7 Marketing Ideas for Loan Officers in 2018

See our updated post on Marketing Ideas for Mortgage Loan Officers for 2019 here.

With 2018 quickly approaching, it’s time to think about ways to better your business and start out the year strong. We’re here to help provide great ideas for improving your marketing efforts. Here are 7 marketing ideas for loan officers in 2018:

1. Manage Your Online Reviews

Consumers have the ability to majorly impact your company’s reputation by leaving reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, and Facebook. How important are these online reviews? In 2017, 97 percent of consumers read online reviews for local businesses and 85 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. However, taking the time to ask for these reviews is also a key component. To help, we’ve put together 10 tips on how to do this.

To better manage your reputation online you must be consistently monitoring sites and proactively addressing reviews. The old adage that “you can please some people some of the time, but not everyone all of the time” applies here. You won’t be able to make every client completely happy, and you may end up with a negative review. Instead of panicking, the best way to respond is by following up, asking questions, and finding out what you can do to better handle the situation should it arise in the future. By working hard and providing consistent customer service, your customer loyalty will grow and so will your positive reviews.

2. Be Consistent

This applies to online and offline channels. It doesn’t mean creating a profile or adding a logo somewhere and never checking the site again. You need to ensure that your information is accurate everywhere – your website, review sites, social media profiles, and so on – and then frequently check back.

You could lose out on a deal because someone called the wrong number or sent a message to an outdated email. This can be easily avoided by maintaining a consistent brand. Respond to tweets, emails, and phone calls in the same tone and with the same message. Whether it’s via email or a Facebook post, regardless how a client or prospect visits, their experience should be the same.

3. Post on Social Media

Social media is ingrained in our daily, personal lives, but as a loan officer, are you using these channels to grow and nurture your business? If you answered no, you should rethink this in the new year. You need to meet your clients and prospects where they are: online.

A common mistake that loan officers make with social media is posting only basic (and, frankly, boring) mortgage content. Think outside of the box and generate content to all of your channels that is exciting and valuable. This basic content provides no real value to anyone that isn’t currently looking for your services. Reach out to your network to engage with you and share their own thoughts in the comments. Make sure that you take the time to respond when they do. This is another great way to stay in front of your clients.

4. Embrace Content Marketing

As a loan officer, your clients do not need your services frequently. So how do you nurture clients during the months and years in between transactions? For clients in that in between, seeing posts about needing a loan officer is neither necessary nor helpful. Instead, share content that is full of valuable information applicable to clients not currently in the market for your services. This way you stay top of mind so they remember you when it counts.

If you need inspiration, check out our top-performing mortgage campaigns of 2017.

5. Clean up Your Database

If you have a database full of stale contacts, then all of the effort put into your newsletters goes to waste. In fact, if you receive too many bounces, unsubscribes or spam reports, your sender reputation and ability to make it to inboxes will plummet.

Having clean data is important to your business. It impacts your email deliverability and your ability to expand your reach. Take the time to clean up your data regularly and remove unsubscribe requests to ensure you’re making the most of your marketing efforts.

6. Go Mobile

These days our phones are always close at hand, and quite often, in front of our faces. If you aren’t already on mobile, you need to be in 2018. Internet users spend 57% of their time on mobile or tablet compared to 43% on a desktop. Facebook is the world’s most used social media platform and 1,149 billion of their users use are mobile only. You read that correctly – there are over a billion users only using their mobile phones.
This includes ensuring your website and marketing collateral is responsive, meaning it adapts to the size of the device being used. It can be extremely frustrating to open an email or try to load a webpage on your smartphone on a non-responsive website. Forms are harder to fill out, buttons more difficult to click, and overall user experience is poor. Avoid causing this hassle for clients and prospects and make mobile a priority this year.

7. Automate Your Marketing

Managing a healthy pipeline of clients and prospects is essential a loan officer growing their business. You have a long list of tasks to tackle on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis, which means it can be difficult to find time for generating and sharing content and following up with past clients.

Automated email and social media marketing is a great way to consistently reach your audience, even when you don’t have time to pick up the phone or send a handwritten note. There are several tools that allow you to automate this on your own, but if you want content created for you from start to finish, OutboundEngine’s automated marketing is the right choice for your business. Click here to set up a live walkthrough and find out how it will help you succeed in 2018.