5 Marketing Ideas for Mortgage Lenders in 2014

Marketing ideas for mortgage lenders tend to be either overused, too complicated, or just not worth the time or money to do them right. Following suit with a post I wrote last week titled 7 Marketing Ideas for Real Estate Agents, I got off on a tangent for mortgage professionals. Whether you’re a mortgage lender, broker, loan originator, or just curious about good marketing, there’s something in this post for you.

Updated List for 2016: 5 Simple Lead-Boosting Marketing Ideas for Loan Officers in 2016

As you near the end of the 2013 calendar year, it’s time to start looking ahead to 2014. You’re probably re-assessing different things you spend money on for marketing and leads this year and looking around at other things you could try next year. Don’t quickly discard something just because it didn’t perform perfectly the first time. A lot of marketing efforts take time and an invested interest in making them work. Today, I share with you 5 marketing ideas that you can use to drive long-term customer value, starting in 2014.

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1. Start or Revisit Your Email Newsletter

I love it when my real estate friends and my mortgage friends all flood my inbox at the same time, letting me know about the new homes for sale in my area, the lower interest rates available to me, and other financially irrelevant tidbits. Of course, I’m being entirely sarcastic and if you’re doing those emails as your “newsletters,” you should stop right now.

Your emails to your clients and customers shouldn’t be showing off how much you know about your trade. Trust me, they did business with you before and they’re familiar with what you know how to do. But you have a ton of untapped knowledge to share with your email recipients topically adjacent to your day job but meant to be more helpful to their lives outside the office. Write about setting up a Roth IRA, how to balance your finances before the holidays, or something simple like doing a family night out for under $30. And if you’re ever at a loss for topics, we’ve got some killer resources here for you.

2. Be Active in Your Community (Offline and Online)

There is always major clout to be earned by volunteering at a charity run/walk, helping out at a local food pantry, and more. And you should continue to do so too because it’s also a great place to network too. Now take that experience and put it online. Your monthly newsletter? Let people know about the charity walk coming up next month you’ll be at. On social media? Remind people once a week to either sign up to run/walk or donate. Then take pictures at the event and share them with people on Facebook and Twitter.

But being active in the community can take other forms too. Attending a farmers marketing on the weekend? Share photos, details, and directions. Know about a new restaurant opening in your neighborhood? Recommend it to your fans and tag the restaurant too. Love good theater? Let people know when tickets for different shows go on sale. Become the community event maven of your personal network and always find yourself at the top of everyone’s mind. Also, check out this free guide for helping mortgage professionals get started using social media too.

3. Start a Blog

Blogs are great ways to both drive organic web traffic to your website but also a great way for you to create plenty of content that you can re-use on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and in an email newsletter. Like I said before, you have plenty of knowledge that can be tapped for good to help you become a trusted professional friend and resource.

Try this out. Whenever you are with a client and they ask you questions, even though you’ll know the answer right away and can give them a response, take 5 seconds and write down those questions. Use these questions as the titles to your blog posts and start writing. Look at it this way. If that person wasn’t sitting in front of you, they’d be on the phone or computer searching for that question verbatim. This is how you build inbound traffic to your website AND have plenty of things to share with your friends and fans on social media sites too.

4. Use Video to Communicate

Take those blogs to the next level and set up a video camera in your office. You could make it a weekly chat session with your audience, answering their questions once a week. Take that video, upload it to YouTube, embed it in your blog, write up a quick description, and you’ll have plenty of website traffic to keep you looking like a pro!

5. Automate Your Social Media

Finding a good cadence to post on social media sites isn’t that difficult. Finding time to do the work is. That’s why it’s important to take advantage of tools out there to help you keep content posted to your social media pages. Without fresh content, it’s tough to stay top-of-mind. Personally, I spend an hour at the beginning of the week finding interesting marketing articles and then schedule them to my social media accounts using Buffer. Or, you could drop us a line and we’ll do the work for you too, giving you both your day back and top-of-mind awareness.

A lot of “marketing” that you might get coaxed into do doing is really not marketing at all. For 2014, it’s important to remember two things: 1) everything is online and 2) people are smarter than they used to be. Email, websites, and social media are not singular solutions, but rather a selection of communication mediums in which you should use to build and maintain relationships. the majority of your business comes from referrals and past clients so having a voice, staying active, and being social is what will help you nurture those relationships to grow your business. And remember, if you ever need help, that’s what we’re here to do for you