Why Mortgage Lenders Use Bankrate

You can put weeks of work and thousands of dollars into make your own advertising platforms — like your website and your social media pages — as effective as possible. Still, though, their reach will likely be limited. Most mortgage lending institutions aren’t getting millions of site visitors per month.

There is a way to get millions of eyes on your brand, though. If you advertise with Bankrate, you tap into a sizable audience. Sharing your rates on their rate tables puts you in front of a massive group. What’s more, all of them are interested in exploring mortgage options. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be using their free time on Bankrate’s personal finance education platform. 

Bankrate rate table advertising

When mortgage lenders choose to advertise with Bankrate, they tap into a huge audience. Specifically, Bankrate can boast:

• 4 million monthly average mortgage page views
• 3 million monthly average mortgage users
• 25 million monthly average page views across the Bankrate website

To get in front of all of those individuals, mortgage lenders can sign up for the site’s advertising platform. Through a relatively easy-to-use interface, you gain the ability to create campaigns and set a cap on how much you want to spend. 

Perhaps most importantly, that advertising platform includes a reporting feature, allowing you to see how your campaigns are performing. This way, you can allocate your ad dollars where they’re most likely to be effective.

Most mortgage lenders use Bankrate’s rate table advertising. With this option, you can display your company’s logo and its rates on the tables Bankrate provides for rate comparison. If you primarily operate in North Carolina, for example, you might get on Bankrate’s rate tables for purchase loans and refinances in the Tar Heel State. 

Within that platform, mortgage lenders have the opportunity to enter up to 35 different loan scenarios based on credit score range and loan-to-value ratios. Leveraging that allows you to provide more tailored information from Bankrate’s rate tables. This way, the leads you generate fit into your ideal borrower profile.

The advertising platform is powered by Bankrate’s Smart Pricing algorithm. That means that the data you share allows the company to optimize how your ads perform. 

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Bankrate’s pricing structure

When you opt to advertise on Bankrate’s rate tables, you don’t just spend ad dollars and hope for the best. Instead, you only pay when you get action from an interested consumer. Specifically, Bankrate offers all of the following advertising structures:

• Cost per click
• Cost per lead
• Cost per call

The higher the level of engagement, the more you’ll pay. You’ll pay more per call than per click, for example. 

As a mortgage advertiser, you’re in the fortunate position to only pay when a lead provides their contact information. (If you offer home equity products, you’ll pay when a consumer clicks on your company.) 

That doesn’t mean your ad spend could get out of control if you get a lot of interest, either. Bankrate gives mortgage lenders several ways to cap the amount of money they’re spending. You can set your budget to any of the following:

• Open, meaning there’s no cap and you’ll pay for any clicks or leads, up until to your account funds are fully spent
• Daily, which caps your spend at a certain dollar amount each day and resets the next day at 8 a.m. ET 
• Weekly, which caps your spend at a certain dollar amount each day of the week, allowing you to tailor lead volume to your staffing availability on each day

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The drawback with Bankrate: price

While Bankrate offers a lot of benefits for mortgage lenders — from advertising that gets optimized by the company’s Smart Pricing algorithm to ad spend that directly translates into activity — it comes at a literal cost. 

Bankrate is one of the most expensive rate table advertising options on the market today. It’s not uncommon to pay $150–$200 per lead. 

Tips for getting the most out of Bankrate

Before you invest in Bankrate’s advertising platform, make sure your company has the bandwidth to handle these things. Doing so will help you make the most of your ad spend:

Get your logo right

First things first, if you’re going to pay to advertise on Bankrate, you need to make sure your lending institution looks reputable on the site. That means submitting a company logo that meets Bankrate’s specifications. Your logo should be:

• Formatted as a graphics interchange format (GIF) file
• 125 pixels wide by 45 pixels high
• On a transparent background with no border

You also need to make sure any registration marks are featured in the file. Bankrate won’t add your ™ or ® for you — they need to be in the logo. 

Finally, make sure that if you include a tagline in the photo, it’s an official corporate one. 

Regularly update your rates

Bankrate updates the rates on its site eight times a day Monday through Friday. When potential borrowers are evaluating rates on this site, they expect them to be current. That’s why Bankrate says rates are stale after seven days.

At least once a week — and ideally more frequently — make sure someone from your team can log into the advertising platform and update your rates. 

Make sure your team is responsive

With a three-figure price tag on each lead, you certainly don’t want them to go to waste. Develop a process for acting on leads as soon as they come through Bankrate. A quick outreach from your team helps to land the lead while they’re warmed up from engaging with Bankrate’s mortgage information.

Getting started with Bankrate

If you want to explore using Bankrate’s mortgage lender advertiser platform, you can complete the form on the bottom of the site’s media kit page. Once you provide your contact info, one of their sales reps will get in touch. 

If you’re not quite ready to pull the trigger there, you can also reach out to our team. We have extensive experience working with lenders who use Bankrate so we can give you an idea of what works — and how to use this advertising opportunity to your greatest advantage. 

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