Happy New Year to all Our Subscribers and Everyone Considering Joining the BNTouch Family! 

You might have heard the unemployment stat is down to 7%. Which is great and all, but there is another statistic that isn’t doing so well: mortgage applications. 

Oh sure, rates are down, real estate markets are tidy, and there is still a ton of disposable income in the US. Yet, you have a problem. 

Specifically, reaching your target audience with a plethora of mortgage content and marketing strategies isn’t working like it used to. Why? Because prospects are rejecting your strategies. Let’s look forward to more advances in the technology driving our industry in 2023.

 It comes as no surprise that mortgage technology is dominating the mortgage industry with all its advances. 2023 will bring more leads and clients for professionals who choose to automate in 2023.

 New Features: 

In 2022, BNTouch experienced some significant upgrades which made our task management system better than ever before. 

The new features we have been working on are based on customer feedback – so feel free to let us know what you think of the new tasks and issue tracking tools. 

These will help you manage issues with ease while collaborating with your team on projects.

New Features Include: 

• Purchase Analysis 
• Loans with Multiple Borrowers 
• Checklists 
• Email Constructor 
• Scheduled SMS 
• Credit Pulls 
• Email Validation

We’re constantly working hard behind the scenes to roll out new features, so look for some exciting additions in 2023!

What to look forward to in 2023:

•  New exciting AI features
• New integrations
• Improved email tracking
• More productivity tools and enhancements
• Stay Tuned for More

We are excited about the future of our product, and we hope that you are too. We are in the best position to create a stronger, bolder product that impacts our customer relationship management. There is nothing we love more than being able to give our users the best possible experience.

Thank you for your continued support in making BNTouch the best it can be! 

Are you ready to join the BNTouch Family in 2023? Why not schedule a free no-obligation demo today!

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You watched the tutorials, read the how-to’s, and boosted your top Facebook posts for several weeks now. Yet still, your mortgage marketing efforts have failed to produce results. Truth be told, marketing is partly an experiment, and sometimes, a particular marketing campaign just doesn’t work. However, there are plenty of instances where marketing campaigns fail when they shouldn’t have. 

Read on to learn the most common reasons mortgage marketing fails –and what you can do about it!

Tops Reasons That Mortgage Marketing Strategies Fail

Unclear Objective Or How To Measure It

The first common mistake made in mortgage marketing is not defining the objective or having too many objectives on a single campaign. Along the same lines is failing to determine whether meeting just one of those goals equates to success or failure. 

The best marketing campaigns have a single measurable objective that allows you to develop a plan and outline what success looks like. While being stringent about your objective can seem counterintuitive (being flexible will widen the possibilities, right?), the opposite is true. As it goes with any life’s goal,  determining the goal and what success looks like will make it more likely that you’ll achieve it. 

Application: A brokerage is expanding and is now licensed in a new state. They want to launch a campaign to create awareness of their brand and service to the new market (objective). They decide to run a video marketing campaign featuring high-value mortgage content discussing the buyers’ needs in that specific market. The video ads are set to run in their target location. Success is measured by video engagement, such as liking, sharing, commenting, or following. 

Undefined Calls To Action

A call-to-action (CTA) lets the consumer know what to do next. After engaging with your ad, the prospect’s next logical question is, “now what?” Your CTA answers the question by telling them what to do next. 

If your CTA is weak or missing altogether, your prospect won’t move forward. Likewise, if you have too many CTA options, they’ll be confused and are less likely to take any action.

Remedy this by establishing a single and well-defined CTA. Make sure the CTA is easy to find, and the task is simple enough for them to complete without challenges. 

Application: An LO is running ads on Facebook to generate more leads. She pairs the smartly worded copy and attractive graphic with a CTA that says “Learn More.” Clicking through, the prospect is taken to a landing page with a few bullet points on the loan product and adds more sizzle with an offer (aka, the solution). She then has another CTA, “Your Homebuying Journey Starts Here,” with a simple lead capture form below. 

Read this previous post for the Ultimate Call-To-Actions for Mortgage Pros

Insufficient Budget

The thing about setting a marketing budget is that it typically isn’t set at all. Like any other business expense, a marketing budget should be based on a percentage of the revenue. But all too often, companies will base their marketing budget on what they feel comfortable spending. The problem with not putting enough money to finance your marketing could mean not running your ad long enough or not reaching enough people to see results. 

Application: One way to set your marketing budget is to review past revenue sheets and set aside a percentage for marketing. Allocating between 6.5% to 8.5% is the norm for established businesses. If your business is less than five years old, consider spending 10% to 12%. 

Read this previous post on Reducing Loan Production Costs by 50%!

Relying On LOs or Interns To Do The Work

As mentioned earlier, marketing is partially an experiment, but handing off the experiment to a novice will make it doomed to fail. It’s also costly. So while there’s no guarantee that a particular campaign will succeed, a professionally crafted campaign based on metrics, solid theory, and past successes will likely yield positive results. 

Application: Employ either an in-house marketer or hire a mortgage marketing agency to handle the planning and undertaking of the overall campaign. Social media marketing, creative, paid ads, video creation, and SEO content are critical marketing elements requiring professional development and execution. When it comes to the finer aspects of marketing, like building relationships and nurturing leads, let your LOs take the lead on that. 

Read this previous post on Increasing LO Volume By Freeing Them From Marketing Responsibility

Customer Experience Is Subpar

Sometimes a business will think that the marketing campaign failed when in reality, it was the experience after the fact that was unable to get results. Challenging to navigate POS, a digital 1003 that isn’t mobile responsive, or an LO that didn’t respond to the lead fast enough are possible reasons outside of marketing that could make it seem as if your marketing isn’t working. 

Remember that no amount of marketing will fix poor business operations or customer experience. 

Application: If you haven’t already refined your digital mortgage transformation, do it now before adding any more money to your marketing budget. Your website, digital application, POS, mortgage mobile app, and every element in between must be working at the highest level of performance in both consumer and business-facing processes. 

Read this previous post on Mortgage Touch Points and Creating An Exceptional Customer Experience Through Digital Means

Ready to level up your mortgage marketing and customer experience? Contact us today to learn more about our stackable digital mortgage tools and services –everything you need to grow your business in any market. 

Schedule a Demo

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.