Smart Mortgage Marketing

This blog post is part of an ongoing series about mortgage lead generation via the web. Click here to access the full list of articles in this series.

Before we go any further in this tutorial, I need to stress the importance of setting goals for your mortgage lead system early on. In truth, I probably should have started with this topic. But hey … better late than never.

It always surprises me how many mortgage folks are stumped when I ask the question: “What are the three primary goals of your mortgage lead system?”

Some people will tell me that the goal of their mortgage lead system is to generate new clients. Sure, who doesn’t want that? But this is too general. It needs to be much more specific. Generating new clients is the ultimate goal of your entire marketing program. But the goals for your mortgage lead system need to be more well-defined.

Every now and then, I will speak to a mortgage broker who really understands this concept. The broker will explain the goals of his or her mortgage lead system in detail and without hesitation.

For example: “I want the people who visit my website to do one of three things — fill out a form for a mortgage quote, click on the “Ask the Expert” button for online chat, or contact us by phone or email.”

Now we are getting somewhere! Note the difference between these well-defined objectives for a mortgage lead system and the generic one I mentioned earlier. This broker is not just saying, “I want to generate more clients.” He has a specific plan on how to generate leads and inquiries through his website. He also seems to have some lead generation mechanisms built into the website, such as forms and chat programs.

This is the essence of creating the kind of lead generation system that produces inquiries on a regular basis. You have to start by defining your goals in clear and specific terms. Only then can you implement the techniques needed to meet those goals.

As we continue through this blog series, we will discuss some of the tools and techniques you can use to make your mortgage lead system a success. But you can’t implement the techniques until you have a clear idea of what you want people to do upon visiting your website.

Rest assured, there’s a lot more great information coming. So if you haven’t done so already, join our free newsletter so you can stay informed.

This blog post is part of an ongoing series about mortgage lead generation via the web. Click here to access the “table of contents” for this series.

Can you really produce mortgage marketing leads through your website by offering free information, such as an e-booklet? Sure you can. I’ve seen it done many times, and to good effect. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it. Let’s take a look at both…

Lately I’ve seen a lot of mortgage brokers offering free reports through their websites, as a way of generating mortgage marketing leads through the site.

Let me start by saying that this strategy can work well. I know this from experience. But you have to go about it the right way if you want to generate mortgage marketing leads on a regular basis. Unfortunately, in many of the scenarios where I’ve encountered this web marketing strategy, the website owner went about it all wrong.

In this lesson, I will to show you how to breathe new life into the “free report” marketing strategy used (and worn out) by so many real estate and mortgage professionals. In other words, I’ll teach you how to put your freebies on steroids.

Using Free Information to Produce Mortgage Leads

Now before you scoff at this lesson and say that offering free information doesn’t work anymore, let me clarify something. I will admit that this strategy for generating mortgage marketing leads has failed for many people in the past. But more often than not, those failures were the result of poor implementation of the strategy — not the strategy itself.

Oh heck, I’ll just say it. I have seen many mortgage professionals take an incredibly lazy approach to this marketing technique. In such cases, it’s really no surprise that the technique failed to generate mortgage leads on a consistent basis. In this lesson, I’ll show you how to avoid common mistakes.

Still with me? Good. I promise to make it worth your while.

Effort Equals Results

You have probably heard the old computer programming expression of “garbage in, garbage out” … yes? That same concept can be applied to your mortgage marketing and lead generation programs as well. If you don’t put in the effort up front, you can’t expect to see great results (in this case mortgage leads) later on. Of course, the reverse is also true. If you work hard to implement proven strategies, the sky is the limit.

The truth is that it’s getting harder for mortgage brokers and others in the lending industry to generate mortgage leads online. You might not want to hear this, but you need to. The reasons why are somewhat obvious. There are a lot more mortgage-related websites than there were just a few years ago, and they are all competing for people’s attention — and, ideally, some kind of response.

With so many websites competing for mortgage leads it doesn’t take long for consumers to become overwhelmed. As a result, you have to work harder to ensure your website is better than those of your competitors, in terms of content, design, usability, lead generation and more.

But I digress. Let’s get back to the subject of this lesson. Let’s talk about using free information as a way to generate mortgage marketing leads on a consistent basis.

Many of the so-called “free reports” I encounter on mortgage websites are poorly positioned in several ways:For one thing, the report will be made up of information that can be easily found elsewhere. If somebody can find information all over the Internet, why would they go out of their way to request it from you? So the first thing you need to do is make your information unique in some way. Doing this will increase the value of your information, which in turn will increase the reader’s desire to have it.

Old-Fashioned Supply and Demand

Think of it this way. Who is going to offer their email address in exchange for a generic article they can find on thousands of other websites? There’s an incredibly high supply of this kind of generic information online today, so the demand for it is low. And when a web-savvy consumer is asked to give up personal information for something they can find all over the web … well, you can see my point. Few mortgage marketing leads will come from this.

Graphics and images are another common problem with this strategy. Many mortgage professionals who promote their free reports fail to give them any visual punch. They offer a title and a brief summary, and that’s it.

People want what they can see. So when you include a graphical representation of your free information (such as a “virtual cover page”), you are practically guaranteed to increase your response rates. You will get a higher rate of mortgage marketing leads if you show people what they are getting. Yet I rarely see mortgage brokers create enticing artwork for their reports.

Injecting Your Free Report With Steroids

Okay. We have wasted enough time talking about the wrong way to produce mortgage leads by offering free information. Now let’s move on to the right way to go about it. Let’s take the “free report” strategy and inject it with steroids (metaphorically speaking, of course). Let’s say you developed an actual e-booklet, in PDF format, full of information about home loans. Or maybe even a series of e-books on different mortgage topics.

Specific, factual and relevant — no more generic fluff! Suddenly, the booklet becomes something that people cannot find anywhere else, thus the perceived value of the item increases even more. This value concept is the secret to generating mortgae marketing leads on a consistent basis.

But we’re not done yet. Let’s build on this simple premise until the free booklet becomes a lead generation machine.

More Value for Even More Mortgage Leads

We already talked the importance of adding visual punch to this strategy, and how people want what they can see. So let’s make this lead strategy even stronger by hiring a graphic designer to create a “virtual cover page” for the free booklet. You can use this to promote your free e-book on your website. Sometimes a bit of visual enticement is all that’s needed to get people to filling out those web forms or sending you emails. So this is another way to increase the amount of mortgage marketing leads your generate through this strategy.

But we’re still not done yet…

Let’s write a press release about the new e-book and publish it online through several of the PR websites. Let’s send an email blast to our referral network (if applicable) or use an e-newsletter to promote the book to a targeted audience.

Right about now you might be saying, “Wow, this is a lot of work.” You are right. is. But nobody ever said mortgage marketing and lead generation were easy. In fact, I’ve stated the opposite throughout this article series.

Producing mortgage leads on a regular basis is hard work. But this is actually a good thing. Only a truly motivated mortgage broker would go to this kind of trouble to generate website leads, which means that this strategy will not be “worn out” or overused anytime soon. It takes time and energy to create an e-booklet like the one I’m suggesting. So if you choose this route, you’ll be in a much smaller league of practitioners.

We talked about supply and demand already. If yours is the only booklet in your city or state that offers so much useful mortgage advice, the demand for it will be high. So right away you have something that people will want. And if you offer it for free in exchange for their contact information, you have a new way to generate mortgage marketing leads through your website.

There’s a lot more great information coming soon. So if you haven’t done so already, join our free newsletter so you can stay informed.

This blog post is part of an ongoing series about mortgage lead generation via the web. Click here to access the “table of contents” for this series.

I am often asked, “What is the best way to generate Internet mortgage leads on a consistent basis?” Actually, the best technique is to combine multiple techniques. Having multiple channels for producing Internet mortgage leads is almost always better than having just one.

I am not a mortgage broker. I’m a website publisher and Internet marketer with a lot of experiencing helping real estate and mortgage professionals generate Internet leads through their websites. If I were a mortgage broker — and I was serious about getting more business from the web — I would experiment with a dozen lead generation techniques and then pick the four or five top-performing techniques to use going forward.

This is the type of approach I am recommending for your mortgage broker website. With this kind of “overlapping” strategy, many of my current and past clients have increased the number of Internet mortgage leads they produce through their websites. There is nothing stopping you from doing the same.

No Substitute for Experimentation

As we continue through this blog series on Internet lead generation, I’ll teach you many different strategies for generating mortgage leads online. At some point you’ll wonder which strategy is right for you. But there’s only one way to determine that. You have to experiment. You’ll hear me say that over and over again.

When it comes to mortgage marketing in general, and Internet lead generation in particular, there are two types of mortgage brokers. There are the innovators and the followers. The innovators discover new and effective ways to produce Internet leads through their websites. The followers simply try their best to duplicate this. The innovators will always be more successful than the followers.

The bottom line is that you must be adventurous about generating Internet mortgage leads and inquiries. You have to try things for yourself to determine what works and what doesn’t. You have to take the advice that I am giving you and build upon it with your own imagination and experimentation. Only then will you graduate from follower to innovator.

There’s a lot more great information coming soon. So if you haven’t done so already, join our free newsletter so you can stay informed.

This blog post is part of an ongoing series about mortgage lead generation via the web. Click here to access the “table of contents” for this series.

From time to time, I’ll get an email from a mortgage broker seeking search engine optimization (SEO) services because they want to generate more leads from their mortgage website. But when I inquire about the lead generation systems they are currently using, these same brokers are often stumped and unable to answer.

“But isn’t that what SEO is for, to generate leads?”

No, not exactly.

Let me explain what I mean. If you increase the amount of visitors to a mortgage website that lacks a lead generation system, you’ll end up with more traffic but no way to capitalize on it.

In my experience, most mortgage websites gets enough traffic to support the broker’s business goals. But many of these sites do a poor job of turning casual visitors into leads and inquiries. This is the essence of mortgage broker lead generation — getting your website visitors to “raise their hands” in some way.

So whenever a client or potential client says they need more traffic to their mortgage website, I usually ask two questions right off the bat:

Question 1 - How Are You Measuring Web Traffic?

When I ask this first question, a lot of people say something like, “Well, we don’t have any way to measure our website traffic right now.” Which prompts another question: If you don’t measure or analyze the traffic to your mortgage website, how do you know your current traffic levels are insufficient? The answer, of course, is that you don’t.

Almost every web hosting service provides basic stats on the number of visitors each day, where they came from, how many pages they viewed (”page views”) and other useful bits of information. So check with your current web-hosting provider to see if you have a web stats program built in.

If you don’t have a stats package through your current web hosting company, you’ll need to install one. Their are some pretty fancy programs out there, such as WebTrends and NetTracker, and they’ll tell you everything you could ever want to know about your website visitors.

Here’s a money-saving tip for you. If you want a full-featured web analytics program for free, check out Google Analytics. It used to be called “Urchin” before Google bought it. The positive side of Google’s purchase is that they made the program available for free — all you need is a Google account, which is also free to set up.

You can learn more at Google.com/analytics

Question 2 - How Are You Generating Leads Online?

Here again, you would be surprised by the number of mortgage brokers who offer blank stares at this question. Mortgage marketing online is a numbers game. To use those numbers to your advantage, you need to implement a variety of lead generation techniques to convert traffic into leads and inquiries. What’s the point of increasing traffic (through SEO or any other means) if you’re just hoping that people contact you?

Or, to state it in mathematical terms:

• False: Web traffic = mortgage leads and clients
• True: Web traffic + lead generation = mortgage leads and clients

Online mortgage marketing is a process of attrition. In the beginning, you start off with a very large pool of people — prospective clients surfing the web for mortgage information, quotes, etc. But that number will soon shrink, because only a percentage of those people will find and visit your mortgage website.

When people do visit your mortgage website the number shrinks yet again. Many people will leave your website without taking any action, for a variety of reasons. Maybe they found the information on the website lacking (content problems). Maybe they couldn’t find what they wanted (usability problems). Or maybe they left the website because there was no way for them to request more information (lead generation problems).

An effective lead-generation program can help you reduce this attrition. So stay tuned for plenty more tips on producing leads through your mortgage website.

As this blog series continues, I’ll show you many ways to increase the number or mortgage leads generated through your website. We will talk about blogs, chat programs, e-books and other downloads, information-request forms and a lot more!

There’s a lot more great advice coming soon. So if you haven’t done so already, join our free newsletter so you can keep up with this article series.

This blog post is part of an ongoing series about mortgage lead generation via the web. Click here to access the “table of contents” for this series.

When it comes to generating loan officer mortgage leads in support of your business, the value presented equals the response earned.

There are two things about that opening statement I want you to absorb. First is the overall premise of the statement (and of this lesson as a whole). In order to generate loan officer mortgage leads you need to present something of value. We will talk more about this.

The second thing I want you to absorb is the word “earned” at the end of that sentence. Some loan officers fail to put in the effort necessary to generate mortgage leads on a steady basis, and then they complain about not having enough leads to support their business. Qualified leads are not easy to come by. If they were, there wouldn’t be such fierce competition for them. You have to work hard to generate loan officer mortgage leads on a consistent basis. You have to earn them.

Generate Loan Officer Leads by Offering Value

Previously in this lead generation series we talked about the importance of having a program or system in place to generate leads consistently. Equally important is the value behind that program. For example, your web site visitors will remain anonymous until you give them a reason to step forward and “raise their hands.” They must understand the value they’ll get in return for their action. Only then will they contact you, or fill out a form on your website, or join your newsletter.

So where does this value come from? Well, safety can convey value. Many people distrust and even fear those in the lending industry. So if you can make people more comfortable with you as a person and a professional, the perceived value of your services will go up. Thus, they’ll be more likely to contact you, and you’ll be more likely to generate those loan officer mortgage leads you need to run your business.

Financial incentives are also a form of value. This will motivate consumers more than just about anything else. So if you can demonstrate how you’ll save them money (minimize their closing costs, get a lower rate, etc.), then the value of your services has increased in their minds once again. Here again, you are increasing the likelihood of loan officer mortgage leads and inquiries.

The right kind of information can also be valuable to your audience. For example, maybe you’ve created a guide to mortgage loans for home buyers in your state. This guide focuses on smart investing and is meant to keep people out of foreclosure trouble down the road — or to help that cause anyway. It’s a timely concern among home buyers, so it would bring a lot of value to your offer. I’m willing to bet you could generate a lot of loan officer leads with this technique, if it were done properly.

These are just a few of the ways you can add value to your offer. Whatever techniques you employ, just remember the key message of this lesson. Response goes up in direct proportion to the value of your offer. On the contrary, response goes down with a weaker offer. If you want to generate loan officer mortgage leads on a consistent basis, you have to work hard and earn it.

There’s a lot more great advice coming soon. So if you haven’t done so already, join our free newsletter so you can keep up with this article series.