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When you have a great mortgage brokerage company with experienced staff, a fabulous brand identity including an informative website, you may feel you can sit back, relax and wait for those looking to secure a new mortgage to come knocking at your door. And perhaps that has worked very well in the past, but it might not be the best strategy going forward. You should be harnessing every single marketing channel available to you to stay ahead of the game – and that most definitely includes social media which is on the up and up.
Social media is more than just Facebook but with 1.01 billion monthly users as of October 2012 it’s the most popular one out there. Twitter is also doing pretty well for itself with 200 million monthly users and LinkedIn just recently announced 200 million members. The numbers are mind boggling and if current trends in the popularity of social media is anything to go by, those numbers are just going to escalate further.
This is why most companies, large and small, employ brand development and marketing companies to try to harness the potential benefits of social media to promote their business to its fullest potential. Mortgage brokers need to follow suit. It’s not only to try and get your message to all corners of the globe, but to make the most of viral marketing. There are several elements to consider in the whys and the hows.
By creating your mortgage brokerage company pages on selected social media, you can share interesting content with your clients. When they like what you post they may share with others who may pass it on hence the name viral marketing. If your social media pages reflect your strong brand identity and key messages, you will not only have more exposure for your company but a memorable brand will start to stick in people’s minds.
When your social media posts link back to your website, interested readers will open the post and voilà, they are at your website. Assuming you created a professionally designed, polished website as part of your brand development strategy these visitors, who are already interested in learning more about the mortgage services you provide, are likely to hang around, take a good look at all you have to offer and hopefully convert.
All those lovely links from your social media posts to your website are what is known in the trade as inbound links. Google and other search engines rate inbound links – they can significantly improve your website ranking on search engine result listings.
People love commenting and asking questions via social media channels. If a potential client has a question about your mortgage brokerage company, the socially active ones are far more likely to inquire via social media than to pick up the phone and ask person-to-person. It’s just the way things are nowadays.
You have to post interesting content that will engage readers and encourage them to ‘like’, share or comment on. Without engaging and informative content your social media marketing campaign won’t go far. The content you post should be diverse, visually attractive and unique, for example:
Facebook – Set up your company page maintaining your brand identify. Post facts, articles, photos and videos. Ask questions and see if your clients respond. Remember that each post will appear on the profile page and newsfeed of people who have liked it. Take a look at Best Mortgage Brokers Rates Facebook page for some great inspiration. Money matters can be dry but they have really perked things up with their posts and images.
Twitter – The equivalent of online text messaging as each tweet can be only 140 characters long. Your profile summary can include a short paragraph about your company and your website address. Your tweets can be fun, provoking and can also link back to an article using a shortened URL address.
YouTube – Is a social media platform where the video is king. Upload your own videos onto YouTube and try to make them different from the rest. There are many entitled ‘What is a mortgage broker’ but fewer which answer specific questions that could be useful for clients such as ‘Which home loan is best?’, ‘How to pay off a mortgage early’ or ‘Negative equity’. You have all this knowledge, so think of your target market’s needs and match them with an informative and interesting two minute video.
LinkedIn – This social media platform originated as a way to link professionals together. It has now been updated and improved dramatically and now allows you to post an update. So set up a company page, detail your products and services, add your website address and start to post. These updates can be comments, links to articles you have found useful or links to articles and information on your own website. As you gather more followers, they will receive each update on their own LinkedIn homepage.
Whichever social media channel you decide upon, make sure your website includes the relevant symbol and allows visitors to access your company page
Social media marketing is not something to dip in and out of if you want to do it properly. Don’t think that a nice company page and two posts a month will make any impact on raising your mortgage brokerage company profile, and don’t expect overnight success. Social media takes time to harness but you will reap the benefits in the long run. It’s like having lots and lots of word-of-mouth recommendations, but they are in fact word-by-social-media.
One key element of social media marketing is to make sure you post regularly at an opportune time. Remember that everyone else is posting all the time and your followers or fans will not necessarily see your posts in their newsfeeds unless they scroll down to check out every single new one. You need to post at different times of the day to assess how many are shared – there’s no hard and fast rule. There are also several analytics tools that you can use to measure your effectiveness on social media platforms such as Facebook Insights and Twitalyzer.
Social media is without a doubt a marketing channel you need to take advantage of to promote your mortgage brokerage company. You can’t afford to spend the majority of your day sourcing articles, posting photos and creating videos – this is time consuming. You need to be available to give sound financial advice to clients requiring mortgages and liaising with the lenders. But instead of employing a full time person to handle all your social media, consider hiring a professional company on a monthly retainer to manage it all for you. They will create interesting content, schedule regular posts and most importantly ensure clients’ questions and comments are responded to quickly. This option is cost effective and when left to the professionals you can focus on the operational side of your business knowing that social media is in safe hands.
Overall if you want your mortgage brokerage company to be successful and to have a strong profile, you need a powerful social media presence. Integrate social media into your branding and marketing strategies – and then get posting!
