Marketing mortgage services is both similar and dissimilar to marketing other products and services. Given that a property purchase is often the biggest single purchase a person will make in their life, the process often is slower than other purchasing decisions (how often have you heard of people buying houses on a whim?). The following will look at some key components of mortgage marketing to help you with this long-form marketing endeavor.

What Is Mortgage Marketing

First and foremost, it might be a good idea to explore the meaning of mortgage marketing. It’s a phrase many people have heard of, but not one that they necessarily can define easily. Mortgage marketing is any, and all steps a mortgage lender, bank, or broker uses to educate people about mortgage services and encourage people to use their particular services. As you can imagine from this definition, a lot of things fit into the category of mortgage marketing.

Marketing In The Digital Era

It’s hard to talk about mortgage marketing without talking about marketing in general. Marketing is a quickly-evolving industry that is on the front end of a lot of technological developments. Things like automation, blockchain, voice apps, the internet of things, the Metaverse, and augmented reality are all quickly becoming a part of marketing, and so need to be at least considered during the shaping of a marketing strategy. There may be new developments you choose not to work with, but this decision should only be made after genuinely considering how these new forms of technology would work with your marketing goals.

Strategy And Measurement

As with all marketing, it’s ideal to start with a marketing strategy. This is going to be a plan that you follow for at least a quarter of the year at a time before you make changes to it. If you want to be able to evaluate whether your strategy is working and whether any changes need to be made, you need to have ways of measuring your inputs and the output. This means that details about data collection and records should be included in every single step of your marketing plan. Constantly ask yourself how you’ll know if something is working and how you’ll record that information so you can have a bird’s-eye-view of your efforts once the quarter is up.

Marketing Qualified Leads

Marketing qualified leads are a key concept you need to understand if you’re in the field of mortgage marketing. Marketing qualified leads, sometimes called MQLs, are people that have expressed or shown an interest in the service you offer but aren’t quite ready to make the move to use your service. Because so many people think about buying a property for months or years before they actually take the leap, this concept is really important for you.

Focus on ways you can capture MQLs and introduce yourself to them. One of the best ways to do this is to provide valuable information for people who are learning about mortgages and home ownership. Content like blog posts, social media posts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and email list updates are all excellent ways to connect with people who are thinking about buying a house in the future. People like to do lots of research for big purchases, and a home is likely going to be their biggest purchase in life, meaning people often want to do a ton of research. Be part of this research process with your content.

Marketing As An Experiment

This is the secret golden rule of marketing: all marketing efforts are an experiment. The world is always changing, as are people’s expectations about products and services. This means that there’s no guarantee that something that worked marketing-wise for someone else or in the past is going to work this time. If you enter into your marketing efforts with the idea that marketing is an experiment—that each thing you do is simply a test to figure out what speaks to people and what encourages them to respond positively—you’re going to be in the right headspace to keep making little adjustments until you find exactly what works for you.

Mortgage Marketers Are Lucky

Mortgage marketers might feel like they’re unlucky because they have a much smaller demographic they’re marketing to. Mortgage marketers are looking for people who can afford houses in a given area, and it seems that this group is shrinking over time. The good news is that this actually means mortgage marketers are lucky. Most marketers start with an incredibly broad idea of their target demographic and slowly shrink their understanding of their ideal audience over the course of a few years as they study who their efforts are most effective and why. Mortgage marketers already have a strong sense of who it is they’re trying to get in touch with. This means that the first step in the standard marketing strategy is practically done. What you need to figure out is where these people are, what platforms and apps they like using, and what media they prefer taking it.

The above information should have made it clear that mortgage marketing is a marathon game that involves lots of tweaks and changes as it evolves. It’s particularly important to understand generational needs in your marketing, as members of different generations are looking for extremely different things when it comes to homes and financial planning.