Marketers can’t argue the effectiveness of social marketing or the need to cultivate a social presence to connect with their audience. The struggle is keeping pace with the constant changes of the social landscape and its relation to your brand’s health. This is more important than ever in light of the past 22 months of the pandemic.

Join experts from NetBase Quid as they share insights from their State of Social 2022 report, including the biggest trends in social media that are shifting brand priorities and where the golden opportunities are for brands to connect meaningfully with targeted audiences.

Register today for “The Ultimate Social Media Guide to Building Your Brand in 2022,” presented by NetBase Quid.

The post The ultimate social media guide to building your brand in 2022 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

While you likely have your sights firmly set on the coming year, it is important to take a moment to reflect on 2021. By reviewing your victories and shortcomings, you and your team of mortgage brokers can make meaningful improvements as you head into 2022. 

Some loan officers may not be sure which metrics they should review. With that in mind, we’ve created this guide to 12 of the most relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) to check to guide your 2022 business strategy.

1.   Average Cycle Time

The average cycle time is one of the most basic metrics that a mortgage broker should monitor. This KPI can help you to assess the overall efficiency of your teams. 

The average cycle time is easy to calculate. Simply divide your total number of days it took for loans to move from application to funding by the number of loans that you processed during that same time period. 

As you start to introduce changes to your processing, your goal should be to reduce your average cycle time.

Excessive cycle times can impact the buyer experience, which can ultimately hurt your brand’s reputation. High cycle times are often associated with fallouts and loan abandonments.

 2.   Pull-Through Rate

The pull-through rate is another KPI that relates to efficiency. In order to calculate your pull-through rate, you’ll need to divide your total number of funded loans by the number of applications that you submitted during the same period.

For instance, let’s say that you are calculating the pull-through rate for a 90-day period. During that time, you submitted 100 applications and funded 50 loans. This means that your pull-through rate was 50%.

While the pull-through rate can not be used to identify the source of a problem, it can let you know if your current processes are inefficient. Make sure that your pull-through rate is steady before you bring in new mortgage brokers or try to scale your business.

 3.   Loan Abandonment Rate

The loan abandonment rate is one of the best ways to measure the effectiveness of your mortgage processing teams.  As the name suggests, abandonment occurs when a borrower stops moving forward with a loan after you have submitted and approved the application.

There are several factors that can cause you to have an unusually high loan abandonment rate. But a lack of communication between a mortgage broker and the client is usually the prime culprit. Borrowers may also abandon a loan if the review process becomes excessive.

4.   Average Value of Mortgages

The average value of mortgages can be used to assess your firm’s profitability. A $250,000 and a $450,000 conventional loan will require about the same amount of work for one of your mortgage brokers. However, the larger loan will generate much more revenue.

Ideally, you want a large percentage of your funded loans to be at or near the conforming limit. If most of your loans are nowhere near this limit, then you will probably have profit margins. Over time, this lack of profit can hinder your ability to scale your brokerage. 

Review the average value of mortgages funded for the previous year. This is especially important if you hope to grow your business in 2022.

5.   Approval Rate

Walking a prospective buyer through the application process can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. All of this hard work is worthwhile when an application turns into a fully funded loan. But a low approval rate can crush staff morale and kill your profit margins. 

By tracking and reviewing your brokerage’s approval rate, you can quickly identify issues in the document collection and application review processes. You can then take steps to resolve these obstacles in order to increase your approval rate. 

6.   Cost Per Unit

If you aren’t satisfied with your net revenue at year’s end, then it may be time to reassess your cost per unit originated. This metric can reveal how much it costs you to process a loan application and obtain funding. An unusually high cost per unit can significantly reduce your profits. 

Several factors can drive up your cost per unit, including a poor hiring plan. If you hire new staff members too early, then your current loans will not be able to adequately offset their salary.

On the other hand, waiting too long to bring in additional employees can cause lags in your cycle time. That is why you must make sure that your overhead expenses are in line with the projected performance of your business. 

7.   Length of Cycle Stage

While the average cycle time determines how long loans spend in each stage of the funnel, this metric allows you to zoom in on a specific stage. If one of your mortgage brokers has an especially high average cycle time, then you can use the cycle stage length metric to gain additional insights. 

For instance, let’s say that you were concerned that a loan officer was taking more time than usual as they processed an application or started to collect documents. You would divide the number of days that each of their loans spent in this stage by the total number of mortgages that were funded in that same period. 

You can repeat this process with each stage until you identify the source of the problem. 

8.   Customer Acquisition Costs

The customer acquisition cost (CAC) is an essential metric for all businesses, not just for those who serve the mortgage industry. This KPI allows you to determine how much it costs your company to acquire a single customer. 

As you’re calculating CAC, make sure that you include costs for advertising and conducting research! 

9.   Number of Conditions Per Loan

As a loan officer, one of your chief concerns should be to provide clients with a streamlined customer experience (CX). One factor that directly impacts the CX is the number of conditions per loan. Over the last few years, the average number of conditions per loan has been on the rise. 

Unfortunately, this can have negative consequences for your business. The more conditions that a loan has, the longer it takes to process. If the funding process starts to get too long and tedious, a borrower may abandon their application. 

To overcome this trend, think about using digital processing software. This kind of software includes tools that can help your mortgage brokers quickly and easily collect documents and process loans. This will lead to a more enjoyable experience for your clients.

10. Profits Per Loan

While the CAC and cost per unit originated metrics can yield some information about your profitability, these KPIs do not provide a full picture of your business. That’s why it’s a good idea to analyze your profits per loan, too.

In order to calculate profits per loan, subtract your total business revenue from total expenses. Next, divide this figure by the number of loans that you funded during the same period. 

Your profits per loan may be low if you have a high cost per unit or CAC. Low average loan values are another factor that can create low profits per loan.

11. Fallout Rate

The fallout rate refers to how many applications were not closed within the “rate lock” period. A poor fallout rate can be a sign that your loan officers are struggling to get loans processed on time.

If some of your mortgage brokers are experiencing high fallout rates, then you may want to address the issue at a company-wide training. Another solution is to rework the way you collect documents or process loans. 

12. Incomplete Application Rate

The abandonment rate tells you how many loans were not funded after they were approved. The incomplete application rate is used to track the percentage of files that were closed because they didn’t have enough information for processing. 

A high incomplete application rate can tell you that your loan officers are targeting consumers too early in their “buyer journey.” 

Inadequate communication during the mortgage processing stage can also be a factor. If your team is not keeping applicants in the loop throughout the entire loan process, then you will likely receive many incomplete applications.

To improve profitability and provide buyers with a good lending experience, it is vital to keep your incomplete application rate as low as possible.

Access Innovative Reporting Tools with BNTouch

If your current reporting tools just aren’t getting the job done, it might be time to make a change. When you want to streamline communication between your clients and loan officers and track trends in your business, BNTouch can help.

We have an innovative mortgage CRM solution that is perfect for individual loan officers, teams of brokers, or enterprise-level organizations. With our technology, you can seamlessly track and analyze essential metrics, including the ones above.

To get started, contact our team today for a free quote or schedule a demo so that you can see the product in action. Let us help you accomplish your goals in 2022 and beyond! 

The post 12 Metrics to Review with Your Brokerage Teams Heading into 2022 appeared first on .

“The more the platforms automate, the more we, as search marketers, lose control.” That has largely been the rhetoric over the years, and while there is certainly some truth to it, there are techniques that can help you reap the benefits of automation without sacrificing control.

Google has already announced plans to deprecate expanded text ads (ETAs), leaving advertisers with no choice but to embrace responsive search ads (RSAs). However, marketers can still use what they have learned from ETAs to improve their RSAs, increasing their chances of a successful transition. At SMX Next, Joe Martinez, co-founder at Paid Media Pros, shared how he benchmarks with ETAs to get the most out of the automated capabilities of RSAs.

Create ETAs to use later

“RSAs can really be hit or miss,” Martinez said, noting that “The reporting for this ad format is fairly poor.” “They [Google] give you a ‘good,’ ‘better,’ ‘best’-type aspect of how your ads are performing and we still see the overall metrics within the main columns, but we don’t get the right information on which combinations of the responsive search ads are performing best, because we can add in a variety of different headlines, different descriptions, but we don’t know what combinations are working.”

This lack of performance transparency is even more troubling for advertisers that currently rely on expanded text ads, since Google is sunsetting the format in June 2022.

“So, to prepare for this, you need to start making sure that you are focusing on adding as many expanded text ads in your account as possible,” Martinez said, “I’ve typically held around three to four expanded text ads — well, now we’re starting to add even more.”

By doing so, “We’re saying, ‘Okay, if I am going to eventually have to enter in a variety of different headlines and descriptions into my RSAs, I want to make sure that I’m entering the right ones — the ones that are going to perform the best when I am forced to use the RSA format,” he explained.

In addition to establishing a performance benchmark, how these ETAs perform should inform the creation of your RSAs when you eventually have to move your ads over to that format. “We’re making sure that we’re doing a bunch of varieties [of ETAs] so we know specifically which combinations are working because we’re controlling that with ETAs,” Martinez said.

To get the best benchmarks using this method, advertisers should ensure that their ads are set to rotate evenly so that impression share is divided across both ETAs and RSAs.

RELATED: RSAs vs ETAs, how, when, and why PPC experts use them

Pin headlines and descriptions accordingly

The RSA format allows advertisers to add up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, which can be pinned to specific positions. By benchmarking with ETAs (as described above), advertisers can take those findings and use them to pin headlines and descriptions in RSAs to gain more ETA-like functionality from them: “We’re pretty much creating our own expanded text ad within the RSA format,” Martinez said.

“Now, Google will say it can potentially hurt your Ad Rank if you’re not giving it [Google Ads’ machine learning systems] the full amount of options and combinations that Google would like,” he said, noting that, for some advertisers, this is a worthwhile compromise: “Okay, you may hurt your Ad Rank, that’s fine. But, we do understand in certain industries, control and order of message is very necessary.”

Despite the potential decrease in Ad Rank, advertisers in highly regulated industries may have to rely on pinning because, in some organizations, legal departments might have to approve every piece of ad copy that is written.

“So sometimes you may have to sacrifice on the Ad Rank just to make sure that your ad copy is on brand, it’s correct and you’re not going to get in trouble within your specific industry,” Martinez said.

For advertisers that aren’t bound to such stringent policies, pinning can still help create the experience you want to deliver to users, which may also justify any potential hit to your Ad Rank score, he added.

Utilize ad customizers

Ad customizers can provide additional control without sacrificing the flexibility that RSAs have to offer. You can use them to automatically insert keywords, a countdown timer, location, price, inventory count, discount rates or product names, for example.

“As you’re grouping and testing out different types of headlines within your expanded text ads, keep note: If your ad customizer ads are performing better, you may want to add those into your new responsive search ads and possibly pin them in certain locations,” Martinez said.

However, advertisers using this technique should be aware that there are no IF functions for RSAs.

“We’re losing that function and it makes sense because there are already so many different combinations that we really wouldn’t be able to see if an IF function customizer was working with RSAs,” he said, “So if you are using that one and you love it, test it out, understand which audience is seeing that one ad or that one variable, then you can start focusing on restructuring your campaign to a specific audience just to make sure that they’re seeing the proper headline that performed better for that particular audience.”

Unlock the potential of your RSAs before ETAs go away 

RSAs are already the default ad type for Search campaigns, but, on its way out, the ETA format still offers advertisers one of the most important tools for successful campaigns — data. Start adding more ETAs to your campaigns ahead of the June 2022 deprecation date to prepare your brand (or your client’s brand) for a smooth transition.

Watch the full SMX Next presentation here (free registration required).

The post How to automate your ad copy without sacrificing control appeared first on Search Engine Land.

In November, Google’s Caio Barros posted a notice in the help forums that there was “a problem” in Google Search Console’s user interface where “Full Users” see their status as “Delegated Owners” within the settings ownership verification section of Search Console. Well, Caio Barros confirmed this is now fixed, a couple months later.

The issue. The issue was that when you went to the ownership verification section in your Search Console settings, you would see your status as “Delegated Owner.” But you would not be able to see the “Users and Permissions” option on your account. That means you were likely a Full User and not a Delegated Owner, but Search Console didn’t show that.

Now resolved. This issue is now resolved, Caio Barros wrote yesterday “this issue should be fixed now.” He said “if you are a Full user but don’t have ownership (i.e., don’t have permission to add and remove users), you’ll see a message like this,” which says you are “not a verified owner.” Caio said this new message makes it super clear and unambiguous.

Now, if you really are an owner and wish to delegate ownership to another user, you can now go directly into the user management settings in Search Console and set the user permission to “Owner.” Then the user will see their ownership verification as delegated owner. They are still not a verified owner, but can manage users and permissions,” Caio explained.

Why we care. If you were running into this confusing permission issue in Google Search Console over the past few months, you can now go back in and adjust those settings. If not, then carry on with your normal daily SEO tasks.

The post Google fixes user and permissions issue with Search Console appeared first on Search Engine Land.

The Google Search ecosystem is constantly evolving. It introduces many algorithm updates every year, ranging from changes targeting specific search elements to broad core updates.

“Google periodically adjusts what types of information it deems to be most important, which can sometimes have a big effect on which results are shown on the web,” said Crystal Carter, senior digital strategist at Optix Solutions, during her session at SMX Next.

Many marketers believe Google primarily relies on websites when creating and deploying each succeeding batch of algorithm updates. But, to improve searchers’ experiences, it actually focuses more on entities — a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable, according to Google.

“Websites are important to Google, but that’s not the only way that it organizes information,” she said. “This is important for thinking about why and how Google makes updates.”

The information landscape is always growing, says Carter, and Google uses a variety of sources to present the most relevant results: “Google’s algorithms are taking into account where the search is made, where the information is coming from when the search is made and when the information was written. They also look at how the person is searching, whether they’re on their phone or their smartwatch or their smart refrigerator, as well as who wrote the content.”

“When we look at their algorithm updates, they’re essentially trying to direct people to highly accessible information from the best sources,” she added.

What happens during Google algorithm updates

Many Google algorithm updates address specific issues relating to an industry or SERP feature. These are usually easy to spot.

“When there’s a targeted update, which is my term and not Google’s, you’re likely to see changes to SERP features,” Carter said.

Carter calls these updates “targeted” because they usually focus on updating specific features of the SERP, such as how results are displayed and which sites are preferred for queries.

“If you look up a COVID testing site, you’ll see some of the targeted work that it’s [Google] done around that SERP,” she provided as an example of a “targeted” update, “It’s curated the results so that you’re seeing information from the government rather than seeing commercial results, and the maps that it’s showing are specifically targeted at medical elements.”

Core updates, on the other hand, are algorithm changes that alter how Google indexes and ranks sites broadly. These usually occur less frequently, but their impact can be enormous.

“Generally speaking, you might see changes to the types of domains which show in the SERPs,” Carter said. “You may see a sudden increase or decrease in domain visibility or a sudden increase or decrease in traffic across the domain.”

“So, rather than one page suddenly falling in rank, you might see a lot of pages change or increase in rank,” she added.

Identifying what type of algorithm update place took place is the first step in responding to ranking fluctuations. This allows marketers to plan a strategy that best addresses the issue.

How marketers should respond to updates

How you respond to a Google update not only depends on what type of change occurred but also on how it affected your online properties as well.

“If you’re on the winning end of this, it’s all smiles,” said Carter. “This is a good sign that you are on the right track with regards to the quality of your information, the demonstrable credibility of your website, and that Google thinks that you have good technical accessibility.”

“Doing well on Google algorithm updates gives you the opportunity to build and compound your SEO capabilities over time,” she added.

Yet when things don’t go as planned with these updates, brands often find themselves scrambling for solutions. This is when it helps to pinpoint the root cause, which can take many forms.

“One of the reasons is that the criteria for your vertical may have changed,” Carter said, referencing a former client who was negatively affected by Google’s update to medical-related results: “They were a reputable, fantastic medical business, and they were selling a test server health test. Then there was a change in the SERP — Google decommercialized this service. For that particular query, they were prioritizing people like the Mayo Clinic, the World Health Organization and the CDC.”

“When Google does that, you have to take a strategic approach to your SEO, which is different from your standard competitive keyword research,” she added.

Although verticals can change often, there’s also a good chance the SERP visibility drop was caused by a problem with your own properties.

“You might have missed something, and this often happens with in-house teams because you’re busy,” Carter said. “You might have missed a particular directive or instruction or rule, or a new element from Google. It might be that you need to play catch up.”

When your site is hit by a core update, it’s important to stay focused on best practices. Carter says this will future-proof your properties for the next round of changes.

“Don’t argue with the algorithm and don’t expect improvements until the next update,” she said. “Sometimes people want to throw everything at it. But generally speaking, the core of the core algorithm updates are around the domain, so Google makes it a quality assessment of your approach to SEO.”

What to expect from future changes

Successful marketing strategies don’t simply identify and respond to algorithm changes — they’re able to expect the trends shaping future updates. And from what many SEOs can tell, Google seems to be leaning more into AI modeling.

“Google introduced MUM [Multitask Unified Model] — the latest powerful AI tool and it helps it [Google] understand the information in a way that it’s not been able to do so before,” said Carter. “Not only does it process natural language, but it does so in 75 languages, and it’s also able to process text and also images and it’s also going to set up to be able to grow to process video and audio as well, so Google is already future-proofing this AI tool.”

“What we’re likely to see in the short term is more AI-powered large-scale updates,” she added.

The more Google leans into these models, the more marketers will need to stay on top of their online assets. And that means keeping them in tip-top shape — all the time. It’s the best way to prepare for whatever comes next.

“If you’re thinking about how to prepare for it,” Carter said, “I would say it’s worth making sure that your site is healthy all the time. Make sure that you have good, quality content rolling out in a consistent manner.”

Watch the full SMX Next presentation here (free registration required).

The post How marketers can prepare for and respond to Google’s algorithm updates appeared first on Search Engine Land.