Step One Finance
Responsibilities
PPC || SEO
The Client
Step One Finance is a specialist UK consumer lender based in Woking, Surrey, offering both secured second charge mortgages of up to £500,000 and unsecured personal loans from £1,000 to £10,000. Established in 2010 and regulated by the FCA, the business has completed over £200 million in loans, built on core principles of transparency, fairness, and responsible lending. Step One operates across a broad range of customer circumstances, serving homeowners seeking debt consolidation, home improvements, or large purchases through its experienced underwriting team.
Step One Finance engaged Digiconomy to scale direct-to-consumer acquisition through search, generating a consistent flow of qualified loan applications while maintaining the strict cost efficiency required in specialist lending.
We delivered a focused acquisition strategy combining Google PPC and SEO. Within 12 months, this approach produced a 180% increase in attributable revenue alongside a 55% reduction in acquisition costs, delivering an exceptional 20x return on investment.
To ensure every optimisation decision was grounded in real outcomes, we built attribution that tracked from initial search click through to completed, funded loan, giving the team clear visibility of which activity was driving genuine commercial value.
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Increase in Revenue
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Cost Optimisation
ROI
The
Objectives
Drive Direct Application Volume
Reduce reliance on broker-introduced business by building a scalable direct-to-consumer acquisition channel through paid and organic search.
Ensure growth was measured against funded loan completions rather than enquiry volume, maintaining alignment between marketing performance and underwriting capacity.
Maximise Return on Marketing Investment
Achieve significant revenue growth while simultaneously bringing down the cost of acquisition, proving that scale and efficiency could be delivered together rather than traded off against each other.
Establish a tracking and reporting framework that gave the leadership team confidence in exactly where marketing spend was generating returns.
The Strategy
A high-efficiency search strategy designed to capture qualified borrowers across both secured and unsecured products, drive direct applications at scale, and deliver exceptional cost performance in a competitive specialist lending market.
Product-Led Campaign Architecture
Structure campaigns around Step One’s distinct product lines, separating secured second charge mortgage traffic from unsecured personal loan demand to ensure targeting, messaging, and bid strategies reflected the different borrower profiles and values involved.
Cost-Per-Funded-Loan Optimisation
Move optimisation upstream by tying bid decisions to funded loan data rather than front-end enquiry metrics, systematically eliminating wasteful spend and concentrating budget on the keywords and audiences that converted through to completion.
Organic Authority Building
Develop search visibility for specialist lending terms across both product categories, creating a sustainable source of qualified applications that reduced overall acquisition costs and supported long-term growth beyond paid media.
The Campaign
Google PPC was structured around Step One’s two core product lines, with dedicated campaigns for second charge mortgages and unsecured personal loans targeting distinct borrower audiences. Bid strategies were aligned to funded loan revenue, enabling rapid reallocation of budget toward the highest-performing keywords.
SEO built organic visibility across specialist lending terms, from homeowner loans and debt consolidation through to personal loan queries, establishing authority in a niche where trust and credibility are critical. Closed-loop attribution connected every click to a funded outcome, driving the 55% reduction in acquisition costs.
Free Site & Market Audit
We will analyse your website against the performance of the main competitors in your niche, providing you with a breakdown of the changes we’d recommend along with examples of the traffic potential for your business.