What Are The Ways to do Marketing For a Credit Repair Company?

If you have started your credit repair company, you must be filled with excitement haven’t been able to bring your idea to life. However, one area that might seem challenging is marketing. Could it be that you are finding it hard to advertise on Google? What other options are available to you?

From content marketing to social media, there’s a wide range of options to help your business compete with the 80,000+ credit repair companies in the US alone. We put together a list of the best marketing ideas for your credit repair business, so you can get your small business to the top.

• Is Credit Repair a Profitable Business?
• How Can I Market my Credit Repair Business?
• What is Credit Repair Leads?
• How do You Describe a Credit Repair Business?
• How do I Start a Credit Service Business?

Is Credit Repair a Profitable Business?

The simple answer is yes. The more important questions are: how profitable is the credit repair business, how much of that market can you expect to take and what kind of ROI should you expect? And then ultimately, will you need a high-risk merchant account?

Read Also: How to Track Disputed Items

Before you ask “how profitable is the credit repair business”, ask how much the average employee can stand to make.

Credit repair specialists can work as contractors or for credit repair businesses. Their salaries can depend on federal, state, and local fees and taxes. For the most part, a credit repair specialist will earn anyway from $40,000 to $135,000 a year, with a median yearly salary of $70,000 per year.

The credit repair industry is well established, the market is wide and the future looks bright according to some analysts. Millennials are joining the market and spending a lot. This generation has bloomed late, and they are entering the market with lots of existing debt. They are prime for credit repair.

Consumer debt in America reached $4.1 trillion by June this year and $1.072 trillion of that is credit card debt. Many Americans are struggling to pay off their credit card debt and are looking for professionals to help them, thus the high demand for credit repair companies.

If you’re looking to start your own credit repair business, the first question you would probably ask is: will it be profitable? Let’s find out:

Starting your credit repair business is easy.

While starting a business is generally hard, building a credit repair company is actually simpler than you think. Some startups were even founded at home and now, they’ve grown into huge businesses helping hundreds of clients at a time.

A credit repair business is also one of the most affordable startups today because all you need is a computer, software and phone to get started.

Those who are in the same industry say that this business is a lot easier to scale because it doesn’t demand a lot of work but it still proves to bring in huge revenues, especially if you keep existing clients happy and add new ones each month.

Can your credit repair business be profitable? If you get the right start and you ensure you keep your clients happy, your credit repair agency will absolutely be profitable.

You can learn through training.

Credit repair isn’t actually that complicated, but it requires the right strategy. This is why most clients would choose to hire professionals to help them improve their credit score rather than do it all by themselves.

But you don’t have to earn a degree or spend years just to run a credit repair business efficiently. Everything you need to know about this industry, you can learn through training programs that are available online.

It’s also beneficial to be a member of a non-profit credit repair trade association that follows the standards set by the FTC and CFPB. Credibility is one of your strongest marketing strategies and being a part of organizations like the Credit Consultants Association (CCA) or National Association of Credit Services Organizations (NACSO) will give you that boost. Simple memberships like this can easily help you earn more profits in the future by bringing in more business for your company.

You can start by doing things yourself and grow your business as demand increases.

Unlike other businesses where you have to hire a team right away, you can run your credit repair company by yourself when you start. Since you’ll still have a few clients, you can do the legwork of reviewing credit reports, identifying material errors, and gathering compelling evidence for your client’s dispute. This will help you save money on manpower, which will also translate to bigger profits.

How Can I Market my Credit Repair Business?

Follow along as we go through six of the top credit repair marketing ideas for this increasingly crowded industry.

1. Build trust and brand reputation with a strong social media presence

You might think social media isn’t that important among all credit repair marketing ideas, but it’s an extremely valuable tool for building trust with clients and the community,

Social media is the ultimate way to humanize and promote your business free of cost. Your credit repair business should use every type of social media platform that customers use, from Linkedin to Instagram. Finding what to post can be a challenge, but if you don’t have a consistent social media presence across all platforms by now, you’re behind the ball.

If you are new to social media, finding what to post on each platform is difficult. You want to establish a consistent tone and voice for your business across all platforms, but you also have to take advantage of what each platform does best.

For example, when deciding what to post on Instagram, you might want to consider using hashtag research. Two of the best tools for Instagram hashtag research are Instagram autocomplete and related hashtags. With these free features, you can tailor your content around trending topics without ever leaving the app.

2. Get published in local newspapers, online publications, and industry associations

Getting valuable content published around the Internet on industry sites is a great way to build brand awareness and improve your website’s position on search engine results pages (SERPs) with inbound links from relevant, authoritative sites.

Inbound links, or backlinks, indicate the importance and relevance of a website in the eyes of Google. That means they are incredibly important in increasing organic website traffic.

Getting published in these publications isn’t about advertising your services, it’s about informing the public of your brand and simultaneously positioning your company as an industry expert. The idea here is to provide a service for the community that, in turn, has a benefit to your website and brand.

You can also get published in local newspapers to help build brand awareness in the local community. This is a great tactic for credit repair businesses that rely so heavily on local clientele.

Going to a local newspaper to ask if you can publish an informative article may sound scary, but it’s very common, so don’t be afraid to ask. Building a relationship with your local newspaper can help establish your business as a part of the local community.

3. Use SEO to improve your website’s visibility in search engines

Credit repair search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing a website’s visibility on search engines like Google and Bing. It’s one of the best ways to drive organic traffic to your website—and, more importantly, convert web visitors into paying customers.

Considering an amazing 93% of global search traffic comes from Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps alone, according to data from Sparktoro, SEO has become an invaluable tool for businesses—especially credit repair businesses who can’t buy Google Ads.

Even if there weren’t advertising restrictions, SEO is still one of the best credit repair marketing ideas. There’s a reason why marketing spending on SEO in the United States alone is projected to reach almost $80 billion in 2020. It’s very effective.

Still, SEO can be extremely time-consuming and it doesn’t work overnight. It takes time to fully develop an SEO strategy based on thorough industry and keyword research.

In fact, according to Google, it can take anywhere from four months to a year to see the results of SEO, but Ahrefs studies have shown that SEO efforts can still be improving a website’s organic results years down the line.

If you’re looking to improve your online presence, here are a few SEO best practices to get you started:

• Produce unique, quality content for a human audience.
• Optimize title and header tags for SEO.
• Remember to include internal links and authoritative external links.
• Track your results with tools like Google Analytics.
• Improve site speed with Google Page Speed Insights.

4. Create and maintain a Google My Business profile for local SEO

Local SEO is the process of increasing a business’s visibility in local search results in Google and on Google Maps. And considering a whopping 46% of all Google queries are looking for local results, that’s pretty valuable.

For credit companies that get so much of their business from local clientele, local SEO is a must.

It all starts with a well maintained Google My Business (GMB) profile. GMB profiles allow businesses to be featured on Google Maps and in local results. Why is that so important?

When a potential client searches for credit repair companies near them, they’ll often search keywords like ‘credit repair companies + LOCATION TERM’ to find the best results that they can go to in person.

Plus, GMB profiles also allow your business to be featured in Google Maps. With proper local SEO efforts, you can reach the first page of results.

5. Use general and industry directories to draw in local clientele

One of the key tactics of local SEO, other than GMB profiles, is building citations. Citations are online references to a business that usually include a name, address, and phone number (NAP) and sometimes include a backlink, a map, or even business reviews. What are backlinks? They are inbound links from an external website back to yours.

Citations are a great way to build your brand awareness and authority, while also improving what is called domain authority. Domain authority has to do with the number of relevant, authoritative backlinks your website has: the more, the better in the eyes of Google. And directories are one of the best ways to get these links and put your business NAP out there as much as possible.

There are two types of directories. First, there are general directories like Bing Places for Business, Yelp, and the Better Business Bureau. These are spots where any business can land a citation and start building some prominence in the community.

Then there are industry-specific credit repair directories that only list credit repair companies. These directories are better for drawing in potential clients who may use these directories to sort through and find the best credit repair companies. For example, on creditrepairdirectory.org, you can land a citation next to thousands of other credit repair companies. However, these citations will usually cost you, while many general directories are free.

6. Start content marketing with a blog to improve your online presence

Improving your online presence is all about creating valuable, informative content, and then getting it in the hands of the right audience.

It all starts with content marketing (and the right website template). And even in 2020, the easiest and most effective form of content marketing is blogging.

Although video has taken over as the number one form of media content used in marketing, blogging has some distinct advantages.

1. It can be used more readily as a part of an SEO content strategy.
2. The barriers to entry are far lower. Video requires more software, more knowledge, and more time.
3. Blogging allows for more inbound links to your website.
4. Companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month according to data from DemandMetric.

This fact isn’t lost on the biggest credit repair companies in the industry. Just take a look at LexingtonLaw, for example. They maintain an active blog covering a variety of credit-related topics to draw in organic traffic.

What is Credit Repair Leads?

A credit repair lead includes the contact information of a consumer who has expressed interest in obtaining help to remove negative items from their credit report. Credit Repair companies need a specialist lead generation company to bring them a consistent flow of quality leads.

Credit Repair services can provide credit scores and credit report advice to clients. But, they should leave the digital marketing strategies to experts who specialize in credit repair lead services. Businesses can offer credit repair services to clients that have negative marks on their credit history. A credit repair lead generation company can provide these businesses with the leads they need.

A successful Credit Repair business requires a steady flow of new customers that is not reliant on “word of mouth”. Individuals with poor credit scores may be interested in a credit repair service that can help improve their credit scores. You need to generate exclusive leads, from people with negative credit marks. But, this is easier said than done; this is where lead generation companies can help.

Although word of mouth brings you some of the best quality leads it is not consistent enough to grow your business. If you want to bring new customers to your business, you need a strong online strategy for attracting Credit Repair leads. Or, you can find a company to generate credit repair leads for your business.

How do You Describe a Credit Repair Business?

Credit repair companies claim to be able to restore or improve your personal or business credit in exchange for a fee. Some may charge an upfront fee, while others may charge a monthly service fee.

Credit repair companies work to restore your business or personal credit by:

• Identifying and clarifying any inaccuracies and misunderstandings with CRAs
• Writing to creditors to dispute any erroneous negative marks on your credit    report
• Negotiating with creditors and debt collectors on your behalf
• Advice on the setting up of new accounts to add more positive data to your credit report.

A number of businesses claiming to do credit repair have sprung up over time, and while some may provide services that can assist consumers, the actual results of their efforts may be questioned. In some cases, credit repair may require legal as well as financial expertise. Depending on the extent of the problem, it may require simply cleaning up misunderstandings, while in other cases professional intervention is needed.

The fees a credit repair company charges can vary. Typically, there are two types of fees: an initial setup fee and a monthly service fee. The initial fee can range from $10 to $100, while the monthly fee typically runs between $30 and $150 a month, although some companies do charge more.

When considering the fees, it’s important to weigh what you’re getting in return. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), credit repair firms can’t legally do anything for you that you can’t do for yourself.

Read Also: How to Write Dispute Letters That Work

You just have to be willing to spend the time reviewing your credit reports for negative or inaccurate information, reaching out to the credit bureaus to dispute that information, and following up on those disputes to make sure they’re being investigated. If you’re unable or unwilling to spend that time, then do your research to ensure you’ll be working with one of the best credit repair companies.

How do I Start a Credit Service Business?

Good credit helps businesses and individuals to establish new loans and credit accounts, which allows these businesses or individuals to make purchases such as vehicles, real estate and equipment. If you have a background or experience working with business owners or individuals in a finance-related field, then opening your own credit repair business or credit collection agency may be a natural progression in your career path.

1. Write a business plan. Create a business plan that lists the details of the type of credit business you intend to open, whether it is a credit collection business or a credit repair business. The plan should describe the ideal customers for the business, business goals and objectives. Also included in the plan should be detailed on the marketing strategies you intend to use to attract and convert customers.

2. Name the credit business. Pick a name for the business that illustrates what type of credit business you intend to run. For example, a credit repair business name might be “Credit Repair for You,” while a credit collection agency may be called “ABC Collections Agency.”

3. Register the business with the state. Contact the office of the secretary of the state to submit the documentation you need to register with the state where the business will operate.

4. Contact the department of licensing. The city or county where the business is located also requires you to register the business locally. For a home-based credit business, you may also have to obtain a home office permit from the zoning department.

5. Identify your lead sources. A credit collection agency may make contact with businesses that offer credit accounts, such as a music company that sells CDs or a doctor’s office that has lists of patients who have not paid. A credit repair business may obtain leads from real estate agents or lenders that work with borrowers who need good credit in order to obtain a loan or mortgage.

6. Create letter templates. Whether you are running a collection agency or a credit repair business, create templates of the letters you will use to contact debtors for a debt owed, or the creditors you are negotiating with on behalf of a customer whose credit you are trying to repair.

Finally

You may be at the startup stage now but plan on becoming a leading, teaching authority. In order to do this, hashing out a business plan should be the first step. A well-thought-out business plan usually includes:

1. Finance and Business Structure
2. Basic Operations
3. Sales Strategies
4. Outreach Initiatives

The plan details how and why the owner is launching the company. It outlines all startup costs such as; software, inventory, and assets. Be specific about your business goals and detail exactly how you plan to make money and scale it. Measurement lets you know how close you are to your goal. Look at the key performance indicators (KPI) you will use to measure your success. This way you can see if you’re maintaining achievable goals and setting yourself up for a positive outcome.