The Bancorp

Financial Services
Media Relations, Executive Thought Leadership

81

Pieces of earned media coverage
over 18 months

60M

Earned media impressions

Working Hand-in-Hand with Small Businesses

The Bancorp is well established in the payments industry, and their Commercial Lending businesses have always provided best-in-class service and solutions to clients, no matter their need.  

The marketplace for small business lending, however, is incredibly competitive. A simple online search for “small business loans” only hints at the crowd of competitors angling for The Bancorp’s market share. At the same time, small business owners have more online resources than ever before telling them how to grow and improve their business. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to owning a small business – or what investments are needed to drive a successful venture, from start-up costs to real estate needs, to fleet vehicles and equipment leasing, and more. 

In early 2019, The Bancorp’s Commercial Lending business entered a new era with an innovative commercial offering – combining small business lending and commercial fleet leasing into one business – to meet clients’ unique, and often overlapping, business needs. This integration presented an opportunity to cut through the noise and drive awareness of the brand.

Lending a Voice

Our media relations program was developed to raise the profile of both the brand and its experts through strategic, consistent and sustained outreach to national and trade press, complementing media interviews with byline opportunities and blog content generation. We created stories rooted in current events and marketplace issues – including the chip and supply shortages, electric vehicles, disaster lending opportunities, and beyond – that had yet to be told and offered out-of-the-box points of view.  

With a primary focus on trade publications within verticals identified as organizational priorities, Red Thread PR secured small business lending and commercial fleet leasing coverage in outlets such as MonitorDaily, Multi-Housing News, Government Fleet Magazine, Customer Think, and more. Beyond trade publications, we extended the reach of The Bancorp nationally by securing coverage in top-tier outlets like The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report and Fox Business.   

Taking Results to the Bank

The program successfully propelled the profile of The Bancorp Commercial Lending division and its subject matter experts. Over the course of 18 months, we secured 81 placements and nearly 60 million earned media impressions in a variety of publications that reached key audiences, including business decisions makers and peers. Beyond the quantitative results, we also excelled in qualitative results in which 95% of coverage featured an expert from The Bancorp and 69% included the bank in the headline or first paragraph of the article.