Mortgage Marketing - How to Earn More Business From Realtors®
Is your marketing strategy getting the results you desire? Mailing postcards, handing out flyers, giving out your business card, and referring real estate agents to your website are forms of marketing activity, but does that mean it's effective? Being effective first means understanding how marketing to real estate agents works. Otherwise, you're practicing the definition of insanity - Doing the same thing repeatedly,
each time expecting a different result. Let me share a powerful illustration of marketing: "If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying, "Circus is coming to Fairgrounds Sunday," that's Advertising.
If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk him through town, that's a Promotion.
If the elephant walks through the Mayor's flowerbed, that's Publicity.
If you can get the Mayor to laugh about it, that's Public Relations.
And, if you planned the whole thing, that's Marketing!"
- Author Unknown Crafting a Bulletproof Marketing Plan Do you enjoy rendering service, helping people live the American dream and adding income to an Agent's bank account? I suppose two out of three isn't bad, is it? If you're passionate about helping others, crafting a marketing plan is possible when you learn and understand the key components, which I call the 4 P's. Planning Planning is the foundation from which you build your marketing. The process helps yield decisions on how you can compete best. By taking the time to properly plan you can avoid many of the common mistakes loan officers make in creating an overall marketing strategy. Creating a marketing plan is a formal process of describing the type of relationships you want to attract, how many you want to attract and how you will attract them. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on to do it. You also know what is merely a distraction. Positioning A position is a place in your prospect's mind. You use positioning as a communication tool to reach targeted Agents in an information-overloaded marketplace. By narrowing your focus you can build a position as a specialist or expert in their mind. This increases the chances of your marketing message cutting through the noise. Instead of competing with every loan officer in your town, you've created a niche specialty in which you can become recognized as an expert over time. Positioning is your competitive strategy for getting noticed. One of the most profound statements made on the subject of positioning comes from Louis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland. When Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which path to take, he responds, "If you don't care where you're going, it doesn't make a difference which path you take." Give your marketing plan better focus, or else your service will be perceived as coming from a multi-headed creature -speaking from many mouths, saying nothing and going nowhere. Packaging Often, it's your materials that Agents come across and gives them their first impression. Perceptions are formed from the quality of your materials that promote your services. Packaging is your opportunity to build a personal brand identity with Agents that they'll trust. Packaging that has been professionally designed conveys that you're established, especially important if you're new in the industry. You can shape an Agent's perception to increase credibility, give a sense of stability and most importantly - to make your brand more memorable. Promoting Promoting your services is what gives your brand identity visibility and credibility. To attract quality relationships you desire, Agents must become familiar, comfortable and feel that you're trustworthy. If you're invisible, nobody is thinking of you. Promoting is your opportunity to repeat yourself visually. A Grammy winner never won the award from their fans hearing the song one time. They won because their fans heard their song repeatedly. Once you've determined a position within a niche specialty, your goal is to promote it through every medium that reaches your targeted audience. Become an Agent Magnet In it's simplest terms, it's about knowing which problems that you can solve for Agents and then targeting the Agents who have those problems. The more painstaking the problem you can solve, the better magnetism you have in your marketing. If you chase Agents, they'll always feel they have the upper hand. By incorporating the 4 P's into your marketing and way of thinking, soon you'll have Agents hunting for your services. Jeff Nelson helps mortgage companies and individual loan officers increase loan originations by developing customized relationship-building strategies that secure quality relationships with real estate agents. Click here to get a free copy of the Marketing Planning Guide, a 20-page workbook designed to help you outline the 4 P's into your marketing strategy. Visit us at http://www.loan-officer-marketing.com.
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
The Exiler
THE EXILER (your search for true brand attributes ends here!)
How To Sell To Howard Stern... Oprah Winfrey... And Paul McCartney!
Do you know what Howard Stern... Oprah Winfrey... and Paul McCartney all have in common?
4 Steps to Successful Offline Event Booths
A great way to gain more local sales is to rent a booth at a fair or bizaar. These can be a fun way to spend the day, and if done correctly a profitable one at that. The following are steps you can take to ensure you receive the most sales within the hours or days of the event.
How to Leverage Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool
Second in a series of three articles:
The Battle of Positioning -- Altruism or Paranoia?
Competition in the past has embodied such beliefs of "kill or get killed" which has fostered paranoia with many individuals and companies. Our competitive thinking has been to: defend, hoard, knock off competition, defame and win at any cost. A view propagated by Intel's Andy Grove that, "only the paranoid survive."
Why Referral Business Is So Valuable
With so much money invested on innefective advertising, it's time to look at some good old fashioned ways of generating new business. One tried and tested way is by referral.
Too Much To Do: Four Keys to Effective Delegating
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. General George S. Patton
Always On Stage - 3 Quick Tips for Trade Show Exhibitors
Do you feel uncomfortable when you're in the trade show
booth? Like folks are looking at you? Like you're on stage?
Got as little stage fright?
Todays Definition of Marketing. Has It Changed?
With the continued proliferation of the Internet, the meaning of the word "marketing" also seems to proliferate. Cyberspace has opened up a whole arena of new marketing technologies, techniques, and twists. Amidst the online exuberance, it seems each online marketer or salesperson changes the definition of marketing to suit his or her preference.
Signage for Mobile Car Wash Vehicles
If you are in the mobile car wash business and you should be. Then you know that your clean work vehicles is your best piece of advertising. But what type of signage should you put on it? Your work vehicles will be very visible in the parking lots while you are working. It will be seen all day long as it is driven around town and when it is parked and you are working. The truck should be used as a sales tool. This brings us to the topic of signage on the van or truck. How can we sell car washes, recruit new customers and at the same time provide a proper image for our customers and the corporations where we clean cars at?
Effective Use of Promotional Products and Ad Specialties
1. Determine the goals of your promotional products program. Do you want to create awareness? To attract new customers? To reward or provide incentives to existing customers? Remember to determine a means for measuring the results.
Marketing Hesitation Costs Dearly
Timing is everything. Hate to be late? The early bird gets the worm.
Becoming The Obvious Choice In A Sea Of Competition
Differentiation, niche marketing, and positioning. These and other related business buzzwords have no doubt crossed every business owner and marketing director's ears in recent years.
10 Important Marketing Tips
Each of the following Ten Marketing Tips is based on a
highly effective but often overlooked marketing tactic.
How many are you using? How many have you overlooked?
Top 10 Tips To Market & Build Your Professional Practice
In building and running a professional practice (or any small business or a home-based business), there are many items that must be monitored closely. As a small operation, you can't afford to find out too late that a critical aspect of your business has gotten off-track! This list looks at 10 items to emphasize at the start of a new year, or any time you want to rapidly grow your business in a short period of time.
You Must Get Going If You Want To Get Growing
For many of service-based businesses out there, it's not that you don't know you should be marketing or don't want to get better at it. It's just that you don't.
What Your Customers Want
Your customers don't know what they want. And to assume otherwise is folly. When you begin relying totally on customers to be your product development department, you are asking for serious trouble.
Resume Writing Service Marketing
Marketing A Resume Business
Make It A Threesome
What if -- every time you had a networking appointment with someone -- you invited a third person. Sound like a ridiculous concept? Why on earth would you want to do this? Aren't you taking the focus off of your business and putting it on someone else's? Here are 5 reasons why multiple meetings are beneficial:
Lessons Learned at the Harvard Business School
"If God wanted to create a perfect punishment for a high achiever, then He would have that person manage a professional service firm," says Professor John Gabarro of the Harvard Business School.
|
