Using a Mortgage Forum as Lead Generator

Note: 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.

Let me start this lesson off with a brief disclaimer. Of all the strategies I’ve outlined in the lead generation tutorial, this one requires the most work. But it could also become the most effective mortgage lead generator you’ve ever used. So if this strategy intrigues you and you wish to go for it, my advice is to enlist support. Creating an online forum / community can be a lot of work, so it’s best to go into it with partners.

Okay, enough introduction. Let’s talk about how you can create your own mortgage forum and use it as a lead generator to grow your business.

Starting Your Own Mortgage Forum

These days, most mortgage professionals are familiar with web forums. These online communities give like-minded people a place to ask questions, offer advice, and generally share ideas. In fact, there are a number of online forums specifically for mortgage brokers and others in the industry.

But let’s turn things around and talk about the benefits of creating your own forum, instead of just being a member of one. Specifically, let’s look at the ways you could use this concept as a mortgage lead generator to help grow your business.

Imagine that you have created your own mortgage forum online, a web-based community designed to serve home buyers and borrowers within your target area (city, town, nationwide, etc.). Can you appreciate the business-building potential of such a forum … one that’s frequented by mortgage-seeking consumers in your area? One that you owned and moderated?

At this point, you’re probably thinking: “That sounds great, but it also sounds like a lot of work. And I have no I.T. department to help me. So how could I possibly accomplish such a feat?”

I’ve already conceded that this approach takes a lot of effort. But with that being said, most mortgage brokers have the resources needed to pull this off. In fact, I’ll explain how you can get your own mortgage forum up and running in a matter of days. I’ll also tell you how to turn your forum into a mortgage lead generator as well.

We will get to the technical stuff in just a moment. First, I want to start with the benefits of having your own mortgage forum online.

A Web-Based Mortgage Lead Generator

The benefits of having your own mortgage forum can be summed up with two words — traffic and leads. During the initial stages of forum development, it’s best to put lead generation on the side burner and focus instead on attracting visitors / users to the forum. This is one of the biggest challenges of launching a new forum, getting people to use it.

The good news is that once the forum has a group of folks who use it on a regular basis, it will continue to grow on its own (without as much effort from you). At that point, you can begin to focus on the mortgage lead generator aspects of your forum, by integrating some of the techniques covered in this tutorial.

Here’s what you should take away from this lesson. Simply by hosting a mortgage forum in your city / state, and by answering people’s questions in a helpful manner, you will begin to generate leads from the forum. To get even more of them, you can implement other techniques as well (such as a chat tool, or a free booklet, or any of the techniques we will cover in this article series).

Keep in mind, however, that your mortgage forum should serve people first and be used as a mortgage lead generator second. If you grow a large and active community over time, and you help people with their mortgage questions, those leads will come eventually!

Creating Your Online Forum

I’ll briefly touch on the technical aspects of starting your own forum, because it’s actually not that complicated. These days, there are some great software programs that do most of work for you. Upload the software program onto your web host, customize it as needed, and you have a fully functional forum ready for visitors.

Free programs include phpBB and miniBB. If you want to evolve your mortgage forum over time (and I recommend that you do) you should use a more full-featured program such as vBulletin.

If this sounds way too “techy” for your liking, there’s no need to worry. Anyone with basic web development skills can handle this process for you. If you have a webmaster, for example, he or she could probably get the forum up and running in a day or two. You could also post the project on a freelancer’s forum (such as Elance.com) and get bids from developers. Easy!

Promoting Your New Forum

So now you have a mortgage information forum online, and you’re ready to start bringing (and helping) visitors. Now what? Well, you’ve got some work ahead of you. You may not realize it at this point, but setting up a forum is the easier part of the equation. Generating traffic and encouraging people to participate is another thing entirely.

Anyone can put a forum online. But only the truly dedicated can turn a forum into mortgage lead generator to grow their business.

So why bother, if it’s so much work? Good question. Let’s revisit the benefits of having your own high-traffic mortgage forum. What you are doing here, essentially, is building an online community of people who are researching mortgages, home buying and related topics — whatever topics you choose to include in your forum. You own this community, and you can leverage it to build your business! Can you put a price tag on that? I can’t.

Lesson Learned: The people who visit your forum will be more inclined to join the conversation if there’s actually a conversation taking place. On the contrary, if they visit to find that nobody is posting any mortgage questions or answers, they may think it’s a ghost town.

So before you start promoting your forum to the world, get the help of friends and colleagues. Have them post some initial questions and answers in each of the categories you’ve created, just to get things rolling.

7 Ways to Market Your New Forum

1. Publish a press release online to announce the new forum, focusing on the benefits it offers to those who participate.
2. Get extra mileage out of the release by sending it to your local news channels (TV, radio, newspaper, etc.). For best results, track down the contact info for the person who does the real estate segment. Contact them directly to announce your forum.
3. Link to the forum from your website menu, your home page, your blog, etc. To get people’s attention, you could create an eye-catching button / image that links to the forum.
4. Do a direct mail / postcard mailing to your target audience. Again, promote the benefits of the mortgage forum, the knowledge-sharing aspects, etc. Include an eye-catching thumbnail image of your forum on the direct mail postcard.
5. Use your professional network to promote the forum. Tell all of you colleagues about it. Invite them to participate by answering questions posted to the forum (as long as their not direct competitors).
6. Repeat as needed. Like any other aspect of marketing, this is a never-ending process. The more you promote the forum, the more visitors and participation you’ll have. And participation is the key to using your forum as a mortgage lead generator later on down the road.

So there you have it, a comprehensive guide to launching and promoting your very own mortgage forum. Granted, it will take some hard work to get from here to there, but the long-term results can justify any effort you put in. You just can’t put a price tag on having your very own community of home buyers and mortgage shoppers!

Stay Tuned — There are many more lessons to come in this series on lead generation. So if you haven’t done so already, sign up for our free newsletter to stay informed!