Mortgage Marketing Trends - 8 Trends That Will Grow Your Pipeline

The way people buy a home is rapidly changing. Therefore, the way lenders market their business needs to adapt to the environment. Thankfully, we have put together the essential mortgage marketing trends that will shape the future of the industry.

Responsive Websites

Responsive websites are becoming a necessity for today’s average loan officer. A responsive website is a site that loads quickly, has an interactive design, and adjusts dynamically to users’ experience.

Meaning, if a consumer is looking at your website through their phone, it adjusts and simplifies the content. At the end of the day, every user’s experience is different. A responsive site helps tackle that problem on the web.

The reason why responsive websites are a mortgage marketing trend is because of the SEO impact. Google is making responsive websites part of the ranking algorithm. If your website is not quick loading and responsive to the user, you will drop in the rankings. This is vital for loan officers and mortgage lenders trying to rank on Google My Business in their local market.

Thankfully, most website builders and CMS platforms offer responsive websites baked into the build. Furthermore, a lot of lenders, loan officers, and real estate agents are outsourcing web development to companies like LeadPops.

LeadPops is a website and funnel builder for the mortgage and real estate industry. Their sites are quick loading, responsive to the users, and effective in the local SEO rankings.

Alternatively, if you are building your site off of a custom CMS like WordPress, you can create a responsive site with the right theme and plugins.

Furthermore, I recommend testing out a few themes and see how they display your site on mobile and tablet. From there, you can get the AMP plug-in. This will automatically update your mobile design and loading times for Google search.

All in all, responsive sites are here to stay. Find the right website partner and you will not see any loss of business from a slow site.

AI-driven CRMs in Mortgage Marketing

Artificial intelligence and machine learning tech are quickly becoming a normal part of our world. The mortgage industry is no different. AI-driven CRMs are a major mortgage marketing trend in the next decade.

Specifically, AI-driven CRMs monitor how users interact with your business and how you interact with your users. From there, artificial intelligence technology can suggest tasks for your sales team, automatically communicate with clients, and make your CRM easier to use.

At the core, AI digests data faster and more accurately than humans. In the past decade, AI and ML have been used to digest large sums of data for companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce. Fast-forward to today, the algorithms are better than ever can be applied to smaller data sets.

Therefore, we are seeing a rise in machine learning tech for smaller businesses. The more data that is input in an algorithm, the more accurate the output becomes. For that reason alone, AI-driven CRMs are becoming better and better.

This is one of the mortgage marketing trends that will continue to grow until most of the sales process is automated.

Business Automation

Business automation and marketing are becoming increasingly more intertwined. It is impossible to scale digital marketing efforts without any form of automation.

Additionally, with the increase of smart tech, automation is weaved into almost every CRM. If you are a loan officer or mortgage broker in the 21st century, you are using some form of automation (whether you know it or not).

With that said, there is a difference between using automation by default and finding ways to leverage automation to help your business grow. For example, most lenders get asked the same few questions by every borrower.

Instead of manually replying, create an automated system that replies on your behalf. Most mortgage CRMs have this capability. Additionally, if you send the same user data to Homebot every month, why not create an automated data pipeline.

By putting automation in your daily workflow, you can scale your business without being overworked. This is the power of business automation and why it is one of the mortgage marketing trends that are here to stay.

Omni-Channel Marketing Trends

Omni-channel marketing is the process of utilizing multiple channels and platforms to market your business. The days of just using your Facebook pages to build your brand are dying.

Your consumers are all over the web. Therefore, you need to build your brand and credibility across multiple websites, directories, and media platforms. The key to creating an omnichannel marketing plan is starting with the foundation.

The foundation of mortgage marketing is local SEO and social media. The best way to automate your local SEO strategy and spread your brand across the internet is by using YEXT (or a comparable service).

YEXT is the best local SEO tool for loan officers and mortgage brokers. YEXT uses its API technology to spread your brand accurately across the web.

Not only do you get access to hundreds of business directories but you can change information in one place, like your phone number or websites, and all the connected directories are updated. This is a scaled way to manage your omnichannel marketing approach for local SEO.

Social Media is a different animal. While there is no sure-fire way to connect Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, and other apps, you can use smart content techniques to build your brand across multiple platforms.

First, it important that you cross-post across platforms. This means you create one video or graphic and post in multiple places, reducing your creation time.

Additionally, creating a content schedule will keep you on track to post relevant content regularly. These tips will allow building an omnichannel approach to your social media marketing plan.

An omnichannel marketing plan is not built overnight. You need the content and infrastructure to spread your brand across the web. However, if you stick to your approach, you will see sustainable growth.

1st Party Data in Mortgage Marketing

In the past decade, brands have relied on 3rd party data for advertising. 3rd party data is information that is collected by platforms that do not have any relationship with the consumers.

This data is then sold to businesses that want to target specific customers. A great example of 3rd party data is through Facebook Ads. When you create a Facebook campaign, you can create an audience of people that are frequently using Zillow. Facebook is buying this data to enhance its ad exchange platform.

Because 3rd party data has many privacy concerns, companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook are limiting 3rd party data usage. Essentially, 3rd party data will be extinct in the next few years.

Chances are you are using 3rd party data on your Facebook and Google campaigns without evening know it. Therefore, you will likely see dips in performance if you are heavily relying on this information.

The key to paid ad success, post 3rd party data, is by relying on 1st party data. 1st party data is information that you have collected from your customers. 1st party data examples are information from your website, CRM, apps, and even social media.

The biggest brands in the world are not paying for other companies’ data. Instead, they are driving consumers to their own websites and social media platforms. From there, they can remarket to website visitors or even build look-a-like audiences.

Essentially, 1st party data is better than 3rd party data. However, it takes more time to develop a brand, craft a narrative, and convince prospects to interact with your business.

At the end of the day, 3rd party data was never sustainable. While many companies are frustrated with the news, the brands that will stick around are building their own 1st party data to rely on over the next decade. Understanding how to use your data is one of the most important mortgage marketing trends for big and small lenders.

Content Creation

Content creation has always been a pillar of marketing. In the 1950s, magazines were extremely popular. Because of that, big brands would create stunning ads to place in popular magazines.

In the 1960s and 70s, broadcast TV became very popular with the masses. Therefore, brands shifted their print marketing campaigns to innovative TV ads. With this in mind, only large national companies could create ads at this scale.

Fast-forward to the 1990s and 2000s, radio had taken the country by storm. Radio ads were increasingly more popular among smaller companies that could afford to pay their local station for 30 seconds of audio. For the first time, smaller brands had the ability to compete for ad space like never before.

In today’s day and age, social media is what drives the needle. Social media is the most important place to build your brand and interact with your clients.

However, as media platforms have adapted over the years, so has content. You are no longer posting the same stationary graphics from the 1960s. Effective content is relevant to pop culture, funny, and intuitive. The key to great creativity is knowing your audience, understanding the platform, and posting content that brings them value.

Content creation is one of the mortgage marketing trends that continues to be relevant. The moment you stop creating content is the moment your brand will decline.

Socially-Conscience Brands Will Win

People crave authenticity. Consumers are no different. In the past year, people want to support a brand the values social issues. Therefore, it is important, now more than ever, to be vocal about social issues. For this reason, being a social conscience brand is one of the defining mortgage marketing trends of the decade.

This authenticity will create loyalty among your brand and your clients. When people shop for lenders or realtors, they want to know that your company stands for something more than profits.

Thankfully, the age of social media has made us more connected than ever before. You can spread ideas, discuss current issues, and stand up for your community with the click of a button.

Furthermore, social media platforms are creating live stream outlets to facilitate real-time discussion. For example, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube have some of the most popular live stream functions.

You can, ‘go live,’ without notice and anyone who is available can join the stream. From there, you can discuss issues that matter to you and your consumers. Often, influencers in the housing space will discuss some of the biggest issues plaguing housing. For example, increasing rent prices, harsh credit guidelines, and housing bubbles.

By showing your audience that you are more than just a lender with a low rate, you can display your empathy and knowledge of the industry. As our world becomes more connected, we all share a social responsibility to our community.

Just because you are a loan officer or mortgage broker does not mean you do not value social issues. Be open and be honest. Consumers are increasingly more concerned about social issues. Therefore, lenders need to be as thoughtful as the people they serve.

National Connectivity

It is no secret that the country is becoming increasingly more connected. The rise of the internet has changed how we buy and sell homes. Additionally, the increase in work from home loan officers has fundamentally changed how mortgages are processed.

There are entire markets where every employee works from the comfort of their home office. By taking away the in-person presence of loan officers, consumers love the convenience of video chats, virtual closings, and not being restricted by geography to find a loan officer.

Because of these reasons, there is no reason to only be licensed for the state that you live in. With a remote workforce, loan officers are getting licensed all across the country.

This has allowed lenders to be more strategic and less restrictive in the way they find business. Additionally, this has cracked open digital marketing, automation, and advanced CRM development for your average loan officer.

Whether you like it or not, national connectivity is changing the mortgage industry forever. This does not mean every loan officer needs to break into new markets.

However, it does mean that digitally savvy loan officers and brokers are breaking into your market. If you have not adjusted to the future of mortgage marketing, you may be losing your local business. At the end of the day, consumers want the best service no matter the location.

Mortgage marketing trends can be difficult to follow. Thankfully, we have outlined the most important marketing topics to be aware of in the next decade. It is vital that we adapt as an industry so we can better serve homeowners.

Henry

Henry has spent the bulk of his career working for mortgage companies and marketing agencies. He uses his experience in the martech industry to guide his strategies and insights in the mortgage and real estate world. He firmly believes that marketing success in every industry boils down to a technology-centered strategy.

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Mortgage Marketing Trends You Need To Know