Mortgage Marketing Content
Knowing the goals is important, but getting there is just as critical. The best and highest achievement of your team’s sales goals relies on marketing executing at the highest level as well. A modern mortgage CRM, such as Surefire CRM, is an absolute necessity to get there.
Should you create content or use stock content?
Finding stock images and slapping them into emails and postcards is neither difficult nor is it very creative. In today’s marketing-saturated world, this type of content will just add to the noise in the borrower’s busy day. Most loan officers and even larger lenders are essentially doing exactly this without even knowing it. If there was no competition for the attention of the borrower and the opportunity to be their source for mortgage consulting for life, this would be acceptable. But competition in mortgage marketing is fierce with multiple lenders approaching borrowers when they indicate interest. This is where mortgage industry marketing creative provides significantly higher value to lenders than stock content.
Modern mortgage CRM systems develop content from the ground up with a focus on the needs of lenders. And not just static, reusable content but also timely and market responsive content. Key interactives, videos and creatives designed for mobile distribution enable lenders to stand out. Of course Surefire users can truly stand out, with award winning content at their fingertips and a powerful marketing platform with which to distribute it.
What are the Advantages of a Multi-Media Marketing Approach?
Lenders are B2C marketers and therefore require sophisticated approaches to developing engagement with borrowers. Their mortgage marketing CRM is the engine driving this engagement in a way a single loan officer would be unable to replicate without automation and access to all types of content.
- Email marketing is an efficient and potentially automated method to stay in touch with borrowers but suffers from saturation, with even the most legitimate messages often lost in the shuffle.
- Print marketing allows lenders to stay in touch from within the home, where most borrowing decisions are made. Production has a per-contact cost but each print piece, whether delivered as a flyer or a mailer, is proven to leave a lasting impression.
- SMS/text marketing allows for an immediate response in a format borrowers have learned to be comfortable using. With no “junk box” for texts, delivery is highly likely but industry compliance is critical and a tool like Top of Mind’s Power Messaging provides enormous coverage to lenders working within the rules.
- Videos and interactive pieces bring the internet alive and power social media with interest grabbing and timely content. Sophisticated mortgage CRMs like Surefire even have custom video delivery systems which can help you record and send your mortgage marketing videos in one platform.
How Can You Implement a Multi-Channel Marketing Approach?
Seeing something more than one time increases engagement but seeing it across different distribution formats adds dimension and understanding. To become a household name it is critical to build logo awareness and recognition. The same is true for personal branding, your face becomes your logo, and loan officers need to put it out into the market as frequently and in as many ways as possible.
Repetition is not the only value of multichannel marketing. When borrowers tend not to open email, or they change jobs leading to a bounced email, or they change cell phone numbers, or even switch home addresses, lenders cannot afford to lose touch. Consistently connecting with prospects and clients through phone, email, SMS, print, and social content is critical in this fast moving environment.
How Can You Optimize Your Marketing Content?
Of course content on its own has little value to lenders. Mortgage CRM platforms like Surefire must also provide efficient marketing automation that ensures the content is delivered on task, on time, and looking great for the borrower to consume. But not all mortgage CRMs are created equal and the application of years of experience to the automation process is critical. Surefire has been awarded for content but also proven to work twice as well when loan officers utilize its automated workflows to market to borrowers.
What is the Highest Use of a Loan Officer’s Time?
Recruiting and retaining loan officers is a challenge for lenders. Using the team that you have to their highest value to the organization will help you reach the common goal of closing more loans. Manual tasks can often be automated to allow loan officers to focus on getting borrowers through the application process and building close relationships with referral partners.
This leads to two schools of thinking when it comes to mortgage marketing. Some lenders view their CRM as a set-and-forget tool to automate marketing. These lenders load in prospects and closed loans and let the automation handle the rest. Often there is a Loan Officer Assistant or Marketing Manager that handles data entry and upload in these situations. Other lenders view the CRM as an interactive hub for loan officers, and use it to generate daily task lists and contact points. The best strategy is typically a combination of these two methods, with the level of CRM adoption driven by the specific goals of the loan officer and their role in marketing for the lender.
Integrations save time here as well. CRMs like Surefire CRM can integrate to key systems like the LOS, POS, social media, lead generation, media creation tools, and more. These integrations and support for a single sign on can work together to create a single hub for all marketing activity for the loan officer. This drives engagement with and utilization of the CRM.
Final Thoughts
Mortgage marketing requires a deep understanding of the mortgage industry and marketing methods. But even with both of those backgrounds, years of experience blending the two will drive better decisions in where to invest. For example, any company can create a campaign to send emails to clients, but getting the mix of digital, print, social, text, and phone correct takes years. Finding a consultant, like Top of Mind Networks, will help make sure your marketing investment goes to driving your business and not to experimentation.
Smaller lenders (anyone smaller than the top handful of digital first lenders that push high-fee loans online and on television) need guidance to make sure their marketing investment pays dividends.
Treat Prospects Like Friends and Family
In the end, borrowers are people. They are mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, grandparents and neighbors. They need assistance and education about securing financing for a home or other property. Treating them well, consulting with them as trusted advisors, and ultimately helping them through an exciting yet stressful event in their lives is both the business goal and the marketers goal. This generates a WIN-WIN scenario and helps ensure you create Clients for Life.
◂ Mortgage Marketing