So, you’ve spent a small fortune on Online Mortgage Marketing, how’s your conversion rate?

In asking this important question, how’s your online mortgage marketing, some answer “I don’t know” some say 10% some say 30%. If I give away a free software app and you sell $320 specialty golf shoes, what’s the relevance of the conversion rate? Can I give away something for free with better results than someone can overcharge for shoes? Sure! Especially with all of the factors involved.

The issue here is if on day one of your marketing campaign you have 5000 visitors and 10% convert to get your free app and the next day 300 people visit and 100 people convert, you’ve got 30% conversion and only 100 total conversions in all which is only 20% or an 80% drop in total conversions. Now, if you’re a loan officer or an agent, is a conversion a free app, a click to your blog page or a follow on Twitter or Facebook?

The point here is that a marketing plan that aims to be successful in the area of home finance and real estate can’t depend on social media as its bedrock. Many marketing gurus want to tell you that can buy their book and you’ll have marketing success and have no way to show you that it actually works. So again, how’s that conversion rate? There are many people that don’t have a social media presence and do fantastic. Marketing is a necessity however it would seem that spending an hour a day on social media alone and expecting results that equate to actual dollars just isn’t realistic. Simply put, social media is fun and it’s pretty close to free but did I mention it’s fun? Money doesn’t buy happiness but it buys everything else and while we know that that’s true, money is fun also. When looking at real marketing and growing your loan or real estate business we have to look at what’s going to bring in repeat business.  Since different products and offers have different conversions we have to look at the nature of the product and determine what a conversion is.

Online Mortgage Marketing Automation

Sending out automated tweets and LinkedIn posts is fun but if it’s automated, you really aren’t sending them out. Now if you consider what type of content you like to read, as a loan officer or a real estate agent looking to grow your market share, chances are the content that interests you doesn’t interest the average consumer so when we tweet out market reports and tips on curb appeal, the unread, unshared tweets and posts aren’t going to be enough to call that activity marketing not to mention the lack of ROI from all that time spent.

You have to do some real marketing. You have to communicate with your clients by means other than social media. Building a brand amongst followers is great and there’s no reason not to do that. But to replace real marketing with social media because it’s free is not a smart move by any stretch.

When you are looking at conversion rates you have to ask yourself, what are you converting? Is someone who follows you a conversion? Is someone who refers you to a conversion? Is someone who downloads or reads a marketing report a conversion? And of those, which one actually grows your business in a tangible way?

If your followers are following you so you will in turn follow them, then the point is moot and the effort wasted. The other fake reward is access to your followers so they can be followed by them also. Is that a conversion? No, not really, and yet we’re bombarded with advertisements that speak to followers being the ultimate prize in this conversion frenzy going on. Now I don’t know about you but when someone offers to send out content for me or asks me to buy 1000 followers for 20 bucks, there’s a wave of revulsion that flows over me. It’s absolutely disingenuous to buy followers and to give the impression of popularity where it doesn’t exist.

Most are finding that online mortgage marketing B2C (Business to Consumer) isn’t as effective and there’s a very good reason as to why. Yet massive amounts of money have been spent trying to turn chicken shit into chicken salad and no one is saying “yum”.

I’ve spoken of all the activities mistaken for achievement in my MAFA Syndrome post. Check it out.

If you’re tired of online mortgage marketing, have questions, or need additional information, feel free to contact us. Each individual’s worldview on marketing is different and we’re more than happy to shed light on what you’re doing by giving a free assessment of your marketing needs. Schedule a few minutes with us by clicking the button below. We’ll help you fix what isn’t working.