Mortgage advisers can find new clients without large marketing campaigns or costly sales drives.
Whether you’re looking for local clients or want to expand your business further, here are six cost-effective strategies to generate mortgage leads.
A great way to find more local leads is leveraging your existing clients.
It sounds simple, but many mortgage advisers don’t fully recognise the power of worth of mouth. And all you need to maximise it are scheduled check-ins and the occasional gift.
Organise email and phone check-ins ranging from a few weeks to a year after you advised the client.
Ask how your client is getting on after receiving your advice. If they reply positively, then follow up with an offer of a voucher or bottle of wine to celebrate their new financial security, and ask if they’ll refer you.
Continue this post-advice engagement through key touchpoints, such as a card at Christmas or an email on their ‘advice anniversary’. This means that when a client’s friend or family member mentions that they need advice, you’ll be first in mind.
Another low-cost way to find more mortgage clients is local advertising.
Not only is it far cheaper than the equivalent exposure in national press – which is beyond the scope of most mortgage advisers – it is also more trusted.
Rather than take out a large, one-off advert, use your resources more effectively with smaller, regular ads. This constant brand presence will cement your firm in the minds of local people - so when they need mortgage advice, you’re who they think of.
An even more cost-effective option is to print off flyers.
Ask local businesses whether they’d be happy for you to put one in their window or on their notice board. You’d be surprised by how many say yes, as being the local hub for news in the community benefits these shops too.
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is a great way to generate mortgage leads online.
PPC will allow your advert to appear at the top of online search results. All you need to do is create your advert and put aside a small pot of funds to promote it.
If your focus is local people, this advert could state ‘Simple mortgage advice for Rochdale residents’ with your key selling points below. Then link this to your ‘contact us’ page or a page outlining your services in more detail.
Not only is PPC a relatively low-cost means of advertising, you can compound this by being able to choose your exact targets.
For local clients, target people searching for mortgage advice within a 15-mile radius of your office.
If you want to expand your client base further, think about your most valuable clients and their demographics. Maybe they were first-time-buyers aged between 25 and 35, or people over 40 looking to remortgage.
The more specific the better. You can then use this demographic information to advertise directly to similar prospects beyond your area.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) affects how highly your website’s content appears in search results. The higher you rank, the greater the number of clients who will find you.
To rank highly, use key phrases in your content’s copy that tells the search algorithm what your page is about.
The best way to do this is to create landing pages – website pages which exist for one purpose.
If you wanted to target clients looking for equity release advice, create a page that uses the phrase ‘equity release advice’ in its header. The rest of the page can then be filled with phrases such as ‘help with equity release’, ‘should I use equity release’ and so on.
Provide some tips on the pros and cons of equity release to display your expertise, and make sure your page has conversion functionality – such as an enquiry submission form or your email and phone number.
Once the page is set up, all you have to do is slightly refresh the copy every six months so search algorithms know it’s still in use.
This page will rank highly, new clients will find it naturally in their search results, be impressed by your expertise, and submit an enquiry – all at no ongoing cost.
Social media is a surprisingly effective tool to find new mortgage clients.
You can either use it freely for social-proofing, or spend some money to push your presence further.
Either way, use Twitter over other channels. While much advice suggests reaching out to consumers, the most effective strategy is to interact with other professionals.
This is the best way to grow your follower base and build an active feed brimming with personality – providing clients with trust and increasing conversion.
Once this is in place, you can then use it to generate new leads cost-effectively.
Use Twitter’s advertising service to target specific demographics with promoted tweets. These should be similar to your PPC ads – a few lines of copy which link to your conversion page.
And as your profile will be active from your professional interactions, users who click on your profile through the ad will know they’re not being spammed.
Marketing tools can do the hard work for you.
Unbiased sorts your brand awareness needs with a bespoke company profile – SEO enhanced to rank highly in search engines and boost your online presence.
Your profile will also appear in Unbiased’s directory, where over half a million potential clients visit every year to find an adviser and submit an enquiry.
And while a PPC campaign can target your preferred clients, Unbiased allows you to set your ideal client criteria, from advice needs to enquiry value, and then matches you with clients most suited to your exact business needs.
To find out more how Unbiased can help you grow your business, click here.
Did you find this article useful? Then you might find our article on how to become a mortgage broker informative, too!
