Smart Mortgage Marketing

A mortgage broker web site without great content is like a sports car with no engine. It might look nice, but it won’t take you very far. So let’s talk about the kinds of content you might add to your mortgage broker web site and how to get the most out of that content.

Web Site Content Strategy

The first thing you need to do is determine the goal(s) of your mortgage web site and then build your content around those goals. For example, if your web site goal is to attract San Diego home buyers in search of mortgage lenders — and get them to contact you — you would build your content around these goals.

You would begin this process by adding informative content to your mortgage broker web site in the form of articles, mortgage calculators, tips and tutorials, etc. You would also make sure your content was rich with keywords, in order to increase your search engine visibility for key phrases.

Generating Mortgage Broker Leads

So now your mortgage web site is full of great content built around key search phrases used by your audience. Now what? Well, you need to generate leads and inquiries in some fashion. After all, your broker web site can only support your pipeline if it produces leads on a regular basis. Refer to these articles on lead generation for more advice.

Organizing Your Web Site Content

One of the most common problems I see on mortgage broker web sites (from a content standpoint) is disorganization. I have visited a lot of sites that were so messy that I couldn’t even find my way around.

So as you add more and more content to your mortgage web site you need to focus on organization. You can make this easier by outlined your web site’s structure on paper. Then, whenever you add a new page of content to the site, you can use your structure map to determine where it should go, how it should be linked into the menu, etc.

I am frequently reminding my SEO clients that they can boost their website traffic levels and overall success by thinking like a publisher. Because nobody knows how to generate website traffic like professional Internet publishers.

Here’s the key to this approach to online mortgage marketing. You must follow the news, identify popular topics, and then cover those topics on your website or blog. Nothing drives Internet search patterns like media coverage. So if you keep pace with mortgage-related news topics and address those topics on your site, you stand to gain more website traffic.

An obvious example if the crisis of mortgage foreclosures. You frequently hear about this on TV, and you read about in the newspapers. As a result, the number of Internet searches for that foreclosure-related phrases has risen steadily in recent months.

I have a client who has not only shaped his website content around foreclosures, but his entire business model as well. Wisely, he has created a service that caters to homeowners who are facing popular foreclosure in Utah. By offering information related to foreclosures of Utah real estate he is able to capture a lot of traffic through his site, which naturally increases the business-building potential of his website.

Think like a publisher, address popular topics, and watch your web traffic increase.

If you operate a mortgage website for business and marketing purposes, but you don’t know how to access your website analytics … you’re operating under a severe handicap. Here’s how to avoid that.

What Is Web Analytics?
Web analytics is an Internet marketing term with many uses and interpretations. Basically, it refers to information about your website visitors. When people visit your mortgage website, and then go on to interact with the website in some way, that information can be collected as data.

In other words, website analytics programs allow you to monitor the activity of your mortgage website’s visitors. Obviously, this kind of website data can be very useful in your online mortgage marketing program.

Even if you don’t have a “store-bought” website analytics program installed on your mortgage website, you probably have a website log that can give you some basic information. Most web-hosting companies offer site logs with basic analytics than can tell you where your traffic comes from, home many visitors you get each day, etc.

But if you really want to know what’s happening on your mortgage website, you should install a more powerful analytics program.

Analytics Programs for Mortgage Websites
If you’d like to go the free route (which I always prefer), you could try Google Analytics. This program used to be called Urchin, but Google bought it a few years ago and renamed it. Google Analytics will give you such information as:

• Number of visitors per day
• Location of your visitors
• Key phrases people use to find you through search engines
• Top sources of traffic
• Top entry page
• Top exit page
• And more

This kind of data is sufficient for most mortgage websites, as it gives you the “intel” you need to make smart decisions about your website’s growth. And, of course, you can’t beat the price.

But if you want to get more advanced with your mortgage Internet marketing (and have the budget to support it), you might look into such products / companies as WebTrends and ClickTracks.

What have you done to expand your online presence lately? How have you further your online mortgage marketing goals by increasing your Internet reach?

These are very legitimate questions for the modern mortgage broker or mortgage company, but oddly enough many in the mortgage industry cannot answer these questions. In other words, they have not given the proper consideration to their mortgage web presence.

The Mortgage Web Presence, Defined

A mortgage web presence is not the same thing as a mortgage website. By itself, your website is just one of many elements that contributes to your overall web presence — or lack thereof. Other elements of the mortgage web presence might include … are press releases, online articles, mortgage blogs, sponsored search / pay-per-click marketing, etc.

Why do I put so much emphases on the mortgage web presence? Because I’ve been watching the mortgage and real estate industries closely for over six years, mostly from a marketing perspective. And I truly believe that those mortgage professionals who adopt a “publisher’s mentality” to grow their web presence will capture the lion’s share of business in their market areas.

I am so convinced of this that I’ve written a 45-page training guide to show you how to build an effective mortgage web presence. Learn more about the guide.

This mortgage company Internet marketing tip is for the “advanced pupils” out there — those mortgage companies who already have a company website but want to capture more Internet leads.

If you fall into this group, you might consider launching a second mortgage. After all, Internet marketing is a numbers game. And if you have two highly visible mortgage websites instead of one, you could potentially generate twice the Internet leads as well. That’s a significant increase in the number of people who find your mortgage business through search engines.

Better still, if you integrate some form of website lead generation in place, the additional mortgage website would add to your business growth.

What Kind of Website?
If you decide to pursue this Internet marketing strategy, you will first have to decide the theme and focus of the second mortgage website. For example, if your primary site is like most mortgage company websites, why not make website #2 more consumer- and education-oriented, sort of like the About.com of your local real estate market. It could be a “one-stop-shop” for mortgage-related information, specifically geared toward home buyers and homeowners in your market area. That’s just one of many ideas for a second site.