Generating loan broker leads to boost your company’s growth is only basic and natural. Although this is easy to understand, it can be difficult to master the entire process. The mortgage industry is competitive. This makes loan broker lead generation an essential part of your business but also one of the most challenging ones.
To get started properly, note that you lose opportunities to modern methods of generating leads if you stick to old ways, as with almost every business model.
While this does not mean you should stop cold calling and partnership-building efforts, updating or adding a few more lead generations strategies is the best idea.
In order to be discovered by younger generations who live online, it is important to learn how to enhance your lead generation process with strategies that bring potential customers to you, rather than the other way around.
To lend a hand, we decided to compile the best strategies you must add to your lead generation plan.
Build a Website. A Very Good One
In 2021 and soon 2022, having a website is just basic. However, a poorly designed and built one won’t do for your lead generation efforts.
Research shows that 39% of website users will abandon a poorly designed site, and over 90% of users will choose to shop with competitors if they have a bad experience using a website.
Your website is your strongest marketing asset and the place where all your leads will fall eventually. It can help prospects decide which lender they want to use and make a choice right on your website with all the options.
A beautiful website with a purposeful design and good content is the best way to generate high-quality leads.
Building a website can be a bit more challenging than other marketing strategies, though. There are many web builders such as Squarespace and Wix that can work well for a while.
If you are looking for real growth and a true impact website, contact a developer or designer who uses WordPress since it is the main platform to care about.
Trust & Authority Building with Valuable Content
Your website should be a trusted authority, and when you achieve it, this is a great way to get organic traffic to your website.
There is plenty of competition in this industry, which is why it is important to choose a niche and create content that shows your expertise. This will help you establish authority.
It doesn’t matter if you only focus on one line of business. However, well-written niche content can be your lead magnet.
This is the first step to building a relationship with your website visitors, and you don’t have to limit yourself to writing content. Mixing text, video, and infographics can help you appeal to a wider audience.
Optimizing Your Site for More Loan Broker Leads
After establishing your expertise through high-quality content, optimize the site so visitors can easily complete actions that get them into your pipeline.
These are the basic principles you should follow to increase your chances of converting visitors to sales qualified leads for your loan broker:
- Remove the clutter.
- Clear and obvious calls to action.
- Reduce friction.
Focusing on one by one, let’s get into the topic:
- Reduce the clutter.
It is easy to see how the concept of trimming or eliminating clutter can be explained. Your site should be:
- Easy to scan.
- Don’t fill it with more elements than necessary.
- Avoid having multiple calls to action located on the same page.
Each page should have a purpose, and it should be respected. Research shows that there is a very narrow window of opportunity (a few seconds) for you to catch the attention of a visitor.
Your site should not overwhelm someone with irrelevant and unrelated information. They will leave if you don’t meet this. Also, people will leave your site if it loads too slowly.
Within a matter of seconds, ensure that a visitor to your website can easily understand who you are as well as what you do.
- Simple and clear calls to action.
Call-to-action (CTA) is simply an element that encourages visitors to take immediate action based on what your element established is for
You can make it as simple as a line, button, form, or text. Your CTAs will increase their effectiveness by clearly describing the action that the person will take. This will reduce the fear of what’s coming that can cause people to flee.
CTAs need to be prominently visible, especially on your homepage. It means that visitors don’t have to scroll down to view the CTA or take the desired action.
Your CTAs should not be lost. Choose colors, sizes, and placements that are easy to see.
- Reducing friction.
To achieve the desired result, you must reduce friction in your CTAs. This will help increase your loan broker leads.
Friction is any action that slows down or makes it more difficult to complete your desired actions. So, prospects have less reason for exit, making the steps short and easy.
High-Qualified Traffic to Your Website
Only a tiny percentage of website traffic converts to qualified loan broker leads. This makes it even more important to optimize your website for conversions besides using the elements above.
After you’ve completed these steps, you can start to pull the levers that drive traffic to your website.
When it comes to this task, no formula can simplify it. You can’t do everything instantly and make a huge difference, but the combination of these details with some time will lead to qualified traffic:
- Organic traffic-generating channels.
We categorize traffic sources into channels when we talk about how to generate traffic to your site. Although you may use different strategies or tactics within a channel to generate traffic, it doesn’t alter the source.
Social media will always be social media regardless of how you leverage it, for instance.
These channels offer the best results for the least amount of money. The only thing that costs you is your time.
- High-Value Content.
Marketing experts say that content is the king. Part one of your strategy for optimization is to use niche content that is high-value for your customers to build authority and trust.
This content can be used to attract customers in search engines. To generate traffic, you can also share the content on social media.
- Work on SEO.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process that allows search engines like Google and Bing to identify what your content is about to be able to deliver relevant content to people who are searching for it.
While traffic may be your ultimate goal, Google and other search engines like Bing, etc., aim to help users find the best content on the topic they are looking for.
Your content should be able to achieve both of these goals.
SEO can seem daunting, but if you master the basics, you will be able to position your content so that it ranks well in search results along with your entire site.
Local SEO for Websites
Another low-hanging fruit recommendation is to make sure your website’s metadata has been properly set up for local searches.
Each website should have a title and a description that are visible in search results. Use local keywords to leverage your website’s potential.
If you don’t understand what we are referring to, here’s an example.
Suppose you have set the keywords “loan broker for homeowners” as part of your SEO efforts in content. However, if you want to move this to a local option, the optimal action would be a “loan broker near you” or “loan broker in [CITY NAME].”
The screenshot shows that our search first returns only a handful of major listing websites. Google immediately lists local businesses whose website title matches our search terms. For this example, we used New York as the city.
Basically, the search engine will display the local website’s Google My Business listing at the top of the map, and along with it, the rating or stars will be shown.
Google uses the prospect’s IP address to find their location to determine their proximity to local businesses.
You need to make sure your business is the one that appears in local searches, and for it, SEO enters the picture.
Reviews for Your Business
You can find many surveys and statistics showing that 90% of people read reviews online about local businesses before choosing to work with any company.
Also, social proof has been rebranded to “reputation marketing” over the years due to the ease with which business experiences can be shared.
It is important to have positive reviews in order to win the 2-second battle for attention via search results and review-centric services such as Yelp!
Trust is associated with having a rating of at least four stars on a review, and if you can take that to a 5, even better. People will not go to your website if the rating is below three stars.
After you have closed with a happy customer, ask them for feedback by writing a review.
You can remove the friction by giving them the link to the review and saving them time to go to your page and leave it. There are most likely not to do it.
Consider offering a discount or other incentive to reviewers in order to generate leads.
Social Media Works for Loan Brokers
Social media is a network of interconnected social circles. Every person has their “friends” and “connections” within a tightly-knit network. Though, we don’t think it needs that much explanation.
We have to mention that this creates an opportunity for word-of-mouth marketing through your clients and their networks.
You must have a strategy in place and follow it regularly to be successful on social media. Remember, these platforms are all about speed, so it’s important to post frequently.
You can post links to your content in your social media posts. There are many networking and branding opportunities.
Facebook is now the most popular social media platform for B2C prospecting. However, it’s important to remember that people don’t visit Facebook just to see boring ads.
LinkedIn is a serious network that is built on professional relationships and often offers niche marketing opportunities to professional groups in your local area.
Remember always to add value. For example, if you want to build a network of loan brokers or clients that need your services on LinkedIn, make sure that you provide value by providing content they are interested in. Do not appear self-serving.
Of course, other social media platforms like Instagram can work but add less value to your lead generation strategy.
Non-Traditional Business Partnerships
It’s a great way to expand your network and increase your inbound leads for loans by establishing relationships with potential referral partners that are not Realtor/Builder-types.
How many professionals do you know who can help you find the right prospects, especially when it comes to loans? We can leave you a list:
- Life Insurance Agents and Financial Planners.
Life insurance is purchased to protect their loved ones and ensure their lifestyle in the unfortunate event of a death. It often includes debt obligations such as a loan to pay for the full price or initial quote.
It’s not always the best solution, but this can be a great way to connect with people that need your loan options and lenders.
Advisors and financial planners are able to assess a person’s financial situation, including their loan terms. The trusted advisor can recommend a loan modification if the payments are lower, as well as advice on real estate investments. You can be the source to provide any loan alternative and be recommended by them.
- Local Credit Unions and Banks Without Loan Services.
This partnership is a unique one. In particular, with smaller credit unions, it is not always possible to offer a loan service for customers on their behalf. This creates a natural referral opportunity to loan broker leads, and you should be at the top of the recommendations.
Management of Customer Relationships
You likely have a customer relationship management system. Well, it should not be used for customer information. Instead, let it sit until you need to access the customer’s file.
Be proactive about your system. As you grow your client base and build up your database, you will have many clients ready for future transactions.
Maybe it’s been five or six years since they last got their loan. Their terms may not be as favorable.
You know they can get a better deal if they refinance, given the current market conditions. You decide to get in touch with them to let them know the current market conditions and offer to refinance when they are ready.
You have provided great value and built more trust, and used a freeway for your company to generate more leads.
This is why these systems are so useful. They can also be used to automate marketing, email scheduling, reminders, and pipelines.
Measuring Your Lead Generation Efforts
Digital marketing has the advantage of being easy to use and accessible. In just a few clicks, you can see data that directly impacts your bottom line.
Thus, it is important that you utilize the tools you are given since, in this case, measuring is everything.
To ensure you are using the right ones, take note of the tools below and join the database to access your statistics:
- Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is the holy grail for online marketing data visualization. It is completely free and can be linked to your website with a very simple line of code.
It can be linked to tracking how many people visit your website. This includes how long they stay there, what pages they click on, their language choice, platform used, how they reached your site, conversion rates, and other information.
As you gather more data and your marketing systems improve, you will begin to notice patterns and better understand your customers. This information will help you make adjustments to your marketing plans and target customers more precisely. It will also allow you to set up campaigns with a better understanding.
- Google Search Console.
Google Search Console is another 100%-free software. It monitors the activity of your website in Google’s search results.
You can view, for example, the number of times that your website has been shown to search users over a time period. These are known as “impressions.” It also shows you how often users click on your links.
You can even see which keywords people are searching for on your site, down to the pages. These insights can be extremely valuable as they allow you to see the performance of your website and make strategic adjustments.
- Social Media Analytics
Nearly every social media platform offers some kind of analytics platform that allows businesses to assess the effectiveness of their marketing.
Facebook is a great example of a robust analytics platform. It shows data such as user engagement, reach and click rates, following trends, and other relevant information.
These statistics will help you ensure that your social media marketing campaigns run smoothly if you invest in them. Social media is about making adjustments and testing to find which posts are most popular.
Use Retargeting Ads for Follow-Up
Although optimizing and creating a complete digital advertising campaign is best left to experts, anyone can create a simple retargeting program.
Retargeting campaigns are designed to find people who have visited your site but did not “convert.” Show them an ad if they didn’t complete a lead form.
These are a great way for customers to be reminded that they have already expressed interest in your services and visited your website. However, they might have been distracted.
These ads are usually more cost-effective than cost-per-click ads, particularly when you are competing with multiple lenders. To expand your reach, you can either set up retargeting ads directly on Google or Facebook.
You can start with a generic ad and then customize your campaign by creating ads that target a specific topic or targeting people who have visited a particular page on your site.
You might want to target people who have visited a page on refinancing with a more specific ad about the topic.
Should You Buy Loan Broker Leads?
Lead generation companies can drive traffic to their websites and generate more leads for other people.
This means you could request the services and have them generate the qualified leads you have been trying to obtain with all these lead generation strategies. However, is it worth it?
What are the pros and disadvantages of using a lead generation service instead of being self-sufficient? You can have a look below:
Pros
- You can get leads immediately without spending time building your website or learning how to promote it.
- Fixed cost per lead.
- You can specify the type of leads that you would like.
- You have the option to choose from which postcodes you would like leads.
Cons
- The quality of leads can vary, especially if an affiliate supplies some or all of the leads.
- Before you can convert a lead into a business, it may be necessary to purchase several leads.
- It can be difficult to reach leads, especially if they take too long to reply.
- Invalid leads can be difficult to return.
- The cost per lead can be very high.
- You aren’t guaranteed they are qualified business loan leads and not just random lists provided to every business interested in them.
In our experience, it is ten times better to work in your lead generation strategy instead of paying for the leads. It may work for some initially, but spending money on prospects that do not always convert or are most likely not to be valuable seems useless.
Of course, we know lead generation takes time, but with your effort, you will notice much better results for half the price by using lead generation tools that work and adding the best sales team to your plan.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Loan Broker Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Loan Broker Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Loan Broker Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.