Stepping Over Dollars to Pick Up Pennies With Your Mortgage or Real Estate Marketing

When the idea of Social Media Marketing started, I thought the idea was intriguing. It seemed that Social Media Marketing could be better than just a website, email, or blog with a chance to enhance all three. But after spending time in the Social Media Marketing World, I came to realize that Social Media Marketing really isn’t marketing at all. In fact, the title “Social Media Marketing” is closer to an outright lie. It may just be the human condition or the fact that it has moved from being somewhat credible to being absolutely disposable faster than any other form of marketing I’ve seen in a decade.

To be fair, here at Exodus we do use social media to get our brand out there and it does draw followers and even some readers to these blogs, but it has never drawn the benefits anywhere near what the Social Media Marketing advocates claim.

My focus is on Mortgage and Real Estate Professionals and helping them grow their market share, so my view on this subject is through the prism of the industry I service. I’ve said it many times: Marketing that works for one industry won’t necessarily work for another.

Loan Officers and REAs are not always versed in marketing concepts in contrast to hard-working small business people (which LO’s and REAs certainly are). The professional Social Media Marketing advocate often presents this marketing in very general ways and the currency or return on investment is followers, friends, and the actual monetary return on the investment isn’t really their problem. While we aren’t suggesting you don’t use it, replacing real mortgage marketing or real estate marketing with social media marketing is no solution and the tactics some have used are actually pretty bad. We’ll look at a couple in a moment. But to turn social media into a marketing platform one finds out in a hurry that this form of marketing requires CONSTANT attention. The buzzword is content. There are software programs that will let you post automatically, and find content based on subjects you and your follower’s tweet, retweet, etc., and then post that for you. I think the next step is to have the “bots” read it, too, and this way, we don’t even have to show up.

I started surveying what marketers suggest and a little while ago I tweeted out the following:

Research being done on aspects of social media marketing. Interesting insights developing. I’ll blog it soon. #mortgagemarketing

This story and experience in this research can be found here

There are so many people who are inundated with the idea of online marketing and how they’re missing out. They fall victim to the whims of the online marketing company that tries to sell a big-ticket, referral-based item like a typical, consumable retail product. A house, a refinance, a luxury boat, or a high-end luxury car are all high-ticket items. None of which you’ll find at Burger King, 7-11, or Walmart!

Online marketing is seemingly cheap, email is even cheaper, and the return on investment is minimal for the Loan Officer and REA. We are constantly using email, Facebook, Twitter, and search engines play such a large role in our lives that it seems only logical to focus here, but it’s important to know that a search engine is a search engine. If they want to find YOU they will. If you want them to REMEMBER to find you, THAT’S MARKETING! Don’t step over dollars to pick up pennies marketing incorrectly to the wrong audience. Be wary of the mortgage marketing roadblocks.