Mortgage Marketing Truths & Roadblocks: How to Avoid the Roadblocks — Part 2 of 3

With a market in place, you then have the “Message.” Your message is crucial! Imagine sitting across from someone considering using you and your services, and they ask, “Why should I do business with you rather than all the other options available to me out there?” The answer to this question should be concise and automatic! More importantly, the answer to this question IS your message and also the key to unlocking the vault to your mortgage marketing strategy. 

Remember, a market that doesn’t receive your message is a market that you don’t have any influence over. The hidden nugget of wisdom here is that in this situation people rarely ask that question out loud. They just make the decision based on what you’ve said in your message and the impression given from the person who referred them.

The third pillar is “Media.” You’ve got your market focused. …You’ve got your message together, so the question becomes: How do you get your message to your market? Now it’s time to choose a medium or a particular type of media to deliver your mortgage marketing message. Remember, media is the vehicle that carries your message to your market.

Generally, Media falls into three basic categories:

1. Television / Radio (or Mass Media)
2. Internet and Social Media / Email Marketing
3. Direct Marketing

Let’s examine each of these forms of media in brief detail:

Mass Media is very expensive and lacks a focused audience. Basically, with Mass Media, you have to pay to advertise to everyone if you’re going to attract anyone. In a city of 2-3 million people, it’ll take 2-3 years with a large budget to create a lasting image of any significance. There is a time and place for this type of exposure, but only after you’ve completely dominated the market or have come pretty close to dominating the market. Mass Media is better suited for maintaining a high-value market position, not creating one in a referral-driven industry like Real Estate. If you’ve got unlimited financial resources, then the paradigm shifts, and everything can change.

Internet / Social Media Marketing / Email is very popular, but also highly recreational. A web search for “mortgage marketing” or “real estate” will yield so many results that you’ll need a month to go through it all, not to mention all the lead-generating sites that you may have even used yourself – leads that are being passed out to anyone willing to pay for them. With lead generation, you are the one being marketed to more than the potential client you’re trying to gain. Understand that the person or lead does this only once before being bombarded with calls and emails and they rarely go down that road again! When it comes to social media sites and the so-called “mortgage marketing” frenzy, the truth is people don’t go to Facebook® or MySpace® to refinance their loans or look for properties.

An email mortgage marketing campaign is a good thing to be doing, provided you have the permission to contact your sphere of influence via email. After reading this article, you would be well served by looking at some of the statistics of email and social media marketing (provided at the end of Part Three of this article).

Direct Marketing sets itself apart from the previous two in a couple of ways. Direct mortgage marketing is focused on your future revenue through your sphere of influence and their needs. The proven advantage of direct mortgage marketing, when compared to other mediums is that it always outperforms mass media and the Internet in a referral-driven business. Direct marketing to past clients (notably with a professional newsletter) no longer requires the need to convince them that your service is worth using because you’ve already accomplished that. 

Direct mortgage marketing allows you to talk in detail about what you can do for them and why their lives will be made better by using you now and in the future. Your efforts aren’t hit and miss like with a billboard or a postcard. There’s far more profit in postcards, yet we don’t produce them because they have zero staying power and virtually no room for your ongoing message. Simply put, newsletters are the only direct marketing tool that doesn’t need an excuse to be in your sphere of influence’s purview, and newsletters keep you there! 

Consider how a newsletter works for a moment: It goes right to the heart of your business, and directly into the homes of your real and most valued clients. Strive to be in the clients’ minds within 30 days of the transaction and you will remain part of the clients’ experience. Forget about them, and they will forget about you. In our experience, your database and a strong personal message create pure gold. Your sphere of influence will call on you exclusively, and they’ll pan for gold for you, by referring the people who trust them, to you. With direct marketing, you’re not preaching to the choir. You have a “meeting” or “get-together” with your client base at regular intervals. And those in “attendance” are captive, relaxed, and attentive to your message. This is what works!

Now on to part 3: Mortgage Truths and Roadblocks