| |
| |
|
Marketing Information |
|
|
|
Mortgage Marketing and Advertising - The Magical Ingredient
Do you offer superior service, consistently close loans on time and overall are more adept than your competitors, yet you're struggling to figure out the mortgage marketing and advertising puzzle? For many loan officers, marketing is a real puzzle. Your expertise is in pricing loans, closing them on time and rendering quality service. You're not necessarily an expert at how to attract more new clients, especially from real estate agents, where most of the purchase transactions occur daily. If your mortgage marketing and advertising strategy doesn't have real estate agents lined up at your door begging to use your services, chances are you're missing the magical ingredient - the ingredient that magnetizes agents. Too often, loan officers chase agents for deals. And when you chase agents, they'll always feel they have the upper hand in the relationship, poised to take advantage of you or be over demanding in their expectations. Does this sound familiar with any of your past experiences dealing with these kind? How do you reverse this pattern? What's involved with getting them to chase you? It begins with relationship building, and of course, that's what your business is about, isn't it? Ideally, your strategy should reflect the major processes of relationship building; lead generation, client acquisition and client retention. Understanding each of the processes is the easy part, executing them to get the results you want is more challenging?unless of course, you know the magical ingredient. Most Agents you meet today aren't ready to do business with you because you're a stranger. Remember growing up, the phrase mommy coined, "stranger-danger." You were told stay away from strangers, don't accept anything from strangers. Gee, is it no wonder why our defensive guard is immediate when we meet someone that we don't know for the first time. Let's not fault Agents for feeling the same way. They're human too, well, most of them anyway. What's it take to get a stranger to become your friend? The same thing it took when you met your best friend. When the two of you first met you weren't instantly best friends, the relationship grew over time. That's obvious, but what does it have to do with Agents? It's not like we're real anxious to make them our best friends. It has everything to do with Agents. Both, the Agent and your best friend's needs are similar. Familiarity, comfort, and trust are the seeds to growing a relationship. So how can your marketing turn strangers into friends, friends into clients and clients into loyal clients (best friends)? Let's get back to learning about the magical ingredient. Since most Agents you want to attract to your business are strangers, your first goal is to establish familiarity. They have to get to know and trust you before they'll do business with you. Don't make the mistake that every other loan officer commits, by directly confronting Agents and soliciting them, a.k.a. cold calling. Good, I'm glad to hear you don't like cold calling because you shouldn't do it. It's the most difficult way to attract relationships. OK, I'm getting to the point, enough dragging this out. The magical ingredient that most loan officers are missing in their marketing is the same ingredient that gets a political candidate elected to public office. No, I don't mean the lying and cheating part, I'm talking about what they do up to Election Day. They campaign! The magical ingredient to your success in becoming an Agent Magnet is campaigning. A campaign is a connected series of messages corresponded over time designed to bring about your most wanted response. It's what drives your message, keeps it in front of the prospect, and sustains it long enough for the prospect to take the action you most desire. Let me briefly cover what a campaign isn't. A campaign isn't sending out a postcard and getting an Agent to pick up the phone and call you, that's called an advertisement. A campaign isn't sending an email message or calling an Agent every once in awhile to check in on how they're doing or learning if they have a deal for you - that's called desperation. Now don't lose the wind in your sails. There's more to campaigning than you realize. Campaigning is what moves each process of relationship building forward. Remember the three processes; lead generation, client acquisition and client retention. You need campaigns to match each process. The three specific campaigns that should make up your marketing strategy include: - Teaser Campaign Each campaign serves different purposes with preplanned desired responses to move the Agent through the relationship building process. You need campaigns to match up with each process. It's a form of action, nothing moves without action. Jeff Nelson helps mortgage companies and individual loan officers increase loan originations by developing customized relationship-building strategies that secure quality relationships with real estate agents. Click here to get a free copy of the Marketing Planning Guide, a 20-page workbook designed to help you outline a strategy to becoming an Agent Magnet. Visit us at http://www.loan-officer-marketing.com
MORE RESOURCES:
marketing - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Who Is Your Market and Where Are They? An important part of planning your business is to know who will use your products/services.The vast majority of small businesses will rely on their communities for sales. Marketing Tips- Who Are You Competing With? Before you can market, you need to know who you are marketing to. Who is your customer? How will you market? Will you cold call, mail, set appointments or employ a walk in approach? Be careful with the walk in approach as many businesses do not permit soliciting. Direct Mail Response Rates Low? Eliminate These Mistakes Are your direct mail response rates lower than you expect? Check your sales letter or direct mail package against this checklist to uncover the reasons for your poor response.LIST You are mailing to people who are never likely to buy You are not mailing to others in the same business who influence the buying decision Your list is out of date Your names and addresses are not formatted correctly for proper delivery Your list has job titles only, not namesFORMAT You are using the wrong format for your audience (self-mailers to professionals, for example) Your letter and brochure are not complete sales pitches in themselves Your liftnote or buckslip confuses your offer or main selling promiseENVELOPE Your envelope gives too much away, so your prospects throw it away unopened Your mailing envelope looks like junk mail Your package is addressed to "Occupant" and not to a person by nameMESSAGE Your letter lacks a strong, customer-focussed headline The opening line in your letter is not compelling You spell your prospective customer's name incorrectly Your letter lacks specifics about product size, weight, color and other vital details You discuss product features but not customer benefits You talk too much about your company and not enough about your reader You do not create enough desire Your letter lacks urgency You do not offer a guaranteeOFFER You are offering the same thing that your competitors are offering Your offer is not specific Your offer is not exclusive Your offer is not relevant Your offer is not valuable Your offer is not unique Your offer is not usefulCALL TO ACTION You do not ask for the order You ask for the order, but too late in your letter You conclude by saying, "If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me" You give too many ways to respond-or not enoughREPLY DEVICE Your reply device is too cluttered You do not tell prospects what to do to buy your product or service Your reply device is not postage-paidTIMING You are mailing at the wrong time of the year Your letter is arriving on the wrong day of the week You are mailing too often, so prospects ignore you You are not mailing often enough, so prospects do not remember youAbout the author Alan Sharpe is a business-to-business direct mail copywriter who helps business owners and marketing managers generate leads, close sales and retain customers using creative direct mail. The Forgotten Market There are a great many online business people who are forgetting the potential that this particular forgotten market can be providing them. The forgotten market I am referring to is the off-line market and as for the potential, it could prove to be quite profitable for you. A Creative RIOT Relevant, original and impactful: that's what my friend Creative Director Jim Mountjoy says that effective creative must be. With apologies to Jim, I have my own acronym because I think ROI is only 75 percent of the way there. Business to Business Direct Mail Offers that Say Free In direct mail, the offer is the incentive or reward that you dangle in front of your prospects to motivate them to respond to your mailing, either with an order or with a request for more information.Offers follow a "you do this and we'll do that" format. CRM: Strategic Engine or Just Another Tool? CRM?strategic engine or just another technology tool? How would you answer this question about your company's CRM initiative? It depends on how honest you are in answering some other questions, including:Do your people have real decision-making power to provide great customer service?Do you have the right people with the right knowledge and skills?Are you including people across the board, not just in your customer service and call centers?The bottom line is that people skill sets need to be similar to the technology they are using -- information sharing needs to be fast, focused, integrated.Let's Start With the LeadersFor CRM to become the strategic engine, not just a tool that people opt to use when they choose, managers and leaders need to demonstrate the new vision through their day-to-day actions. Networking the Media The media is a business's absolute best friend. It is THE source of information distribution to the masses. So You Want To Cut The Crap And Get Into The Money? So, you´ve been around for a while, and maybe even made a few bucks, but you still need something.. Laws of Marketing - The 10 Immutable Most marketers believe that anything is achievable if you are energetic, creative or determined enough.But laws of marketing follow laws of business, and if you violate them, you risk your marketing dollars. Do Not Consider Running the Same Yellow Page Ad until You Read This Grant Businesses have a love-hate relationship with the Yellow Page directory On the one hand, business owners know they need to be there - even though everyone they compete against is there, too. They rightly fear their ad won't get noticed. The Day I Learned to Start Saying No It was the fall of 1998 when I had just started my first business as a marketing communications writer. Most of my clients hired me for newsletters, brochures, and sales materials, but I would get the occasional request for something different. Make More Money with Marketing Metrics Do you know how effective each of your individual marketing tactics is? Many small business owners market in a vacuum. They spend money on brochures, advertisements and web sites with no real way to tie specific results to specific endeavors. The Biggest Problem With Your Marketing Is...? What is the biggest problem most marketers have? Who knows. We don't, and they certainly don't either. Basic Brand Building A brand is the essence of who you are. The more powerful the brand the more memorable you will become. The Five Most Common Joint Venture Marketing Mistakes To Avoid Joint Venture marketing has become a highly popular way for small businesses to maximize their profits. When two or more businesses combine their resources synergistically, it creates greater marketing impact and bigger profits than either can have alone. Attracting Clients With Ease Whether you are already running your own business, or still thinking about starting your own business, I suspect that deep down you know you have gifts and talents that can really make a difference to others. In an ideal world, you'd spend the majority of time doing the work you love to do, with a steady stream of clients knocking at your door as and when you want them. Whats Your Selling Sentence? What's your Selling Sentence? If you have a business, you need a selling sentence.Sometimes called the Defining Sentence or the Secondary Statement, the Selling Sentence is the group of words that clarify and refine the the nature of your business when seen or heard with the name or logo of your business. Marketing: Are You Focused? In early 1992, President George H.W. Catalogs are Selling Machines If you've got a mailbox, you're no doubt aware of the popularity of catalogs. People love to look through catalogs, and more important, they love to buy from catalogs.
|
| Article List | Index | Site Map |
|
All logos, trademarks and articles on this site are property and copyright of their respective owner(s).
The comments are property of their posters, all the rest is Copyright © 2006 CanadaSEEK.com - All Rights Reserved. |
