Achieving sustained success in the mortgage brokerage industry requires a diverse marketing strategy. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done. After all, digital marketing is a constantly evolving, complex field.
With this in mind, the team at BNTouch has outlined several digital marketing tips for mortgage brokers. These tactics can help you generate more leads, stay connected with clients, and grow your business. Plus, your loan officers will have an abundance of quality prospects to target with their marketing efforts!
Read on to find out how you can revitalize your digital marketing efforts in 2021.
Identify Your Ideal Audience
Whether you are a relatively new loan officer or have been involved in the industry for years, the first step to digital marketing is to identify your ideal audience.
Even if you think you know who you should be targeting, reassess your current practices. As your organization grows, your ideal customer base may change as well.
A great way to ensure that you focus your energies on the right clients is to create “customer personas.”
These personas list out characteristics that you would like to find in a quality lead. You can also create personas for buyers who aren’t quite ready to purchase and low-quality leads. After you create these templates, your loan officers can easily sort through prospects and identify quality leads.
Guest Post and Acquire Backlinks
Guest posting is the practice of submitting blog content to other companies to publish it on their sites. Focus on companies related to the mortgage industry, including lenders, real estate agents, and title agencies. A great place to start is the companies that you already work with daily.
As you’re crafting these guest posts, make sure to include links to your page. Discuss the type and quantity of links with the host ahead of time to prevent unforeseen disagreements.
Links from another site to your page are known as backlinks. Google uses these types of links in the ranking process. Having high-quality backlinks can help your site reach page one of the search results.
Leverage Various Types of Media
As a mortgage broker, you have to make effective use of various types of media. While optimized blog content is a core part of any digital marketing strategy, it will not generate enough quality leads on its own. You must also incorporate videos and images into your digital marketing campaigns.
Videos are particularly appealing to modern consumers. You do not need to flood your website with videos or reach a million YouTube followers for this strategy to work. A few carefully placed pieces of media content go a long way.
For instance, placing a video on your “About Us” page makes your team seem more personable, which can draw in quality leads.
Create a Captivating Website
If you don’t have a website, creating one should be a top priority. Every mortgage broker needs their site if they hope to be competitive in the modern marketplace.
While you may still receive your fair share of phone calls, many consumers search for mortgage services online. If you don’t have a website, a high number of leads will immediately move on to the next loan officer — one who does show up online.
Even if you have a website, it is important to review it from time to time. You should access it from your smartphone to ensure that it is optimized for mobile, too. If it is not, reach out to a web development firm to remedy the issue immediately. A large percentage of consumers browse the web primarily from their smartphones.
If your website is not attractive and engaging or fails to work well on mobile devices, you’ll drastically limit your reach. Revitalizing your online presence starts and ends with a great site.
Engage on Social Media
In addition to a website, social media pages are must-have marketing tools that every mortgage broker should be using.
Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer a ton of free advertising opportunities. Once your platforms are live, begin to post quality content regularly. Your content might include success stories, links to recent blogs, and other materials that will encourage consumers to visit your site.
We recommend focusing your energy on a couple of social media platforms. Create accounts on the platforms that are most popular with your target audience. As previously mentioned, identifying your ideal audience is an essential first step to rejuvenating your digital marketing strategy!
Start an Email Marketing Strategy
In the mortgage industry, email marketing is an incredibly useful tactic. Sending past clients periodic emails to celebrate birthdays or notify them about refinancing opportunities can pay off over time.
These messages will keep your company at the forefront of customers’ minds when it comes time to buy another home or refinance. If possible, offer them the opportunity to work with the same loan officer, too.
Email marketing can also be used to turn prospects into qualified leads. When your team receives information about a prospective client via a contact card or phone call, add their emails to your list.
Sending relevant email communications that are concise and engaging can draw customers deeper into the sales funnel. This allows your loan officers to close the deal.
When you have a top-quality mortgage CRM, it’s easy to send out effective marketing via email. Add dates and tags to buyers so that you’ll never forget to celebrate the anniversary of their home purchase. Then, your system can send out custom messages when the dates arrive!
Retarget Quality Prospects
Retargeting is the practice of directing specific advertisements at users that have previously visited your site. This strategy is very effective because most clients do not select a mortgage broker after a single visit to their website!
Clients that have provided you with contact information clicked through multiple pages on your website, or interacted with your content are prime candidates for retargeting.
You can set up your retargeting campaign through Google Ads. If you aren’t familiar with the platform, the best mortgage CRMs often offer tools designed to make it easy to create new campaigns with popular platforms.
Obtain and Highlight Client Reviews
Consumers are wary about advertising content. However, they are much more receptive to information provided by other consumers. This concept holds true in the mortgage industry as well.
Encourage your clients to review your business online. The more positive reviews you have, the better.
Reach out to past clients and politely encourage them to leave you a review through a survey or Google. You can easily do this with a CRM that sends out automated requests about a month after a loan is closed.
Once you have accumulated several positive reviews, highlight this customer feedback on your website or share some success stories in an email marketing campaign.
You can also use this feedback to improve your customer service. These reviews can help you identify what your loan officers are doing well and what they need to be doing better.
Network
The mortgage industry is founded on relationships. You have to work with buyers, realtors, title agencies, and other industry professionals to close a loan. Instead of simply using these relationships to close mortgages, leverage them to market your services.
Partner with experts in the mortgage industry. Devise a mutually beneficial agreement that will help you generate leads while also helping their businesses.
If you are a new loan officer, consider working with a more experienced broker. They may be able to help you develop your lead generation skills and teach you how to better serve your customers.
Work with Influencers
Much like generating organic traffic, building a social media following can be extremely time-consuming. If you want to reach a large audience fast, consider partnering with social media influencers. These individuals are social media personalities that have thousands or tens of thousands of followers.
An influencer can help to market your services on their social media page. This relationship gives you access to their massive audience. In exchange, influencers receive payment, free services, or both.
As you’re searching for an influencer, don’t focus entirely on the size of their following. Instead, make sure that the influencers you work with are a good fit for your mortgage brokerage.
Take Advantage of Mortgage CRM Technology
Implementing these tactics can help you massively increase your lead generation capabilities. But you still need to track and distribute your leads effectively.
So what’s the best way to do it? Use an innovative mortgage CRM, like the BNTouch platform.
Our versatile software includes a full suite of tools. With it, you will be able to automatically distribute leads, track team performance, and analyze key metrics. You will also be able to automate marketing strategies so that you can focus on serving your clients.
BNTouch offers scalable solutions for mortgage brokerages of all sizes. Whether you are an independent loan officer or manage an entire mortgage enterprise, our platform can accommodate your needs.
Contact us today for a free demo and see our technology firsthand!
