Digital marketing allows you to scale your mortgage business and automate your processes so you can save time, reach more people and close more deals. Digital marketing doesn’t have to be complex. All you need is a solid strategy and the right marketing tools
The majority of people who need your services will start by browsing on the internet. If your business doesn’t have a strong online presence, then you’re losing out on leads. This is one of the reasons why digital marketing is so key to your business growth.
With automated digital-marketing systems, your client-recruitment efforts can continue running in the background while you focus on current clients and their loans. You’ll have more time to bring in purchase business, develop relationships with Realtors and keep your borrowers informed — all of which ultimately generate more referrals for your business.
With a strong marketing strategy and a solid presence online, you’ll have a firm foundation for business growth. As a mortgage originator, you need to build a large consumer database and implement a disciplined marketing system that you can use to keep the flow of leads consistent. These tools will help you accomplish that.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to personalize your brand, increase awareness, build credibility and keep your business at the top of your clients’ minds so they come back to you when they need your services. It has a return on investment that can be much higher than other marketing channels.
The emails you send also can help you acquire new clients as recipients forward your emails to family and friends who need to buy or refinance their homes. In order to make effective use of this digital-marketing strategy, you need an email marketing platform to build a campaign that will engage and convert today’s connected consumer.
An email marketing platform is a service-based technology you can use to design email templates. It allows you to segment your subscribers, answer their questions and provide them with relevant information at the right time — something that is particularly important for the mortgage industry. Although not required, pairing this with some type of landing-page builder can greatly increase your conversions when trying to gather client information.
With a great email marketing platform, you will be able to maintain communication with your borrowers and referral partners so you can close more loans. You need to choose the right email marketing software, however, otherwise you risk wasting time and effort, and even incurring fines. Some great email marketing platforms include Mailchimp, Constant Contact and Sendinblue.
Thanks to its “forever free” email marketing plan, Mailchimp remains among the most popular email services in the world. The software integrates with WordPress, Shopify, Magento and tons of other platforms. It also has robust marketing automation features which, although not as advanced as the other examples on this list, are perfect for mortgage marketing.
Constant Contact is one of the fastest-growing email marketing platforms in the world. It’s easy to use, and it makes it simple for beginners to manage their contacts, email lists, templates and marketing calendars. Each account offers access to unlimited emails, built-in tools for social media sharing, list segmentation, tracking and reporting, and much more.
Sendinblue is yet another user-friendly platform that offers complete text and email marketing tools for businesses. This software’s features for automation allow you to segment users, send transactional emails and schedule automatic follow-up emails. One major advantage of this platform is that it uses artificial-intelligence algorithms to choose the best time for sending bulk emails, thus ensuring optimal email deliverability.
Automation programs
Social media allows mortgage originators to share their message with their current audience and new clients while keeping track of trending conversations that are taking place in the industry. It’s also a powerful communication channel that allows you to be quick and responsive so you can gain borrower loyalty.
The right social media automation tools will help you gain a clear understanding of borrower insights, as well as the things that influence prospects. There are tons of tools to choose from, many of which will be invaluable in helping you to maximize your social marketing strategy.
Automation software Hootsuite is compatible with multiple social media platforms. With it, you can monitor many social media streams at once and get real-time updates, which allow you to keep an eye on all the conversations going on around your industry and brand. Hootsuite also provides regular reports to help you understand how well your social media marketing strategy is performing.
ContentStudio is an all-in-one tool for your marketing. It integrates all major social platforms along with Zapier and Canva, which makes posting easier. This tool lets you discover trendy content through its RSS feed reader (RSS, or really simple syndication, allows for website updates to be sent to an audience), curate it and schedule it to all your social channels. Lastly, you can keep track of the insights through social inbox and social media analytics.
SocialPilot integrates with all major social media platforms simultaneously. It is ideal for small- and medium-sized businesses, although even large enterprises can use it. The tool has social media scheduling, client management, calendar management and various other features to help you get the most from your social marketing campaigns.
BuzzSumo is a great social media search tool that will help you better understand your content-marketing strategies. It is designed to give you insights as to which topics are shared the most and to help you discover popular keywords within the industry. BuzzSumo also will help you keep track of what your competition is doing so you can adjust your strategies accordingly to stay ahead of the pack.
Online presence
As an originator, you need a website and blog to help you increase your online visibility and connect with your audience. A blog will keep your readers engaged, showcase your expertise and position you as a leader in the industry. Not only that, but blogs can become a profitable asset as well.
Blogging also can be a great way to generate a consistent flow of leads. When you provide high-quality, engaging content, your readers will continue to come back, giving you more opportunities to convert them into leads.
To run a successful website, you need to have the right tools. These include a search bar, live chat service, a survey tool, webpage heat map, infographics creator and analytics.
CRM software
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a critical tool for originators that helps to automate key marketing and follow-up tasks. It keeps your prospects, clients and referral partners organized in a convenient, centralized location.
This technology orchestrates records of interactions with all of your contacts, and it comes with functions such as form submissions and integrations, which help you capture and nurture your leads from your own website and others. Once you get leads, the platform allows you to automate immediate responses.
Examples of popular mortgage CRM platforms include Surefire CRM, Encompass Digital Mortgage Solution, Cimmaron Mortgage CRM, Jungo, Unify and BNTouch Mortgage CRM.
Visual tools
Graphics and video are crucial in digital marketing. As a mortgage originator, you need high-quality, engaging visual assets to help you attract and retain the attention
The good news is that creating images and videos is easy with design tools like Canva and Wave.video that simplify the process with templates. If you decide to take things a step further and you’re publishing videos on YouTube, these tools can help with the editing.
Tools like these help originators quickly create visuals for their content-marketing efforts. They can be repurposed across multiple marketing efforts, such as your blog, email, prerecorded webinars and social media.
● ● ●
Your success as a mortgage originator will be determined by the types of marketing tools you use to attract and nurture your leads. They will help you create interesting, valuable content, and distribute it to your audience so you can acquire new leads, grow your database, nurture your existing leads and close more loans.
If you want to take it a step further, you can try to hire a business coach to help with marketing as well, but these resources should give you a great place to start. With these must-have tools in your arsenal, you’ll have everything you need to grow your business in 2021 and beyond. ●
