Conditions are primed for another mortgage boom. Wall Street is yearning for yield. Politicians are talking 65% homeownership again. Rentals are increasingly scarce and expensive. And, most importantly, the Federal Reserve is itching to pull the trigger on their first interest rate hike in over a decade.

Are you ready?

If you’re in the mortgage or real estate business, you should be thinking about how to grab as much of this impending boom as possible. Having lived through the boom and bust of the last mortgage rodeo I can teach you a few things.

My email and phone have begun to heat up with old friends and new acquaintances in the mortgage industry, all looking for how to get in. Of course, that gets me thinking…

What core advice should I be giving to get these marketing programs positioned for maximum yield? Here’s how I start this conversation.

Are you stuck in old school mortgage origination?

Too many of these conversations are starting with how the mortgage works, not how it should work. If you begin with that mindset, you’re starting in a hole.

Is your website ready?

All of your customers have moved to their mobile devices. With the recent release of the larger screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the shift is complete. People are toting around their laptops less, and no one is parked in front of a desktop unless forced to by their job.

Consequently, if you’re website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re about to be invisible.

Do you have a web traffic plan?

In the last decade, the internet has changed dramatically. How you get people’s attention on the web is a big part of that change.

During the last mortgage boom, you could put up a website, do a couple of SEO tricks, and deliver yourself a bunch of mortgage customers. This unsophisticated model worked because search engines were infants, AdWords was just emerging, and social media didn’t even exist.

The landscape is going to be far more complicated in this go-around.

There are multitudes of online advertising platforms and networks. SEO has grown in complexity and is nearly impossible to game. AdWords (particularly for the mortgage market) is high competitive and a sophisticated platform to manage. Meanwhile, social media (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) is where everyone’s attention is 24/7.

If you want web traffic in this messy and ubiquitous Web, you’d better have a plan.

Can you talk to the new customer?

The mortgage brokers and companies that win in the next mortgage boom are going to be the ones that know how to speak to the new client.

Emerging are customers who always have known the Internet (or forgotten the world without it–careful not to think this is an age thing). They have always known 24/7 connectivity. They have grown up on tablets and mobile phones. They expect everything to be available at a click and instantly.

Oh, and they don’t talk on the phone, much less wait on hold!

The expectations that come from their experience is going to cause most mortgage companies a significant problem.

If you want to talk to this new generation of mortgage clients, you’re going to have to:

• Embrace a conversation that happens via text messaging, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or who knows what’s next
• Collect documents via Evernote and Dropbox
• Connect and retrieve the data you need from their online bank accounts and payroll systems; they don’t do paper, copies, or faxes
• Give instant answers and approvals–these folks don’t wait, they just go elsewhere

Will you meet new expectations?

Back to the original question: Are you ready?

We’re working on several of these projects right now. Contact us for a free consultation on modernizing your online mortgage strategy.