Mortgage Marketing Tag

Mortgage Marketing on LinkedIn

Do you have a marketing strategy? You can start by:

• Defining your goals
• Defining your audience
• Perfecting and promoting your profile or company page (go back and watch our training from yesterday if you did not attend!)
• Promoting your page

LinkedIn is one of the social media platforms that can help you advance your goals. You can build up an enormous social and business sphere by using LinkedIn. Much like Facebook, you can join various groups that provide value, interact on posts, answer questions about your field of expertise and share valuable content to start conversations. When deciding on what to share, make sure to consider the problems your target audience is currently facing, what they are interested in and what is important to them.

There are a myriad of content types you can share with your audience. These include:

• Blog posts: These can be written by you from your website or from other news sources.
• Industry news and research: Market updates, white papers, and case studies are all great things to share.
• Quick tips: Simple posts that include mortgage or real estate tips and tricks
• Photo updates: Photos from closings and events are a great way to show what is happening behind the scenes
• Videos: Mortgage videos from yourself or other industry partners.

LinkedIn limits writers to 1,300 characters, so if you have a great thought leadership piece, creating a LinkedIn article is the way to go. Just like a blog post, you can embed images, videos and even audio. LinkedIn articles will put your profile in front of more people if you are actively publishing articles. Additionally, your LinkedIn article can be shared outside of the network and can help with SEO for your profile.

Another way to boost your presence on the platform is to use LinkedIn Stories as well. If you use Instagram or Facebook stories, this will be right up your alley. This feature is great for business – and here are three great ways every business should use LinkedIn Stories:

• Share behind the scene moments
• Important projects you are working on
• Host a corporate Q&A

Remember, though, that LinkedIn Stories can only be used via mobile app.

Understanding LinkedIn

With over 660 million users worldwide, LinkedIn has recently been on a steady growth trail and seen record levels of engagement and job postings. Not only does LinkedIn help expand your professional network and connect you to other business-minded people who can contribute to your success, but it also increases lead generation. Adding LinkedIn to your marketing strategy is a pivotal move toward a successful business. According to a HubSpot study, the Microsoft-owned platform has performed better than Facebook or Twitter when it comes to visit-to-lead conversion rate at an impressive 2.74% compared to .69 and .77% from Twitter and Facebook, respectively. 

There are a number of ways you can use LinkedIn to best advantage:

• Explore Opportunities: use advanced search resources available to find prospects
• Expand Network: send personalized connection requests to prospective customers and business partners
• Engage Connections: engage in conversation after connecting
• Establish Relationships: show interest in connections and engage with those who are active on your posts
• Expert positioning: provide value with great content that is shared consistently

If you are new to LinkedIn or haven’t given it much attention lately, you will want to update your profile with a current and professional photo, work experience, background photo, headline, summary as well as a customized URL. The URL should look something like: linkedin.com/in/yourfullname.

The profile headline, in turn, should be instantly recognizable, short and concise. By default, the headline is your current employment position; however, you can customize it to demonstrate your expertise or vision for your role. Sum up your specialty or approach succinctly and support the professional brand you’re cultivating.

For you summary, be sure to ask yourself the following questions: What do you really want readers to know about you, if they read nothing more? Professionally speaking, what’s your purpose? You can highlight your skills as well as developing aspirations.

Additionally, endorsements can enrich your profile tremendously. If you recommend someone on LinkedIn, chances are they will return the favor. By having good recommendations on your LinkedIn page, business partners and customers will be more likely to want to work with you. When recommending someone, make sure you follow this sequence:

1. explain the nature of your professional relationship
2. provide details of the position for which you’re recommending the person
3. explain how they’ve grown at the company
4. indicate how their contribution helped grow the team or company
5. explain what these achievements reveal about that person
6. end with a note about the personal aspect of working with him/her.

Once you have a solid profile, your next steps should be to customize your connections to grow your professional network, join and create your own LinkedIn groups, befriend everyone in your sphere, post about your closing with pictures of your happy customers, and take advantage of the blog and website links on your profile. These tips are guaranteed to help you crush it on LinkedIn! 

Prepare For the Hot 2021 Housing Market

According to a recent forecast from real estate giant Redfin, over 30 percent of homebuyers are projected to leave their current metro area in 2021. With the transition to remote work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of Americans are moving to suburban and rural areas that more align with their personal preferences rather than career needs.

Although the 2020 spring housing market did not meet pre-pandemic expectations, the market has nonetheless remained hot throughout the year and is only expected to increase in 2021. Interest rates are low and demand for housing is high as Americans search for homes that fit their new lifestyles.

So how can you best prepare for the busy year ahead? Let Intent help!

1. Send your database a customized holiday message before the New Year letting them know that you are eager to help them with home financing needs.
2. Plan to attend our free coaching in January to prepare for the upcoming months.
3. Take advantage of co-branded marketing with your top agents and make a plan to conquer 2021 together.
4. Let Intent manage your database and nurture your leads to create meaningful relationships that will yield sales for a successful 2021.

Interested in learning more about predictions for the 2021 market? Check out this article.

Ready to learn how to make the most of your database and increase your sales for the new year? Contact us today.

It’s Time to Graduate from Using a Mortgage CRM

Yes, CRMs are a great tool. But just like with every tool, you have to understand how it works and use it every day for results you can count on.

At Intent, we do most of the work for you. We automate your relationship strategies to create impressive ROI. But don’t call us a CRM. We are a mortgage business development tool that increases sales through marketing.

What else do we do?

• We manage complicated tech stacks and integrations while staying on top of emerging tech trends in order to help innovate mortgage strategies.
• We analyze data and behavior to create personalized homebuyer journeys for every lead.
• We produce industry-leading FB ads, landing pages, websites, and retargeting campaigns – as well as exceptional social and digital marketing strategies.
• We understand mortgage marketing better than anyone else in the industry, and our analytics and ROI are unmatched.
• With a decade of mortgage marketing experience, we know the market, your competitors, your referral partners, and your homebuyers.
• We are your internal sales machine. Or the best LOA you ever thought of hiring! We delve into and follow up with all opportunities so you miss no business – and we pay for ourselves in the first month of use.
• We work as mortgage business consultants helping mortgage companies understand the nexus between people and technology for the best overall customer experience while keeping costs at a minimum.

At Intent, we listen to you first to thoroughly understand your goals. We make available to you all the tools to grow your personal brand while helping you dominate your competition in terms of service, follow-through, communication, and organization.

The mortgage market is rapidly changing, and you must adapt to remain competitive. Instead of spending the next 3 to 5 years curating your database to yield results, we can do it for you in as little as 30 days! The only thing you stand to lose by not quickly adapting is a significant amount of business and the market you’ve built by proving that the largest financial transaction of someone’s life is something you can skillfully manage.

Reach out to us today.

What the Restaurant Business Teaches About the Mortgage Business

Restaurants live or die by their reviews. Whether that’s a splashy spread in the newspaper, inviting influencers and bloggers to join them for a meal or simply through digital channels like Yelp and on Google. A bad review can stop a potential diner their quest for a great meal at a restaurant while a positive review can reassure their decision and often even provide advice about where to sit and what to order.

So too it is with the mortgage experience. While it is critically important to be found through reviews, the experience is the first piece to get right. Let’s use the restaurant set up as an analogy.

1. People need to find you. Whether through recommendations from friends or family or through their agent, having good word-of-mouth advertising is going to be important.
2. Reservations need to be easy. Applying for their loan should be simple and done right from their phone.
3. Have the best host to greet them. They should never feel alone. Your marketing should greet them promptly and show them the exact steps needed.
4. The server should be on point.The mortgage professional needs to be the guide to the whole experience. A server makes or breaks the entire thing. Walk them through the menu slowly and thoroughly. Make sure they know that you are going to focus on their needs and answer any questions that they have, even when there are other people waiting for your attention.
5. Back of the house needs to know what the front of the house is doing.The kitchen needs to be ready for whatever comes their way. From special orders to dietary restrictions, making the perfect meal is critical. Your LOA and your ops team should work in harmony. Expectations of timelines should be met and introductions to the Chef should be made to ensure the best meal.
6. The manager should stop by the table.Never, never take your eye off the ball. Even when your team is doing an exceptional job, be there to check in.
7. Check in, check in, check in.Ask how everything is. Anticipate their needs before they ask. Give them space while making sure they are happy.
8. Explain the check.Always review with them the numbers so they fully comprehend what the total is and have the opportunity to ask questions.
9. THANK THEM.Over and over again. Make them feel that they are truly appreciated and that you were honored to be part of their lives.
10. Get 5 Stars.Know when and where to ask them to leave reviews so that the next time someone is looking, they find you.

Some of the best loan officers in the industry started out as very savvy servers in their youth. The ability to manage multiple tables, many orders and chaos makes for an outstanding mortgage professional. Intent can help make your daily routine much easier with simplified strategies to grow your business. 

Mortgage Marketing Visionary

The person or company that you charge with relating your vision of the ideal mortgage should be able to juggle all of the facets of modern marketing. That includes understanding technology, sales, marketing, the mortgage market, brand, websites and a vast array of digital channels.

A successful mortgage broker shop or banker will need someone to develop and implement marketing communication strategies, social media campaigns, email and text campaigns, investigate emerging tech and so much more.

What we do at Intent to allow you to outsource your marketing- 

• Provide a superior customer experience 
• Market your company with brand consistency
• Create websites, landing pages and integrated web solutions
• Personalize your CRM campaigns
• Create & maintain social media pages 
• Develop content strategies for SEO and brand awareness
• Train teams to work effectively with systems
• Assist with importing and organizing databases 
• Design strategies to Market to Realtors, Builders, Financial Planners, Accountants, etc.
• Traditional marketing such as logo, tagline, brand development, print, direct mail and more

You don’t need a marketing department; you need a smarter way to streamline your processes from people who have been in the mortgage marketing arena. Using Intent will make you feel like you hired a marketing visionary of your very own.

Mortgage Customer Journeys

What happens from the moment a person decides they want to buy a home? What are the buyer’s thoughts, fears and worries? Where do they turn for advice — friends, family members or online search? How can you be the trusted source of lending information and be in front of them at the right time with the right message?

All paid search and lead generation gurus want you to believe that they have the secret recipe for finding you leads, but anyone who has purchased leads knows the game only too well. The reality is that leads are expensive, not exclusive and require true relationship development. 

Put yourself in the potential buyer’s shoes. The buyer simply fills out an application, provides their contact information and presses enter. Within minutes, their phone is ringing, their email is blowing up and texts are coming to their phone. How do they know which lender to choose among the many pitching their services? What makes your strategy different?

1. Start with data. Know to whom you are marketing. 
2. Understand the buyer’s goals and speak to them about the possibilities of the home in their future.
3. Create a vision that is realistic and create a true partnership with them as their lender.
4. Warn the buyer that many others will try to contact them. Possible suitors include everyone from those who will still be looking at them as a lead, to those who will buy their data once their credit is pulled. Give your prospective buyer the chance to opt out of that contact cycle.
5. Be true to the plan and start educating a buyer on everything they will experience in searching for a home, buying a home and becoming homeowners.
6. Let them have the easiest path possible when applying for the loan and giving you documents.
7. Work in tandem with your buyer’s real estate agent to prepare your buyer for everything they will need to do for the move.
8. Let the buyer feel as though they are guided but in control.
9. Solicit their feedback after closing, with the goal of building your reviews.
10. Continue to pour into that relationship with good information after the move.

We have pioneered successful mortgage companies along this customer journey for years, and we know what it takes to make homebuyers feel respected, heard and understood. Intent will make your customers feel like you are the best communicator in the mortgage industry.

Outsourcing Mortgage Marketing and Technology

All marketing departments have the best of intentions for allowing their loan originators to use personalized marketing. However, the steady demand for fliers and other requests can keep loan officers from focusing on some of the bigger strategies and goals required by their company to build business.

Luckily, marketing can be easily outsourced because companies such as Intent truly understand mortgage marketing and will analyze current strategies and technology stacks as well as examine brand awareness to create a true plan for growth.

Intent — at the enterprise level — studies common practices and processes, consults with marketing and IT groups for input and expertise, automates best intentions, and creates a fantastic solution that is as effective as it is streamlined. This solution is also simple to use and adaptable for growth and emerging technologies. 

Intent’s process:

1.  Assess technologies being utilized within the organization
2.  Poll and interview leaders to see what current technologies are valuable and used
3.  Construct framework for a branded end-to-end solution 
4.  Suggest architecture for a best-in-class solution
5.  Build custom automations, workflows, reporting and oversight
6.  Create marketing content and graphics to merge messaging across platforms
7.  Generate lead funnels and scoring, according to needs
8.  Produce websites, landing pages, Facebook ads, Google ads, retargeting platforms and SEO
9. Integrate all digital marketing components 
10. Review compliance and security 
11. Test and deploy a system
12. Train all employees

Whether you are a broker shop that needs a brand, a voice, a website and a strategy for growth, or you are a mortgage company looking to cut costs by outsourcing your mortgage marketing, Intent can create a custom plan that will make you successful.

Personalization is the New Mortgage Marketing Buzzword

Marketing to your database requires segmenting your audiences appropriately and creating individual messaging plans for each segment. So often, mortgage marketing strategies try to cast too wide of a net. The message doesn’t resonate with the target recipient because you cannot speak to a past customer, potential customer and referral partner the same way. 

Segmenting audiences and creating individualized emails or texting help you show that you are listening to and engaging the contact. 

First-time homebuyers, for example, should receive messaging created for their timeline in the rental cycle. Using database intelligence will also allow you to see if your lead has their credit pulled by another mortgage professional and will ping you when this happens.

Those with credit issues to resolve should be on a game plan that teaches them how to create positive credit habits. Once that credit score is healthy, your technology platform should ping you and the customer to let you both know it’s time to buy a home.

Closed loans should have monitoring to uncover opportunities to eliminate PMI or let the mortgage team know it’s time for a refinance. 

Regardless of the recipient, messages should be personalized with the contact’s name, their goals and your combined strategy. The messages should also be automated so you can close loans instead of having to worry about follow-up. 

Target marketing that is personal and solves problems is what we do best. Communicate better and close more loans. 

Mortgage Account-Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing, or ABM, is the easiest way for mortgage brokers or mortgage companies to create meaningful marketing campaigns without the benefit of a full-time marketing department. ABM has surged in popularity across all professional fields over the past few years because it allows personal branding and individual customer experience to take center stage at a relatively low price point.

ABM is especially beneficial in a scenario where, for example, a mortgage professional is licensed in different states and wants to share with first-time homebuyers the opportunities for down payment assistance programs specific to each state. With ABM, a customer journey can be crafted for each. 

Technology plays a large part in how opportunities from ABM are applied. Using a mortgage CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) or CDP (Customer Data Platform) is only one piece of the proverbial puzzle. Creating workflows with a deep understanding of the customer and their homeownership goals, as well as determining the length of the homeowner’s journey and truly giving information that is timely and valuable are what turn a lead into a loan. 

There should always be alignment among your sales, marketing and technology teams, and companies like Intent show you exactly how to do that without having to hire a large staff. Take your mortgage marketing to the next level; you owe it to yourself to think bigger and better.