When you give clients the option to pay for big-ticket items in interest-free installments, you open the door to new possibilities for yourself and your client. While your buyers gain immediate access to the equipment they need to start, grow, or scale their business—equipment they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford—you move more product and close more sales.
But your customers only know about the payment options you tell them about! Today’s small business owner is an avid researcher, so including messaging about your financing and leasing solutions on your website is critical. Making this information readily available gives you the edge and shows your customers that you have several options to get them the equipment they need in payments they can afford.
Here’s what you need to know to promote financing and leasing options to your customers online and through social in the most effective way.
Know What Your Target Buyer Wants
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) financing is the financing solution of the future. No, that’s not an exaggeration. Almost 56 percent of consumers have used a BNPL service as of March 2021. Only eight months before, that number was 37 percent. And at least 53 percent of survey respondents expect to use BNPL in the next year.
Why has BNPL experienced such a surge in popularity? Here’s one clue: among consumers who had used BNPL since the pandemic started, at least 41 percent and 25 percent said they had done so to conserve cash or because of lost income, respectively.
BNPL thwarts sticker shock by breaking down the upfront cost of a big-ticket item, making it more affordable as a result, but here are other talking points or terms to use when discussing the financing option you offer:
- Installment-based financing
- Point-of-sale (POS) financing
- Zero-interest, no-fee financing
- Customer financing program
- Buy now, pay later (BNPL)
- Seamless checkout process
- No paperwork or hard credit checks
- Instant approvals for credit-challenged SMBs and startups
When discussing leasing options, "early purchase option" (EPO), is somewhat the leasing equivalent to the BNPL financing option.
Where to Promote Financing
Where should your messaging be found and the point-of-sale buttons integrated? The two obvious places are product listings and checkout processes (the stage where you choose your payment method). But, merging your new financing and leasing options with your existing marketing strategy gives you more opportunities to reach potential buyers.
Turn Passive Browsers into Buyers
Your marketing strategy is informed by where your target audience engages in conversations about their business. This should be where you’re engaged, too, since your business is their business. Come armed to the conversation with solutions that will help them succeed.
- Your customers already know about their standard payment options, so make your financing and leasing options a prominent fixture in your physical store, website, and social media channels.
- Incorporate installment-based pricing into your value-add messaging, as it speaks to the cash-flow pain points many of your small business buyers are experiencing.
- In product listings and at checkout, one of the strongest visible contrasts you can paint is the total upfront cost of an item next to the cost in installments.
- For in-store interactions, arrange signage displaying your financing and leasing messaging throughout the sales floor and at the checkout desk. Your sales associates should also be trained to discuss financing with customers too.
Choose a Financing or Leasing Provider that Makes It Easy
The best financing or leasing providers makes integration easy, or handles it for you. But what you want at the end of it all is a streamlined checkout process from all sales channels (checkout page, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and a single location for your sales data.
Clicklease, a leasing option, offers a simple process for adding “Apply Now” buttons to your site. We’ll even handle implementation for you, and your sales data is conveniently centralized and searchable for all your reporting and analytics needs. But when it comes to promoting a leasing solution that will give your buyers access to more business growth, it’s up to you to get the message where it needs to go. We’re here to help you close the conversation with a sale.
