Securing a steady flow of top-tier leads for your pipeline is already a daunting task –but you knew this when you got into this industry. But when you factor in the current formidable market conditions with the already fierce competition, the pursuit of prospective borrowers seems like an even greater Herculean endeavor.

We get it.

That’s why we put together this list of the top 10 mortgage marketing strategies specifically chosen because of their proven effectiveness at helping you stand out from the crowd and uniquely position your services as one that goes above and beyond –making for a powerful and persuasive offer that organically feeds your pipeline with leads.

Make no mistake –while these strategies may appear straightforward (and several are quite manageable to implement), they possess the remarkable power to grant you a necessary competitive edge.

Drive Marketing Success –Demo Website Templates

Craft a Captivating Website: Your Secret to Converting Prospects

Your first impression is a primary determinant of whether a prospect will convert or not, and nowadays, these impressions happen online. Chances are, a prospect will land on your website as the final destination before reaching out to you, so you need to strategize a way to effectively make them fall in love (or at least be curious) right from the start.

Your site also needs to entice them to explore further; whether that means learning more about the company, consuming information, or starting the application process. 

In other words, you don’t want to be ‘just another website’ that the prospect will likely forget. You need to create a memorable visitor experience. 

Creating one doesn’t require a lot of time or know-how if you begin with high-converting website templates like one from LenderHomePage.

Speed Matters: Turbocharge Your Mortgage Website for More Leads

A fast-loading website propels visitors through the lead funnel. If your website is using a poor hosting service, has too many plugins, and/or has excessive lines of HTML, CSS, and Javascript code, your audience will abandon your website before it fully loads. 

Search engines are very strict about this and are quick to push down your website to the bottom of results, so you want to make sure to keep user experience at the top of your priority list.

Mobile Optimization: Your Ticket to Mortgage Marketing Success

Mobile devices drive 62% of web traffic, making it absolutely essential that your site is mobile-friendly. Furthermore, Google favors mobile-friendly sites over sites that are not optimized for hand-held devices. No need to hire a developer to overhaul your site –LenderHomePage sites are already mobile-optimized. 

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From Click to Client: The Art of Boosting Conversions on Your Website

To encourage prospects to share their information, you may need to offer something in exchange. For example, an ebook or a quick quote could be offered in exchange for their name and email address. 

You also need to have a dedicated ‘Contact Us’ page to include more detailed information, such as directions to your office, map, address, email, and anything else that would encourage prospects to reach out.

Rise Above the Competition: Mortgage Marketing with Strategic Automation

While your competitors are mainly focusing on getting their name out there to get leads, you can do the same, but with a focus on the consumer’s value in working with you.

The combination of consumer-facing software + automation is a great way to delight your audience. In the mortgage environment, all your audience needs is a simple and fast homebuying experience where they are properly guided through the entire process. Mortgage software that automates the intake process also allows you to scale profits.

If you want to simplify the home-buying experience for your customers, look no further than Loanzify. Loanzify provides an easy-to-follow timeline to help guide clients every step of the way. 

Some useful features include an interview-style questionnaire for the initial intake process, the ability to track all communications between your company and the client all in a single platform and mobile app, and much more.

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There are also numerous branding features within the software, such as the ability to customize colors, add a logo and profile picture, etc., to better strengthen the relationship between your clients and your brand.

Timing is Everything: Navigating Mortgage Marketing in the Digital Age

Today’s audience is not easy to market to. With attention spans decreasing due to short-form content apps such as TikTok, you need to be smart about how you approach your target market. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to churn out content every day. In fact, the pressure to post daily content may reduce the quality of the content and make you feel burnt out. 

Sure, there are benefits, such as the opportunity to put out various types of posts and see which ones your audience interacts with most. Posting daily can give you some good insights but does not always benefit you in the long run. 

Instead, start noticing when your audience is most receptive. For example, many businesses like to send out newsletters on Fridays when the work day is not as busy, and everyone is getting ready for the weekend vs. on a busy Monday. 

In the case of your target audience, which is potential homebuyers, notice changes in homebuying patterns and market accordingly. A good time to hit your audience with powerful and convincing messaging to buy a new home is when the market is good for buyers.

Solving the Mortgage Puzzle: Focus on Solutions, Not Just Loans

The only way your marketing messaging can resonate with your crowd is if you provide a solution to an existing problem they are experiencing. This message can be as simple as loans for homebuyers with poor credit, but oftentimes, prospects are looking for much more than that. 

Here are some other pain points you can resolve for clients:

• Simple Application Process: This requires a shift in your way of thinking. Mortgage software, like an LOS, streamlines the application process, but it does so for the originator –not the borrower. So when considering how you can beat out your competition with your application process, meditate on what the borrower experiences with the application. 

Once you’ve pinpointed the precise messaging about how you make applying for a loan stress-free and transparent, it should be clearly addressed in your marketing messaging.

• Personalized Guidance: If your messaging revolves around how you guide homebuyers along every step of the home-buying process, you’ll win hearts instantly. After all, it’s not easy for clients to navigate technology that potentially confuses them and sometimes, they need a human to explain the technicals, such as terms and requirements. Excellent, personalized support combined with easy-to-use technology is a powerful way to stand out above the noise.

On-Demand Demo – Click Here

Lights, Camera, Action! Leveraging Videos for Mortgage Marketing

Video content is dominating today’s world. We can see this with current social media trends, and how people view videos is presented quite clearly in these trends. For example, short-form video content is preferred over a 20-minute video explaining the same concept. 

Next time you think about writing a whitepaper or other long-form content, ask yourself whether you can effectively communicate the same content in a video. If the video becomes too long, you can easily break it down into smaller digestible videos or even upload a crash course on YouTube. 

Popular types of video content tell an intriguing story, are testimonials, informational or tutorial, or lighthearted for entertainment.

Know Your Competition: A Winning Strategy for Mortgage Professionals

Mega banks aren’t your only competition. Local lenders and originators are too, so it’s worth checking out what they’re up to –where they’re winning and losing. 

You can see your competitors’ strongest and weakest points by reading online reviews. You can check out their social profiles and get content inspiration. You can also see what types of content they produce are getting the most views, which will give you an insight into the hottest topics in real estate. 

A good strategy is viewing your competitors’ content and asking yourself how to make it 10x better.

SWOT Analysis: Your Blueprint for Mortgage Marketing Mastery

A SWOT analysis is a report you can create that lists your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This helps you steer your marketing strategy to focus on growing your strengths, recognize your weaknesses so you can act accordingly, take advantage of opportunities, and become more aware of threats, whether they are in your control or not. 

• Strengths: This involves a comprehensive evaluation of your unique selling points, such as specialized expertise, exceptional customer service, or a vast network of real estate referral partners. By understanding and highlighting these strengths, you can emphasize your competitive advantages and effectively communicate them to potential clients to set you apart from competitors.
• Weaknesses: Assess any areas where you may fall short, such as limited product offerings, inadequate technology infrastructure, or a lack of brand recognition. By acknowledging weaknesses, you can develop targeted strategies to address and overcome them, improve you overall service, and enhance your market position.
• Opportunities: This may include emerging market trends, changes in regulations, or new customer segments. By staying attuned to these opportunities, you can tailor your marketing strategies to capitalize on them. For example, if there is a growing demand for eco-friendly home improvement loans, a loan officer could position themselves as a specialist in this area.
• Threats: This may include increasing local competition, economic fluctuations, or evolving customer preferences. By addressing threats head-on, you can adapt your marketing strategies to remain resilient and competitive.

When You’re Ready To Take Your Lending Career to the Next Level –LenderHomePage

If you’re ready to take your mortgage business to new heights and see these strategies in action, we invite you to experience an on-demand demo to discover how we can empower your marketing efforts to gain a competitive edge and achieve greater success in your mortgage business.

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The days of physical directory books left at your doorstep are long gone, but that doesn’t mean business listings are dead. In fact, a vast amount of consumers still research a local business before reaching out. In fact, Google revealed that roughly 46% of ALL Google searches are specifically looking for a local business! As a loan officer, you know that when it comes to making a major decision like home financing, prospective buyers need to have all the facts and feel confident before making a move.

So, how do you help homebuyers discover your business in a sea of fierce originator competition?

Discover Our Loan Officer Solutions

Along with excellent local SEO on your mortgage website and an active social media presence, local online directories and business listing sites are where it’s at! However, we’ve found that most loan officers don’t truly understand what it takes to effectively manage their business listing –if they even have one! 

Since there are numerous online local business directories and many components to manage, we’ve put together this simple “marketing ideas for mortgage loan officers” guide to help you simplify managing your loan officer business listing.

The 4 W’s of Business Listings for Loan Officers

Before we get into the various business listing sites and the tools to manage listings, let’s take a step back and learn the importance of business listings for loan officers. 

Why Should Loan Officers and Brokers Create Business Listings?

As we mentioned earlier, a large portion of online searches are for local businesses, which is why Google’s algorithm highly favors geo-targeted listings. Adding your loan officer info to local business listings is an organic way to appear higher in search results.

What Info Should You Have On Your Business Listing?

Typically, a business listing has three core fields: name, address, and phone number (also known as NAP). Again, since your business thrives on online presence, you’ll also want your website URL. Not only does this affect your SEO, but it also makes it more likely for searchers to visit your site.

Additionally, the option to add photos helps you show off your business visually and give your audience a sense of the face(s) behind your business.

Where Can Loan Officer Business Listings Be Found Online?

One of the most common business listing websites is Google itself. When somebody searches for a local business, a Google Business listing is usually shown first. That’s if you’ve set up your Google Business listing. Other top local business directories for loan officers include Facebook, Yelp, Apple Maps, etc. It’s also worth noting that many online directories search the web to compare business information. So, if any of your business listings are incorrect, it may trigger a domino effect and start spreading incorrect information across the web!

When Is the Right Time to Create a Business Listing?

The right time to create a business listing is NOW. The sooner you create one, the sooner you expose yourself to more home buyers, and you will gain a lot more traffic on your website and receive more inquiries. 

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However, be sure that you have your mortgage website ready and have a dedicated phone number that people can call. This will ensure your audience that your business is established and you’ve had previous clients.

Top Business Listing Sites All Loan Officers Should Take Advantage of

Although there are numerous online business listing sites that you can create a listing on, here are the top ones that are extremely beneficial for your mortgage brand.

Google MY Business

Creating a Google Business profile as a loan officer takes just minutes, costs no money, and is generally easy to manage. The more often you update your profile, add new photos of your business, update your hours, and answer some of the most frequently asked questions on your profile, the more likely your listing will rank higher. 

When somebody searches for ‘loan officer near me’ or any similar inquiries, your business has a better shot at appearing as a top listing if your info is complete and current. Another good way to help your Google Business listing rank better is to gain as many reviews as possible. Be sure to ask your happy homebuyers to leave you a quick review! 

Meta/Facebook

Social media is one of the best ways to get real estate clients, and contrary to the popular myth that Facebook is dead, the platform still gets around three billion monthly users. The truth is that many homebuyers are on social media.

One of the top benefits of creating a Meta page is that it makes it very easy for users to reach out to you through the Messenger option. This exposes your company to a brand new audience online that is otherwise not so easily accessible. Plus, it’s free to create a listing. 

On-Demand Demo – Click Here

Apple Maps

With at least 200 million users, Apple Maps is one of the top business listing sites on which every local business should be. Since nearly half of the American audience uses iPhones, having a listing on Apple Maps makes it easy for mobile users to find you whether they are sitting at home or on the go.

Like most directory sites, you’ll need to verify your business at the end, and then you’re good to go.

There are also listing sites geared more towards real estate, such as Trulia and Zillow, which are great sites for loan officers and brokers to get listed on.

Some real estate websites automatically pull up a list of licensed local loan officers and brokers without any action required on your side. It’s still a good idea to monitor these and ensure your information is accurate.

Local Business Listing Management Tools You Should Know About

The sites listed above are just a few of the many directories on which you can list your business. The more websites you get listed on, the more challenging it will be to manage every listing to ensure that your business information is accurate and consistent on all websites.

The good news is that you can use many listing management tools to get a single view of all your listings and a report on how consistent the data is across different sites. Here are a few of them. 

Yext

Yext is an online platform that allows businesses to control and synchronize their online listings across 200+ business listing websites. In other words, Yext helps companies ensure that business information such as phone numbers, addresses, hours of operation, and reviews are accurate and up-to-date. Some of the publishers Yext allows you to manage your listings on include Google, Apple, Amazon Alexa, and Bing.

With features such as the ability to remove duplicate listings, reputation management tools, and analytics reports that show how customers interact with a business’s online content, Yext provides invaluable insight that can help you improve your overall customer experience and drive more online and offline traffic.

Thryv

Thryv may not be as advanced as Yext when it comes to business listing management, as it only allows you to manage around 40 listings. However, the platform is great in other ways. The main benefit of Thryv is that you can add your listing once to the platform, and the data auto-populates to the 40 other websites, saving you massive time. 

Additionally, Thryv includes features to monitor reviews from customers, providing insights to improve customer engagement and help with reputation management.

BrightLocal

BrightLocal allows you to easily monitor and track the performance of 50+ online directory listings while also helping you clean up any inaccuracies that could be affecting your visibility online. 

The platform provides detailed analytics to help you understand how your business appears in search results, which websites drive the most traffic to your site, and areas for improvement.

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LenderHomePage Helps Loan Officers Elevate Their Digital Presence

If approached correctly, listing management doesn’t have to be difficult for your mortgage business. There are numerous tools to help you manage your online presence. 

As long as you are listed on the top directories mentioned earlier and your basic fields, such as your business name, address, phone number, and website URL, are consistent across platforms, your business can gain so much more exposure. 

Business listings are just one of the many marketing ideas for mortgage loan officers. As you scale up your marketing efforts and gain more traffic on your website, you’ll want to equally give importance to how your brand is presented to your audience. 

Check out LenderHomePage’s mortgage website templates and delight your prospects and customers today.

Your mortgage website is your digital real estate (no pun intended). But while you have the freedom to design it any way you want and the obligation to deliver an ideal user experience, you also must ensure that your website’s visibility is optimal. This is where a mortgage site’s structure comes into play.

As a mortgage provider, you may not have a team of web designers to help guide you through this critical process. That’s why we created this ‘mortgage website audit checklist’ where we guide you through the most critical aspects you should focus on, ensuring that you’ve maximized your website’s visibility and indexability.

What is a Website Audit?

A website audit is an assessment of every page on your website to determine elements that need correction or improvement. While it may be easy to spot issues on your homepage, an audit combs through your entire site, looking for visual and technical problems that can negatively impact user experience and search ranking.

Common issues that an audit may uncover are broken links, duplicate pages, missing meta descriptions, and not mobile-friendly.  

Thin or non-original content and slow page loading are typical but significant issues that most mortgage websites suffer from, and it’s no surprise. Creating pages upon pages of original, quality content isn’t fast or simple.

And designing a website that provides optimal page speed often means a complete technical redesign of its framework –an overhaul that other website providers aren’t willing to invest in.

But we did…

Meet LHP 3.0 — Websites Built For Speed!

But let’s get back to website audits.

Why Bother Auditing Your Mortgage Website Anyway?

There are numerous reasons why you should conduct an audit of your mortgage website.

Gives you insight into your website’s framework

Unless you understand the ins and outs of your site, you won’t know what to alter to improve your search ranking. 

Optimizing for SEO

Only through a website audit can you determine how to improve your website’s SEO. Conducting a site audit can help you find what errors you have made so you can correct them and also identify any missed opportunities to gain more SEO benefits.

Better convert visitors

Track your visitor’s journeys by identifying where your audience clicks and whether they fall off at a certain point. A website audit gives you a chance to spot these issues and get them fixed.

Beat competition

With a competitive website audit, you can see what is working for them so you can possibly replicate it. For example, SpyFu is a great tool for learning about the most popular keywords that your competitors use.

Backlinks analysis tools such as Ahrefs and Ubersuggest allow you to examine your competitors’ backlink profiles and compare them to yours.

How to Conduct a Website Audit

There are many tools you can use to conduct a website audit. Free tools such as Google Pagespeed Insights and Google Search Console give you an excellent view of what’s going on with your site.

There are also paid comprehensive website audits, although the information overload may leave you with more questions rather than answers. 

So which audit road should you take? 

We recommend starting off with a mortgage website template that addresses the most common offenses right off the bat.

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After that, follow the list below of the primary areas you’ll want to focus on.

DIY Website Audit Tips for Loan Officers and Mortgage Brokers

Use a site audit tool

The tools previously mentioned are great for pinpointing the most overlooked website issues, such as 404 errors, technical errors, duplicate content, crawlability issues, etc. Any red flag warnings should be the first ones your fix.

Review and Elevate Your Web Content

One crucial aspect of this audit is assessing the existing content on the website. Content not only serves as the voice of the business, but it’s foundational to search engine ranking and conversion. However, editing and creating content is much easier said than done.

But that’s where AI-powered editing and writing tool comes to your aid! Audit your content using AI tools that check your spelling, grammar, and tone. Depending on the tool, it may also suggest keywords to strengthen your SEO.

When it comes to content creation, professionals can use AI to efficiently generate first-draft content that helps expedite writing web content. Can it really be that simple? See for yourself!

Our newly launched LHP 3.0 websites come with built-in AI-writing tools, empowering loan officers and mortgage brokers to effortlessly craft compelling and relevant content for their online platforms. With this advanced feature, you can streamline the content creation process, optimize search engine visibility, and connect with your audience more effectively than ever before. 

Take a closer look at your website’s user experience (UX)

Nobody wants to stay on a website that is hard to navigate. Is your homepage clean with a clear, concise message? Would first-time visitors know where to navigate different pages and your contact page? Ask yourself these questions and make any changes accordingly.

Once you have done all of the above, make a list of recommended changes and hand it over to your developer(s) and or designer(s).

If you rather not bother with all of these design issues, your best bet is to go with a mortgage website template from LenderHomePage that is already designed for an optimal borrower experience and lead generation.

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Features That Every Mortgage Website Should Have

Are you missing any of the below features on your website? If so, it’s time to start creating a plan for implementing them.

An ‘About’ Page

Your clients want to know exactly who they are working with, so it’s highly essential for mortgage companies to provide an ‘About Us’ page on your website telling them who you are and what makes you different. 

Loan Officer Pages
Loan Officer pages give your team a way to promote themselves, your company and bring traffic to your website. To provide a more personal connection, add short bios under each team member’s photo. Add the ability to apply with each loan officer and potentially schedule meetings with them directly. This is a great value add to clients and a feature that helps with attracting and retaining originators.

If you are the sole owner and employee at your company, you can include a longer bio next to your photo since you’ll have a lot more real estate on the page.

Testimonials

A website should not just be an avenue to increase online presence. You can also leverage it to build trust. How do you build trust? By showcasing customer stories.

Having high-quality and relatable case studies on your website can ensure prospects that you are an expert in your field and have benefitted others with your work. 

Especially in an industry such as real estate, where your clients have to make important decisions and invest a lot of money, you absolutely need to have case studies on your site to move your leads along the funnel.

Reviews

Client reviews serve as a validation of your business’s credibility and reliability. During the consideration phase, prospects seek out feedback from others who have experienced your service and expertise first-hand. 

By having a collection of genuine client reviews readily available on your website, you provide valuable information that assists potential borrowers in their decision-making process. By prominently displaying your reviews, you demonstrate that real people have had positive experiences with your business and brand, strengthening your reputation and making it easier to convert web visitors into mortgage leads.

Interactive Tools

Once a visitor has landed on your website, you want them to stay. To do this, you must provide free interactive tools and resources that engage prospects. 

It’s fine if you want to create gated content to collect lead information, but be sure to provide a handful of ungated resources as well. Not everybody wants to provide their information, but this doesn’t mean they will not make a good client. An example of a free tool that every mortgage company should have on their website is a free mortgage calculator. 

Sometimes, popups can be interactive. However, you want to keep these to a minimum as nobody wants to keep hitting the ‘x’ button to see the content that they came to your website for in the first place.

Social Media Icons

You may come across many websites where you scroll down to the bottom footer and find a line of social media icons for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. What’s the real purpose of linking your social channels to your website?

Although it may seem counterproductive to lead key prospects away from your site, you should consider that the people who will click these icons are your site visitors who are taking the time to learn more about your company. They are likely deeply invested and just need to see that you are an expert in your field before they convert to a customer.

Make sure that you’re consistently posting high-quality content to each of your channels to have a positive impression among your crowd. This is your chance to showcase that you are knowledgeable about the mortgage process. You can share your blogs, testimonials, infographics, social tiles, and any other information that can better convince your audience that they should choose you as their lender.

You should also include a link to your website through your social channels. This allows your social media audience to get one step closer to contacting you, which should be your final goal.

Optimize with LHP 3.0 – Request A Demo Today!

Lead Magnets / CTA Buttons

Encourage your audience to commit further to you by incorporating lead magnets and call-to-action buttons on your website.

A lead magnet is an element where you offer something of high value for free (such as an ebook or guide) in exchange for their contact information.

A call-to-action (CTA) button is similar. It contains only a motivational message that encourages visitors to take additional action that moves them closer to a funded loan.

That action could be to interact with your chatbot, call your office, use your online mortgage calculator to estimate a monthly payment, or even begin their online application. The messages on the buttons are typically short (ex., ‘Inquire Today,’ ‘Schedule a Call with Us’).

Blog

If your website does not already have a blog, you should create a section for it. Blogs help you showcase your expertise and knowledge while also helping you show up better and more frequently in local search queries. 

Decide how often you will create content and post. A healthy schedule is to post about once a week. 

Have writer’s block? Use our AI mortgage writing tool to blast through it! Available on LHP 3.0 websites.

Effortless Website Optimization: Utilizing LenderHomePAge Mortgage Website Templates for Increased Leads

There are so many improvements you can make on your mortgage website to increase leads and encourage prospects to reach out to you faster. By making even the most simple adjustments, such as moving around certain elements on your website, you can greatly improve the visitor experience.

If working with website design elements is not your strongest area, leverage a mortgage website template from LenderHomePage.This out-of-the-box solution establishes a strong baseline that checks off most of the audit list. Then, you can use the tips provided in this guide to fine-tune your site as you see fit.

Elevate Your Mortgage Site’s Visibility: Get A Demo

Picture this: Your ideal customer, a perfect fit for your target market, eagerly searches for “loan officers near me.” As they hit that search button, a multitude of relevant results floods their screen. The prospect starts scrolling and finds a select few local loan officers. Unfortunately, your business is nowhere to be seen.

Or worse yet, the prospect finds your site but quickly clicks out because it took too long to load –triggering Google to drop your site further and further down search results.

To prevent such nightmares from haunting your business, it’s imperative to keep up with the latest updates for local SEO optimization –particularly page speed. In recent years, page speed has emerged as one of the most critical factors influencing search rankings.

Like LenderHomepage, Google understands that page speed and User Experience work together and play a pivotal role in determining the quality of a website and, ultimately, conversions.

Missing this marker means certain doom for any website.

So take charge of your online presence and search ranking by ensuring that prospective borrowers looking for a local loan officer finds you on their first search. After all, according to Google, 81% of consumers use the search engine to search for a local business (Brightlocal, 2021).

Act now, and secure your spot in the local market to maximize your visibility and success with SEO optimization.

FREE Ebook: Master Digital Presence to Grow Leads!

But before implementing a local SEO strategy on your mortgage website, we need to step back and review something called “intent.” Google uses intent to judge what sort of search result the searcher wants. Is the searcher looking for information? Looking to buy? Looking to compare? All of this determines what type of content Google will display. Tying in “intent” with location further determines search results.

So let’s start there.

Understanding “local intent”

46% of all Google searches have some sort of local intent, and a whopping 97% of users will use Google to find a local business. (Safari Digital, 2021). Because of this, Google offers a handful of features to support geo-targeted searches. 

For example, when you search for ‘loan officers in (city name),’ Google will first display results from Google Maps listings and then showcase the traditional ‘10 results per page’ search results.

Now, let’s say that a particular searcher looked up ‘loan officers.’ Even though the user has not mentioned a location in their search query, Google may still display all the loan officers in the user’s area. Some users may even search ‘loan officers near me.’

Again, if the location is detected, Google will do its job of informing the searcher of all the loan officers near where they are located.

Then comes the underlying purpose of the intent of the search query. A transactional intent is where the searcher intends to purchase something now. While informational, commercial, or navigational are other types of intent categories. When it comes to drivers of traffic, those with informational and navigational seem to be the intents with the most volume. When it comes to sales, transactional intent is the big winner –which isn’t surprising since someone that is looking to “apply now” will do just that (it’s just a matter of where).

Now that you have an understanding of the mindset of intent and how that works with the searcher’s location, let’s move on to the strategies to optimize your website to gain local traffic.

Best loan officer strategies for SEO: Your Plan for Implementing Local SEO

Improve Page Speed for Instant SEO Boost

Page speed, also known as load speed, plays a critical role in SEO by determining how fast a page’s content appears. Different factors, like web hosting and page size, affect how quickly a page loads, and this can vary between desktop and mobile versions. Faster loading times improve SEO because it enhances the user experience –essentially, the longer the load time, the more likely it is for a user to click out. 

So if Google detects that a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, the search engine will drop your ranking. Conversely, a mortgage site with optimized load speed will get an instant SEO boost.

There are several strategies that you can implement to improve your page speed. The easiest one would be to use a mortgage website platform that addresses these factors for you, but if you prefer to hire a developer to work on your existing site, these are items you’ll want to overhaul:

• Optimize image files: Compress images to reduce their file size without compromising quality.
• Minify code: Remove unnecessary characters, whitespace, and comments from JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files to make them smaller and load faster.
• Reduce HTTP requests: Combine or eliminate unnecessary scripts, stylesheets, and other resources to minimize the number of requests the browser needs to make.
• Enable browser caching: Configure caching headers to allow the browser to store certain elements of your website, reducing the need to download them on subsequent visits.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN): Distribute your website’s content across multiple servers geographically to deliver it to users from the server closest to their location, reducing latency.
• Optimize server response time: Improve the server’s processing speed and reduce the time it takes to respond to requests from the browser.
• Minimize redirects: Reduce the number of redirects on your website to minimize the additional time required for the browser to reach the final destination.

Add location-based keywords to your website copy.

We all know that the right keywords are what bring the traffic in. So do your research! There are a handful of free keyword research tools that you can use to find out what the hot local keywords related to your industry are. Here are some of our favorites.

Google Search Console: Search Console is free to set up for any business, and the tool has many benefits. You can see the number of impressions, clicks, and average position for each of your web pages, and you can filter the timeline for when you want Google to gather the results. 

If you go to the ‘Queries’ section, you can see what search terms people are searching for, where your website shows up, and what position you are in for that search query. This is helpful because if you are showing up as the 80th result for a local search term, you know you need to optimize for that search query better.

Free Keyword Planners: There are several free keyword research tools out there to try. Most limit the results displayed on the free versions. However, they present a fair enough amount of data to be a valuable resource. 

Google Keyword Planner: Although built for Google Ads, you can still get a pretty good idea of what keywords are good for regular organic search copy.

Google Suggest and Related Searches: Did you know you do not need to use an external third-party tool to research your keyword? Google itself presents suggestions and related searches when you type in a topic into the search engine. 

The suggestions are presented as you are typing in the query. For example, if you are typing in ‘loan officer…’, Google may suggest that you search for ‘loan officers near me’ or ‘loan officers in California.’ That should give you some ideas for local keywords. As for related searches, you can find these when you go to the bottom of the search results page. The page will give you very similar ideas to the Google Suggest feature.

You can even ask your friends and loved ones for local keyword ideas! Ask them what they would search for if they were looking for local loan officers.

Keep in mind that optimizing your mortgage website for local SEO is one of the best lead-generation strategies for mortgage lenders too!

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Optimize your web pages for on-page SEO.

This is where you go all in and ensure your local keywords from step one are integrated into your website. There are many ways you can do this. The best place to start is your contact page. Do you have your physical address on your contact page? This would also be a great place to add headings such as ‘Best Loan Officer in (your city, state).’ 

Along with your contact page, make sure that the headings throughout your website have a healthy amount of local keywords added in. Do your title tags and meta descriptions mention your location? 

This is one of the best ways for your audience to find you. Of course, you’ll also want to optimize your blog articles, loan program pages, and images with alt tags!

Tip: Don’t forget to optimize for voice searches! A good way to do this is by adding questions that people often search for in your headings. You can use www.answerthepublic.com to find out what types of questions people search for regarding your topic.

Make your mortgage website responsive and mobile-friendly.

Although this is easy to miss, you want to ensure that your mortgage website is mobile-friendly. This is because many search engines, such as Google, have mobile-first indexing.

Use a free tool from Google Search Console called the Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure your site is up to speed and has no issues rendering on mobile. Hint: If you use a LenderHomePage mortgage site, you can rest assured that it’s responsive and mobile-friendly!

Create a Google Business profile

Creating a Google Business profile opens up another opportunity to bring in local traffic. This will allow you to appear in the Google Maps results that list all the registered businesses in the area. It is completely free to create a business profile on Google. 

When creating your profile, make sure that you add high-resolution pictures of your business with good lighting, have a proper description that compliments your business, describe your offerings, request your best clients to leave reviews, and make sure that your address, hours of operation, and name of your business are correct. 

The more relevant your description is to what your audience is searching for, the more likely it is to appear higher in the Google Maps results. 

Then, you need to monitor your listing every now and then and make any changes as needed.

Tip: Along with asking your best clients to leave reviews on your Google Business listing, you can also request them to leave a review on other directories such as Yelp, Trustpilot, etc. However, you don’t want to pay for reviews. Make sure the reviews are authentic and not spam-like.

Don’t forget directory sites

Once you have tackled the Google Business listing, you can move on to getting your business listed on other directory sites such as Yelp and Yellowpages.com. 

The most important thing to remember when listing your business on these sites is that the information must be consistent on every website. This helps Google recognize your business more easily to help it rank higher for relevant search terms. 

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Build high-quality local links to your website

Link-building is a process in which one website links to another site, giving the linked site more SEO value. When doing link-building outreach to secure links on other sites, you first want to ensure that the website you’re trying to build links on is relevant to your niche. 

So a high-traffic informational website on the latest films and TV shows will not be relevant for your mortgage business. However, given the right content and context, linking to a local home contractor or pet adoption website might be perfect.

Reach out to the top local publications and businesses in your area, and see if they are willing to partner with you in some way so that you can give them an opportunity to link to your website. 

You also want to remember to build links on sites with a higher domain authority score. Tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush are great for finding out the Domain score of a website. 

Link-building is not an easy process and will require a great deal of patience and effort. However, if your efforts are consistent, you will certainly start seeing your rankings improve in search engines.

Post on your social media channels to boost engagement

Many homeowners lurk around on social media, so you must make your business visible on all the social channels you can think of. Plus, Bing search engine – which still holds about 10% of all internet traffic –uses social media as a factor in their search ranking. Posting frequent and relevant content can get challenging for a single LO, so consider using an intern or a scheduling tool to plan ahead. This, at the very least, can help take some of the load off of your plate.

For a more comprehensive solution, use a mortgage marketing specialist who can do the heavy lifting. Check out our social media marketing service for more information. 

It helps eliminate competition from businesses farther away from you, and you can further optimize for local SEO with Google Maps. Did you know that 86% of consumers rely on Google Maps to find the location of a business (Backlinko, 2020)? 

There is no reason you should wait to optimize your website to garner local traffic and the traffic you already get. Want to learn more about optimizing your digital presence? Read this previously published article about social media marketing for loan officers. 

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A marketing plan helps you grow your mortgage business – this is true even for single MLO’s. But let’s face it, creating a plan can be overwhelming and confusing. We understand. Many loan officers find themselves in the same boat.

The great news is that we’ve simplified it for you with this guide.

Our straightforward but thorough loan officer marketing plan template covers everything you need to succeed in your role and ensure business growth. With our help, you can stop stressing about creating a plan and start focusing on reaching your goals toward mortgage business success.

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Identifying Where Your Business Currently Stands

Prospecting likely takes up the majority of your day, but you don’t want to overlook analyzing your business as a whole. For example, are you keenly aware of which marketing activities are bringing in business or whether there were any significant changes to your lead generation avenues?

Start by focusing on where your leads are currently coming from and where they drop off. For example, if you see that you’re getting traffic from social media, but you struggle to move them further down the path to closing, you know that there’s work to be done there.  

Note that little to no leads from a particular source doesn’t mean you should abandon it altogether. For example, you may have heard that email marketing is dead, but that’s simply not true.

Email marketing has some of the highest ROI’s as well as decent conversion rates in marketing. So if one of your lead generation tactics isn’t quite panning out, it may just mean you need to alter your strategy, not can it altogether.

So start by examining the hard data and see where your business currently stands with lead generation and conversion. After that, you’ll have a clearer picture of how to structure your business plan.

Goal-Setting: Essential to Loan Officer Success

Setting goals and objectives isn’t just a marketing ploy. It’s actually scientifically proven that goal-setting helps individuals achieve impressive results in record time. Using goals not only motivates you but also defines what success looks like to measure your progress. 

The best method, by far, is to use the “SMART” goal method, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Here’s an example:

• The first step in working towards your goals is to identify the goal. Let’s say that you want to close more loans. Specify how many loans you want to close.
• Next, identify your closing ratio. This will help you determine whether your goal is attainable. For example, an LO with a current closing rate of five loans per quarter will have a better chance of achieving eight loans per quarter. If you’re a newbie, eight loans might be too lofty to achieve in your first quarter. 
• Closing more loans is an indicator of a successful loan officer, so we know this goal is relevant. But you also want to make sure that any goals you set are in-line with company expectations. If your company has a specific quota, you’ll want to take that into account as well. 
• Next is giving yourself a timeframe in which you’re going to achieve this goal. In our example, we’re giving ourselves a quarter to reach eight closed loans. 

Now that we have a foundation let’s jump into creating your marketing and business plan.

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Mortgage Loan Officer Marketing and Business Plan: How to Structure Your Plan

Now that you know what works, what doesn’t, and what strategies you have yet to test out, you are in a better position to create your loan officer business plan. Since marketing and business plans can get hefty, a good way to stay organized is to divide your plan up by different fields or departments. For example, you want to have a section for the ‘operations plan’ and the ‘marketing plan.’

A good template you can follow is to start off with an Executive Summary followed by some industry and market insights. After that, you can go into the fields.

Executive Summary

Every good plan needs a strong introduction that will give a clear snapshot of the different sections of the business plan. A good loan officer executive summary will include the following:

• Brief information on your business
• Target borrowers
• Local competitors
• Your UVP (Unique Value Proposition)
• Brief description of the plan from different viewpoints, such as lead generation tactics and realtor partnership creation.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, it’s best to write this section of the plan out in the end when you have a solid idea about the details of your marketing plan.

Industry and Market Analysis

Having a detailed analysis of your industry and market landscape is a great way to set a direction for your plan. What this does is give you valuable insight into how big your target market is, how much it is expected to grow in coming years, what’s trending in your industry, what trends are here to stay, etc. 

Your industry analysis should answer questions such as:

• Who are your main local competitors?
• What is the TAM (total addressable market)?
• What is the SAM (serviceable addressable market)?
• What is the SOM (serviceable obtainable market)?

Marketing Plan

As for the ‘Marketing’ section of your plan, you must cover the four P’s: product, place, price, and promotion. Explain the product(s) and or services you are offering. Since your loan officer business is likely local, explain how the location of your business impacts its growth. Address the following questions: 

• Is there a large serviceable obtainable market in your area? e.g. are you working with a local builder, with a top realtor, etc…
• Who are your local competitors? 
• How are you differentiating yourself from your competitors? (Hint: competing solely on rates or products is unlikely to be effective)
• Are there any local mortgage niches that are being underserved? 
• How will you promote your mortgage business, and what mortgage technology do you need to support your efforts?

Operations Plan

Don’t let the label mislead you. Operations simply refers to how you’ll complete your tasks and how your workflow and tools will help you achieve your goals. The first step is to outline your short and long-term goals and the processes you use in each of those areas.

Some examples of short-term processes would be:

• Managing your document workflows
• Applying tech to improve communication
• Implementing more interactive digital tools to drive engagement
• Allowing borrowers to pay for their own credit report

Some examples of long-term goals would be:

• Streamlining the borrower intake between your mortgage website and application
• Create mortgage content geared around your niche target and implement it in your lead funnel
• Shifting to a personalized self-serve model that automates time-consuming processes without sacrificing service.
• Implement a social media marketing plan that helps build relationships and engages potential clients.

By using this loan officer business plan template, you’ll have a compelling framework to achieve your goals and create a clear path for career longevity. And at LenderHomePage, there’s nothing more important to us than helping mortgage loan originators succeed. That’s why our suite of digital mortgage tools are different.

From mortgage website templates with built-in lead magnets to a co-branded mortgage mobile app that grows your realtor referrals to an intuitive 1003 intake, our mortgage tech is designed to help captivate and create clients for life. Schedule a demo today and take the first step toward your long-term success.

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A crucial component of marketing yourself as a loan officer is social media. Social media has made it easier than ever for businesses to reach their target audience, with both its accessibility and the sheer number of internet users on social media. 

Social media has assisted businesses of all sizes in establishing customer connections for years. While it is a helpful tool in increasing traffic and lead generation, more than anything else, social media helps businesses gain more exposure. 

With all that said, it’s a lot easier to state the benefits of using social media than it is to start.

There’s also the issue of keeping up the momentum –knowing what to post, finding the right image, editing it, and writing a catchy headline…

It’s a lot of work, we know!

Read on to learn the steps that can make social media content less intimidating and assist you in creating a lead-generating strategy.

Have you checked out the newly expanded Social Media Marketing Program? Our awesome automated evergreen content now also comes with done-for-you branded content to share on your personal social channels plus the ability to create your own branded social content for partners to share. 

Learn more in this video.

How To Create A Mortgage Social Media Strategy

1. Define your Audience

If you’re a loan officer marketing your services to everyone you can, you’re wasting time, energy, and money. Let’s say, for example, you’re based in Texas. Instead of marketing to “everyone in Texas,” it may be helpful to narrow it down to “first-time homebuyers with poor credit looking to buy in Houston.” Being aware of and planning for your audience, in particular, can help you reach the right people with the right message and more successfully accomplish your marketing objectives.

So, to start, decide who your target market is. Broadly, you may say a homebuyer, but what does a homebuyer specifically look like?  You should base the specifics of who these people are on your market research and the audience information you already have.

Find your target audience by:

1. Gathering data. You must be aware of your target market’s characteristics to reach them. To effectively market to your audience, you should learn what a typical homebuyer’s age, location, and engagement trends are on various sites. Although gathering this data may seem difficult, a CRM makes this information easily accessible and simple to use.
2. Taking advantage of social media analytics. Many social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, have built-in analytics that can provide you with information about your followers, such as when, where, and other interests they may have. Additionally, using these tools with business accounts is free.
3. Keeping up to date with the competition. You’ll gain insights into how to communicate with your audience by knowing what those around you are doing. To fill any gaps in your current strategy, you can look at where your rivals are lacking and improve upon that.

Once you’ve identified your target market, stay up to date on their needs and interests, and put a social listening strategy into practice.

2. Establish Clear Goals

Setting objectives that direct your work is crucial to succeeding at social media marketing. The SMART goal strategy provides a helpful framework for setting up fundamental goals and achieving your overall objectives.

• SMART is short for:
• Specific: It’s critical to be clear about the specific, smaller results you hope to achieve to meet your goals and measure your progress. By being specific, you can narrow in on what you and your team need to do to achieve your larger goal. For instance, you might want to increase your Instagram followers by 15% this quarter as a specific social media goal.
• Measurable: You have to have a way to quantify whether or not you have succeeded in achieving your goal. Having clear ways to measure your goals can do that– you can use metrics to gauge your development and adjust your goals as necessary. For instance, if you discover that likes and follows don’t result in increased website traffic, you can change the metric to one that will.
• Achievable: All of your objectives should be attainable for your company. Unrealistic goals can discourage workers and cause conflict in your business plan. Realistic goals can increase your productivity and keep your motivation up. Make sure to adjust your goals as you set them if it seems like you aren’t achieving them.
• Relevant: Ensure that your social media marketing objectives align with your overarching business goals. For instance, if increasing brand awareness is your goal, you might set a target of getting 25 social media followers to click through a post to a landing page that details your services.
• Timely: Your goals should have a clear and firm deadline to hold yourself accountable. Set a specific cadence to check in and ensure you’re staying on track rather than setting a goal for some vague time in the near future.

Using SMART goals gives you a place to start, as well as a way to check in on your progress and make adjustments as necessary. Even though social media marketing has many moving parts, these goals can help to keep you on track and not get disoriented.

3. Administer your resources wisely

Social media tasks are often mindlessly handled as an afterthought for loan officers. It may seem that you’re saving money and time by just handing social media to whoever has the free time, whether that be yourself or a colleague, but managing social media successfully calls for specific abilities such as:

• A strategic mind
• Organizing abilities
• Branding knowledge

Hiring a specialist to manage your social media can be beneficial if you have the funds. If you don’t have the funds to hire a social media manager, you can still spend money on social media advertisements, increasing reach and promoting brand awareness. 

4. Use each platform differently

You may want to post on as many platforms as you can be strong, but doing so could hurt your social media marketing plan. For instance, if your target audience is people over 40, you may want to focus less on TikTok. You will likely find that most of your audience is on Facebook or Twitter.

When you are creating your strategy, take into consideration:

• Where your competition posts
• Where your target audience is most likely to be
• Your metrics

Additionally, you should consider how to use each platform most effectively based on the purposes for which it was designed and the types of content that perform best there. For example, Facebook is good for quality live video streaming and interacting with followers one-on-one; Instagram and Tiktok rely more on visual content, like pictures, infographics, and short, entertaining videos.

Youtube is also for videos but is more oriented toward longer, informative videos. LinkedIn and Twitter are more written content-based, but Twitter is better for real-time conversations and quick news alerts, while LinkedIn is better for long-form written work, like articles and blogs. 

You might discover that the majority of your target demographic doesn’t tend to use fast-paced platforms like Instagram, so you’ll want to gear your focus more toward Facebook or LinkedIn. Maybe you want to be able to frequently give quick updates to your clientele, in which case Twitter may be helpful.

To get the most out of your marketing efforts, research the best strategy for each platform you use. While there are many ways to expand your small business, social media can be useful for attracting and keeping new clients.

Done-For-You Social Media for Loan Officers

5. Be consistent with your content.

Consistently posting compelling, engaging content is the key to success on social media. This will not only help to give you an appearance of trustworthiness, but it will also demonstrate that you care about engaging with your audience and that you have relevant information to share.

The principle of posting frequently is still valid despite changes in social media platforms’ algorithms over time. It increases the likelihood that your content will appear in newsfeeds. By concentrating on producing consistent, pertinent content, you can convince the algorithms that your posts deserve to appear in different newsfeeds, which will eventually draw users to your page.

6. Engage with your followers

Because social media users enjoy interacting with brands, you can gain advantages like:

• Increased brand awareness and a broader market reach
• Increased brand loyalty
• Seen as a local expert

According to Forbes, a staggering 83% of consumers place a high value on the customer experience, which makes the potential for a high return on investment (ROI) enormous. This includes interactions with brands on social media that help customers feel seen, heard, and understood. Using social media, you can keep an eye on conversations as they happen and quickly address any queries or concerns from your audience.

This can mean several things: it can include posing questions about your offerings, making Facebook groups, and employing the use of fun features like GIFs, emojis, and videos.

It can also be helpful to employ tools like Instagram Live to open up a dialogue with people looking to purchase or refinance a home. You can answer their questions and let your experience speak for itself as you engage with both prospective and current clients in real-time. 

Allow yourself at least an hour a day of constant social media activity to keep engagement high. 

With this hour, however, you should do your best to respond to any urgent concerns as quickly as possible throughout the day.  

7. Keep things professional

Remember that whenever you post something on social media, you are representing your company. Too frequently, posts can be misinterpreted, upsetting followers and causing conflict. Consider developing a social media policy to direct your staff members’ posts and interactions to avoid any unnecessary issues. 

A typical social media policy will include the following:

• Clear, non-confusing guidelines on what to post and how to react to unfavorable comments
• Platform regulations and guidelines
• The consideration of brands
• Security measures

Investing in a social media policy can ensure that your company is prepared for any situation. Remember that social media is fundamentally about putting your customer service philosophies into practice.

8. Hone in your brand identity

Your company’s brand identity makes customers relate to you and distinguishes you from the rest. Therefore, consistency should be maintained across all marketing channels, including print, digital, and social media.

For loan officers, maintaining brand consistency can be difficult, especially in the beginning. But it’s significant in all aspects of your company, and social media is no exception. As you post, be sure to maintain your brand voice (how you speak to customers), keep your posts consistent across each platform, and concentrate on your value proposition. 

A consistent brand identity can help increase loyalty and make it simpler to decide what to post.

9. Quality over quantity

Instead of randomly producing as many posts as you can per day on as many platforms as possible, you should concentrate on producing regular, high-quality posts. It’s actually very likely that posting too many low-quality items will penalize your account and flag you as spam.

It’s also difficult to keep up with a schedule that requires you to post several times a day. So ultimately, posting too often will end up hurting rather than helping your strategy.

Consider implementing a social media calendar to reduce these risks. You can use these calendars to organize your schedule and plan posts in advance. Marketers can keep track of the various moving parts of social media by categorizing posts into categories like when to post, post captions, post visuals, and which platforms to post on.

To keep your posts’ quality high, constantly ask yourself before posting something: Does this information benefit my readers? Is this something new, motivating, inspiring, or enjoyable? Does the text cite its sources?

You can use these to produce high-quality content that interests and draws readers.

10. Watch your outcomes

Social media marketing is influenced by various variables, so it’s crucial to evaluate and track progress. Analytics are helpful because they can improve campaigns, set new objectives, and identify tracking metrics.

Before you begin tracking, you should decide which metrics are most critical to your marketing objectives. 

The most typical metrics include:

• ReachsEngagementsImpressions
• Mentions
• Posting clicks
• Video views

Although social media marketing can seem intimidating, there is much to gain. When done properly, social media marketing can be a reliable, cost-effective solution to keeping your pipeline filled and your referral network active.

If you still need help with your social media presence (or would like a quickstart way to supplement your posts), consider adding our social media marketing to your website plan. Click below to learn more and schedule a conversation with an account executive.

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