Building and nurturing your contact list is essential for long-term success in the mortgage industry.
According to a study by STRATMOR, 89% of borrowers made their decision to choose a lender based on relationships. A well-maintained list allows you to stay connected with potential borrowers and offer solutions tailored to their evolving needs. Whether people are actively shopping for homes, considering a refinance, or looking at home equity products, by regularly engaging with your contacts, you build trust and increase the likelihood of keeping the business of past and current clients.
Learn how to increase your network, grow your business, and retain your customer base in a competitive market. It only takes four simple steps.
1. Make Sure Your Current and Past Customers Like You
Referrals are one of the most trusted and cost-effective ways to build your contact list. Leveraging your existing network of former clients and other trustworthy sources can help provide a steady pipeline of new leads into your business.
In addition to your former clients, fellow businesses can also provide support in this area. You’re working with real estate agents on a daily basis, and establishing a trustworthy relationship with top agents in your area will lead to more referrals coming your way.
Home improvement experts, such as general contractors, will be some of the first to know who are looking to upgrade their homes. Financial advisors or attorneys who help with estate planning can also be a source of new leads; if people are setting themselves up financially to buy a home, they will need help getting a loan, which is where you come in!
Most importantly, make sure your past clients are leaving reviews. Five-star reviews on sites like Google, Zillow, and Yelp will help drive organic web traffic to your business, which is one of the more effective ways to generate new lead sources from past customers.
2. Be an Industry Expert
Consumers are more likely to trust a person that they deem to be an expert. You can use your expertise in the mortgage industry as a resource to grow your contact database and increase business. Thanks to our online world, you can easily broadcast your expertise.
Have a solid web presence: Develop a web presence that contains free, helpful tools for consumers that are purchasing a home. Items like interest rate calculators, down payment estimators, and information on different loan programs are all good resources for potential clients. There are also available tools that will allow consumers to browse for homes in their area if they provide their contact information, and you should offer that option.[1]
Also, make sure your website is keyword optimized so that you appear high in Google search results. The use of key terms, including locations and common lending terms in your site’s copy will help improve your rankings.
Make friends on social media: Regular postings on social media can also expand your reach, so set a schedule to post at least 2-3 times a week. Include both important lending news as well as more personal topics, such as loans you’ve recently closed (provided you get permission from your customers).
Facebook and LinkedIn are both highly effective social media tools for networking and expanding your reach within a community. Join local neighborhood groups on Facebook to promote your services to targeted groups. Participate in homebuying forums; if people see you answering questions, you can grow a prospect base through your reputation as a trusted source of information.
3. Get Out in the Community
If you want more referrals, sometimes it can be as simple as becoming a well-known face around town. Hosting or participating in events in and around your community allows you to meet potential clients in a more relaxed environment and begin establishing a relationship under more casual circumstances.
Some creative ways to interact with members of your community:
- Sponsor neighborhood events. See what’s happening at your local parks where events are often held, especially during summer months. Parks are almost always looking for sponsors for these events, and it will give you an opportunity to offer your content to a captive audience.
- Offer free seminars. Hosting events at community centers or other public forums provides in-person opportunities to leverage much of the content you created for your website or social media presence. Getting to know people in real life helps build your brand and establishes trust as a valued resource for mortgage lending within the community.
- Network. Joining local business organizations, like a Chamber of Commerce or local small business organization, will allow you to expand your referral network through other trusted businesses within your local community. Joining these organizations can also open new avenues to network with local consumers through sponsored events.
4. Leverage the Latest Tools to Stay Ahead of the Competition
The best way to a consistent sales pipeline is repeat business, but only around 18% of all mortgage clients do business with the same broker when they look to refinance or buy a new home. Once you build up your contact list, the key is maintaining those relationships.
CoreLogic offers detailed insight into borrower purchase intent so that mortgage brokers can understand their market, identify ideal networking targets, and retain clients.
Precision Marketing from CoreLogic helps you identify and engage with highly motivated customers — both current and past. By combining geolocative intelligence and deep customer insights, Precision Marketing helps reveal when your customers are considering a home purchase or an equity product for home improvement.
Precision Marketing has helped numerous brokers expand their business. See how Tom Ahles of Edge Home Finance has been using this tool to identify which of his clients are in the market for a new home:
Key features:
- Lead Alerts: Be the first to know when your customers begin their home-shopping process.
- Detailed Insights: Know the price range your customers are shopping in, their home value, their equity position, and more.
- Market Monitoring: Monitor your customer base to maximize retention and boost pull-through rates.
- Location Insights: Understand whether customers are shopping for in-state or out-of-state homes.
- Comprehensive Mortgage Profiles: Access complete mortgage data, including primary lender, loan type, and presence of any second mortgages for better cross-sell opportunities.
Market Intelligence from CoreLogic provides extensive insights into the mortgage market, helping you stay ahead of competitors and grow your business. By combining the most comprehensive set of data sources with predictive analytics and industry-leading tools, Market Intelligence enables mortgage brokers to recruit top-performing loan officers, build relationships with real estate agents, and identify high-potential markets to stay ahead of the competition.
Market Intelligence is a valuable resource to see the full picture of the mortgage market and understand which players can help you the most. See how Tom Ahles from Edge Home Finance has been using Market Intelligence to search for and identify top performing loan officers to partner with in his areas of need:
Key features:
- Identify Top Performers: Quickly find high-performing loan officers and real estate agents that fit your business objectives to recruit and build strategic relationships that boost engagements and originations.
- Competitive Analysis: Monitor your competitors’ transaction volume, product mix, geographic reach, and real estate agent relationships so that you can adjust your strategies as needed.
- Comprehensive Data: Access a full view of the mortgage market by leveraging CoreLogic’s extensive datasets and proprietary models, complete with full data transparency and transaction reporting back to 2019.
- Advanced Search and Filtering: Customize your views and reports to find and rank loan officers and real estate agents by geography, loan size, loan type, LMI and MMCT borrowers, and more.
- Market Monitoring: Stay ahead of key mortgage markets, trends, and lending activity in areas that are important to you.
[1] Please be sure to comply with all applicable privacy laws and privacy notice requirements that are applicable in your jurisdiction.
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