What is mortgage marketing?

yuripoll · Joined: 30 May 2005 Posts: 2 Location: Portland OR

Hi,

The best thing to start this forum is by drawing the picture of marketing in mortgage business. Why is it different from other industries? Simple - because people are coming to brokers for a personal attention and wanting to keep it that way.

There are a bunch of top producers selling marketing programs, which are hard to implement (we had at least 10 that we never used). Sending holidays and birthday cards is another thing that most of us do.

I personally did a 3 year funded clients campaign which included holidays cards, nice little presents, such as magnet calendars and new batteries for smoke detectors and the whole thing worked! We spent some $ on it, but it was worth it.

Some consider this information as know-how, but I think we will all win by fine-tuning our ideas through this forum. Any thoughts on that?

kevinp · Joined: 31 May 2005 Posts: 1

Are there any of these products that you could say more about? Maybe thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Of course there are potential legal ramifications whenever you give a negative opinion of a product.

I have seen several programs from different Dan Kennedy proteges (Reed Hoisington, Brian Sacks, Scott Tucker seminars, many others I'm sure) and was curious whether these fit into the hard to implement camp.

Your 3 yr program would be something that would compatible with the Kennedy style.

Thanks,

Kevin

yuripoll · Joined: 30 May 2005 Posts: 2 Location: Portland OR

In my opinion, the power of top producers’ campaigns is the ready to print material, meaning you don't have to spend a huge amount of time on re-inventing the wheel.

The downside is that they are tight to the business model they are pushing. For example, if you buying internet leads and do a lot of marketing, you can not follow Brian Sack's model. + You’ll have to spend some time choosing the right campaign + they are not always working as they sound like they should :)

The best way is to setup campaign yourself based on your client base and the way you do business, obviously. The biggest part of it is to stay organized and keep sending out the pieces / calling people. I can provide you with some products that are on the market that will help you with that.

mortdesign · Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 2 Location: Charlotte, NC

I wrote a short article on Internet marketing recently. I thought it would give an overview to people looking to build an online presence.

Mortgage Marketing: What To Expect
By Anthony Urso

The day has come for your new website to go 'Live'. After tweaking this and changing that you are finally ready for the herds of potential clients to bombard your website with promising loan applications. While you sit by your email program for a few hours waiting for that first application to come through, you realize that there is more work to be done.

The first step that should be taken is setting your short term and long term goals. This can be as simple as writing two sentences on a sheet of paper. Try to determine what would be a realistic number of leads to achieve per day and what that number of leads would cost you if you where to purchase them from a mortgage lead company. Take in to consideration that the leads from your site are not only exclusive, but also in real time making these leads as good as gold. Try purchasing exclusive live leads on the Internet and you will see that they can range in price from $50.00 to almost $75!

Lets say that your company spends anywhere between three to four hundred dollars a day in mortgage leads. If it cost you only $50 less in advertising to obtain the same amount of leads per day, you are still ahead of the game. You may find that you can cut your cost of leads in half, it all depends on how you use your marketing budget. Two exact websites with the same marketing budget can achieve two very different results.

I had a client that I was selling leads to about 5 years ago who decided she was going to start her own lead generation website. I wished her well on her venture and off she went. Several weeks later I received a somber and humbling phone call from my client who told me that she put up a website and was spending $200 a day in advertising and was only getting 1 or 2 leads a day. I was almost in tears at that point. I asked her what form of advertising was she doing, she replied with "Keyword advertising with a well known company". At this point I was still confused because I strongly recommend keyword advertising as a primary source of exposure. She told me that she was paying close to $11.00 per click for the term "refinance". For those of you whom do not YET know what that means, every time someone clicked over to her site, it cost her $11 Bucks. So for her $200 she would receive only 18 visitors to her site! Now figure that only 1 or 2 of those people actually applied.

The point of my story is not how much you spend but how you spend it.

Your long term goals should focus on such things building link popularity, Getting a good position in search engines and creating some good public relations with your site. These goals for the most part are less expensive but take time to implement to be successful. Be prepared to wait at least a year before you site actually can be seen in the search engines with a good position.

(Your site will be searchable within a few weeks but you may be the 400th result for 'Refinance in Nome Alaska')

In conclusion, 'You need to spend money to make money' and 'Good things come to those whom wait' Although cliché, They still apply.

jason.toledo · Joined: 01 Aug 2005 Posts: 3 Location: San Diego

Mortgage marketing is an effective way to increase your business. Due to the heavy reliance on the internet, mortgage brokers and loan officers who maximize the use of their e-commerce potential are going to stand ahead of their competition. There are many companies that provide services to help mortgage brokers and LO's alike do this. With the combined efforts of offline branding and marketing with a complete internet solution many brokers and LO's have seen a tremendous increase in referrals and effectively an significant gain in revenue.
For more questions on internet marketing please contact me via email or reply to this post.

Jason Toledo
Asst Marketing Dir
NTIRA
jason.toledo@ntira.com

lenderama · Joined: 08 Aug 2005 Posts: 22

I'm a die hard Internet junkie, but I don't think it should be the main focus of a mortgage brokers marketing efforts. Person to person, local contact is what set's you apart from e-loan.

tlemm · Joined: 09 Aug 2005 Posts: 2 Location: San Diego, CA

IMHO- Internet marketing in the Mortgage industry is not what it is cracked up to be. I own a company that promotes via SEO and I have sat at the top of the search engines for many city specific and nationwide keywords. There is way to much hype over the results- they are not what you think. The internet landscape as it relates to mortgage is completely saturated and people tweeking and cracking algorythms for their jobs can't break into it, and if they do it is very temporary. Lead prices have jumped 300% in the past year and a half and why? People who are online have either excellent credit that they want to shop out to take back to their local buddy so they seem educated -or they have horrible credit and even junior LO's don't want them. The only people serious are those that fall in the middle and think their credit is worse than it is. We recently put a San Diego mortgage company in the top 5 on Yahoo and MSN for the major keywords in San Diego that pertain to mortgage which is a hot market- results= 2-3 people per day visiting the site and 4 forms filled out in a month. That is the reality- I say do it the old fashion way- networking with industry professionals and people. Might throw in some direct mail with live transfer as well. That is my view from the other side of the fence.

BECCA9892003 · Joined: 20 Jan 2005 Posts: 400 Location: Altoona, PA

the batteries for the smoke detectors caught my eye..i like different..could you tell me more of how you did it??

gogetloan · Joined: 13 Aug 2005 Posts: 2

Tried and true is just a good as new. Why reinvent the wheel? Relationship building still works but it's not fast enough for newbies who want leads now, business now. Brian Sacks says to find a niche which is great but if you're new you don't know enough to even pick a niche. Many years ago, I stumbled onto a niche by being with the only lender in my territory who had 90% loans for condos. I built on that by getting CC&Rs for nearly every condo in my area and had contact info for the HOAs. I was the condo queen, so I know niches work. Before I had that niche, I went to all my closings for purchases and handed out more cards for the realtors, telling the buyers how lucky they were to have worked with that professional agent. Word got around about an LO going to closings. Why? Because if I was attending closings, you better believe the docs were there ahead of time so things went smoothly and the agents didn't have to worry. I was there holding the buyer/borrower's hand. I initially started going to purchase closings when I was new because it made sense to me. Other LOs thought I was wasting my time but it turned out to be a great marketing strategy. When I got busy, I still felt those 7 to 10 hours a month for purchase closings was my best investment.

chow · Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 9:43 pm Post subject:

Always show up at your purchase closings! (unless you're out of town, then ask if you can call in and set on speaker phone with them) I think during the first refi wave in the late 90's I slacked a bit on the refi closing attendance, but I never missed a purchase.

ray916mn · Joined: 31 Jan 2006 Posts: 1

Mortgage marketing clearly means many different things to everyone.

The classic definition of marketing is finding out what people want, and figuring out how to most efficiently and effectively target a specific need (i.e. market).

As all of you know, customers have different needs and depending on the programs you have access to, experience with and knowledge of, your business is better at meeting the needs and being competitive for different customers. You can't be everything to everyone without running a high risk of being nothing to anyone.

So marketing is the discipline of looking at the opportunities in the market (ie. what customer's want) matching them up to the strengths of your business, and developing the most effective and efficient means of attracting the customers you can do the best job for.

While the Internet isn't the be all to end all for mortgage businesses, it portends the future. Tight targeting on low credit score clients, lead generation "bid for business" sites, and other very specific approaches represent the parts of the market that depend least on relationship to close the business. The increasing trends towards on line purchasing show that consumers are more and more willing to forsake relationships for convenience or price. It is not the thing today, but it will be thing eventually.

FWIW

Del · Joined: 23 Feb 2006 Posts: 3

I think the overall context of mortgage marketing pertains to establishing some sort of dialog (and involvement) with the prospect or client (whether that be a sphere of influence target or a home buyer/owner).

The original poster of this thread mentioned systems and I would agree that systemitizing your marketing is one of the best ways to ensure 1) You're actively marketing 2) You have a method that's fairly automated and 3) it's multi-pronged.

There's a multitude of sources out there for marketing kits but essentially it's direct mail, automated voice systems (with call capture), seminars/booths, internet lead generation (and website lead generation), price shoppers from your local newspaper rate ad listing and referrals generated from word-of-mouth and consistent contact with present and past clients.

It's just a matter of finding out what works for you, in your market, and within your budget.

I think direct mail is still a wonderful tool, especially letters. Heck, even bright yellow postcards still bring people business. It doesn't have to be pretty when you're effectively running a numbers game. eg. Mail to XX,XXX and get YY responses and Z closed loans.

Then again, I'm a HUGE proponent of keeping in contact with your current and past clients through greeting cards whether automated in some fashion (say through ACT! or Goldmine or heck, 3x5 cards).

Disclosure: I own www.loanfuel.com which sells nothing but greeting cards....but I'm a marketing fanatic.

Del

robert_tito · Joined: 30 Apr 2008 Posts: 24

Hi, I certainly agree with you. Your advice is really very helpful for us.
Thanks a lot!

Bobwilliams · Joined: 20 Sep 2008 Posts: 1

Mortgage marketing specialists provide you with innovative, proven marketing solutions to bullet proof your mortgage business. The philosophy is to get behind you, your strengths, your weaknesses, your goals and drive you to your highest level of success - push your thinking to new levels, create new ideas, think out of the box and work your plan.

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Bobwilliams
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Fedrik · Joined: 27 Sep 2008 Posts: 11

It seems you have already received some good responses from other users.

So you must try that out.

hope to contact u in future.

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