Case Study
Calculator-Led in a Paid-Only Category.Investor Borrower Acquisition
A DSCR lender serving real estate investors was acquiring borrowers almost entirely through paid channels in a category where the largest competitors do the same. We built the organic flywheel that breaks that pattern.
- Industry
- DSCR Investor Mortgage Lending
- Engagement
- Calculator + State Programmatic SEO
- Timeline
- 12 months
- Status
- Anonymized
01 / Challenge
DSCR (debt-service-coverage-ratio) lending is a wholesale-style product in retail clothing. The lender's competitors were all spending heavily on paid acquisition because the organic surface seemed too narrow to bother with. But the buyer (real estate investor) is also a sophisticated researcher, exactly the audience for a calculator-led organic funnel.
02 / Approach
We built a DSCR qualification calculator as the conversion event, surrounded by state-level programmatic pages with state-specific DSCR product information (rates, qualifying criteria, common scenarios), and an investor-targeted editorial layer explaining DSCR products in the language investors actually use. Schema, internal linking, and CRO tied the funnel together.
- Calculator-as-CRO
- Programmatic State Pages
- Financial Schema
- Investor-Targeted Content
- Funnel Optimization
03 / Results
Within twelve months, blended cost per funded loan dropped 43%, with the organic channel supplying the marginal volume. The calculator became the highest-intent lead source in the business. The state-level pages now rank for DSCR queries the competition still hasn't built pages for.
- −43% blended cost per funded loan vs. paid-only baseline
- 50 state-level pages ranking for DSCR product queries
- ~32,000 calculator submissions in year 1
- $840M+ indicative loan volume sourced through the organic channel
- Organic channel now structurally underprices paid for marginal volume
“The competition is still spending the same dollars on paid we used to. We're spending those dollars on margin.”VP Marketing, DSCR Lending Firm