Loan Officer Marketing – Some Things To Think About

Loan officer marketing should be just like any other type of marketing right? No, when we look at different products or services, the time between purchases or loans is far greater than the average retail product or service. Putting the LO in the middle, if you’re an LO that also flips houses, you may be using the same carpet cleaner on a regular basis, if you’re also a real estate agent, you are using yourself for the loan process but when you are a consumer, the loan process isn’t something that will have you jumping off the couch to run and do another one of. So carpet cleaning sales or anything retail on the product side has a far more frequent resale opportunity. As obvious as that seems, it is forgotten or ignored when it comes to loan officer marketing. The nature of the loan product and its service is that while the average cost is 8x more expensive to generate business from new clients, with loans it can be considerably more. Your sphere of influence is the best source for new business from referrals as well as repeat customers and refinances. Your past client should be an ambassador for you AND your business.

Some Loan Officer Marketing Pitfalls

• Treating your mortgage marketing like it’s the same as retail marketing

  • The time between purchases is far greater than retail sales or services and a mortgage is a big-ticket item. Email, Facebook, Twitter, and such are far better marketing mediums for retail impulse purchases. People don’t typically impulse purchase a loan.

• Too much industry jargon in your marketing message

  • Discussing topics that are relevant to the industry can in many cases turn your loan officer marketing into a lullaby. Understand that the person who’s done a loan doesn’t see the process or the benefits of programs and rates the way you do. If it’s time to make a change for the customer’s benefit then it should be a direct contact rather than a marketing plan to convey something so important.

• Speaking in the third person in your marketing message

  • Your messaging talks in the 3rd person. Example: “My clients know that I can be…” “When I work with people” is a subtle thing but can be enormously detrimental to your message. If your marketing doesn’t look them in the mind’s eye as they read it, it’s no longer from you to them but from you to anyone and that takes away from the notion of being personable. It’s not that hard to do once you get the hang of it. If you are using our free Content Help service, we’ll help make sure this doesn’t happen

• Forgetting that you are NOT your customer

  • As mentioned above, loan officer marketing gets tricky when the LO insists that the borrower is
    • a.) still a borrower
    • b.) just like they are
  • Nothing can be further from the truth when it comes to marketing. The messaging tends to get a little wonky or in other words, too industry-speak and technical and since your client doesn’t understand it, they tune out. While the intention is to make the message credible, it might succeed but the reader is out. This devastates your marketing effort.  We have a motto. Share Yourself – Share Your Knowledge – Become Family.

These are some of the issues that should be considered when putting a loan officer marketing plan together. There are lots of mediums to use and many views on what works best. You may feel that it doesn’t matter how you approach your marketing when it comes to some of these concepts. Many have felt that way also but what we’ve found over years of experience and working with literally thousands of loan officers over the years is that those who share themselves, share their knowledge, and become family, do infinitely better than those who don’t! This is easily displayed on our testimonial page.