Mortgage Marketing in 2021
2021 is the year to invest heavily in marketing and close more loans. But what can you expect to see in the 2021 market? Here are some trends:
- Housing inventory could open up
- Mortgage rates will edge up
- Home prices will keep rising, but not as quickly
- Zoom towns (housing markets that are growing in popularity due to the remote work trend) could really take off.
- City homes could get a lot cheaper
According to Realtor.com chief economist, Danielle Hale, you can “expect sales to grow 7 percent and prices to rise another 5.7 percent on top of 2020’s already high levels.” Interest rates, which have motivated many buyers in 2020, “are expected to remain low and will help ameliorate some of the affordability concerns resulting from rapid home price appreciation seen in 2020”, says Selma Hepp, CoreLogic deputy chief economist.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
To take advantage of these favorable conditions and get your message across to your target market, it’s important to know who your audience is and market to them appropriately. Millennials, for instance, represent a huge market you should tap into. Many millennials plan to purchase a home within the next 5 years meaning that they are seeking information about the house-purchasing and mortgage processes.
This generation grew up in the age of the internet, so they both respect high-quality information sources and know where to find them. Your company must provide them with the information they want and need, or they will find someone else. That’s where social media marketing comes into play. As social media becomes more professional, mortgage companies have the opportunity to reach out to strategic business partners like real estate agents and builders and develop relationships that can turn into actionable leads.
To give you perspective, five out of six millennials connect with companies on social media, meaning that it is crucial for your company to have an active social media presence where you can engage with your customers. 62 percent of millennials say that if a brand engages with them on social media that they are more likely to become a loyal customer.
CONTENT MARKETING
Well-written and useful content can help educate leads, improve website SEO and attract internet information hunters who trust and respect good sources. Your content can also be shared via social media and can be promoted directly to your targeted audience.
REFERRAL MARKETING
Trust, reliability, customer service, communication, solutions, priority, and speed are just some of things real estate agents cherish. Make sure to have conversations about strategy and goal alignment with your referral partners for a stronger Q1 & Q2. More importantly, add value to them. There are several ways you can create value to your partners, such as:
- Tech
- Coaching
- Marketing
- Support
- Lead Nurturing
- Education
DIGITAL MARKETING
Digital marketing is a broad field that relies on the internet and digital devices to attract consumers. The methods are various:
- Solid, easy-to-use website
- Good SEO
- Educational content
- Retargeting
- Lead capture & follow up
- Ads & Landing pages
If you are pursuing leads, the only thing that matters is having immediate, predictable, and personalized follow up with purchased leads. They should be immediately prequalified and an appointment should be set for follow up.
DATABASE MARKETING
Everything you need to generate leads in 2021 is likely already in your database! Before you buy another lead or ask for another referral, shouldn’t you have a clear understanding of what your own database can provide?
Other forms of marketing include video marketing and traditional marketing. This all seems too much? Intent Marketing can help you assess your needs and create the right marketing strategy for your audience market.
Targeted Sphere Marketing
Knowing your audience and personalizing your messaging to each individual is the heart of targeted marketing. Unlike traditional marketing, it boils down to making customers feel like they are the only one you have. This is the secret to creating raving fans who advocate for you to others.
Targeted marketing starts with defining “WHO” specifically is a good fit for a product or service and delivering personalized messages directly to that targeted audience. This is different than starting with “WHAT” the promotional message is, marketing to a broad audience and expecting a reaction. The process involves four stages that can transform a stranger into a promoter of your brand, ultimately.
Attract: The first stage is to attract strangers via keywords, blogs, social publishing and advertising so they become visitors.
Convert: Next up, you’ll work to convert them using effective landing pages, calls-to-action and user-friendly forms.
Close: Leads are then nurtured by your CRM, marketing campaigns and workflows until they close.
Delight: Once they become customers, this is when you’ll send out surveys and small contents that add value to your customers and make them promoters.
If you are creating an email campaign, you need to think about the type of audience you are targeting. It’s important to get a sense of your target market and find out who they are (age, job, school, home etc.), what appeals to them, where they are geographically, what they do in their free time, how connected they are (email, social media, text), and what they do online (shop, search, learn etc.). If you are targeting refinance customers or first-time homebuyers, there are a number of characteristics you can determine right off the bat:
Refinance Shoppers:
- Rate-sensitive
- Willing to shop around for quotes
- Know what they are doing
New Homebuyers:
- Looking for someone to guide them through the process
- Willing to pay more for helpful advice
- Referral driven
Use the characteristics of each audience to craft a tailored marketing message that speaks directly to their needs or concerns. Intent understands the different types of customer journeys and offers a multitude of targeted campaigns.
Now that you know the concepts, here are the steps to creating your own targeted marketing for your business:
- Find your niche: Decide which customers you work best with and market to them. Do you love working with first time homebuyers? Are move-up buyers more your speed? The more you can target your marketing the more success you’ll have with responses.
- Determine the need of your audience: What are your customers looking for that you can provide to them?
- Develop your solution: How are you going to explain to your customers what you can do to help them?
- Market your solution: Reach out to your target audience via text, email and social media letting them know that you can fulfill their need.
- Share your knowledge and engage in your space: Become a member of groups, forums and communities where you can share ideas, tips and more.
There are several ways to reach your audience and find leads, whether going through your database or asking for referrals. Social media ads are likely the most scalable and cost-effective method to get your brand in front of your target market. People who are thinking about refinancing their home and people who are about to move are on social media platforms. Social media advertising allows you to directly target and retarget these people and place highly relevant ads straight into their newsfeed. Think Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google and more.
Intent can create targeted social media ads and landing pages for you! Talk to us to learn how we can help you grow your business.
Loan Officers’ Online Presence is Crucial to Mortgage Success
Forty-three percent of respondents to a recent National Mortgage News survey found their 2018 mortgage lender through an online search. In the same survey from 2017, only 21% of respondents found their mortgage lender through an online search. If this trend continues, over half of this year’s prospective homebuyers will find their mortgage lender online.\n\nFor mortgage planners, an online presence with correct and up-to-date information is crucial to success. According to National Mortgage News, technology company Yext found that within its online presence, 64% of loan officers listed incorrect addresses while 46% had errors in their businesses’ names. Meanwhile, almost 58% of the loan officers surveyed had no online presence at all. Ensuring that profiles are created on social media platforms and that information is up to date and reviews are solicited can greatly increase loan officers’ visibility in online searches. A website with strong SEO is very important as well.
Intent Employee Spotlight: Kristen Brower
Here at Intent, our team is a family that works together each day to ensure that our customers are able to provide their home buyers and business partners with the best possible lending experience. Each week, we’d like to introduce you to a member of our team.
A graduate of North Carolina State University’s College of Design, Kristen Brower (affectionately known around the office as “Sparkles”) is our Graphic Designer at Intent. Learn a little more about her today!
Name: Kristen “Sparkles” Brower
Start Date: Started interning in June 2016, started full time in July 2018
Position: Graphic Designer
Brief overview of what you do: I am the creator of all visuals, graphics and branding for Intent. Sometimes I’m tasked with the hardest challenge of them all: interpreting Kelly’s thoughts and constructing them into visual form.
What brought you to Motivator/Intent: During my sophomore summer, I was looking for a graphic design internship to introduce myself to the working world. It didn’t take long to realize Motivator/Intent is not a typical workplace, and that my job would last much longer than just that summer.
What do you like most about working at Motivator/Intent: I enjoy the ability to be creative with my projects and to work alongside great people!
Hometown: Charlotte, NC
Hobbies: When I’m not busy trying all the delicious new food and beer around Charlotte, I can be found hanging with my cat, working out or figuring out a jigsaw puzzle.
Book you’ve read over and over again: I’ve never been a big reader. I had to read “Night” in English class in eighth grade and then again in 10th grade.
Top 3 movies: Legally Blonde, Mamma Mia!, Finding Nemo
A bit about your family: I am the youngest (therefore favorite) of three. My family lives nearby, so we get to spend a good amount of time together. My favorite part of our time together is playing with my nephew, a quick and curious toddler.
Favorite food: Pancakes
Thing you’re scared of: Animals that act too much like humans — the Easter bunny, mascots, some animated characters.
Worst habit: Bad posture
Dream vacation: There is still so much I want to see! The top of my list right now is either Greece or any tropical island.
Favorite cocktail: I can never say no to a margarita.
What is A Mortgage CDP?
One of the best ways for mortgage professionals to become a competitive force in the industry is providing their clients with exceptional service. Intent Homebuying Marketing Intelligence is a powerful digital marketing tool with the heart of a CDP that will become your most valuable asset for providing your customers and business partners with exemplary service.
What Exactly Is A CDP?
A CDP is defined as a Customer Data Platform that primarily offers automated marketing and sales force automation. However, the goal of a successful mortgage CDP is to use technology software to manage all your business relationships and interactions with current and potential customers. A CDP system is valuable to your business because it will not only help your business grow; it will help you balance and keep up with an ever-increasing number of referrals, contacts, leads and Realtors.
Why Does Your Business Need A Mortgage CDP?
Most mortgage companies that use CDP software find it very beneficial because it leads to increased awareness and outstanding customer retention. A CDP captures detailed information about your customers and their behaviors, pointing you to the right target market, product development and activities for your particular client. Your business needs a CDP to make your company more efficient and to increase revenue per loan officer. This software will allow your business to succeed in many ways and result in consistently successful closings.
Why Intent?
Here at Intent, we care about our clients and make sure they have the best support. Intent is a complete digital marketing platform with the heart of a CDP. We specialize in relationship building, sales management, email marketing, website development and shareable content. Intent carefully generates leads and is designed to make marketing easy.
Tips for Effective Testimonials
Testimonials on your mortgage website are a powerful tool for converting leads into customers. Customers love to work with people or companies that provide evidence of a positive customer experience. A testimonial is defined most simply as “a public tribute to someone and to their achievements,” but from a marketing standpoint, more should be considered when adding customer testimonials to a website. Here are some tips on how to optimize your testimonials for your business:
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- Make sure your testimonials are visually appealing. In terms of language and text, it is important for the reader to be able to easily visualize the testimonial’s subject matter. This can be done with descriptive language, bright adjectives and enthusiasm. Suggesting this to your customer before they compose a testimonial will help you obtain appealing content from them.
- Make sure there is a level of specificity to the information provided in a testimonial. Instead of saying, “John is awesome. We’re so happy we went with him,” use something more like: “John is awesome. Not only did he handle our home purchase carefully and efficiently; he also referred us to some of his trusted business partners to help with our new home.”
- Consider deviating from just text and think about incorporating visual elements with your testimonials. If the customer is OK with it, perhaps include a smiling photo of them to go with their quoted text.
- Even more effective than written testimonials, in some cases, are video testimonials. If you go this route, just remember that video testimonials introduce some complexities, with both the visuals and the audio needing to be polished and professional. However, if you have the capacity to create quality video testimonials, or even complementary imagery, go for it!
To learn more about the importance of testimonials, view this article
Forget a CRM. You need a CDP.
You can’t have a conversation in the mortgage space without someone asking for advice on which CRM is the right mortgage CRM. While we answered this question in another article, we would certainly say that CRMs are a thing of the past. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Manager, which was great when all business was referral-based, but in this current age of lead management and machine learning, we need to be looking forward.
CDP stands for Customer Data Platform, and that’s a place where all data can be stored, analyzed for behavior and opportunity, and used effectively. A CDP could save a mortgage originator time and energy when building acquisition strategies. With any platform, it’s the integrations and the UX that make the product important. Knowing when to talk with your database, how to talk with them and the method of communication they prefer goes a long way toward understanding and listening to their needs, respecting that balance and providing excellent marketing solutions.
Value Connect is Reshaping The Home Appraisal Process
Built for and by real estate industry experts, Value Connect makes the real estate appraisal process better and easier for mortgage lenders, appraisers, brokers and their clients. Since Value Connect was launched in 2015, the core idea behind the Ontario, Canada-based company’s process has been simple: Eliminate mortgage planners from choosing their appraiser, thus ensuring independent, unbiased and fair reports. While that might not sound like a good thing for loan originators, it actually couldn’t be more ideal. Here’s why: The Value Connect platform anonymously connects lenders — as well as brokers and underwriters — with experienced, accredited expert appraisers who possess a keen understanding of the local market.
Tired of dealing with appraisal fee changes, missed deadlines, incomplete appraisal reports and the challenges of partnering with out-of-town appraisers? Value Connect eliminates all of these. Value Connect’s appraisal reports include property photos, graphs and a streamlined flow of information. Report accuracy is at a premium, thanks to built-in validation tools that ensure that all information critical to the report has been considered. To close on a loan, simply order a Smart Appraisal Report from Value Connect. Average turnaround time for a report is just three business days — and it may be faster. Equally beneficial is the level of detail in every Value Connect report, which offers more in-depth and consistent information than a mortgage planner has probably ever experienced. The customer service team with Value Connect is also available to carefully guide clients through the process and answer any questions or future questions. Following are the four main reasons why loan originators appreciate Value Connect’s Smart Appraisal Reports:
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- Ordering is super-easy and can be done through a mobile device.
- A long as an accurate report order is placed, the appraisal fee will never change.
- Expertise is guaranteed — and in less time.
- Updates are readily available.
Here’s how the process works:
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- Fill out a Smart Order. Once completed, Value Connect will provide a quote within seconds and an account representative will be there to provide step-by-step guidance.
- Once the appraiser receives the order and completes the appraisal, he or she will submit a detailed report using Value Connect’s intuitive software.
- Finally, receive an online appraisal report that includes photos, video (where available) and audio commentary pertaining to the newly appraised home.
Sign up for Value Connect or click here for a customized demo of the Value Connect report ordering system.
Infutor: Everything You Need To Know About Consumers
With an increase in industry demand for targeting and scale, the ability to harness customers’ insights and turn data into effective action is pivotal to the success of any business. Not only will customer knowledge help you better shape products and services; it will potentially save you mounds of money misspent on unqualified leads and poor strategies. Infutor Data Solutions Inc. offers solutions aimed at creating personalized engagement and delivering more relevant, timely campaigns. Infutor maintains a data repository named Identity Graph that assembles consumer identities, profile attributes and intelligence to aid businesses in driving conversions and making informed decisions. Headquartered in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, Infutor provides solutions stretching from identity recognition and ID cloud services to data licensing and cleansing. Here’s a breakdown of some of Infutor’s key features:
Identity Verification, Scoring and Updating
Inbound inquiries are enhanced, completed and updated with contact details and actionable attributes that may include demographics, buying power, housing and automobile ownership, and lifestyles. These data elements are then given a score from 0 to 100, according to accuracy.
ID Cloud
ID Cloud allows for easy, on-demand data hosting and monitoring in a secure domain. If your customers move, change phone numbers or add email addresses, you will know how to reach them. Multiple entries for one customer are linked to a single identity profile with the most up-to-date information for that consumer.
Identity Marketplaces
The Marketplaces platform enables you to build custom and lookalike audiences to expand the reach and effectiveness of omnichannel marketing campaigns. Prospects can be targeted by a number of criteria and refined through predictive indicators to build segmented, high-propensity audiences.
Identity Enrichment and Append
With this product, Infutor fills critical gaps in your customer and prospect identify data to paint a complete picture of your customers. Based on a snippet of information such as a single input phone number or email, Infutor can provide name, physical address and additional demographic and behavioral attributes.
Data Cleansing and Normalization
Data hygiene services include name parsing; CASS certified address standardization and correction; NCOA and PCOA move updates; date of birth and date of death data. Additionally, if certain contacts appear more than once with conflicting information, links across datasets determine what’s accurate. In the mortgage industry, for example, Infutor’s Property Owners Data can dramatically increase speed to lead and speed to dial — and even level the playing field for smaller lenders — by providing consumer insights and predictive attributes such as home value, purchase date, property descriptors and mortgage information. Introduced in July 2018, ReachSmart Digital ID is the latest addition to Infutor’s consumer identity solutions. It adds up to 10 email addresses to each first-party customer and prospect record in a marketer’s CRM or CDP database. Founded in 2003, the company serves a wide array of clients, from marketing agencies to mortgage loan originators. In 2016, Infutor received a large strategic investment backed by the growth equity team at Norwest Venture Partners.
Click here to learn more about Infutor.
Opendoor is Revolutionizing Home Transactions
Opendoor is a real estate technology service created for home buyers and sellers to simplify the experience of buying and selling a home. When a seller requests an offer for their home, Opendoor uses market data and information provided by the seller to present an offer. The seller then reviews the offer, and if they approve, Opendoor will complete the work. Sellers are paid within a matter of days so they can focus on purchasing their next home. When purchasing, buyers can visit Opendoor homes on their own time and access the service using Opendoor’s mobile app. Once buyers have found the home they love, Opendoor will assist in making an offer. Every home sold through Opendoor has a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so buyers are able to purchase with confidence. Not only does Opendoor work with homebuyers and sellers, but the company also transacts with agents who represent both parties. Opendoor offers competitive commissions both to real estate agents who refer sellers to Opendoor, and to those representing buyers on Opendoor listings. This process allows real estate agents to give their sellers peace of mind with an all-cash offer.
In the future, Opendoor will feature a preferred agent partnership where real estate agents can partner with Opendoor to better serve local homeowners and buyers. Founded in 2014, Opendoor is headquartered in San Francisco and has over 700 employees across different home markets. This innovative company has served more than 20,000 customers in making their move easy. Opendoor operates in 14 cities across the United States and has been recognized by Inman News as the most innovative company in real estate.
Click here to learn more about Opendoor.
