Organic growth marketing. The good-for-you kind.

Video transcript: A Five-Year Partnership with Good Signals

In this five-year collaboration with Oakbrook, Claire Smith, Marketing Director at Oakbrook, speaks with Cemanthe McKenzie, an independent interviewer and videographer, to reflect on Oakbrook’s experience partnering with Good Signals – from brand growth and a smooth website migration to business resilience through change.

0:06 Cemanthe: Can you please confirm that you aren’t being held hostage or being bribed or forced to be here?

0:11 Claire: Definitely not. I’m here with my own free will.

Meet Claire Smith

0:14 Claire: I’m Claire, I am Head of Marketing for Oakbrook Finance.

0:18 Oakbrook is an unsecured personal loan provider that helps customers in the UK who can’t access mainstream finance from the likes of their bank or a big retail brand.

How Oakbrook describes Good Signals

0:31 Cemanthe: How would you describe Good Signals?

0:33 Claire: They’re not a typical agency that are kind of motivated by getting you to increase your spend every quarter, getting you to commit to more services, getting you to pay for more articles.

0:48 They’re about knowing what’s best for your business, and helping you achieve that.

0:55 It might be that, you know, you stick with one type of service for six years. It might be that actually, yeah, you know, you take on more services in the next six, twelve months.

1:05 But I think them being an extension of the business is absolutely where they are. And you can also see how kind of passionate they are about building relationships that are sustainable, you know, they won’t just take on clients for an additional revenue if they think it won’t work.

1:26 And I think that’s really important when, when selecting an agency.

1:31 Massively knowledgeable in terms of all things digital. But also willing to really get under the skin of whatever industry it is that they’re working with.

1:44 So, you know, financial services, for example, is extremely complex. It’s regulated, that comes with lots of challenges.

1:52 And at the start of when we started working together, you know, they put the time in to really understand it, really get under the skin of, not only the customer, but also the landscape and the regulatory environment.

2:08 So I’d say that’s a massive plus, you know, in terms of how knowledgeable they are of digital, but also how knowledgeable they can become about relevant industries.

2:19 And I just think the way that they work, how approachable they are, how willing they are to change as well, and to pivot and to explore different ways of working, different opportunities.

Rebranding and Website Migration

2:32 Cemanthe: So you moved from Likely Loans to Finio Loans –  a full rebrand and a website migration is a risky and stressful time., of course.

2:39 How did it go and how did Good Signals help with this?

2:44 Claire: Likely Loans was our primary brand. It had been our brand for the last eight years.

2:48 So obviously with that comes a degree of brand recognition and loyalty that we’ve built over time.

2:56 However, customer research had proved to us that, as well as kind of sense of anxiety when applying for a financial product. The Likely Loans brand was also given a sense of association with some brands that weren’t perceived that well in, in the public eye.

3:14 So, you know, we’ve probably seen in the news, certain brands were offering really high APRs, we’re asking customers to take on more borrowing all the time and the Likely Loans brand was often associated with those brands that wasn’t great from a new customer perspective but also, just wasn’t where we wanted to be and where we wanted customers to associate with.

3:38 So, we decided to rebrand to Finio Loans. And the main concern for us was all that kind of brand loyalty and awareness that we built with the name.

3:50 What if, when we migrate to the website, we lost all of that recognition and the traffic that came with it?

3:59 So, really early on in the process, we engaged the team at Good Signals and said, okay, here’s what we want to do, how do we best plan this migration? And how can you help support us through it?

4:14 The team came back with a really, really detailed plan, both in terms of kind of timelines, monitoring plans, to check, you know, that everything was going well or not, and also a really detailed rollback plan, so that if things did go badly, we could kind of stop, pause, revert, and then look at what we needed to change to make things right in future.

4:38 But actually we didn’t need the rollback plan because it went so well. You know, we, we didn’t lose any rankings at all or any website visibility and the actual migration itself, we were quite nervous about, we thought, Oh, you know, we’re going to be up till all hours in the morning, you know, kind of checking things.

4:58 But because of the steps that Good Signals had put in place, it was almost seamless.

5:05 And, you know, the feedback from the new brand was so, so well received from both customers, but also, partners that we work with as well.

5:15 So the aggregator sites that I mentioned earlier.

5:18 Cemanthe: Amazing.

5:19 So it sounds like it was an overall success.

5:22 Claire: Oh yeah, it was, it was brilliant.

5:23 You know, like I said, we, we didn’t lose any visibility, any visibility at all.

5:28 And actually, six months on, we’re probably now performing, probably 10 to 15 percent better in terms of traffic and conversion than we were for Likely Loans, which is amazing.

Support During COVID

5:41 Cemanthe: Did the COVID pandemic impact your industry and how did Good Signals support you through that?

5:49 Claire: Yes, massively.

5:51 So I think COVID was probably worse than the kind of financial crash in 2008, mainly because for lenders, we rely on information, like, is the customer employed? What’s their regular income? And we get that data from, kind of credit bureaus and it can be up to three months old.

6:16 Obviously, COVID changed that.

6:19 We didn’t know, if people were on furlough, if people being made redundant, you know, most of the industry actually paused lending because you just couldn’t make a decision on whether they could pay.

6:32 Whether someone was right to lend to or not.

6:34 So during that time, lenders and lending the market was stalled. And it was kind of like, what’s going to happen, you know?

6:46 Most of the marketing team at Oakbrook were on furlough.

6:50 And I remember the first call that I had with good signals, just after lockdown started.

6:59 They were so supportive. They were like, okay, what do we need to do? What can we do to support you? What do you need? Do we need to pivot? Do we need to do things differently?

7:11 And it was during that time that it was almost likesomebody else just there for support to go, okay, we’re not going to move forward on rankings, you know, this month.

7:23 We’re not going to do these campaigns that we have planned, but actually working on kind of the basics, getting things in order so that when we do start lending again, we’re kind of ready to hit the ground, the ground running.

7:36 And it was just so refreshing to work with an agency that weren’t, you know, just focused on commercial outcomes.

7:45 They were focused on business sustainability in the long run and also that human aspect as well.

7:52 Cemanthe: Hmm, very important over that period of time when when we all needed a friend.

7:56 Claire: Yeah, absolutely. Cemanthe: Yeah, especially in certain industries.

Would You Recommend Good Signals?

8:00 Would you recommend Good Signals to a friend or a colleague?

8:03 Claire: Yes, absolutely.

8:04 So, you know, my role at Oakbrook is probably one of the most external roles within the business.

8:13 So I work with with other lenders.

8:15 We have good relationships with those we work closely with, aggregated partners – and most of the people I speak to, if they are looking to elevate their digital marketing in any way, I’ve already recommended Good Signals to them.

8:33 And also not just them.

8:34 But people outside of the industry, you know, I know that Good Signals have experience across a range of different verticals, and yeah, I have no hesitation recommending them at all.

8:46 Cemanthe: That’s amazing. Thank you.