47% Haven't Seen Any Invoice Finance UK Advertising Or Adverts
Our survey of invoice finance UK based users found that 47% said that they had not seen any advertising or adverts, from invoice finance companies, over the course of the last year. This group is of interest as they are already using factoring or invoice discounting and so are likely to be alert to advertising, more than businesses that are not already using such products.
See also our research about finding invoice finance online.
Invoice Finance Users Versus Non Users
Another study, back in 2011, of non-users found that 80% said they had not seen any advertising from invoice financiers in the last 12 months. The difference could either be that advertising has increased or that non-users are less aware of adverts for these products than users. Either way, there are still a lot of businesses that are clearly not seeing any advertising for these services, which cannot help tackle the widespread issues of lack of awareness and understanding.
Methods Of Advertising
Going back to our recent survey, 53% of existing users that said that they had seen adverts, in the last year, were then asked about the method of advertising and the name of the invoice finance company. The methods that they described were as follows:
- 84% - Email
- 5% - Television
- 4% - Online
- 4% - Radio
- 2% - Post
- 2% - Not specific
This shows a predominance of email marketing, which is very direct, i.e., it targets a single user rather than many. The usage of general, awareness-raising advertising, such as TV ads, was low in our study.
Invoice Finance Companies Advertising
We also asked the name of the factoring or invoice discounting companies that they had seen adverts from. 34 of the respondents (that's 64% of those that had seen advertising) were able to name who they had seen promoting these services. The following list of invoice finance companies was mentioned specifically - the percentages are of total responses:
- 51% - Several different companies
- 19% - Hitachi Capital Invoice Finance
- 14% - Lloyds Bank Commercial Finance
- 11% - Bibby Financial Services
- 3% - HSBC Invoice Finance
- 3% - ABN AMRO Commercial Finance
Good to see that these companies are clearly active in promoting the industry.
Source: Invoice Finance Recommendation & Advertising Survey May 2015 (100 respondents - all existing users - some may have given multiple answers to questions) and UK Factoring & Invoice Discounting Market Research Summary – Part 1 16th March 2011
