another initiative was to showcase success of past RFG clients. We did this by interviewing and writing several case studies for the website. We also developed a before-and-after slider to showcase the transformation that the houses went through.
The Results
Old Site vs. New Site
Time on site 
20.58%
2 minutes 38 seconds vs. 3 minutes 11 seconds
Pages per session 15.48%
2.37 pages vs 2.74 pages
Avg monthly organic traffic 20%
702 visitors vs. 843 visitors
Load time 
66.06%
6.60 seconds vs. 2.24 seconds
Bounce rate 9.73%
58.27% vs 52.60%
“Since working with Brolik, RFG has consistently received more views on its website, received more customer calls, and most importantly has continually built its loan volume when measured year over year.”
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