New to the world of mortgage loans? New mortgage brokers face a lot of competition and often start with a small marketing budget.
But that still leaves you plenty of lead generation strategies you can put into action to attract homebuyers and grow your business.
So, where exactly should you start? And what are some of the best strategies to focus on this year?
Discover now some essential lead generation tips for new mortgage brokers that can help you get off to a good start.
- Optimize Your Site to Capture Leads
It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that most people today search for mortgage deals online. It’s fast, it’s convenient, and it brings up lots of options.
As a new broker, your first point of contact with your clients is often your website. Optimizing your site to capture leads doesn’t involve anything sophisticated or costly.
You just need to focus on the right things.
- Built authority and trust with valuable content that answers questions and provides guidance. This will naturally attract traffic from search engines.
- Ensure your website visitors understand who you are and what you do within a couple of seconds. In other words, ensure your homepage is awesome.
- Use clear calls-to-action that your visitors cannot remain indifferent to. Offer more than a consultation.
- Eliminate clutter from your website.
- Use a streamlined design that makes it easy for visitors to orient themselves on your site.
- Make completing actions as quickly as possible for potential leads, whether it’s contacting you, using a loan calculator, or filling a form.
- Improve your website loading speed.
- Ensure your website runs optimally across browsers and mobile devices.
- Use local search engine optimization (SEO) to optimize each page on your site for local searches
For best results, consider working with a web designer and SEO expert. It’s an investment that will pay off in time.
- Blog to Showcase Your Expertise
We talked already about creating content for your site, but to consistently capture leads, you have to do more than that. You have to showcase your expertise to win the trust of your audience and generate leads organically.
An effective strategy in the long-term is to add a blog to your site and publish on it content regularly. In your content, answer the questions that clients often ask you. Share tips and advice. Tell them what they need to do and what they should avoid.
Blogging won’t necessarily generate as many warm leads as say buying mortgage leads online.
But it can validate your business identity and enable you to start each conversation with warm leads from a position of confidence and authority.
- Take Advantage of Local Listings
You want to get listed on the most relevant local directories. These usually include Google My Business (which puts your business on Google Maps), Yelp!, and other local listings.
Listing yourself on these directories is free. You only have to confirm your identity and provide your essential business information and contact details.
Once you’re listed, you’ll become more discoverable in local searches, whether they occur on mobile or desktop.
- Be Active on LinkedIn
For most professionals, LinkedIn tends to generate more business leads than most other social networks. Use a combination of valuable content (you can share your blog content), landing pages, and ads to grow your LinkedIn presence.
In addition to direct leads, the network can also consolidate your online reputation and help you build trust.
LinkedIn is great for presenting case studies which can improve your reputation.
- Set Up an Engaging Facebook Business Page
Social media users are usually not in buying mode. For example, most homebuyers are more likely to search for a mortgage broker using Google search than Facebook. That said, having an engaging Facebook business page is good for business.
It can attract more leads naturally and make it easier for them to call or message you. Your Facebook business page is also great for gathering positive ratings and highlighting success stories.
It will provide social proof, which is very important for you as a new mortgage broker.
- Connect with Divorce Attorneys
When couples divorce, they are likely to sell their home. That makes divorce attorneys a rich source of warm leads.
This is one of those lead generation strategies that most mortgage brokers don’t really think about but which can prove quite effective in the long run.
Joining your local Chamber of Commerce is one way to connect with divorce attorneys. Another is to contact them directly through social media. You’ll find many divorce attorneys on LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Buy Mortgage Leads Online
The methods of generating leads that we covered so far take time before they show consistent results—weeks at least.
But there’s a faster way to generate highly targeted leads, and it’s easier too—buying mortgage leads online.
When you buy leads, you skip the searching and marketing process and focus more on your client. You retain full control over your workflow and can scale lead generation to your needs.
What’s more, you can increase conversion rates while at the same time lowering your cost per lead.
Buying leads means you can choose your leads and get exclusive ones, all this while focusing on building great relationships with your clients.
When you’re at the beginning of your journey, buying leads online can be a powerful strategy to combine with your other lead generation efforts.
Not sure where to start? Learn more about how LeadsFilter can help you generate more clients for your business.
The Wrap Up
New mortgage brokers face challenges, but they also have plenty of opportunities on their hands. Unlike their older peers who didn’t grow up in the age of the internet, they are more attuned to the web and social media.
This puts at their fingertips a set of powerful tools that they can use to grow their online presence and capture leads.
If you’re one of them, starting off as a new mortgage broker doesn’t have to be an uphill struggle.
If you focus on the right lead generation strategies, the ones that can have the biggest impact on your business, you can grow your portfolio of clients in a sustainable way. And, of course, you can make many homeowners happy.