Advertisements By Invoice Finance Companies Versus Crowdfunding Companies
Invoice finance (IF - factoring or invoice discounting) and crowdfunding are both alternative finance options for businesses looking to raise money. Although crowdfunding has only recently appeared on the funding scene since 1997, there has been huge growth in uptake and a surge in general awareness of the product. Conversely, awareness remains a significant issue within the IF sector although it was in use in the UK as far back as 1400. We wanted to understand the relative level of awareness of invoice finance versus crowdfunding.
Our advertising and promotion survey looked at a sample of existing invoice finance users and asked them about their levels of awareness of advertising of various financial products.
Research Sample Composition
Our sample was made up of 100 randomly selected respondents, all existing users of invoice finance, who were using a range of different providers - they were also from within a broad range of different industry sectors. We chose existing users as they were likely to be particularly sensitive to invoice finance-related adverts, perhaps more so than the general population of UK businesses. You might expect existing users of a product to have a higher advertising awareness level than others as they are familiar with the products and may also be targetted by alternative providers, trying to entice them to switch providers.
Invoice Finance vs. Crowdfunding Awareness
We asked our sample:
"Have you seen any advertising for [invoice finance/crowdfunding] over the last 12 months?".
The results were as follows:
- 14% had seen advertising for invoice finance (86% had not).
- 90% had seen advertising for crowdfunding (10% had not).
So, over 6 times more awareness of crowdfunding advertising was found among our sample of respondents. Also, bear in mind that these were all existing users of invoice finance, so they should have been more sensitive to advertising for a familiar product that they were already using. Previous research has found that the main form of IF advertising seen by existing users was "email" (84%). So my conclusion would be that much could be done to raise the level of advertising, and hence awareness, by the IF sector.
Source: FundInvoice IF & Crowdfunding Advertising and Promotion Survey - January 2016 (100 respondents, all existing invoice finance users of a variety of different invoice finance companies)
