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While oil prices and mortgage rates are up, financial institutions need to smartly harvest demand for new financial product acquisition and, now, more than ever, be precise in their efforts to attract qualified applicants. As we covered in our recent data trends report, persistently high oil prices will dent vehicle loan demand and consumer confidence, both directly and indirectly, opening up new opportunities for financial institutions. The future suggests, however, a new world order for conversion logic: with Google, we have “Search and Click," and with generative AI, we have “Chat and Decide.” So the real question here is, are you optimizing your marketing to show up first in ChatGPT? If you are looking to accelerate your financial institution's growth trajectory with strategic marketing decisions, you can’t afford to ignore this new channel.
What the Data Shows
Our intelligence solution provides visibility by instantly referencing 7+ billion online transactions across hundreds of financial institutions to pinpoint exactly what works to grow funded applications. The data shows that prospects from ChatGPT are 6 times more likely to convert into an approved application than those from organic Google Search. This is based on our first-party data from 1.2 million Q1 website visitors from 200 financial institutions over the last three months.
How to Maximize Generative AI Value
Here are ways to make sure that you are maximizing the value of this channel for your financial institution:
- Ensure you have an optimal position on ChatGPT for searches like “best car lender in [your geo].”
- Visit openai.com/advertisers? to sign up for early access.
- Demand that all your advertising be trackable, including ChatGPT.
This way, you can ensure you are evaluating the ROI of your advertising channels to optimize the allocation of dollars to OpenAI versus other channels.
Why does ChatGPT Perform Better?
Often, on Google, prospects are in a discovery phase that does not yet include readiness to pull the trigger and purchase a service. With ChatGPT, prospects engage in something called intent compression. They perform research, comparisons, and situational "what-if" analysis within the chat interface. By the time they click a direct link to a financial institution, they have already:
- Provided their specific financial criteria to the AI interface.
- Filtered out institutions that don't meet their needs.
- "Decided" that your institution is the best candidate for them.
This means that when they visit your site, they are ready to submit an application. Additionally, Google searches are usually short and generic. ChatGPT, however, is highly contextual and therefore users self-select based on their ability to qualify for an application on your financial institution's website. This can result in higher application approval rates than lead volume from clicks alone.
Finally, with ChatGPT, high-friction intermediaries, such as LendingTree and Bankrate, that redirect to the highest advertising bidder are removed, providing a direct path to your bank or credit union with less friction to reach the actual application. Additionally, research has shown that current users of LLMs for financial institutions are both early adopters, who are more comfortable with the digital application process, as well as high-intent researchers willing to chat back and forth with AI to get the perfect answer, and then are more committed to the resulting transaction than a user performing a quick, few-second Google search.
How can you make sure you are tracking all the data from ChatGPT?
At Alpharank, we integrate with 40+ financial institutions' LOS and deposit-opening systems and track each starting point before it enters the application, including integrating with ChatGPT. We can set you up for a free trial to track everything and show you how your ChatGPT searches are performing compared to your competitors with a free competitive analysis. It’s just one line of code that can get you the data in seconds, showing you exactly how many funded applications are coming in from ChatGPT today. We deliver over 50%+ growth for our clients. Reach out to get started!