In order to build customer trust, lenders need to show their understanding of the challenges that business owners face, and how their lending solutions can lower or even remove these hurdles in ways which connect to a business’ purpose.

It’s not enough to make your case through numbers alone – you need to highlight your value in real and relatable terms. One simple technique for achieving this is to showcase how your solution fits into broader business trends.

1. Identify trends

Whether it’s ever-changing consumer demands, new technology, or sudden supply chain disruptions, businesses must constantly adapt to trends that shape the broader market. For business owners, keeping track of these trends while running a successful operation can be difficult.

Lenders have an opportunity here to help their clients and potentially attract new business: breaking down the major trends within the market, and how they’re expected to affect businesses.

These trends should be evidence based, and ideally draw on unique research or insights generated by the lender themselves. Presenting unique insights will help to differentiate you from competitors, present you as a market leader, and remind clients that their lender has a deep  understanding of current economic conditions which could better help them tailor financing solutions.

2. Highlight opportunities

As economic trends play out, businesses are often presented with several opportunities to either steel themselves against hardship, or to bolster their position within the market.

These opportunities could include small things like consolidating multiple loans to lower repayments and improve cash flow, through to more complex opportunities such as acquiring businesses or moving into new markets.

For lenders, this in itself is an opportunity. Lenders typically have extensive experience supporting their clients through different market cycles, and may be better placed to recognise new business opportunities (and how to take advantage of them) than their clients.

This is a chance to demonstrate that knowledge and encourage clients to respond to changing economic conditions. Case studies are a very effective way to achieve this, as storytelling can help make complex ideas simple and more relatable for business owners.

Try to think of clients you’ve helped to navigate similar market trends in the past and how you were able to support their continued growth – would they be comfortable for you to share their story with other clients?

Sometimes it’s not possible to use a real case study. In these instances, it may still be beneficial to include a story, but to write a fictitious one based on past experiences and make it clear to the reader that this is just an example of how you’ve worked with businesses like theirs.

3. Provide solutions

Finally, your copy should conclude by outlining how you can help clients to seize these opportunities. Be careful not to turn this into a hard sales pitch – don’t devote more than a few lines to the benefits of using your specific product, or listing off your awards or industry rankings.

Your case study should be enough to demonstrate how good you are at what you do. Instead, this final section should showcase the variety of relevant products and services you provide, and drive your readers to call one of your in-house experts for additional support navigating the trends you’ve identified.

If you would like help better understanding how to craft content for business owners in need of lending support, or the best ways to incorporate case studies into your content strategy, we’d love to help. Email us: hello@craftedwriting.com