Marketing strategies should be used by everyone – including those in the mortgage industry. As a mortgage broker, you rely on marketing for most of your work to reach potential customers.
For professionals trying to gain leads, increase sales, or build relationships, marketing materials are used every single day to do so.
Ineffective marketing can have a strong influence on your overall business health, so taking advantage of digital marketing strategies can help keep your business strong.
Digital Marketing Strategy For Your Mortgage Business: 8 Marketing Strategies
As the economy experiences many ups and downs, it's important that a mortgage broker reacts appropriately and is prepared to work with clients when things are more volatile. This is where strong mortgage marketing ideas and techniques can really play an important role.
If you're a mortgage broker struggling with your marketing tactics or unsure where to start, here is your guide to mortgage broker marketing strategies and marketing tips that can help boost your business and gain more leads.
Identify Your Niche and Your Audience
One of the first and most important steps you should take when creating any strategy is to identify your niche and audience. For real estate agents, loan officers, and mortgage brokers, the general audience will include prospective clients looking to buy a house or property.
Understanding your audience will push you in the right direction when creating a marketing strategy. If your target audience is specifically first-time homebuyers, you won't want to create your marketing materials that are aimed towards high schoolers or retirees.
Similarly, you will want to find a niche – or "a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service" – that best suits your brokerage. Your niche may be a bit more general as you can work with a variety of clients looking to take out a mortgage. However, you can choose to focus on first-time home buyers or people looking to purchase a secondary property.
To determine a niche, you can look at the demographics in your general location. Do you operate in a neighbourhood full of young families? Are you located in a big city or a small town? What is the average home price in your city?
All of these questions can help you narrow down "all home buyers" to something a bit more specific.
Network
The mortgage industry thrives off referrals and people knowing your name. The same often goes for other types of loan officers and real estate agents. So, one of the best mortgage marketing strategies is to network. Networking is to "interact with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts." Oftentimes, people network to meet other professionals in the industry or to build a collection of vendors.
For loan officers, not only will you want other professionals in your industry, but you will also want to meet people who may need a mortgage in the future and can increase your mortgage leads. One of the best ways to reach potential clients is through networking. As a business owner, you can use marketing materials like business cards to reach new people.
Visiting open houses, attending conferences and networking events, and chatting with people you see in your everyday life can lead to more clients and more business. Additionally, you may consider partnering with other businesses and having them refer their clients to you.
For example, you may have a close partnership with a realtor who will recommend your mortgage brokerage to their clients who have just closed a deal on a house.
Build Professional and Local Relationships
Another aspect of networking and mortgage marketing that we've just touched on is building professional and local relationships. As a mortgage loan officer, you can benefit from creating and sustaining relationships with professionals in your area. Whether you want to connect with other mortgage brokers, real estate agents, banks, or home inspectors, these relationships can benefit your business.
In general, you want to treat these connections as a kind of symbiotic relationship. You help them and they help you. For example, a real estate agent has just referred their client to your brokerage. You can then refer them to a home inspector or refer other clients to that realtor.
This is a kind of "word of mouth" marketing tactic that can be implemented as a loan officer to help with lead generation.
Improve Your Social Media Presences
Social media can sometimes act as the biggest asset to a company's digital marketing strategy. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok have quickly become major assets to professionals and can aid small businesses and major corporations alike. Instagram and Facebook advertising is probably the biggest avenues for website visitors and potential clients as there are tools available to businesses that can help you target your audience more effectively.
Along with lead generation, social media can be used as a way to build relationships with your followers. As a mortgage broker, you might use social media to share helpful content and information about the mortgage process. You might also share stories about a home buyer you have worked with in the past. Social media provides a lot of room for creativity. There are many different ways to use these platforms to grow your business online and accomplish your marketing goals.
Use Email Marketing Effectively
Another component of both content marketing and your digital marketing strategy is email marketing. Email marketing has replaced a lot of direct mail and an effective email marketing campaign can often reach new clients by landing right in their inboxes.
Building an email list is a major component for many businesses as it allows them access to your mailbox and can increase their lead generation. For some, marketing emails are genuinely helpful and act as a sort of newsletter that provides information to their readers. Others use emails to promote sales, products, and other campaigns.
Additionally, many websites try to bring back past visitors with targeted ads and emails. Companies that sell products have also been known to send people emails who have "abandoned" their shopping cart without purchasing anything.
As a mortgage broker, you might consider using email to not only sustain relationships with past clients but also reach potential home buyers. Through networking and social media, you can build an email list that can be used for mortgage lead generation.
Generate Leads With Client Reviews
Generating qualified leads is huge for your brokerage. Not only can this lead to more loans, but it can also help you build your network. One way you can generate more mortgage leads is through positive reviews from past clients.
Consumers love to be validated before purchasing a product or booking a service. Positive reviews solidify that a business is reputable and qualified to do good work.
As a loan officer, you should encourage your current clients to leave a good review of the service provided on your website or on Google. Not only will these reviews help with your brand image, but Google has been known to push websites and businesses that have good reviews.
Forbes notes that "If Google sees that you have good reviews, your website will be ranked higher in search engine results because Google can see you are popular and offer customers a good experience. As a result, good reviews improve your relevance. Google’s algorithm is dedicated to giving searchers the most relevant results, so having good reviews will improve your ranking."
Maximize Your SEO
Along with great customer reviews, your search engine optimization (SEO) can have a strong impact on your Google analytics and ranking.
SEO is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website or landing page by ensuring that the site ranks high on the list of search results returned by various search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Maximizing your SEO can be done through optimized Google ads, PPC ads, landing pages, and other pieces of content.
An optimized page is more likely to bring in a prospective client than one that is not. Most websites seek to optimize as much as they can in order to bring as many new visitors as possible. If you need help with your SEO, we recommend Merged Media who have extensive experience with real estate professionals.
Host Events For Current and Potential Customers
As we move back to hosting in-person events, you should take advantage of the opportunities that come with hosting events for your network. While attending open houses is one way to grow your network, hosting your own events can take things to the next step.
If you're a mortgage broker, it makes sense to host an information night on topics like buying your first house, mortgage interest rates, or managing loan. These types of informative events can be a way to reach your target marketand bring in other consumers.
As well, the audience is receiving information from the go-to source for mortgage information. You may also host a client appreciation event where you can celebrate and thank the people who have worked with you over the years. Appreciating your client base can help you boost the relationships you already have while increasing the possibility of referrals from previous customers.
Create Goals and Conduct Regular Reviews
Finally, you will need to constantly create new goals and evaluate your marketing efforts. Setting goals that are S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) can help you stay on track as your implement your campaign.
Additionally, as you achieve your goals, you will have to set new ones. This will allow you to continue to grow your brokerage and reach your target audience. Along with goal setting, you should evaluate and review your efforts. If there's a strategy that isn't working or you're not reaching your target market, these need to be reviewed and edited.
As well, regular reviews can help you understand ways in which you are succeeding. You may not be focusing a lot of energy or time on your website visits, but if they are garnering a lot of traffic, a review can help you understand why this is happening and how to take advantage of it.
In Summary
These marketing tactics and strategies can help you grow your business and help with generating more leads. It's important to plan strategically and set goals that align with your company so that your marketing efforts are cohesive.
