Referral Marketing is Mortgage Marketing

Are you really doing referral marketing? Ask any loan officer or Real Estate Agent, and they’ll tell you that their business comes from referrals, not withstanding the referrals from REAs to LO and vice-versa. Just outside of people that have done business with before.

Referral marketing is by far the least expensive and best way to market a business that is the singular focus of a high ticket item and a personal involvement model. The loan industry isn’t necessarily per se, personal involvement but the loan officer is and the loan process is as one on one as it gets in the finance industry.

Since most loan officers say their business comes from referrals, and in most cases it does, why will the same folks say they don’t see enough business across the board?

What is it that makes referral marketing really work and work well?

Well, the answer to that is very simple, referral marketing is like anything else in that you need to reach out for it. You have to reach out to the people that would give you the referrals. You could just call them and ask “Hey, can I have a referral?” or “I know I called you last week and asked for a referral, can I ask again?” obviously this doesn’t work. When we look at the overall concept of referral marketing it’s not about asking for referrals only. Lender marketing is built on relationships. 

Without relationships, there are no referrals. Therefore if you depend on referrals, common sense and logic dictate that you should do all you can to keep the relationships valid in order to boost your referral numbers. It’s not hard to do. Rocket science need not be employed to do an effective marketing campaign that will not only maintain your relationships but also turn those relationships into ambassadorships for you and your business. This is what you want because this is what your business needs. Real referral marketing.

Referral marketing is really the symptom of a much easier mortgage marketing campaign. We have a simple saying here, a motto if you will. Share Yourself, Share Your Knowledge, Become Family. Simply put, if you decline to reach out to your clients in some realistic way, if you fail to share yourself with them in even the smallest of ways, you CAN’T expect them to refer business to you. You will have created an environment that doesn’t promote finance equating to (put your name here). There’s just no way. People are hit by thousands of marketing messages every single day. The ambassador is going to protect his ambassadorship. If your brother was a mechanic with a shop in town and did good work would you not be an ambassador for your brother’s shop?

Regardless of the medium you use, which for the Loan Officer and REA should be newsletters… (in our experience with real LOs and REAs we’ve seen better success with the traditional newsletter produced and personalized correctly than any other medium in both the short and longer-term) if you aren’t personalizing your newsletter by sharing yourself with your clients, in other words, reaching out and being more of a human being than a mortgage academic reference manual you’re missing the point. Referral marketing is your effort to be part of your past client’s life, this puts you in the inner circle, each person on average has about 250 people in their sphere of influence and while they don’t interact with all of them regularly, the do in fact interact to a decent percentage of that sphere. 

You need a representative, an ambassador for you and your company with everyone you’ve done business with. Your newsletter should reflect your person, your personality, and the traits that people would find endearing in even the slightest way. This can’t be manufactured, the one they sat across from signing papers, the one they put their trust in, that unspoken bond that says, call me any time. By personalizing your newsletter in a way that shares who you are what you do, what you know, and what you’re about without being “sales-y” is the key. That’s referral marketing.

If you aren’t sure where your marketing efforts stand and need an opinion from outside your “yes” circle, schedule a free discovery call, you’ll be glad you did.