Tips for Mortgage Professionals

The mortgage market is under a lot of stress right now. The Mortgage Bankers Association is calling it the biggest crisis since 2008, and all over the world alarm bells are ringing as income dries up and people with financial obligations are getting more and more worried about their debt. Mortgages are often a lion’s share of that burden, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Because of America’s sudden recognition of its debt, more and more people are hungry for ways to reduce the rate of interest or prolong their mortgage terms in exchange for an easier time now and for the next few months after the virus starts to die down. Additionally, many people who may have been on the fence about mortgaging a new home might now be considering making the jump because of how cheap and eager the market is. Of course, the problem is finding these people and reaching out to them. Let’s look at a few important things to consider when solving this problem.

1. Set Up a Marketing Budget

Attracting clients can often be the toughest part of any business. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and absolutely vital for the well-being of any operation, no matter how small or large. Market experts have often recommended that companies looking to expand their clientele need to invest 10 to 20 percept of revenue into the marketing budget. That may seem like a lot of money and it’s often difficult for a lot of new business owners or freelancers to justify that kind of spending, but it’s often best to see this as an investment and not as spending. After all, any money you put into marketing should hopefully come back to you in new business with bigger profits. Whether this happens in practice or not depends, of course, on whether you can properly invest that budget in the things that count.

2. Build a Website

The time of networking in person is largely behind us. The practice is slow and generally limits you only to the friends and family of the people who you’ve already successfully helped. More and more, people today are going online. So the first important step is to create an online presence. Lots of burgeoning professionals use platforms like WordPress and Wix to create websites for their business, and while these systems are easy to use and largely free, the child-like plug-and-play templates that make them so easy to use often come at the cost of professionalism.

A website is often your first interaction with your clients, and the aesthetic of your landing page is just as important as it is in your office. Great websites load quickly, have attractive and professional images and backgrounds, and have an easy-to-navigate interface, both on desktop and on mobile. Good websites use engagement tools like mortgage calculators, buttons with quick “request a quote” and “call now” options placed in important positions so clients can quickly get through to you once you’ve made a good first, online impression.

3. Create Content

A potential home-buyer’s first Google search isn’t going to be “mortgage professionals in my area”, it’s almost always going to be a question about what to look for in a neighborhood, what kind of problems new homeowners face, and how to know they’re not being swindled. This means that if all you have is a mortgage calculator and a quote inbox, chances are the people who see you for the first time have already encountered many of your competitors’ websites and you are not likely to be their first choice. This is why so many businesses will often create blogs, articles, and other pieces of free information about the services they are selling to help inform clients during that first crucial research step.

Creating content like this does two fantastic things to improve your reputation:

First, your website gets a lot more attention, and people stay on your website for longer, which is great for the Google algorithm. This means that your website is considered high value and Google will automatically start ranking you higher on their searches for relevant terms.

Second, clients get to interact with you and your content before they even start looking for quotes. They feel a sense of familiarity because they’ve already learned so much from you and have reason to trust you as an expert and an authority on the subject. They no longer have to worry about the fear of hiring an incompetent mortgage professional or someone who doesn’t take the job seriously, and this can often convince them to pick you over a cheaper competitor they’re less sure about.

4. Take Advantage of Online Marketplaces

Everything we’ve been talking so far has to do with your own website or your Google search listing, but it’s easy to forget that a lot of these Google searches direct clients to online marketplaces like NerdWallet, Zillow, BankRate and LendingTree. While these places can have a reputation of being fiercely competitive and over-concerned with price, they also attract a huge base of savvy clients who know what they want. More importantly, it’s just good sense to diversify your marketing and have your face on as many different platforms as possible.

5. Use Remarketing

Remarketing is a little-known and often misunderstood part of marketing that has to do not with new clients but with clients who may have already seen some of your content but, for whatever reason, decided against coming back and completing the journey. Maybe they clicked one of your Google Ads and stayed on your website for a few minutes but had to close the window because of the kids. Maybe they requested a quote but were unsure about the offer and didn’t respond. Remarketing is a way of getting back in touch with these people to either remind them to come back, or potentially even sweeten the deal depending on how you want to run your campaign. It’s a great way of ensuring that you never lose a potential client again.