3 Ways Mortgage Companies Should Market Themselves Online

Mortgage brokerages commonly insert artificial roadblocks in front of their marketing. They know digital marketing is the wave of the future, but they’re concerned the industry isn’t exciting enough to pique the interest of potential customers.

If you think your industry is boring, your marketing will be boring. Let’s change that narrative. Mortgage lenders need to highlight the most exciting part of their business: helping people make one of the best, most significant purchases of their lives!

Here are 3 ways lenders can market their businesses online, and attract potential customers with a content marketing strategy.

1. Start With Great Blog Content

Homebuyers have a bunch of questions; especially if this is their first purchase.

Starting a blog can help answer these common buyer questions. Among consumers aged 18-34, blogs ranked as the most important source of information when making buying decisions – and older generations value them as well. According to studies performed by Research Now, “consumers between the ages of 35-54 ranked blogs as the second most important source behind friends, family, and colleagues. Even older consumers (55 and older) value blogs when making purchase decisions ranking them third in terms of importance behind friends, family, and colleagues and editorial articles.”

Topics for mortgage lenders to blog about are diverse, but typically, you should be trying to answer common questions that are likely to stay relevant. In content marketing, we refer to these articles as “evergreen” – this is content that never becomes dated.

For example:

10 Things to Consider When Buying a New Home

How to Pay Your Mortgage Off Faster

Variable vs. Fixed Rate Mortgages: What You Need to Know

These topics will always be relevant – and if you do your research and write a well informed, interesting article, they will continue to pick up traffic from search engines for years to come. Evergreen content is one of the best marketing investments you can make because it will continue to pay off long after the blog is published.

2. Incorporate Video Marketing

Live and staged videos are dominating the web right now, accounting for 74% of all web traffic. The trend is growing on social networks as well. Video on Facebook accounts for just 0.9% of posts, but a whopping 7.15% of reach (impressions). If you want to stand out online, video is a medium you must invest in.

Evergreen video content works extremely well, but for the sake of this article we’re going to focus on topical content. Your video strategy should mix both together, with topical content being produced as much as possible. Anytime there is a market update, a significant change that your potential customers should know about, or anything at all that provides value to your audience – you should be shooting a quick informative video.

While this can seem daunting at first, we have good news from our personal experience: it’s not.

Our Creative Director, Taylor Kerby, recently published an article on FitSmallBusiness about how to create pro-quality videos with just your mobile phone. If you’re new to video marketing, I highly recommend starting with giving his article a read.

Finally, we should discuss the new development of live video, and how to shoot it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many other major social networks are now encouraging users to use live video. If you’re comfortable on camera, this is a great place to shoot your content. On Facebook, live videos jump the algorithm and place your content in front of a much larger audience than any ordinary post, providing a major advantage. If you’re new to video, start with staged content so you can give yourself time to become comfortable, but make sure you’re working up to getting on camera live.

3. Repurpose Your Content

The last way mortgage companies can market themselves online is through their social channels. All of the video and blog content you create should be shared on social media and boosted (paid advertising) to pre-set audiences where applicable. The targeting options on social media are phenomenal, allowing lenders to choose the exact demographics of their potential customers. If you haven’t already, you need to set up a Facebook Business Page and install a retargeting pixel on your website for social advertising. It allows you to show your content to people who’ve visited your website in the past few months, making your chances of bringing in clients through social media much higher than generic online advertising.

Remember:

Website visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert on your website.

You can’t afford to not be running retargeting ads. Here’s how to setup your first campaign.

We hope this gave you some ideas about how mortgage companies can start marketing themselves online. If you have any questions, or would like to inquire about our marketing services, fill out this form and let’s start a conversation.

What do you think? Will you increase your video production this year? Let us know on Twitter or in the comments section below.