Finance for Our Customers who are renovating

Hi everyone I hope You are well.

I produce high quality concrete flooring and I think I am losing potential customers because of the price barriers.
We are ranked at the top off the search engines for renovate concrete,restore concrete,polished concrete and all major keyword related to the service we provide (so getting potential customers is very easy as we get over 1000 people to Our various websites each day).

My question is.
Is it possible to have a bank or prinicple lender that would work with us to remove the cost barrier?
So we basically need finance for our customers.
Our customers are allways happy with the service we provide as it has a high percieved value.
Maybe someone can suggest a solution.
The customer would have sureity in the form of their own house/income.
I do hope this makes sense.
I did not know where else to ask it this forum looked suitable.
Thanks for your time/help
Stuart
 
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Are you asking if you should arrange finance for your customers, like a car dealership does?

I would think that any customer who has to rely on you to find them finance shouldn't be getting the work done.

What sort of concrete flooring do you do? Polishing existing slabs? Or new slabs with some sort of finish?

What sort of cost is involved?
 
Thank you for your quick response.
I imagine we could just put a link up to a script that would do a loan caculation and give an idea of a monthly fee.
We provide concrete resurfacing,renovation right up to high end polished concrete floors.
The cost can vary for the high end result in the 5000-10000 range.
We dont need the loan we own all our equipment etc etc.
We just want to remove one of the obstacle for our customers.
So basically we would be sending a high value lead to any bank/lender as the homeowner would have sureity.
We just dont know where to begin with this.
We had thought off getting on linkedin and joining apropriate groups and then asking but I did a search for forums of that nature and this one seemed ideal.
The concrete can be existing or pre pored
Thanks
Stuart
 
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Hi everyone I hope You are well.

I produce high quality concrete flooring and I think I am losing potential customers because of the price barriers.

hi Stuart

Welcome to Somersoft

You think you're losing potential customers or you know this for a fact ?

it's a very important distinction, and from a business point of view it would be very worthwhile for you to do some research on this first before you go looking for a solution to a problem that possibly does not exist.

What is the average cost per job or per client feel services?

Thanks

Rolf
 
Than You
We have 7 websites
1 for each set of keywords
4 google+ accounts
Slideshare professional
3 facebook accounts with 17 fanpages
You tube
etc etc so we have massive internet exposure
Our traffic is extreamly targetted right down to the long tail keywords.
So each possible clinet gets to the exact page they need be at for the exact search they entered (search engine traffic being ideal)
Often we find the customer is kicking tires and will get back to us.
We provide all mediums of contact and we showcase our work via articles/images/slides/video.
Now we have all means of generating interested surfers we look to removing the last barrier COST.
Our customers are allways happy with the results
Thank You
Stuart
 
Than You
We have 7 websites
1 for each set of keywords
4 google+ accounts
Slideshare professional
3 facebook accounts with 17 fanpages
You tube
etc etc so we have massive internet exposure
Our traffic is extreamly targetted right down to the long tail keywords.
So each possible clinet gets to the exact page they need be at for the exact search they entered (search engine traffic being ideal)
Often we find the customer is kicking tires and will get back to us.
We provide all mediums of contact and we showcase our work via articles/images/slides/video.
Now we have all means of generating interested surfers we look to removing the last barrier COST.
Our customers are allways happy with the results
Thank You
Stuart

So u are assuming that the lack of conversion is related to not having access to the immediate cash, and the perceived value of your service is high.

You can easily confirm this Im sure.

A lender IE bank wont have an interest in general, the dollar amounts are too small. In any case, I guess the home owner would ALREADY have a mortgage, so THAT lender would be the obvious place for them to start.

In terms an unsecured loan, its hard to go past Ge money for national coverage and a consistent approach.


ta

rolf
 
Thank You

We watch all traffic in and out of our websites so all we need do now is look at deriving greatest value from that traffic by removing all barriers.

We had thought of mentioning see whoever currently supplies your current home loan for a bridge loan (what ever it is called)

I would have thought a bank would be all over this...
Someone sending them targeted leads where the customer has sureity.
This customer can also be sent to their physical branch.
We have lots of work we are just looking at doing local (geographical) work.
If we have this in place we can send the cutomers for other Australian states elsewhere.
I imagine we can create a page with a live actor video embeded saying what the loan options are. That way we could say on our advertising creatives click here to see how you can turn this floor into this for less then $90 a month (something more creative).
We will look at GE money.
I hope it is ok with the forum for us to send any other inquiry (linkedin contact etc) to this thread.
For 3 reasons mainly
1. Its saves me typing all this out again
2. The thread captures the essense of our problem and the solutions so far offered
3. You have tried to help us so in return we will send surfers to Your great forum.
Thanks and I will return and moniter this thread often.
Stuart
 
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I would have thought a bank would be all over this...
Someone sending them targeted leads where the customer has sureity.
This customer can also be sent to their physical branch.

Hi Stuart

your biggest issue here will be the fact that most likely only existing fund would have any interest in it whatsoever. And it would require a particular branch loans person to have an interest in meeting their drawdown goals for the week or month, a transaction of this size to be of any benefit to any lender when using a mortgage backed loan.

The transaction costs of setting up even a
just a new split on existing mortgage-backed loan, would likely far outweigh the media financial benefit of the small loan.

However, it would make the client more sticky to that lender

thanks

Rolf
 
Sounds like you most of the marketting sorted but none of the sales organised.

I think I can see where your coming from, it would be very time consuming and have to advertise finance for customers that are may looking for afford concreting done, flyers posting through the letterbox and telling them how they can a discount drive way done and you that you can organise finance that you have organised through a private financier (reputable one of course) and allowing him to give you part of there earnings back to you, so you can offer the discount to customers..

Does this sound like something your trying to achieve?

Sometimes paying for a ton of marketting isnt really worth it, you have to find the people that will recommend you to other clients. If you spend thousands of advertising your essentially asking for the tyre kickers because they curious to know what your charging. Its just how the game works.
 
Hmm as Rolf identified a lender would probably not be interested in this type of arrangement because the loan amounts are too small/numerous. Some companies do it for whitegoods etc but only on a very, very large scale like a Harvey Norman.

However, what YOU can do is potentially have your own company funds available to be lent out as payment for your jobs. Not sure how the technicalities would work but it's something worth exploring if your company has lots of cash it isn't using.
 
Another one is Certegy EZYPay.
Not sure what their upper limits are.
We use them for our biz and often get customers we wouldn't usually get.
Some customers will only shop where they can get finance.
 
As a web exercise
We took out google for all the concrete terms Australia wide related to the service we provide
Then we did it again targeting our area (often having 7 or 8 listings on the first page of google for each term using multiple websites)
So we could not be happier with the search engine type in.
Then we turned to facebook.

We have lots of work. (but we would like to capture all the local work)

We know we have a great product that is of high value to the customer.
We have used all forms of media to show its value.
We also know if we need to we can use flyers and also put adverts aimed at our websites (dragging offline customers online) knowing our websites will convert this traffic.
The last barrier is removing the cost.
I can see us creating a page with a video created to show the payment as a loan.
What would you rather see?
Buy a polished concrete floor for $5000
or
For less then $20 a week you can have a floor that provides numerous benefits such as
Reduced mould midue
No more pathegens or allergens
Increases the value of your home
And sure is pure eye candy

From a banks point of view
They are getting a customer who has security in their home.(can You get a better lead?)
Once they have this customer and they provide a good service they most likely will convert him/her into a full time client.

I am the webmaster who has provided this service for my client
First I get all the search engine traffic I can
Then I create pages to showcase the service provided
Then I ensure contactability
Meanwhile I look at ways to improve the conversions
This is the last step
Arranging for a reputable provider that is local to Canberra Sydney or South coast
Obviously I can create a video to explain we recomend you use Your current homeloan provider but you do have this option.
Stuart
 
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Ace in the Hole
You just hit it right on the head

Customers we would not have normally gotten.
Obviously those that are cashed up are good to go.

Pointing out they can either use their current provider or create a video showing what the repayment over 7 years etc would be would help them further.

Seems like a walk up start to any bank to me
Thanks
 
No problem at all.
If I ask the right questions in the right places I might just obtain the right solution.
My client is doing very well and taking down this last barrier will ensure his success.
Providing surfers with options converts them into customers. (In theory)
 
If you're getting lots of leads with low conversion, perhaps it's not priced correctly?
Or perhaps the SEO/SEM needs to more targeted and specific rather than as large whale net which is how it sounds at the moment.
 
Nothing could be further then the truth
I did not say we were getting bad conversions
I am simply looking at exhausting all options to providing possible customers with payment options.
 
My client is doing very well and taking down this last barrier will ensure his success.
Providing surfers with options converts them into customers. (In theory)

This is the bit that I don't think works.

I wouldn't touch finance offered by the company I want to buy from with a barge pole. I immediately think "car finance" and honestly, if I am looking for a product that costs say $5000 minimum, I would either have the funds to pay for it, or know I can increase my mortgage (or LOC) easily to pay for it.

If I am at the beginning of surfing or this type of floor, then something to indicate that "starting at $5000" might just weed out the tyre kickers before you have to try to convert to them buyers.

I wonder if the problem is that it is not clear from the website just how expensive the job will be? If the website can be worked to show upfront how much this sort of job will cost, then trying to "convert" tyre kickers to buyers will not be an issue, because the tyre kickers will not even bother to ask for a quote.

In this day of internet buying, I really dislike sites that don't give any idea of whether something I am interested in might cost $500, $5000 or $15000. Is this an issue on this particular site?

If so, then fixing that will weed out the tyre kickers asking for a quote, wasting time on something they cannot afford and remove the need to look desperate by providing a lead to a finance company or bank.

I could understand that if you were selling motorbikes, cars etc, but I would be suspicious of a renovating product company offering finance.

A recent example is that with our house being painted, I thought we might look for a really nice front door. I found the type I liked, the website told me it was $12K, so I didn't go any further. Had the website not listed a price, I would have called them and wasted my time and theirs.

We have just ripped up carpets and will investigate carpet, tiles, timber and polished or other concrete finishes, so this is something I would be looking at soon. It would be lovely to be able to get a price idea before having to go too far into the "homework".

I just think people renovating floors would either have a good idea it will be expensive, or if not, they need to know upfront whether to even bother going further. And renovators (I would think) know their budget, have their finance sorted and just don't need to be led by the nose to a finance provider.

What do others think?
 
thats been my point all the way along


I don't believe this to be a finance issue

I reckon this is a need to close the sale issue........

The cost is just another small challenge in the overall scheme of things

I have essentially a sold for a living for near 20 years now and often the lack of progress for a new biz is ognoring the basic sales process.

Lead generation is the precursor to sales, ESP in an in home or home improvement situation

Tar
olf

This is the bit that I don't think works.

I wouldn't touch finance offered by the company I want to buy from with a barge pole. I immediately think "car finance" and honestly, if I am looking for a product that costs say $5000 minimum, I would either have the funds to pay for it, or know I can increase my mortgage (or LOC) easily to pay for it.

If I am at the beginning of surfing or this type of floor, then something to indicate that "starting at $5000" might just weed out the tyre kickers before you have to try to convert to them buyers.

I wonder if the problem is that it is not clear from the website just how expensive the job will be? If the website can be worked to show upfront how much this sort of job will cost, then trying to "convert" tyre kickers to buyers will not be an issue, because the tyre kickers will not even bother to ask for a quote.

In this day of internet buying, I really dislike sites that don't give any idea of whether something I am interested in might cost $500, $5000 or $15000. Is this an issue on this particular site?

If so, then fixing that will weed out the tyre kickers asking for a quote, wasting time on something they cannot afford and remove the need to look desperate by providing a lead to a finance company or bank.

I could understand that if you were selling motorbikes, cars etc, but I would be suspicious of a renovating product company offering finance.

A recent example is that with our house being painted, I thought we might look for a really nice front door. I found the type I liked, the website told me it was $12K, so I didn't go any further. Had the website not listed a price, I would have called them and wasted my time and theirs.

We have just ripped up carpets and will investigate carpet, tiles, timber and polished or other concrete finishes, so this is something I would be looking at soon. It would be lovely to be able to get a price idea before having to go too far into the "homework".

I just think people renovating floors would either have a good idea it will be expensive, or if not, they need to know upfront whether to even bother going further. And renovators (I would think) know their budget, have their finance sorted and just don't need to be led by the nose to a finance provider.

What do others think?
 
We wont be providing the finance
I will create a webpage along the lines off

1 You have options increase your current home loan
2 Use Gemoney
3 use ezypay
ezypay worked out $490 cheaper over 2 years (there must be a fee for us providing this service I do not know yet)

Over 7 years Gemoney looked good
You can have this polished concrete floor for as little as $18.69/week

Still very early stages with this was looking for ideas

Hard to give a cost when each floor is different
Different finishers are required
Many factors enter into the equation.
We are open we make it very easy for surfers to contact us
We have a free cd answering hundreds of questions
Over 7 websites and numerous web 2.0 propeties we answer every question You could imagine.
Price is like walking into a car yard and knowing you want a car
You do need to ask
Customer inquiries are never a problem.
 
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