As a loan officer, know that there’s real value in creating a personal brand. Consider this: if you decide to change to another brokerage or financial institution (or go out on your own), would rather do it building your reputation from square one again, or do it with a reputation you’ve spent years refining?

That’s the value of personal branding –it’s yours, and it follows you your entire career.

Your personal brand also widens opportunities. Every meeting, connection, and happy client that engages with your personal brand is another opportunity added to your career. Building up your personal brand also increases your value as a mortgage professional. A brand that is recognizable and is seen as trustworthy commands more money.

How can you build a personal brand that lasts? That’s what this post is going to show you. Read on and bookmark this page for future reference.

Personal Brand for Mortgage Professionals: It’s More Than Likes and Comments

If you’re on social media, you may think that you’re well on your way to building a personal brand. But if you haven’t taken the time to define your brand and create a foundation for it, all those likes and comments are in vain. Here’s what you need to do instead:

Phase One: Define Your Personal Brand Identity

Be very clear about who you are and who you are not. What are your values? What’s your purpose? Who are you trying to reach? It’s critical that you know precisely what image you want to portray lest the public defines it for you and possibly create one that you never intended. 

Phase Two: Create Personal Brand Awareness

Creating brand awareness and associating it with mortgage services is the goal of this next phase. The more your brand becomes well-known, the easier it will be for the consumer to remember and trust it. Here are top ways to build awareness for your brand:

• Partner with real estate agents or other industry professionals that have successfully built their personal brand.
• Use referrals and build up your online reviews.
• Create different forms of content (video, blogs, infographics, podcast)
• Be active on social media
• Use paid advertising and remarketing

Phase Three: Engage With Your Followers

When we say engage with your followers, we mean doing so purposefully and actively. When someone leaves a comment, don’t just reply with, “Thank you!”. If you’ve noticed a follower liking and commenting on your posts, send a direct message. Did a website visitor fill out your contact form on your mortgage website? Activate a drip email and text campaign. Give them additional opportunities to get familiar with your brand and know what you’re all about.

Phase Four: Create Brand Loyalty

Getting to this phase takes a while –we’re talking about six months to a year. Remember that we’re building a personal brand that will last the life of your career, and that takes time. But that’s okay! In this phase, you want to add more fuel to your authority and trustworthiness. Do this by offering high-quality, high-value products for free, such as ebooks, webinars, and digital mortgage tools like mortgage apps and calculators.

Mortgage Websites Built for Personal Branding

At LenderHomePage, we firmly believe in the power and profitability of your personal brand. That’s why we created websites templates and tools built specifically for showcasing your brand across the web. Check out our three new mortgage templates for personal branding and try it out free for 14 days. Click here to launch one in minutes!

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Mortgage company branding is more than a logo. It’s part of the entire consumer experience, how your customer perceives you and is an indispensable factor in your ROI. Everything from the individual graphics to your website and mortgage app appearance to social media posts to online chats is part of your brand. 

Because branding is a critical element of your business, it’s vital that you know the fundamentals of a strong one. By the way, this is true about personal branding as well. Whether you’re a team on 1 or 100, your mortgage brand is your DNA and promise to consumers. Here’s how to do it.

Purpose 

A strong brand reflects your company’s purpose. It’s the reason why your business was established and answers the key question: why should a consumer choose your business over others? 

This is the starting point for your entire branding plan. The more specific you are, the more defining the difference between you and your competitors. Answer these three questions, and you’ll have the foundation to your overarching purpose that is part of your brand strategy:

• What is your business best at?
• What is your business passionate about?
• What difference can your business make?

Consistency

Consistent branding increases familiarity. The more a consumer is familiar with your brand, the more they begin to trust –and even prefer– your brand and business. And when it comes to online consumers who are comparison shopping, consistency and trust can tip the scales in your favor, turning a web visitor into a prospect. 

Graphic elements and color schemes are visual ways to create consistency but don’t forget how your mortgage business tech stack works with your branding. A similar and predictable look, feel, and tone should be apparent in the entire Borrower Experience.

Captivate

One of the hallmarks of a great brand is that it grabs the attention of consumers. That’s not to say that it must be loud or aggressive, but optimally, it should contain some pivot –enough to make a consumer do a “double-take” when they come upon it while browsing for local mortgage brokers and lenders.

Keep in mind that the double-take is more than a cool logo. Captivating with your brand also involves offering the “remarkable” with your services, such as instant quotes or self-generated approval letters. 

Personality

A strong mortgage brand also has a recognizable personality that makes it relatable to its target consumer. We can see this in action with well-known brands like Nike (motivational and inspirational) or Apple (innovative and fresh). 

Authentic brand personality permeates everything from running the company to campaign messages, helping to build rapport and loyalty from your target mortgage consumer. 

Emotional Hook

Consumers are often persuaded more effectively by emotion than logic. A recent collaborative study analyzing 35 years of research into emotions’ impact on decision-making revealed that emotions are a pervasive and predictable driver in decision making.

Thus, a strong mortgage brand needs an emotional hook that emphasizes the benefits to the consumer. This emotional hook (the benefits) excites consumers and motivates them to convert into borrowers.

Community

Your current and past mortgage consumers can be your most effective evangelists and be a rich resource for new mortgage leads by sharing their experience and recommending it. A strong mortgage brand is one that your consumer advocates are thrilled to share. It’s professional, clean, and trustworthy -everything they can get behind to share and go viral. 

Authority

When it comes to the lending industry, authority is a must. Anything less than unshakable authority will cost you business. Ways that you can build authority with your branding include:

• Mortgage content like a blog, videos, and email marketing
• Infographics and eBooks
• Digital mortgage tools like a mortgage app and professionally build mortgage website
• Publish content on industry-respected platforms
• Consistent and active presence across the web, including review sites and social media

LenderHomePage Builds Your Mortgage Brand

A strong mortgage brand sets you up for success. It defines fundamentals like your mission and company values, rallies employees around your vision, emotionally hooks prospective mortgage consumers, excites advocates for your business, and overall helps to facilitate a thriving ROI. So when it comes to a digital mortgage partner, choose one that’s built for branding as well as scaling. 

Try us out for free for 14 days and discover why top producers and enterprise originators trust LenderHomePage for all their digital mortgage platform needs. 

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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.