Marketing and Advertising for Mortgage Brokers

Owning your own business can be stressful, particularly if you’re not sure what to do next. As a mortgage broker, you most likely own your own mortgage brokerage business and source your own clients. But now that you have your own firm, how are you supposed to scale it so it can continue to grow? As a lender, we’ve seen plenty of mortgage brokers and what goes into a successful (or unsuccessful) business, so let’s walk through the most impactful and actionable elements that you should focus on within mortgage broker marketing and mortgage advertising.

Mortgage Broker Marketing Strategies

Mortgage marketing is essential to growing your mortgage broker business. Your brand is your biggest asset. To continue growth, it’s critical to push and leverage your brand to not only make it easy for current and potential clients to recognize it, but also associate additional value with it. Mortgage broker marketing will also help you generate mortgage leads and bring in more business.

When it comes to actually doing this, there are a number of methods and channels that you can opt to use, as long as your brand is consistent and active across any that you choose to employ.

Social Media

With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all reaching over 200 million active daily users (and nearly 2 billion in Facebook’s case), it’s hard to make a case against being on social media platforms. They give you endless opportunities to interact, share, and learn, as well as extend your reach to potential clients or networking opportunities. While it can seem overwhelming to get started, or even dedicate that much time to a platform, mortgage brokers should be taking advantage of the opportunity to reach their target audience.  We have a full guide to help brokers get started, build an audience, and understand best practices for our top two platforms. Some basic tips that you can immediately start on social media include:

• Post video tours of new homes
• Share and congratulate new clients
• Use Facebook ads to boost posts with listings that you want to reach a larger audience
  
  
• Promote positive reviews from current clients

Website

Next up is your home base of operations on the internet. Your website is at the center of your online presence and identity, and it should be treated as such. Whether people are specifically searching for your business online, or just any mortgage business, you want your site to stand out and provide an excellent user experience. Due to the importance that the internet plays in all of our lives, a poor website can make or break a firm’s success (or at least seriously stunt growth). On top of being easy to navigate and understand, it should be optimized to show off your strengths and what value you provide your clients. You want to be a go to source for all things in the mortgage industry. Publishing helpful content on the mortgage process and how to obtain a mortgage loan will enable you to appear in search results and generate leads.

For more information on this process and how to start a new website, see our complete list of optimization tips and steps for the website creation process.

Email

Sometimes overlooked, email marketing is another way to keep in contact with past, current, and prospective clients. Other marketing strategies are better for lead generation. However, if you’re tracking leads from your website, social media, or other channels, sending out helpful emails is a great method of building relationships with them and for re-engaging past clients. Not only that, but it also puts your knowledge and authority in the space on display and makes people more likely to convert. Our comprehensive guide on email marketing for brokers includes how you can get started and track performance, as well as some free email templates that you can start using today.

Content

Content creation is yet another of many mortgage marketing strategies to help build your authority, share your expertise with others, and bring in more leads. One of the most proven ways to accomplish this is through a blog, like the one you’re reading right now. It can expand your reach beyond people who know your business name by appearing in searches for common problems or questions. It also serves to get your foot in the door with potential clients who might be looking for mortgage brokers in the future. By helping people find information at the top of the marketing funnel, it makes them more likely to stick with you as they move down the funnel and closer to making a purchase. However, a blog isn’t the only way to go about content marketing, and we cover several different options, as well as how brokers use them, here.

Review Sites

Your brand is only as good as its reputation, and it’s important to keep in mind that you might not always have control over that reputation. Review sites like Google and Yelp give anyone who’s interested information about how valuable your services are, how you treat clients, whether you know what you’re talking about, and more. While you can’t control the reviews, you can make sure that you minimize bad reviews with outstanding service and encourage reviews from those who have had good experiences with you.

Word of Mouth

Another aspect of your reputation is word of mouth, which can also be an incredibly effective marketing tool. While all of the marketing tactics we’ve discussed have been digital, people still trust those that they know more than online ads or emails. In fact, according to OutboundEngine, 75% of a real estate agent’s business comes from word of mouth and referrals. A mortgage broker is in a similar boat. By asking for — or incentivizing — referrals from both current and past clients, you can quickly grow your real estate business and reputation. Some examples of ways to go about this include:

• Requesting referrals through a landing page on your website
• Offering discounts or specials for referrals
• Giving clients thoughtful gifts that they would be likely to actually use (and might show off or be asked about)
• Providing an exceptional mortgage broker experience that your clients will want to tell their friends about

Targeted Networking

While it might be tempting to network with everyone and anyone in the industry, scaling a real estate business requires prioritization of how you spend your time.  Not everyone is interested in working with a mortgage broker, so it is important to target people who are relevant. Loan officers and real estate agents are great partners to help you get more prospects. It's also a great idea to partner with mortgage lenders offering a variety of loan programs.

In addition to helping you gain potential customers, networking can help you solve any problems your mortgage business could be facing. Find people who can advise or provide guidance on these topics and focus your networking efforts primarily on these people. Of course, this doesn’t mean to completely ignore anyone who can’t provide immediate assistance, but if you’re going out of your way to connect with people, it’s more valuable to be people who can help with current roadblocks.

Advertising Strategies for Mortgage Brokers

Paid advertising differs from the previously discussed mortgage marketing ideas in that it is an outbound strategy. In other words, through mortgage marketing, the goal is to get customers to find you by appearing in relevant search results. In mortgage advertising, the goal is for you to find clients by promoting your brand on their previously visited web pages and in publications they might read. A dramatic example of outbound advertising is direct mail. In this example, you would pay for direct mail advertisements to go to every home in a zip code and hope someone is interested. Google Ads and Facebook ads are more targeted, but the lead generation concept is similar to direct mail.

If you have additional money to spend on lead generation and are looking for more clients, advertising makes sense for you. On the other hand, if you have a steady flow of qualified leads stick to the inbound mortgage lead generation tactics.

For additional guidance, see our Lead Generation for Mortgage Brokers post.