Mortgage lead generation should be considered one of the most important activities a loan officer can engage in. Without a reliable source of fresh and qualified prospects flowing in each week, your pipeline, and ultimately your pay-check will suffer.
Unfortunately, this subject is often put on the back-burner for many loan officers, as they seek out a fast and easy solution such as purchasing leads, or paying for expensive mail drops, and other strategies that are pitched to the originator as “turn-key” solutions to closing more loans.
You know how that usually works out right? A good mortgage lead generation plan is typically going to require a bit more than just writing a check to a service provider. Think of it this way; if the service really delivers great mortgage leads, then how long do you think it will take before that particular service becomes saturated with long lines of loan officers wanting in? It won’t take long before this once effective source is watered down. There are only so many pieces of mail that can be sent, and only so many times a lead can be sold before the borrowers get frustrated.
So what’s the solution? Should we simply throw in the towel and look for another career? Not a chance!
Mortgage Lead Generation Tip #1
Let the borrowers come to you. Think about it. Are you at your most friendly when a telemarketer calls you to sell you on a new credit card protection plan? If you’re like me, then I doubt it. We don’t like to be interrupted with sales pitches. Neither do your prospects. But how about when you actually need a service badly enough to go in search for it? Now are you more likely to listen to what the sales person has to say?
Of course! The same is true of your borrowers. In most cities, there are hundreds, if not thousands of borrowers who take the time to visit a search engine online and perform a search for mortgage loans. These people are serious enough to take time out of their days to search for and research the topic of mortgage loans. Wouldn’t you say this makes these people far more qualified leads than those you would cold call?
Imagine if you had a strategy as part of your lead generation campaign that put you in front of these people at the very moment they performed these searches? Are you seeing the potential here?
Mortgage Lead Generation Tip #2
Have a Call To Action. I took a little trip across Google looking at dozens of mortgage websites. Can you guess what I found? Most of them look, and sound as if they were written by the same organization. I’d be hard pressed to find a single site that stood out. All of them brag about great service on the front page, and then excitedly point out that I can apply for a free mortgage quote.
What’s so special about that? Think like a borrower. Will he or she see this as an amazing opportunity to get a quote? Nearly every single website offers this service, and I have yet to find a site that charges for it, so why is a big deal being made about the fact it is free?
The claims of great service are also cliché. Have you ever run across a loan officer who warns his prospects that his service is mediocre at best? Not a chance! In other words, these are the sorts of messages that go in one ear and out the other. They blend you in with everyone else. If you want a mortgage lead generation campaign that delivers something other than the same old results you’re tired of, you need to think of a few calls to action that make your prospects excited.
This could be a list of tips, warnings, an e-book, a guide… If you’re marketing online, you can create an audio clip or video. There are numerous ways to draw your prospects in without sounding like every other loan officer and mortgage company on the block.
Many originators are searching desperately for a reliable way to self-generate their own mortgage leads.
Ok, this post is for Loan Officer Marketing Lab members. We have hundreds of members who are now spending time and effort on getting their websites to page #1 of Google. While I’ve spent plenty of time demonstrating live how to build a Google friendly website, I have not as of yet spent time publicly demonstrating the effectiveness of proper SEO.
Today I want to change that. If you’re a member of the Loan Officer Marketing Lab, here’s your chance to publicly call me out and force me to PROVE first hand, how to get front page of Google rankings. How does this work? Simple – There’s a form below you can enter your info, and the keyword you think I should target. As a Lab member, you should already know how to do proper keyword research right?
Find a keyword, or even 2 or 3 that you think I should rank my site for. We’ll count the requests, pick the most common keyword, and you’ll get to see us rank the site live! In other words, you get to follow every little step we take (Isn’t that a song?) in the SEO process. No, not just screenshots, you’ll get to see what we did and why, and then see the impact that each step had on our overall rankings.
Why am I doing this? Because while I believe that instructions and verbal steps are great, it’s 10 times better when you can see something in action. Wouldn’t you agree? No mystery, no hiding behind curtains, no smoke and mirrors – You call the shots on the keyword we should target.
My initial guesstimate is that we’ll be ready to kick this off in February, so please submit the keyword/keywords you’d like to see us target:
Remember – The keyword needs to be related to Mortgage Marketing topics, as this is what my site is about. Also, these training sessions will be displayed in the Members Only section of www.loanofficermarketinglab.com
The best way to position yourself is to create a unique selling proposition (USP), which is a concise statement that clearly explains the benefits of doing business with you. Some famous USPs you’ve probably heard include FedEx’s “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight” and Geico’s “We’ll help you save you up to 15 percent or more on car insurance.”
Here are four steps to creating your unique selling proposition.
Step 1 – Brainstorm Your USP
The first step to creating your unique selling proposition is to brainstorm all the reasons why clients should do business with you. Instead of using vague and meaningless phrases like “I offer high quality service and professionalism,” quantify exactly what clients get when they do business with you. What does “high quality service” or “professionalism” mean to you? This should be present in your mortgage marketing all the time.
Your USP should be specific to your niche audience, in line with your strengths, and different from your competition. What do you do differently from other LO’s that makes you stand out? What do your best clients say about you? What are you most proud of? Are you a local expert or well-known in your area? What are your mortgage sales accomplishments? Write down whatever comes to mind. It’s ok at this stage to write several pages. Show what your mortgage training has taught you!
Step 2 – Clarify Your USP
Once you have a clear idea of how you differ from other LO’s and why prospects should hire you over all the other mortgage brokers out there, narrow down the most compelling reason to a sentence or two.
Step 3 – Prove Your USP
Your prospects are skeptical, so you need proof that you can do what you say. A great way to do this is to get client testimonials. Good client testimonials explain how easy you made their loan approval process, how clearly you explained the steps to buying their home, how frequently you were in contact with them, and how well you solidified their deal. And a solid mortgage lead generation system should attract PLENTY of these prospects.
Best of all, when clients sing your praises, you’re not bragging. You’re showing (social) proof that you’ve done this before, and you’ve done such a great job that your clients are willing to vouch for you. Testimonials do much of the selling for you.
Here’s a picture that all loan officers should see! Have a look:
This image is a screenshot of the results from a heat map study of Google browsers. In other words, (Look very closely in the upper left hand corner, you’ll see the Google logo, and see this is a Google Search page) what this picture shows, is the results of an intensive, sophisticated study of how average people use search engines.
To put it in a nutshell, the red area covers search results numbers 1, 2, and 3. This shows evidence that 80 – 100% of web users view and click on a link within the top 3 search results of Google when looking for something. (Such as a loan officer)
The orange and yellow areas show that 60 – 79% of people will view and/or click on the results within search results numbers 4 and 5.
The red horizontal line shows where you have to scroll to view the rest of page 1 on Google. As you can see, once the browsers have to scroll to continue viewing results, the number of people who bother viewing and clicking the websites at these positions begins to severely drop off.
By the time you reach position 9 and 10 on page number 1, you’ve lost nearly 80% of visitors! What does this tell you? It tells you that you need to have your website on page #1 of Google. It also tells you that even on page #1, you need to be as high up the food-chain as possible!
Once we get to page #2 on Google, the number of people clicking has been reduced by 91% and drops off even more as you scroll down. The real question to ask here is “where is your website at on Google?”
If you’re not on pages 1 or 2, chances are you’re getting nothing out of your website. If you want regular leads generated from serious and targeted buyers, your web ranking matters. More specifically, it matters when your site shows up.
Do you show up on page 1 of Google when you type in your city and the words: “loan officer, mortgage, or mortgage loan?” If the answer is “no” then you’re not being found by your prospects and you’re losing out on business.
In St. Louis last month, Google tells me there were more than 79,000 searches for loan officers and mortgage loans. In just 30 days! Imagine being on page #1 for each and every one of these searches!It can be done, but you have to take action.
My post is two – fold today. Something useful, and something entertaining! It’s Friday, it’s ok for me to share…
Today I want you to ask yourself questions about your current mortgage marketing efforts. Your marketing should accomplish 3 things.
1. It should reach large groups of people
2. It should be focused to grab attention
3. It should be targeted at likely targets
Why do I bring this up? Because even those who nod their heads yes, and claim to understand these facts don’t do anything about it! When I began building websites and online marketing strategies for loan officers, I had a unique opportunity to look closely at what most lenders use as a website, as a mortgage marketing plan, as a lead generator.
Let me tell you, there’s a reason most loan officers are not earning money from their websites! Why not?
1. The same loan officers who claim they already know they should target large groups of people, and also claim that hey “do” – most definitely do not. Less than 5% of the websites and online marketing plans I’ve reviewed for both individual loan officers, and larger offices get more than 2 or 3 visitors to their site per day.
In fact, most of these websites are all but invisible to the search engines and impossible to find by anyone interested in a mortgage. Please don’t make this mistake. It’s costly, it’s frustrating, and it’s unnecessary. A little bit of online mortgage marketing attention can go a long way!
2. Repeat after me: “Get a free quote now” is not a call to action! Well, maybe it is, but it’s not a good one. Yet I see this one phrase on the front page of nearly every mortgage website I stumble across. The call to action begins with, and ends with this one line.
This accomplishes little more than screaming to your prospects: “Hey! I’m just like every other website you’ve browsed and other than shopping for a rate and closing costs, you won’t get anything new here!” Think about it. Your website is you. As far as the prospect is concerned, this is likely the first exposure they’ve had to your business, and the only basis for judging your worth to them.
By placing a tired, overused statement on your front page as the one and only call to action, you’re telling them that you’ve got nothing else of value to offer. Not the message you would hope to communicate right? It’s an honest mistake for most, but one that should be rectified as soon as possible.
Put yourself into the shoes of a prospect visiting your website. What concerns would you have? What would grab your attention? Usable information right? Preferably offered up for free. Articles, how to, blog posts, and lead capture forms offering a report or “mini-course” that will help them avoid mistakes are all great ways to stimulate interest and capture leads.
3. Once again, most mortgage marketing I stumble across would not pass inspection when it comes to targeting prospects. Yes, it can be difficult to focus your energies and efforts on a niche market when you see so many possibilities – not wanting to let opportunities slip through the cracks.
But if you’re serious about closing more loans, and you want to give your marketing efforts a boost, then it’s time to figure out just who you are selling to and why. Most websites are a large mass of links, with no true direction. They try to be all things to all people in the hopes that whether you’re a FSBO, a first time home buyer, a move up buyer, an FHA candidate, a refi prospect, a mortgage mod prospect, a…. Well you get the point.
When you try to get 1 website to sell well to so many different prospects, all that is really accomplished is the message is severely diluted. It’s a lot like the guy trying to be the jack of all trades – ends up doing lots of things, but none of them all that well.
With all that said, I hope this is taken to heart. I may be quite gruff, or blunt at times, but I prefer to tell it how it is as opposed to beating around the bush. This is your career after all, and it’s an important topic worthy of a critical eye.
If you’d like to learn more about using your website as a mortgage marketing tool, here’s a link for you to check out: marketing online
Now… Onto the fun part. I received an email last night with pictures of cakes. That’s right, the pics below are all just flour, sugar, eggs, and frosting. (Ok, a few more ingredients – But impressive no?) – I want to eat the soda can cake…
Hope you found this interesting! Hey look, whoever made this cake even fashioned a cord and plug on the money machine! Attention to detail. Now to salvage my image as posting on topic and relevant blog posts? Well, what can we learn from this? That anything, even making a cake can be elevated to a fascinating level.
I’m stunned by the talent and creativity on display here, how about you? These images have been forwarded from email to email millions of times. They’re cakes! Did you wake up this morning thinking you’d be stunned by pictures of a cake? Point being that we as a people appreciate excellence. Put the same level of excellence into your marketing efforts.
Don’t make this an ordinary day, make it extraordinary. Ok, I’m off to go grab myself a boring and likely very square cake from the bakery… At least it will taste good…
- Ok, so no video recordings here… The tone of the post just reminded me of one of those “Caught On TAPE!” Series…
Blooper time people! Usually my posts are very serious in tone, and <gasp!> educational in nature. Looking for a light-hearted post today, so I began thinking back to some of my early days as a loan officer, and some of the more laughable (At least now they are) mistakes I made.
But fair is fair, so if I’m going to serve up some stories, I want you to share as well. Ok, now that we’ve agreed, here’s my worst of the worst story:
One of the most difficult transitions for me as a new loan officer was dealing with those clients who would never send in their stips, but yet would call multiple times per day demanding you “hurry up!”
So I had this client who became quite hostile when I told her the loan was not ready, as she still had not delivered proof of income, bank statements, etc. She called and left me a really nasty voicemail. Another loan officer was in the office with me as I listened to her angry message.
I decided it was best I call her back to diffuse the situation. I left her a voicemail once again reminding her that the loan would not make progress until she delivered the documents I had asked for multiple times now. I set down the phone on the carriage after I finished leaving my message, and proceeded to complain to the loan officer in my office.
He inquired about the situation, and I explained how ridiculous this woman was, and made some cracks about “She probably doesn’t want to give me her bank statements because she must not have the money she told me she does to qualify!”
The words and the back story had barely left my mouth when I realized in horror that there was another voice in the room… “What the?” I looked around for the disembodied voice but could not find it! Where is this sound coming from? My eyes finally settled on my phone!
In my frustration with the customer, I apparently set the phone down too quickly and the phone was not resting on the carriage properly – meaning that I never hung up! I reached down to snatch the phone up hoping the voicemail system would give me an option to cancel and re-record my message!
The pay-off for my speedy phone grab? “Thank You – Goodbye!” AHHHHHHHHHH! I was too late. The already angry and unreasonable customer was sure to blow her top! But what could I do? You know that sinking feeling you get in your stomach that comes with the realization of impending doom? That’s what I enjoyed for the next few hours waiting for the inevitable tongue lashing that was sure to come with every ring of my phone.
So what happened? I never heard back from her. I often wondered if it was because she found my comments insulting, or if she realized from my message that I was not going to approve her loan without proper proof of income and funds in the bank.
Either way, I learned an important lesson that day. But not the one you might expect. I learned to always manually press the button on the phone with your finger and listen for the dial tone before venting in frustration about a customer…Or a family member…Or anyone for that matter! (No high-horse soap box preaching today folks! We all have to vent sometime! It’s how we stay sane when things get tense)
So how about you? Any interesting stories to tell from the trenches? If this post gets enough interesting responses, I just might be able to be persuaded to share my story about the borrower who brought her father with her to the closing table… After he passed away! (Yea, think about what that one means for a moment!) Now share!
#1 – Our latest video is a great follow up to our keyword research and online marketing instruction. (Have you been following our latest calls and blog posts on Lenderama?) The video is posted here, and I strongly recommend you set aside the 7 minutes needed to watch. This can change your perception of online marketing…
#2 – On the same note, our next live tele-conference call: “Online Mortgage Marketing – What You Need To Know” has been scheduled for Tuesday May 5 at 1:30 CST. Follow the link below to get your call in details. Don’t get left behind!
It’s fun to imagine what you would do differently if you could just hit the restart button. I’ve often asked myself what I would do differently if I had to start my career over in today’s market.
While some things never change within a sales and marketing industry, some things have evolved quite a bit. If I were a loan officer training to get started ASAP, here’s what I would do: Read More→
Welcome to 2009! As I struggle to retrain my tiny brain to write 09 instead of 08, I eagerly look forward to what this year will bring! I hope all of you are putting together a solid marketing plan. I know it seems to be the same song and dance year after year, but what are you going to do differently this year?
I want you to take some time and examine your current situation and ask a tough question. That question is “Why?” Why am I in this situation? What behaviors, habits, and events have worked together to land me into my current situation – be it good or bad?
Straight answers work best here, even if it’s not what you want to hear or admit. I’ll give you a little peak into a few of these “self chats” I’ve had with myself. I put everything on paper or into files on my PC, so I can always go back and find my habits. Here’s one from a few years back:
I have a serious question for you.What are you doing about the internet? Hands down, one of the most powerful mortgage marketing tools around is the web, yet most loan officers aren’t sure even where to begin. Why is this a concern? Well have a look:
Estimated U.S. Population – 337,000,000
Estimated U.S. Internet Users – 248,000,000
In other words, 73.6% of the U.S. now use the web! Talk about the perfect advertising medium! How many mortgage marketing tools can you think of that have such reach? Not many, especially if you’re looking at the cost associated with such advertising.
So what’s stopping you from using this tool? For most, it’s the simple fact that they really don’t know what to do! How about we give you a tad bit of inspiration here…
Marry both online and offline efforts. With the web, you have a tool that can provide instant, and customized info. This makes it easy for your target market to get more info. Need an example? It’s no secret I am a huge fan of marketing to realtors. I primarily targeted the top producers in my market, who under normal circumstances wouldn’t give a loan officer the time of day – I’m sure you know what I mean…
My solution was to setup a miniature site that used the realtors name as part of the URL. Then I would use a combination of a quick mailer and/or phone call to give him/her the web address. Let me ask you a question. If you received a notice that there was a website with your name as the web address, would you check it out? For example: www.chadweber.com would definitely get my attention, especially if someone contacted me and informed made me aware that it was made specifically for me! You can’t resist.
Seem like a lot of work? (It requires maybe 20 – 30 minutes at the most to craft a personal site if you’re using the right tools) It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it. A realtor listed in the top 100 – 250 within the state is usually closing over 10 – 15,000,000 in transactions each year, and far more if you’re in a high dollar area.
Just one of these agents giving you most of their business could easily add 6 figures to your bottom line. So my question to you, is this… What else do you have on your “to do” list that requires just 30 minutes of your time and can possibly add an extra $100,000 or more to your paycheck? My guess is not much, as most marketing efforts don’t carry the same potential as a top producing referral source.
This is just 1 tiny example of how powerful the web is. Need another? Well, I have a very powerful example for you. Simply click the link to get 3 days worth of instruction FREE. What you learn just may change your mind about how you approach marketing…
Hello
there! My name is Chad Weber and I run the Loan Officer Marketing Lab
. (www.loanofficermarketinglab.com)
The site you've visited: The Loan Officer Project is exactly
that - A project of mine that allows me to train 100 loan officers per
month absolutely COST FREE.
Nothing else on the market even comes close, and despite what you may
be thinking, there are absolutely no strings attached. Register for
more info above!
