Marketing Software for Real Estate or Mortgage Brokers

Marketing Software for Real Estate or Mortgage Brokers

BUS 455 Internet & Social Media Marketing

We are approaching 2020, and the Internet is maturing at a more accelerated pace. The typical home buyer and/or loan customer is savvier than ever before. They anticipate a fast website, with accessible interface features, and simplicity of use. The key to understanding your potential customer is essential to maintaining an influx of new and repeat business for any Real Estate/Mortgage office. The best and most effective way to do this is via automation/software.

Establishing a content approach around a well-defined persona brings clarity to the simplest of marketing efforts. In this current climate, there is a massive amount of data that can be collected and leveraged to prove your current thinking of who your audience is. Having this ability makes many marketing enterprises more efficient. Moreover, implementing the influence of social media is considered a science. Nearly nine in 10 real estate professionals now use social media to sell homes. (Real estate gets hooked, 2011) A substantial social media tactician can help you create an idea that inspires the signals needed to become relevant.

Contests and extremely targeted paid social ad campaigns have illustrated significantly powerful addition to the bottom line when executed properly. Some firms find that their internal data sources are fit for usage in a marketing campaign for repeat business.

An example of this is from my current employer. The company initially was just a loan servicing provider. They would service lenders loans by collecting and applying payments, reporting to the credit bureaus, providing account maintenance, and, when needed take care of bad loans by either foreclosing or selling the loan off to a bad debt lender. However, when trying to grow their firm, they realized they had over $3 billion in current loans, which came from 60 thousand loans that were attached to at least half that in borrowers, and these were borrowers that have proven to be able to pay. So, after receiving several inquiries from those borrowers asking if they could refi their loan through them. They decided to test it out.

He first hired some underwriters from both a paper and subprime and had them come up with some make sense lending criteria. He then purchased a small mortgage broker office that already employed ten loan officers and loan processors. Now that he had a product in hand, a staff to sell it and over $800 million in profits from his loan servicing company. He instructed the loan officers to reach out to those people who had inquired about refinancing. He then started actively marketing to his existing clients through direct mail and social media and has grown into a $300 million a year lender in as little as five years. The companies social media marketing plan was simple; they started by developing a website that existing customers could go on and manage their existing accounts. When the customers opted to receive emails from the company about upcoming products and services, it would trigger a back analytics product that would quickly run these customers’ account info against the new loan products they had developed.

Furthermore, if it could prequalify them, it would generate a notification for them to review a prequalified offer for refinancing. Once qualified, if they then decided to follow and like them on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter, they would receive a discount of their qualified rate. This worked for them twofold. They had qualified borrowers they could pick from their own tree, and those borrowers helped them grow across three social media sight overnight and collect inquiries from new potential customers.

In the Real Estate industry, the key is locating a qualified candidate. You want to spend your marketing dollars on people who can actually afford what your selling. So a software that is meant to automate the marketing decision of a growing business would be ideal. Smart Market is meant to take your existing client and call them to action. This can be done by asking them to connect with you through social media. At that point, you will have access to them and all their friend. You have now grown your marketing pool, exponentially.

Now it’s time to see if they can qualify for what the company has to offer, this is where the analytics take over. On your existing clients, it will review their entire history with your company. If you’re a loan company, then it will look at their entire loan history, what they bought, size of family, how they pay, are they ever late, and if so, is there a pattern once it collects this data and analyses it. It can better determine whether someone is likely to default on their loan. Thus, making lending more precise and less of a shot in the dark. This new software leverages the power of the Internet and mobile Apps for connecting the customers directly.

Gone are the days of looking in the yellow pages to locate a company that can provide a service. Yellow pages were printed annually and were often outdated before they were delivered to your front door. Today we use search engines to locate information, and they are still the place for most consumers to find your company and the services you offer.

So, a website that represents a firm needs to be accurate and truthful about what they do and services they provide. Moreover, unlike the old yellow pages, they can be updated and correct in a few clicks. However, knowing exactly how your potential customers search for things you make, or provider can make a huge difference to your business. Example: doorbell, ring doorbell, ring video doorbell, should all be considered if you sell a doorbell that has a camera. Then, placing those words in the best places on your website makes you applicable when the customer is exploring or searching for a specific product.

According to the California Department of Real Estate, there are 94,700 active real estate brokers, and there are 206,500 actives in the state of California as of July 2019. According to the NMLS, there are 207,991 mortgage entities licensed to lend in the US. These are all potential customers, not to mention any new licensees.

I plan to position and communicate this product offering by using live demos at the top 10 Real Estate trade shows. Live demos will create a significant amount of buzz. Furthermore, if we can turn at least half of that buzz into sales, we will be off to a great start. This year over 118 thousand realtors were in attendance at the Realtors Conference & Expo in San Francisco. Presenting a new product, there is like shooting crabs in a barrel.

Trade shows also offer a way to get initial feedback before the product goes live. These people are the target market, and if they give honest opinions and feedback that you can address before going to market is invaluable. Furthermore, it is like having free marketing. They will go away with their recommendations of what is right and wrong about the product. Moreover, if you can address their concerns quickly, then you will have a walking word of mouth advertisement for free.

Combine that with some social media mentions for a small give away, and you will have a good head start. Live Demos and online demos are a great way to advertise and train your future customers.

In conclusion, it is clear that the Internet and social media is a force all its own. And to be successful in the current marketplace, you have to have some Internet presence, and goes far beyond just a website. You need social media presence, and it has to be maintained and monitored as it is ever-changing.

References

California Department of Real Estate Retrieved from http://www.bre.ca.gov/Licensees/

Çiğdem Aytekin, & Seray Merve Keskin Demirli. (2017). The Role Of Social Media In Real Estate Marketing: A Research On The Transformation Of Real Estate Marketing In Turkey. Öneri, (48), 17. https://doi-org.proxy-library.ashford.edu/10.14783/maruoneri.vi.331567

Hu, S., & Li, Q. (2017). Modeling and simulating a smart information-based real estate online platform. Procedia Computer Science, 111, 339–347. https://doi-org.proxy-library.ashford.edu/10.1016/j.procs.2017.06.032

Huszar, Z. R. & Yu, W. (2019). Mortgage Lending Regulatory Arbitrage: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Nonbank Lenders. Journal of Real Estate Research, 41(2), 219–248. https://doi-org.proxy-library.ashford.edu/http://aresjournals.org/loi/rees

Real estate gets hooked. (2011). Marketing Research, 23(3), 4. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsh&AN=67267165&site=eds-live&scope=site