Four new features — consumer interest insights, audience insights, change history insights and auction insights, and demand forecasts — will be rolling out in beta to the Google Ads Insights page globally in the coming weeks, the company announced Thursday.

Why we care. If the predictions are accurate, demand forecasts can help brands better anticipate emerging trends so that they can plan their inventory and campaigns accordingly. However, user behavior has been unpredictable since the start of the pandemic, so make sure to evaluate demand forecast predictions with your own data before making decisions based on them.

The consumer interest and audience insights enable advertisers to learn more about how customers are searching for their offerings, as well as the themes they’re interested in and the ad copy that most resonates with them.

Zooming out, Google Ads’ product updates and offerings over the last few years have been designed to make advertising easier for SMBs, which may not have the resources to hire a full-time PPC professional or enlist the help of an agency. The Insights page is free and these features are likely to provide actionable information to all advertisers on Google’s platform, but its benefit will be greater for businesses that otherwise may not have had access to these trends.

Consumer interest insights. This feature aggregates and anonymizes the top-performing search query themes that drive performance in your campaigns. It tells you the number of people who searched for each theme, the theme’s growth and how it performed in your account.

Audience insights. This feature is aimed at helping advertisers learn about the interests and affinities of audiences that are seeing their ads, particularly the user groups that Google’s automation has identified as driving strong performance. Additionally, audience insights can enable advertisers to identify what creative resonates with their audience.

Demand forecasts. Instead of focusing on historical performance trends, demand forecasts use machine learning and past seasonal search trends to predict emerging search interests over the next 180 days.

These forecasts are personalized to your account, so advertisers will only see trends based on the categories they advertise in. Data is updated daily and predictions are replaced with real data as it comes in. The forecast may also adjust daily to improve accuracy.

Change history insights and auction insights. This feature can be used to better understand how shifting auction competition or changes you, the advertiser, made in your account affect performance.

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If you are noticing less traffic to your website’s AMP pages coming from Twitter, turns out there is a reason for that: Twitter has subtly updated its AMP guidelines page on its Developer site to say support for AMP will be phased out by the fourth quarter.

How that might affect you. Previously, if a mobile user clicked on a link to your site, Twitter would redirect them to the AMP version of that page if an AMP version was available. Now, that won’t happen and users will just load the native mobile/responsive version of your content.

Thanks for telling us. We’ve heard anecdotally that publishers have been seeing AMP traffic fall, especially since Google started putting non-AMP pages in its Top Stories section. But it was David Esteve, audience development specialist and product manager at Marfeel, and technical SEO consultant Christian Oliveira who spotted the update in Twitter’s documentation.

Looking at our own data, we’ve seen sharp Twitter referral declines since August. But, traffic completely bottomed out in November suggesting the rollout is complete.

We’ve seen similar declines in LinkedIn referrals to AMP pages and have reached out to the company to find out if it is also dropping support. We will update this post when we get a definitive answer.

Why we care. Since Google announced AMP will no longer be required for Top Stories, many publishers have been asking themselves if continuing to support AMP is still worth it. The main worry has been the risk of traffic loss if publishers rely fully on their native mobile experiences for ranking. But, if social media traffic to AMP pages is going to drop as support is lifted, the need for AMP seems to get smaller.

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The right CRM tools can make a world of difference in the ultra-competitive mortgage industry. By incorporating a cutting-edge CRM into your business model, you can empower your team to get more done while improving the customer experience.

Below, we’ve outlined 5 CRM tools that will boost your productivity and help your loan officers outpace the competition.

1.   Collaboration Platform

A versatile collaboration platform can streamline the entire mortgage processing experience. The collaboration tools offered by a great CRM, help mortgage brokers, processors, and other staff members to work on the same files simultaneously. 

Team members can also share notes, view status reports, and update clients on the progress of the file using this efficient platform. 

2.   Communication Channels

If you want to provide your clients with a world-class mortgage experience, so communication is key. A mortgage CRM will give your loan officers access to a robust communication platform that can easily integrate into various channels. 

With our platform, you can rapidly connect leads and borrowers with mortgage brokers, real estate agents, and other partners. You will have the freedom to use popular communication methods such as SMS, email, push notifications, and social media platforms, and you can even take advantage of pre-made content. 

This versatility makes it easier than ever for your team to effectively connect with high-quality leads and remain connected with clients throughout the mortgage process. 

3.   Lead Distribution Tool

Manually distributing leads is time-consuming and inefficient. A high-quality platform offers automated lead distribution tools. This software will not only distribute your leads to the right loan officers; it will also allow you to track the performance of each team member. 

By improving lead distribution and performance analysis processes, you can ensure that prospective consumers are connected with your top performers. 

Best of all, lead distribution technology in a great mortgage CRM is already integrated with most lead providers and can interact with proprietary systems, also making it easy to take advantage of all of the tools right away. 

4.   Marketing Automation

Marketing is an important part of lead generation and sales. However, you may not have enough time to devote to various marketing-related tasks. 

Fortunately, a CRM solution includes automated marketing functionalities that will keep borrowers engaged throughout the sales process. The best software also makes it easy to continuously promote your services to partners with a state-of-the-art marketing engine. 

5.   Administrative Reporting and Control Functions

A mortgage CRM is designed to be extremely customizable so that you can tailor it to the unique needs of your mortgage team. You can restrict access to certain features, also closely track the performance of loan officers via its built-in reporting tools, and handle other administrative tasks. 

The best mortgage CRMs on the market gives you total control over the day-to-day operations of your lending team.

Innovative Solutions from BNTouch

If you are searching for a user-friendly CRM that incorporates all of these great tools, then BNTouch’s platform is the perfect solution. Our innovative technology is scalable for mortgage brokerages of all sizes. We can help your growing team to get things done with a full array of customer management functions.

Want to see our tools in action? Contact us today to learn more about pricing or to schedule your free demo.

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When it comes to your mortgage team, you want to maximize their earning potential. The same ring true about your mortgage POS and CRM systems. By understanding their purpose and functions, you can know how to make them work for you. What’s more, you can also discover how to connect the platforms to create a seamless integration that maximizes your entire organization’s earning potential. 

A mortgage POS is a transactional management system with a unified database that consolidates structured and unstructured data from multiple sources into a single repository allowing businesses to organize and build a profile around an individual borrower. The POS’s ability to unify user data into a single record gives mortgage teams the ability to form a 360-degree view of the borrower and their loan and process the application within a centralized, secure hub. 

A CRM’s primary objective is to build relationships with borrowers and support the sales cycle. Businesses can collect and store customer and prospect information within the CRM, track and score leads, forecast revenue potential, and build a prospect profile to support marketing efforts. 

When comparison shopping, you may notice that there are a few areas where their functions overlap. It’s worth noting that overlap doesn’t imply redundancy nor that one platform can effectively do the job of the other because, ultimately, each software serves a different purpose in your mortgage business: 

• CRM is designed to manage leads and current customers.

• Mortgage POS is intended to manage the borrower and their loan.

As a stand-alone product, an intelligently designed mortgage POS or CRM platform will automate the most critical areas of your business, helping to increase productivity and profitability. But when there’s deep integration between the two platforms, the true power of mortgage tech is unleashed. 

Benefits of POS-CRM software integration include:

• Quick, Bilateral Data Capture: Borrower data captured at intake on the POS-side of the transaction is shared with the CRM system and vice versa. This eliminates manual data entry and helps to keep accurate records for each lead and borrower throughout your organization.
• Fund More Loans and Increase Borrower Retention: With streamlined and reliable information easily accessible through both platforms, loan volume increases, and funding time is accelerated. The result is an immensely improved borrower’s journey that boosts loyalty. 
• Improved Lead Segmentation: Businesses can categorize leads captured through their POS into target groups in the CRM to customize their marketing strategy.
• Better Holistic Experience For All: POS-CRM integration provides a better experience for borrowers and professionals alike. Not only do the mortgage team stakeholders have access to CRM data in the POS, but your office admins will have access to POS data on their CRM! This creates an excellent customer experience with competitive longevity.

Businesses looking to differentiate themselves through personalized consumer experiences need to implement mortgage technology to create a 360-degree view of the borrower across each platform they interact with. By understanding what a mortgage POS and CRM do and how they work together, you can deploy a digital mortgage transformation that supports your workflow and business growth.  

LOANZIFY: The Mortgage POS Solution For The Modern Lender

Google has published its annual Shopping Holiday 100, a list of the top 100 consumer products that are predicted to trend the most on Google in the U.S. this holiday season. The predictions are based on the last several months of query data and are bucketed into seven categories: gaming, health & beauty, fragrances, kitchen gear, sports & fitness, tech and toys & games.

Why we care

Knowing which products are going to be most sought out by consumers is always crucial for retailers, but this holiday season, it’s even more important due to challenges stemming from the pandemic: Consumers are shopping online more than ever, while supply chain delays impact inventory and prices.

If you’re selling some of these trending products, you might want to evaluate your inventory with respect to the heightened demand — more than one-third of U.S. shoppers say they’ll look for other retailers that carry the same product if items are out of stock, according to Google. For underdog retailers, this might also be an opportunity to increase awareness and attract new customers. And, all retailers should ensure that their product feeds are up to date so that they can show up in Google’s free Shopping results.

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Google has released version 9.0 of Lighthouse, the website auditing tool for developers, SEOs and site owners. With this release, Google has updated the API, added user flows, refreshed some reporting, added new accessibility elements, and more.

9.0 is available. You can access Lighthouse 9.0 using the command line, in Chrome Canary, and in PageSpeed Insights which began rolling out this week. Google said it will also be part of the Chrome stable release in Chrome version 98.

Here is what is new. Google has made some changes to the Lighthouse API saying if you use the Lighthouse report JSON, there “may be some breaking changes in 9.0 that you need to be aware of.” Those technical changes are listed here.

User flows: Lighthouse 9.0 supports a new user-flow API that allows lab testing at any point within a page’s lifespan. Puppeteer can be used to script page loads and trigger synthetic user interactions, and Lighthouse can be invoked in multiple ways to capture key insights during those interactions, the company said. “This means that performance can be measured during page load and during interactions with the page,” Google explained.

Reports: Google has refreshed some of the reports within Lighthouse. The refreshed reports aim “to improve readability and make the source of the report and how it was run clearer,” Google explained. A final screenshot has been embedded at the top of the report to make it obvious at a glance if the page being tested loaded correctly and is in the format expected. Plus, the summary information at the bottom of the report has also been redesigned to better communicate how Lighthouse was run and the report collected.

Accessibility: In 9.0 of Lighthouse, all the elements sharing that ID are now listed.

Why we care. Google recently updated the PageSpeed Insights report and a lot of the features it uses is based off of Lighthouse. Using these tools can help you make your website faster, more usable and more accessible. In terms of SEO or rankings, the changes might not make a huge difference but this is more about your users and making them happy.

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Urgent requests make it hard to prioritize the most strategic jobs. But when you standardize and centralize the entire process, you can make data-driven resource decisions and ensure the most strategic work gets done first.

In this webinar, join Adobe Workfront as they share six proven methods to handle the onslaught of marketing requests, prioritize the most important work, and increase your value to make 2022 your best year yet.

Register today for “Your New Year’s Marketing Resolution: Master the Art of Saying No With These 6 Steps,” presented by Integrate.

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Google on Tuesday released new search features intended to give more visibility to local news content when searchers are looking for information about their communities.

The company said it has expanded a feature previously rolled out for COVID searches that adds a carousel of local news stories when relevant to a searcher’s query. For example, a search on “football” may bring up stories on local sports.

Why we care. Local news organizations depend on organic search traffic and, according to Google, queries like “news near me” have tripled in the past five years. Unfortunately, that also comes as local news companies continue to struggle for survival. According to The Poynter Institue, a journalism advocacy group, more than 90 local news organizations closed during the pandemic. That’s on top of declines that have stretched back years. In 2019, the New York Times reported that 1 in 15 U.S. newspapers had closed in the past 15 years.

So, it’s certainly good that Google is finding ways to give the surviving local news ecosystem more visibility.

Read next: Google News app will display non-AMP content and send readers to publisher pages

Not just news sources. In addition to adding the local news carousel, Google also is adding a “Popular on Twitter” carousel for queries on local news topics. While local news organization tweets may be included, the feature will also pull in tweets from a range of sources it deems to have local authority on those topics.

Remaining questions. The new features are noble and timely, especially as COVID created closer bonds with homes and local communities. What will be interesting to see is whether the added visibility benefits the most vulnerable local publishers. While regional dailies and local TV affiliates have not been spared by declines in local publishing, community weeklies, alt-weeklies and other niche local publications struggle the most. Will they be able to compete for slots in these carousels?

“Any publisher’s content is eligible to rank within the carousel if their content is relevant to what a reader is searching for,” said Meghann Farnsworth, a Google spokesperson. “Publishers with more Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness for a given topic or location will rank accordingly.”

But Google acknowledged that the new carousel is not reserved for local publishers, just local content.

“Local news includes sources with news about the user’s location, which is often local publishers but can sometimes include national reporting as well,” said Farnsworth.

News SEO. These new features also highlight why good SEO is essential for local news organizations. Inclusion in Google News (if you can even get in), authoritative news content that demonstrates E-A-T and a speedy website with good UX all help determine SERP visibility, even for smaller local audiences.

Here’s what the local news carousel looks like.

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