Want to make your marketing more powerful and targeted to your ideal borrower? The key lies in creating buyer personas. A mortgage buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your optimum mortgage client. It serves as a guide that ensures you understand your borrows needs, their pain points, and the best marketing message to reach that particular persona. 

Buyer personas reveal what led this ideal borrower to your services and what you need to do to attract others like them.

Even if buyer personas is a new concept to you, you’ve likely used a rudimentary version –for example, using one message for first-time buyers and another for commercial borrowers. However, this post will teach you how to develop mortgage buyer personas like a pro and tactics for implementing them in your marketing and lead generation. 

How to Develop A Mortgage Buyer Persona

To create an insightful persona, start with the general demographic info of clients in your database, like age, gender, marital status, homeownership status, geography, education level, career, income, and other broad categories. 

Once you have basics down, you want to dive deeper. Consider:

• What sort of hobbies or leisure activities do they enjoy? 
• What worries them?
• What pursuits or goals do they have in life?
• Where do they shop?
• How tech-savvy are they?

Now that you’ve completed your research, it’s time to start analyzing all the data.

Analyzing the Data

The first thing you want to do is look for emerging trends and patterns. Once you find the pattern, categorize the data to define your core buyer personas.

Next, go through each persona group and start filling in the averages about each buyer persona, like their educational level, occupation, challenges, goals, etc.

We recommend structuring it in this way for each persona:

• Background (Employment, Career Path, Family)
• Demographics (Age, Gender, Income, Geographic Location)
• Attributes (Demeanor, Communication Preferences, Interests)

For each persona, you’ll also want to include common objections. 

Naming Your Mortgage Buyer Personas

Now here comes the fun part –naming your persona. Personas with names like Veteran Vicky, Millennial Mike, or Commercial Chris are catchy and easy to remember. Here’s what a completed buyer persona profile might look like:

Millennial Mike

• Location: Westcoast
• Age: 32
• Gender: Male
• Education: Bachelors Degree
• Hobbies: Gaming, exercising, cooking
• Job Title: Graphic designer
• Income: $67,000
• Relationship Status: Single and no kids
• Preferred method of communication: Text
• Goals: Purchase first home by 35, move up the career ladder
• Challenges: With no tax breaks and continuing student loan payments, disposable income is limited

Implementing Buyer Persona Into the Borrowers Journey

Once you’ve defined your personas, the next step is to use them in your marketing efforts, particularly their Borrower’s Journey.

As a quick refresher, a Borrower’s Journey is the process consumers go through to become aware of, consider, and decide to complete a mortgage application. 

 Example: Millennial Mike and His Buyer’s Journey

Mike’s awareness is rooted in his goal to purchase his first home by 35. Mike will likely research the homebuying process, asking peers about their experiences buying a home, reading blog posts about first-time homebuying, and use interactive mortgage calculators that help him estimate various scenarios. 

Feeling informed, Mike moves into the consideration stage, comparing lenders, looking up reviews, and getting familiar with the lender’s brand, mission, and digital mortgage tools.

Finally, Millennial Mike moves into the decision stage. Having explored various options, your marketing messages about first-time homebuyer programs, minimal down payments, and online borrower portal nudge him to pre-qualify with you. The ease of application and positive experience then ultimately convince Millennial Mike to continue and complete the full 1003. 

Today’s mortgage consumers expect to be engaged on a more personal level, and buyer personas are another tool in helping you to create that engagement. They allow you to gain insight, focus, optimize, and strategize your communication with current, past, and potential borrowers. While admittedly not full proof (humans don’t always fit neatly into categories), buyer personas have proven time and again to help increase conversion rates and revenue –making it worth the additional effort. 

Scaling a mortgage business requires a 360-degree effort. From staffing to workflow management and technology, growing a mortgage business is just as much about increasing intake capacity as it is about developing professional attributes such as branding. Even if you’re a one-person shop still a year or so away from expanding your business, it’s best practice to build a foundation that can scale with you. 

That said, this article will cover how to build a brand that’s pliable enough to meet your current business needs as well as your future expansion plans.

Then, we’ll give you ideas on how to use strong branding to fuel your mortgage business growth. Let’s dive in!

How To Create A Scalable Mortgage Brand

Developing a scalable mortgage brand begins with writing a mission statement that stands the test of time. It should be well-defined, simple, and honest about who your company is at its core. No matter how large your company gets, this mission statement will remain true. A simple guideline for writing a mission statement answers these questions:

1. What does your mortgage company do?
2. How does your mortgage company do it?
3. Why does your mortgage company do it?

After writing a 1-2 sentence statement that hits all three points above, you’ll be set with a branding foundation that you can use for everything from your business plan to advertising to scaling expanding your business.

Remember to add visuals! Graphics and color schemes are a memorable part of your branding story. While it’s expected that your visual brand will evolve over the years, it should remain relatively consistent to maintain that familiarity and relationship with your public. 

How To Use Your Brand To Grow Your Mortgage Business

Discover Your Target Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a fictional ideal mortgage consumer. If you’re doing it right, you’d be able to answer questions like where your consumer lives, her income, his fears and drives, demographics, and shopping habits. 

Knowing your brand and mission statement will help you to discover who your target buyer is. Consequently, you’ll know what messages, content, and advertisements you should create to speak to this buyer effectively. Although it may seem like a minor exercise, knowing your target audience can decrease the cost of lead acquisition while also increasing the quality of the lead.

Understand Your Competitive Edge

The fact is that there will always be a competitor with a bigger marketing budget or more resources. But that doesn’t mean that you’re out of the race. Your mortgage business –its value, mission, service –are qualities and benefits that are unique to your business. 

So when attempting to leverage your brand to scale your business, think about what factors make your business attractive and unlike others. Use what you know about your target buyer persona to develop a list of benefits and features about your business and brand and use it as a framework for your marketing strategy to strengthen your reach. Here are a few examples:

• Transparent mortgage process
• Pressure-free self-serve application
• Investment property professional
• Tech-savvy government loan specialist
• Biligual loan services

Use Brand Awareness To Define Your Pathway For Growth

Brand awareness is the initial step of any marketing funnel and a critical component of organic mortgage lead acquisition. Not only does your brand communicate your value and purpose, but it also builds rapport and familiarity between your business and prospect. This awareness is crucial since consumers typically choose what they are familiar with when making purchasing decisions.

Now that you understand that there is “equity” in your brand, inject it into every touchpoint of the user experience. Just like building a long-lasting business, creating brand awareness requires constant effort for a sustained period. 

Be Social. Studies have shown that over 50% of a brand’s reputation comes from being sociable. Be active on social media by sharing content, replying to comments, commenting on other’s posts, and responding to reviews.

Humanize Your Content. Use personality and storytelling to give your brand depth and your prospects something to latch onto. You can do this by sharing client stories, lending scenarios, and even easy-to-read mortgage articles written in a friendly tone.

Technology + Mortgage Branding

A brand’s ability to scale your mortgage requires more than inserting a logo. To positively impact your marketing campaigns, consumer perception, and revenue, mortgage branding requires a 360-degree effort in awareness and consumer experience. At LenderHomePage, we understand this concept profoundly and have woven it into every mortgage software product we’ve developed. 

From our templated mortgage websites to the industry-leading Loanzify mortgage mobile app, our digital mortgage tools invite engagement, strengthens brand loyalty, and definitively set you apart and above your competition. We’re more than software developers. We’re your partners in digital mortgage business success. Click here to start a conversation. 

We’ve compiled a list of the topmost relevant, and useful online courses mortgage professionals need to thrive and grow their mortgage business to the next level. From digital marketing to customer service to branding strategies, these upper-level online courses are taught by professionals at the top of their game and will give you the launching platform you need to grow your business. 

Need more resources for scaling and completing your digital transformation? We got you covered! Explore our stackable and brandable digital mortgage platform that grows with your business. 

Leadership Assessment and Development 

This course by Udemy is a 2-hour deep dive into exploring and developing your leadership skills. More than the typical “business leader approach,” this course is a great foundation for growing a mortgage business and shows you how to create a resilient work culture and leadership mentality within your team to promote innovation, accountability, profitability, and loyalty. Learn more.

Performance Experts 

Taught by one of the nation’s top fifty producers of loan origination, Tim Braheem offers several coaching programs in an exclusive small group, online settings. His Leadership 360 course is open only once a year to 9 members are takes mortgage professionals through a year-long business and life coaching program to teach mortgage professionals how to build a sustainable business model that complements the desire for personal fulfillment. Learn more.

CORE Training 

Taught by trio Rick Ruby, Todd Scrima, and Reeta Casey, this program focuses primarily on leveraging healthy competitiveness within your workforce to elevate the entire team. There are three levels to this program, with the first requiring a 12-month commitment and comes with the promise of doubling your business after successful completion. Learn more.

Social Media and Digital Advertising 2021

Offered by the respected Mortgage Banker’s Association (MBA), this webinar provides upper-level insight into digital marketing and social media marketing for the mortgage industry in 2021 and beyond. With legal compliance, consumer trends, and evolving digital etiquette, knowing how to market your business is challenging. This course can be completed in a single session and will provide a solid foundation for establishing and maintaining a professional mortgage digital presence. Learn more.

Aligning Customer Experience with Company Culture

Offered by one of Linkin’s featured professionals, customers service expert Davide Brownlee provides insight into the customer journey. He shows you how the mortgage professional can add value to each phase to create an exceptional customer experience that results in happier clients, a supportive and satisfying work environment, and increased profit. Learn more.

Marketing Foundations: Automation

Named as one of Forbes 30 Under 30, Jon Chang teaches the foundations of automation in marketing, how to use it to drive efficiency, identify marketing opportunities, and develop retargeting ad campaigns with high conversion rates. The self-directed course has several case studies and can be completed in a day. Learn more.

Sales: Closing a Complex Sale

This 5-module course is a fast-track program for improving sales and closing skills. It helps originators understand the buyer’s dilemmas and offers solutions to simplify the buyer’s journey and value proposition. Taught by Jeff Bloomfield, trusted sales strategist and executive coach to senior executives of Fortune 500 companies. Learn more.

Advanced Mortgage Loan Processor: Essential Skills Training

Gain a more profound knowledge of mortgage processing with this essential skills training course. This program is perfect for the loan officer looking to branch out on his own or work independently alongside banks or lenders. Even seasoned brokers will find the lessons helpful in expanding their practice and training up a top-producing mortgage team. Learn more.

Optimize Your Google Ads Campaign

Go beyond the basics set up of Google ads and learn how to plan, execute, and optimize for mortgage lead generation. Taught by Google, this one-hour seminar will introduce you to the advanced features of Google’s ad platform and prepare you for creating powerful mortgage ads on both local and national levels. Offered on a rotating basis so check the calendar for the next available date. Learn more.

Brand Management by UCLA Extension

This higher-level 11-week course offered by working professionals is part of UCLA’s Extention program. Available in 100% online format, you’ll learn the development and application of a business brand and how to leverage this power to differentiate yourself from the competition. This course is ideal for mortgage brokers who are aggressively scaling their businesses. Learn more.

The mortgage customer experience (CX) refers to all the touchpoints and effort you put into making borrowers feel important as they interact with your business and move through the borrower journey. Although difficult to define the scale that measures CX success, make no doubt about it, customer experience is directly linked to your pipeline and funding rate. 

A recent study by PWC demonstrated this when they found that 86% of buyers were willing to pay more for a great customer experience, especially when it comes to big-ticket items. Yet another study, this one by Walker conducted in 2020, found that customer experience will be the key brand differentiator, overshadowing price or product. It’s just as alarming to see what negative customer service will do to a business. Current research found that one of the top reasons customers will change financial institutions is a poor experience. 

Knowing how crucial customer experience is to the digital loan process, we’ve tailored these three areas where you can enhance the digital mortgage customer experience. Let’s get started.

Understand the Borrower Journey 

The borrower journey is the roadmap of experiences that customers go through as they interact with your digital mortgage software and brand. It begins with their first impression –perhaps your mortgage website –and goes on long after they’ve applied. To begin enhancing it, consider the borrower’s needs, motivations, actions, and even barriers to action that they may encounter along the way. Ask yourself:

• What first motivated that borrower to perform that action? 
• What would motivate them to move to take the next action? 
• Are there any obstacles that prevent them from taking that next action? 

Keep in mind that obstacles may be caused by technology that is unappealing or difficult to use. Therefore, when choosing a mortgage software vendor to partner with, thoroughly consider how fun it is for your borrower to use in addition to its utility to you. 

Prioritize An Omnichannel Customer Experience

Modern digital consumers prefer to connect with mortgage brands across different channels. That means that your mortgage website, mobile app, social media profiles, instant messaging, mortgage POS, and any other channel must be on point and streamlined across the board.

Although every channel may lie on a different platform and serve a different function, the core purpose at each point should be to deliver an unrivaled experience and to guide the customer down the borrower’s journey. Streamlining and automation are crucial to a mortgage omnichannel CX, meaning data exchange between platforms –such as your LOS and mortgage POS –should be fully integrated. 

Proactively Engage With Your Borrower

Innovation with real-time and self-serve functions empowers customers and helps them develop a deeper commitment to your brand and see the application through to funding. Here are a few of the high-value ways that you can proactively engage for a better CX:

• Automated Notifications – Customers appreciate reminders and notifications that keep them informed and provide gentle nudges to take the next step. These can come in automated SMS messages, email notifications, and dynamically updated borrower timelines.
• Educate Customers – Provide a library of articles and video resources for customers to devour on their own. This, too, is part of the borrower journey as many borrowers spend time learning in their consideration phase. 
• Easily Accessible Information – Remove the obstacle of requiring the borrower to ask you for information. A borrower portal that shows what documents are pending, accepted, and next steps are standard. Take it a step further by providing downloadable approval letters, too!

LenderHomePage Elevates The Customer Experience In Lending

In a nutshell, within the customer experience lies a massive and untapped potential for growth and your competitive edge. But you’ll only go as far as your mortgage software platform can take you. We set to develop the preeminent mortgage suite as functional and flexible as it was a delight to use for both mortgage pros and their borrowers. Contact us today to discover how easy it is to kill the competition with a stellar CX powered by LenderHomePage. 

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