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. 

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Retaining clients is essential for both maintaining and scaling a mortgage business. But it doesn’t happen magically. Similar to the work you put into nurturing the mortgage lead in the first place, it takes work to foster a relationship that keeps those clients around. Here are the top reasons it’s worth the effort to re-engage previous clients and the strategies to help you do it right

Re-engaging Past Clients Bolsters Your Reputation

The decision to buy or refi is not an easy one. So when clients choose to work with you, they’re also choosing to entrust you with a significant financial undertaking. 

By continuing to engage with clients even after funding, you underscore the concept that you care about the well-being of your borrowers, and they are not “just another loan.” It’ll implicitly demonstrate that you see people as more than just dollar signs, further solidifying their trust in you. 

Aim to be known as a trusted loan advisor beyond the life of that one deal –one that helps them make sound financial choices to refinance when rates are low, cash out of their investment when the market is high, or help find a property to grow their wealth.

Your reputation is the key to mortgage business success, and when you re-engage with your clients, you establish a reputation as a go-to resource for all present and future mortgage needs. 

Re-engaging Clients Encourages Repeat Business

A fact that often gets overlooked is that most home buyers are not first-time homebuyers. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, only 31% of the homes sold in 2021 were purchased by first-time buyers. This means that 69% were repeat borrowers.

Failing to keep up with your previous borrowers gives them a reason to seek another mortgage pro for the next transaction. So if you’re not re-engaging your past clients, you’re likely leaving money on the table.

Re-engaging Clients Boosts Referrals

Even those past borrowers who never plan to buy another home or refinance anytime soon will likely know someone who will. Consistently re-engaging those previous clients with authenticity will encourage the referral and motivate a glowing recommendation. 

Remember that people want to work with professionals they trust. And without a frame of reference in the home financing, they’ll rely on the recommendations of the people they know.

Ideas for Re-Engaging Past Clients

Thank them for the referrals they sent.

We’ve already discussed the incredible value of leads that come from referrals, but did you know that you can use this event to re-engage your past client again? You can do this in a couple of ways. First, establish that the new lead is a referral by asking prospective clients how they heard about you. Alternatively, if the client provided the referral which you later engaged, make a note to follow up with your past client to thank them for that lead. 

Re-engaging doesn’t have to be complicated. A quick call, text, or email to say thanks, plus adding an open-ended question, will feel natural and be welcomed. 

Use your mortgage expertise and past notes on the client (you’re saving notes in your CRM, right?) to develop good open-ended questions. Considering their current loan, would they possibly benefit from a refi? Briefly discuss current market rates. Are kids nearing college age? Mention using equity for college tuition. Have they outgrown their home, or are they now empty-nesters? Go over home financing options for this next stage in life. 

Even casual conversation can reveal a wealth of information. For example, they may be excited about becoming grandparents for the first time or a vacation to Greece they have coming up to celebrate a wedding anniversary. Offer congrats, and if there’s any value you can bring (like recommending a can’t-miss winery in Greece), let them know! 

Of course, if the referral they sent you uses your services, be sure to follow up with a gift and a second thank-you.

Send a mortgage rate or market update.

Even with easy access to rate information online, many homeowners are unaware of or make an effort to stay up-to-date on the refinance market.

So as part of your plan to re-engage former purchase loan clients, you can send a rate update a few times a year. There’s no need to be “sales-y” when using this approach. The point is to provide the information, re-affirm your relationship with the client, and pique their interest. 

Share home improvement ideas.

A home is an investment, so sharing ideas on enhancing it makes sense. Not only does it provide value to your client, but it also keeps your name at the top of their mind. You can do this by creating a homecare email campaign where you share home improvement tips and suggestions with past clients. 

You can do this in a couple of ways. You can hire a copywriter to create 12 articles for you (or write them yourself) and email one every month. Alternatively, you can search the web for 3-4 pieces and write a summary of each, link it back to the original article, and email those summaries to your past clients.

You can also partner with a local professional, like a contractor or landscaper, and have them write an article. Your clients will get valuable information, you’ll get free professional content, and the partner will appreciate getting their name out.

How do you re-engage with past clients?

Share in the comments below, and if you’re not already subscribed, sign up for our free weekly newsletter so you never miss an article.

Referrals are the lifeblood of any business, accounting for as much as 65% of new business. However, your former clientele isn’t the only source of referral –you also have realtors! The value of connecting with real estate agents is clear –you share the same consumers and complement each other’s services. 

However, while it’s an obvious avenue for mortgage referrals, few pros know how to get referrals from agents. Fewer still know how to keep a steady stream of qualified leads flowing. 

(Offering to buy them lunch or coffee won’t cut it)

In this article, we’re going to give you three actionable strategies to help you build a robust network of real estate professionals that will enthusiastically refer their homebuyers to you.

Let’s dive in.

How to get more qualified mortgage referrals From Real Estate Agents

Drop The Sales Pitch. Build Relationships.

Realtors are excellent salespeople, so they’ll appreciate a good pitch when they hear one. However, coming off too “sales-y” will have the opposite effect you’re hoping for. You might start to sound like competition, making the agent resistant to anything you might have to offer.

Let’s also remember that realtors are not your end consumers. They’re your colleagues and referral partners.

Here’s how to have a “building a relationship” approach that effortlessly encourages more agents to give you leads:

• Learn about the agent. Research the realtor to know more about their business style, clients they serve, and strengths. Even info about associations, hobbies, or other interests could come in handy when getting to know a potential referral partner. 
• Make the first conversations light. Don’t always talk business. Agents often get approached by loan officers looking to take them out to lunch and explore how they can “partner up.” Don’t be that basic mortgage pro. Instead, keep the first meeting friendly and personal. Congratulate them on a recent accomplishment or other noteworthy bits of news. 
• Share your value (but don’t brag). Casually sharing how many referrals you’re getting and how happy those clients are is a subtle way to hype yourself up without pushing it. It’s also a way of letting them know that you are open to receiving referrals and are successful at seeing it through to completion. 

Partner With Them In Social Media Marketing

Here’s what we know: Real Estate Agents are some of the most active professionals on social media. In fact, an estimated 90% of all 2 million licensed real estate agents use social media for marketing their services regularly.

This fact alone underscores their ability to be powerhouse networkers and your most lucrative ally for getting more qualified referrals. 

The key to getting “in” is not to pitch them, to echo the above point. Instead, you need to focus on creating a reciprocating relationship that genuinely adds as much value to their business as it would to yours. Here are some ideas to get started doing just that:

• Help cross-promote special events like live virtual open house events. 
• You can also offer to participate in the event via chat or live stream to answer questions from participants about home financing. 
• Create real estate-related centered content such as articles, infographics, or videos that you can co-brand with the agent. 
• Better still, have them publish the original content on their site and link back to your site for an additional SEO boost.
• Continuing the spirit of offering free valuable content, reach out to their email list. If you’re not already aware, email lists have one of the highest conversion rates. So if your agent has a list of a few hundred emails that they organically grew, it can prove to be a white-hot lead source. 
• Engage with the agent’s social media. Go beyond just liking every post and take the time to comment with additional insight or echo their sentiment. 

Leverage Your Digital Mortgage Tools and Co-Branding Opportunities

Historically, the real estate profession has been historically an in-person profession –at least when it comes to doing open houses and showing properties to potential buyers. So when the industry was suddenly thrown into virtual-only, it posed a significant challenge. 

Fortunately, it seems that both the industry and consumers have embraced a virtual way of home buying as a welcomed alternative to traditional in-person. And much like in the mortgage industry, technology in real estate is proving to be a significant boost to revenue potential.

As such, real estate agents look to partner with technologically savvy mortgage professionals. Products like our co-brandable mortgage mobile app Loanzify are a popular and valuable tool that agents can easily share with their clients. It’s free for the agent and consumer to use, and it’s packed with resources, information, and interactive tools that lead all users back to you. 

Loanzify POS is another tool you can use to win over more real estate referral partners. Keeping every interested party informed is hard, and miscommunication is a major cause of delayed funding and unhappy customers. With Loanzify POS, the agent can have secure access to the loan file with a pre-determined level of access.  They can also be assigned to specific loans.

From the agent’s admin view can see where the borrower is in their journey to approval and can even download the borrower’s preapproval letter to submit with their offers. 

Real estate agents are a powerful resource for finding quality leads, but only you make a conscious and strategic effort. Remember that when you approach it from building lasting relationships, you make it a win-win for everyone. Make it personal, overdeliver, be social and genuine, and leverage your mortgage technology every chance you get. 

Want to learn more about implementing mortgage tech to win over more referral partners? Click below to try it out for free and schedule a live demo with one of our helpful account executives.

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Some pretty fantastic promises have been made regarding what social media can do for a business. Post daily on Facebook and triple your revenue in 3 months. Be more active on Linkedin, and leads will pour in by the hundreds. Reach 10,000 followers on Instagram, and your pipeline will be filled with qualified leads.

While social media is a catalyst for remarkable growth and revenue, it doesn’t happen quite so easily or quickly. It takes time –a continuous and strategic effort –to achieve measurable, long-lasting, revenue-generating results. 

However, the bottom line is that social media for mortgage businesses does, in fact, work. It’s just a matter of knowing how to work it and having the patience to do it for a sustained period. In fact, it can be one of your most powerful tools in lead generation and so much more. 

Let’s take a look at recent stats that every mortgage professional should be aware of regarding social media and consumer behavior:

• 72.3% of Americans are on social media (Data Reportal)
• 74% of social media users review business sites to make buying decisions (Statista)
• Facebook is the largest organic lead source, second only to websites (Hootsuite)
• The number of social media users in the US increased by 10 million between 2020 and 2021. (Data Reportal)
• Information found on social media influences the shopping behavior of 75% of Americans (Adroit Digital)

Now that we’ve established that it’s is a powerful tool that’s worth the investment and effort, let’s drill down even further and explore the various ways social media benefits your mortgage business.

The Power of Social Media for Mortgage Business Growth

Increase Traffic To Your Mortgage Website

Social media posts are vital for driving more traffic to your mortgage website. You can do this by sharing content from your blog or with a graphic that directs them to a landing page. Be sure to include your main mortgage website on all your social media profiles, as motivated prospects often investigate a business’ online presence before contacting them.

Generate More Mortgage Leads

Social media is a critical part of your mortgage sales funnel, and as the number of users continues to boom, so does the opportunity to reach more prospects. Use the platforms to amplify your reach and put your lead capture form in front of more eyes.

The Power of Social Media for Mortgage Branding

Increase Brand Awareness of Your Mortgage Business

Social media users are open to discovering new brands on social media. Instagram recently released stats that showed that over 200 million users turn to their Explore page, and over 80% discovered a new product or service from their platform.  And with nearly 70% of Americans checking social media at least once a day, your brand is more likely to stay top of mind. 

Increase The Trust Factor with Your Prospective Borrower

Trust is the precursor to all transactions, especially when it comes to large ticket items like mortgage loans. Use the platforms as a way to increase trust by showcasing your company’s mission and values along with establishing your brand as a thought leader in the mortgage industry.

The Power of Social Media for Communication with Borrowers

Manage Your Mortgage Company’s Reputation

Even if you’re not currently active on social media, chances are that people are still talking about your business. Use social media as a listening tool and be part of the conversation about your services. If the conversation is positive, use it to highlight your business and win over more potential borrowers. If the conversation is negative, get ahead of the situation and attempt to resolve it before it turns into a major issue.

Engage With Borrowers and Prospects

When a person feels noticed and part of the conversation, the stronger the bond becomes. In the case of the prospective borrower, this bond makes it more likely that they’ll apply for a loan. For a current or past client, engaging with them builds loyalty that compels them to recommend your services to others and generate leads on your behalf. 

Social Media Management Solutions By LenderHomePage

Communication is as old as humanity itself, so the principles of social media are nothing new. However, the digital age has altered how best to execute communication via social media. The tools, strategies, pace, scale, and capabilities make it a total game-changer in the business world. Are you keeping up with the best practices in social selling? Or are you leaving that to your competitors? 

We can help. 

Click below to learn more about our social media management services and schedule a conversation.

Marketing Services

Keeping that pipeline filled with new qualified leads is one of the biggest challenges that brokerages face daily, and marketing plays a critical role in making that happen. However, many mistakenly hand this crucial task to their LOs or office staff, thinking that it’ll be just as effective (or cost-efficient) to do so. 

But having your LOs take responsibility for mortgage marketing could be costing you more than you realize. 

If you want your LOs to increase their loan volume, you must take marketing off of their plate and pass it on to a professional marketer. Here’s why:

1. A professional marketer will free up LO time so they can focus on processing loans
2. A professional marketer will modernize your lead gen strategy
3. A professional marketer is easier to manage and will deliver better results.

In this age, it’s no longer a question of whether a brokerage needs to do digital marketing but rather how serious they are at getting results. A healthy benchmark for effective marketing would be that it accounts for about 20-30% of your total pipeline. Are you near that benchmark? How much time are you willing to have your LOs dedicate to reaching that goal? 

By answering those two questions, you’ll start to get a better idea of how significant and costly the problem is to have your LOs take responsibility for your business marketing. Let’s take a deeper look at why you need to remove marketing from their to-do list, and give it to the capable hands of a professional mortgage marketer. 

Mortgage Marketing Powered by LenderHomPage

A professional marketer will free up LO time to process More loans.

Many business owners have a “Do-It-Yourself” type of mentality. While admirable and essential to business start-ups, requiring your LOs to have this same mentality regarding marketing will end up backfiring, and here’s why. Firstly, marketing takes knowledge of how marketing works, how to design a marketing strategy, and how to execute it. Essentially, when you require your LO to take on marketing, you make them take on a second career. 

How well do you think they’ll execute? 

How long do you think it’ll take them to complete the necessary tasks? This leads us to our second point…

Even with an experienced marketing team at the helm, implementing the strategy takes time. Considering the 40-hour workweek, how many of those hours are you willing to take away from lead nurturing and loan processing to have your LO make a rudimentary effort in mortgage marketing?

A professional marketer will modernize your lead gen strategy.

The rise of the digital age has reinvented many aspects of marketing, and with algorithms constantly evolving, competitors altering their campaigns, market changes, and consumers shifting their online behaviors, your approach must also adapt. 

That includes modernizing every aspect of your inbound mortgage marketing strategy. Below is a partial list of tasks that entail a “modern marketing strategy”:

• Website development or redesign
• Branding
• Graphic design
• SEO/keyword research
• Content development
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Local market research
• Mobile marketing integration
• Print marketing development and production
• Paid advertising
• Metrics and data analysis
• Public relations
• Video creation and marketing

While this is an extensive list, it’s not exhaustive. Remember that innovative technology, apps, and marketing disciplines are constantly being created. It’s challenging enough to train an LO into a top producer –do you really want her also to try to keep up with the latest in marketing? 

A professional marketer is Easier to Manage with better results.

When you hire a mortgage marketing agency, you get access to a team of expert copywriters, graphic designers, social media marketers, SEO professionals, PPC strategists, web designers, plus managers to coordinate it all. Is this something you want your loan officers or business to take on?

While some are tempted to take their marketing in-house, that’s not always the best way to go, especially for mortgage businesses. For mortgage businesses, the cost of recruiting and training a new marketing department could be prohibitive. And that rings true for both individual and multi-branch firms. 

So unless you’re in the business of marketing, it’s best to focus on lending and leave the marketing to the experts.

The Bottom Line

Marketing is both essential and a necessary expense. That’s right –there’s a cost for marketing and lead generation. Some falsely believe that they can eliminate or reduce the cost by their LOs do the marketing. But as you now can see, you’ll end up paying much more. When you shift the responsibility of marketing from your LO to a marketing professional, you’ll have beefed up your revenue streams from both your lead generation side and your lead nurturing side. 

Ready to make that happen? Click here to schedule a conversation with our redesigned mortgage marketing services. 

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Content that engages your audience isn’t about winning a popularity contest. It’s about enticing or activating motivation, making it more likely that the reader will convert into a borrower. Engaging content also makes your business more memorable. So even if the prospect didn’t take action then, your content and business would linger on their mind long after, increasing the likelihood that they’ll return to your mortgage site. 

If you’re stumped on how you can give your mortgage web content a fresh and engaging upgrade, this post is for you. In this post, we will look at six keys for creating mortgage content to drive engagement. 

Use Visuals like Video, Graphics, and Images

It’s well known that humans are primarily visual learners. This study illustrates that idea when it found that a person could remember about 65 percent of visual information after three days versus only 10-20% of written information. That’s not to say that text is irrelevant. Written content is still a preferred way to consume content and the foundation to organic web traffic. But adding a visual element will help to make your content more appealing and memorable.

The other thing about visuals is that they are more likely to be shared around the web, helping to intensify engagement opportunities.

Make Lists

Business blogs are discovering what magazines have known for over a century — readers like lists! Articles with titles like “top ten ways…” or “20 tricks to” instantly pique curiosity and trigger the reader to click more to read the entire article. 

Another benefit of lists is that they break down information into bite-size pieces, making it easy for the layperson to understand complex topics like finance or real estate. 

Use storytelling to share a success story

Humans love a hero story, and sharing a client success case study is how you can do it. The great thing about this method is that you don’t even have to be a great storyteller. Just follow this basic three-act model, and you’ll have an engaging piece of content that your reader will devour.

1. The setting – Offer some background demographics on the client, like age, career, and family. Also, share info on whether the client is a first-time homebuyer, a veteran, or perhaps looking to retire soon.
2. The problem- Describe questions or obstacles that the client is struggling with.
3. The resolution: Bring the story into a climax, describing how concerns were resolved.

Create a how-to guide

When writing a “how-go mortgage” guide for driving engagement, go long. About 1,500 words or more. Substantial guides are more likely to get read and shared. Although a 1,500-word guide or blog post can seem too challenging to create, an easy way to think of them is as a list blog post where you dive deep into each bullet point.  

Here are some additional tips on creating how-to guides for your mortgage blog:

• • Focus on solving a problem for your prospective borrower. A how-to guide is only helpful and valuable if it actually solves a real problem for your reader.
  • Break up large chunks of text. Break up topics visually with checklists, quotes, or infographics. 
  • Include a workbook. A companion workbook adds even more value to your guide and invites engagement. No time for creating a whole separate workbook? Consider adding exercises or questions at the end of each section for the reader to complete. 

Provide resources or tools

Create content that lists tools or resources helpful for the prospective borrower, such as: where to check their credit history, a guide for creating a budget, an affordability calculator, recommended local home repair service providers, local hiking trails, and community activity guides are a few examples of helpful resources that will likely get shared.

Do something unexpected

The purple cow is a method made popular by marketing guru Seth Godin. Godin introduces this idea with an anecdote about going on a car trip and seeing cows grazing on the field. While it excites you at first (especially if you’re a city slicker), you get bored after miles of the same plain cows. Now imagine that there’s a single purple cow grazing amongst the hundreds of typical cows. Not only does it immediately catch your attention, but it keeps it as well –for some time!

This relates to engaging content creation because you want to pivot from the norm to get people talking. Here are some ideas:

• Play devil’s advocate and offer a different perspective on a popular mortgage topic
• Include gifs on your blogs or create memes for shareable content
• Combine mortgage topics with seemingly unrelated subjects (i.e., “Dwight or Jim: The Office Guide to Buying Your First Home”)

Ask for engagement

A simple way to increase your content engagement is to just ask for it! At the beginning of the post, ask your reader to bookmark it for future reference. At the end of the post, ask your reader to comment and share the post on social media.

Be sure to include a social media plug-in to make it super simple for the reader to share with their followers. 

Did you find this article helpful?

Check out past articles on related topics like top ten online courses to grow your mortgage business and ways to drive more traffic to your mortgage website.

The definition of a brand can be boiled down to how the public perceives you, so a personal brand isn’t necessarily built around a business or even with the goal of building a business. A personal brand is built around you -encapsulating your strengths, your expertise, and your style. Because a personal brand is essentially created from scratch and is unique to you, you can leverage this power to support your mortgage business and act as a brand ambassador to the business brand.

An example of this can be found in Richard Branson. The billionaire adventurer has a well-known personal brand and uses it to complement his business brand, Virgin. Another example can be found with Oprah as she uses her personal brand as part of her multi-channel media empire, Harpo. 

The main takeaway is that while different from business brands, personal brands are powerful, influential assets –especially to mortgage businesses.

Personal Brand: Becoming An Ambassador to Your Mortgage Business

Highlight Your Accomplishments

Make an even more compelling case for the company’s expertise in the industry by sharing your experience, certifications, associations, and education. Letting prospects know about your ten years of experience in the mortgage industry or your bachelor’s degree in business administration goes a long way in building your mortgage business’ trustworthiness and professionalism. 

Non-business accomplishments are also great ways to trump up your mortgage business. Items like completing an Iron Man marathon or restoring a classic car to be showroom ready hint at your perseverance and commitment to excellence –admirable characteristics that are subliminally attractive to mortgage prospects. 

Make Social Media “Follow” Worthy

Individuals will follow social media accounts for various reasons, such as for humor, inspiration, advice, news, or connection. A personally branded social media profile can add another dimension to the business’s social media presence and could often hook the viewer much more readily than a business brand might be able to.

You can expand the hero story by sharing the journey on your brand social profile. For example, let’s say that several of your mortgage team decided to do the Iron Man marathon. You might post 1-2 images of them doing the race, sharing how proud the company is of these team members.

However, the personal brand can delve deeper into the journey of getting ready for the race, unfolding a hero story that resonates with followers. Thus, the personal brand compels the audience to invest emotionally, which causes them to invest emotionally into the business brand. 

Reflect Company Culture and Values

Along the same thread, a personal brand allows prospective clients to see the business culture and values in action. Sharing involvement in social causes that matter to you, such as volunteering at a local rescue mission or literacy program, demonstrates true passion and shows that community building is more than just lip service.

A personal brand also reveals true enthusiasm in providing mortgage services. A mortgage business comprised of earnest, joyful, and savvy professionals draw positive attention from all fronts.

A personal brand also reveals true enthusiasm in providing mortgage services.

Choose Both Personal and Business Brand

Having a personal brand doesn’t mean it needs to compete with the business brand. They are complementary and extend one another’s reach. So instead of thinking you need to choose one over the other, harness the influence of both to boost your mortgage business above the competition.

Check out our new personal brand mortgage templates to co-promote your mortgage business. 

Personal Brand Templates

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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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.