To increase the number of loans you close, you need more customers, right?
Customers come from qualified leads. So how do you get leads in the mortgage industry?
Beyond options like buying leads or relying on referrals, there are tons of opportunities for you to build your audience of potential customers and generate leads using content marketing.
We’ve compiled a list of tips and ideas around content marketing for mortgage lenders so that you can take steps right now to build your audience and generate leads.
What is content marketing for mortgage lenders?
Essentially, consistent and compelling mortgage content marketing meets your audience where they are.
It guides, reminds, and educates them about your mortgage business, helping to convert them into qualified leads, and ultimately satisfied customers.
Dedicating time and resources to content strategy will improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and increase traffic to your website, all of which generates leads. It also provides a way to share information and build trust with consumers.
Unlike advertising, which stops when the budget runs out, content is evergreen, lasting many years. It’s worth investing in as a long-term strategy. And the sooner you start, the better you’ll outperform your competition.
Content marketing isn’t just blog posts either, but also many other forms of helpful content that is free to consumers, like ebooks, emails, webinars, videos, infographics, and more.
How a content marketing strategy helps mortgage loan officers (MLO) generate more leads
In an ideal world, it would be easy for consumers to find you and engage with you. This is actually possible with the many digital marketing tools available.
Yet many consumers, and even mortgage lenders themselves, can get a little lost navigating thousands of different online resources.
A consumer may feel overwhelmed by information when looking for a solution, such as how to finance their home.
If they were able to search for mortgage information, wouldn’t it be great if they could take this clear path to engage with you:
- Type a question into a search engine: “Where do I start when buying a house?”
- Find and click on your post that answers their question.
- While reading the post, see options to download an ebook or sign up for emails for more information. They also see a contact form to request a rate quote or get in touch with you.
And that’s just one path.
The benefit of content marketing is that it makes full use of your content and valuable expertise to share that information across many channels.
This meets consumers where they are and reminds them you’re here to help, all the while pulling them into and guiding them through your sales funnel.
The 12 best content marketing ideas for mortgage lenders
With this basic understanding of the value of creating content, let’s dig into concrete tips and ideas to inspire ways to build and engage with your audience to generate leads.
Pick one or two ideas based on your natural strengths and interests and give them a try.
If you’re ready to dive into more robust efforts in mortgage content marketing, consider connecting with us to learn how our team can support you.
1. First, create a mortgage website
Although creating a website isn’t technically considered a content marketing tactic, having a website is an essential foundation for all of your content marketing efforts.
Your potential customers need a place to land as they view and interact with your content. Your website becomes the primary resource for attracting traffic and moving that audience through their journey of applying for and closing loans with you.
All content on your website should be strategic, just like your content marketing efforts. It should provide clear positioning to show who you are and how you can help. This content can also be optimized with keywords to help your website organically gain traffic.
Beyond the information that shows your credibility and educates potential customers, it should also be actionable. Progressive lead paths, or survey-like forms, should be easily accessible so that consumers can connect with you and share information about themselves that helps you convert them to customers.
2. Write a convincing mortgage lender bio
Certain elements of your website are often overlooked when thinking of traditional content marketing. But they can be a simple traffic generator and way to generate leads.
This includes a convincing mortgage loan officer bio for yourself and bios for all loan officers on your team, which help to show credibility.
These also allow users to find and connect with an individual quickly and easily. This may be helpful for personal referrals or to call back a loan officer. In these cases, someone will likely type the loan officer’s name into a search engines. So it’s best if your site is the first result they see, and the place that gives them a clear path to get in touch.
In this way, these pages include SEO to help you gain organic traffic. They’re also a good place for credibility details like licensing information, professional background, and even applications that go directly to the individual loan officer.
3. Write a landing page for each of your loan products
Loan product landing pages are fundamental to your business. Including them on your website allows your site to serve as a hub for the resources your potential customers need to start their loan research and application process.
These work as a sales tool to share with your customers. They can also be optimized with keywords to help you show up in search results.
Loan products can be added or removed as your business focus changes. And this evergreen content becomes a helpful resource to users who may refer back to it for basic loan requirements, FAQs, and even linked related articles if you expand your content here.
4. Use your Google Business account to its full potential
Let’s step back from your website and take a look at Google, where many people may first discover your business.
With a Google Business account, not only will your business show up with information such as hours and reviews when searched, but it also provides a chance to educate your audience further.
Many of the fields that appear are auto-populated by Google, but there is one place you can add content yourself to help potential customers — the Q&A section included in your knowledge panel.
Here you can answer questions submitted by users. If you don’t see any questions posted, post common ones yourself and answer them to provide insight and education.
Post the question in a voice or perspective that a customer would ask and then respond with an answer provided in a professional voice and tone that matches your brand. Just don’t go too heavy on any marketing pushes. Focus on education and information here.
5. Write helpful blog posts about each of your loan products, often
Blogging speaks to the heart of content marketing. Blog content can be evergreen or related to current topics like the impact of the changing market.
By posting informative content on a regular basis, consumers and current customers will rely on you for insights about their mortgage needs.
Blogging also provides opportunities for building organic traffic with SEO. By linking articles strategically, you can pull users further into your site to follow a path to all the information they need as they research.
Within blog posts, include Calls-to-Action that users can easily access to connect with you and take the next step, becoming leads.
Keyword research and traffic analytics will help you see what’s reaching your audience and what they might need more of.
We’ve seen great results when we combine this data with understanding your potential customer’s perspective. Are they comparing loan products, learning about credit scores and finances, or wondering about the current market?
This often includes much of the information you’re already sharing in conversations with your customers. Wouldn’t it be great if you could share that information from one place by posting it on your blog?
From there the information can be repurposed across several channels, including emails and social media. It can even kickstart your efforts for recording and sharing videos.
6. Create a YouTube channel
There’s a lot of need for written content like blogs, but there’s also a lot of competition with written content. One place where marketers and businesses just can’t seem to meet demand is with video.
Create a YouTube channel to stand out from the competition. Record a quick video with highlights from your latest blog post. Just had an interesting conversation on the phone with a customer? Record a quick video sharing the same insights you shared with the customer about the loan process.
Videos will help you build an audience and can also be used to enhance content across other channels like emails and social media.
For video ideas check out: Types of Mortgage Marketing Videos You Should Create
7. Post your new blogs and videos on your social media channels
To get the most out of your content ideas, you need to create content that you invest in and work to its full potential. Any content you create should be shared across all of your digital marketing channels.
Build audiences where your potential customers already interact with businesses and their own networks. Social media platforms are naturally made to help you increase your interactions with users and your visibility.
Sharing helpful news articles, as well as your own work, is another way to build your social audience and position yourself as an authority in the mortgage industry.
When you publish a blog article, for example, Google’s search index takes a few days at best but most likely it will take weeks for your article to show up in the search results. Posting on social media makes your articles instantly easy to find and interact with.
8. Host a free webinar
Webinars are increasingly popular ways to market your business and generate leads.
Pick a hot topic that will provide viewers (your potential customers) with the information they’ll find valuable.
Use your regular virtual meeting software or even find free webinar platforms that make it easy to schedule, promote, and host a webinar.
Once you go live for the virtual presentation, speak to what you know and share the basics of how you can help. Open it up for a Q&A or survey to learn your audience’s concerns, and even the language they use, to help you craft better content overall.
You’ll collect valuable information from participants and generate qualified leads at the same time.
9. Write a lead magnet to collect email addresses
Just as a webinar can attract people to you, a lead magnet is meant to do the same but in the form of an ebook.
Adding downloadable ebooks throughout your website and sharing them across your channels gives you a chance to collect emails to build an email marketing list in exchange for the highly valuable information you have to share with users.
This content also helps educate your leads and warm them up to your sales process. A download could be a simple one-pager or a full several-page ebook.
For example, provide a checklist to prepare for the loan application, with basic information that helps potential customers come prepared for their first calls with a loan officer. Or provide in-depth information about the benefits of a particular loan program.
10. Write a weekly newsletter for email marketing
Collecting emails through efforts like webinars and lead magnets helps you build an audience that you can then continually reach out to through email marketing.
With excellent email marketing tools available, be as specific or general as you want by segmenting your lists to target people at specific phases of their mortgage research or shopping journey.
A weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly email newsletter helps you broadcast your other content marketing efforts further. Include a roundup of your latest blog posts and videos, or promote your next webinar.
Or maybe you want to pick a theme based on your latest interactions with customers. Are you getting a lot of questions about purchasing in a sellers market? Create your next newsletter focused on tips to navigate this for those looking to buy a home.
11. Answer questions for free on a Q&A forum website
Use a forum website that currently reaches your audience and is built to spread information.
Respond to people’s questions on Quora or host your own “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. In either case, you’ll provide answers to common questions and have an opportunity to build trust with the audience, show your credibility and willingness to help, as well as share resources that will allow the audience to further engage with you.
Be mindful of any rules for businesses on these platforms so that you can get the best reach possible and offer valuable insights to these audiences.
12. Be a guest on a money podcast
Podcasts are a simple way to step outside of the box and creatively meet customers where they are.
Do you regularly listen to any financial podcasts as resources? Or have you ever heard your customers, or even referral partners, mention podcasts that they find helpful and informative?
Podcasts have an ever-growing listener base. Find podcasts that help people become finance-savvy and reach out to pitch coming on as a guest.
In this case, think about the value you can provide first. By discussing financial tips and mortgage insights, you’ll build trust with this audience and engage new traffic.
New potential customers will follow your social media accounts, sign up for your email list, or even just Google you and land on your website to build their relationship with you.
How far could your business reach with strategic content marketing?
When content marketing is done well, it uses a range of content across many different channels to reach consumers, often multiple times, in places where they’re used to getting information.
Making the most of content marketing for lenders is an interesting challenge.
If you’re not sure how to do it right with your current team, Kaleidico is a mortgage marketing agency that has spent nearly two decades building a full range of marketing services with the ultimate goal of generating leads.
Content marketing is one of our core services, with a team of mortgage marketing experts who can build a strategic content marketing plan for you and create the content to back it up.
Book a discovery session with us. Together we’ll explore how we can help expand your reach and generate more leads.