Five steps to building a winning mortgage marketing strategy

By ICE Mortgage Technology
December 18, 2024 • 6 min

In the competitive world of lending, keeping your organization top of mind with both current clients and potential borrowers is essential to capturing their business when they’re ready to take the next step in their homeownership journey. A well-crafted marketing strategy is key to nurturing the many relationships within your network, while keeping people informed about the mortgage solutions best suited to their needs. Whether you're reaching out to existing clients, attracting new borrowers or encouraging referrals, the tactics and technologies you use can be the determining factor in the success of your campaign.

Utilizing the following mortgage marketing disciplines will help you execute an effective marketing plan that drives traction and ROI:

Enhance visual content: marketing content is more than just words. Graphic elements, infographics and imagery will make your marketing pieces memorable and help increase conversions.
Automate communications: automating borrower communications with regular, timely touchpoints can accelerate your client’s buying journey, while enhancing their overall experience. This not only impacts your ability to attract new business but can increase customer referrals.
Customize email efforts: incorporate personalized, engaging and educational content within your automated email communications to improve open rates and conversion rates.
Get social: social media marketing is constantly evolving. Taking the time to understand and deploy the most current digital marketing trends and tactics can generate continual growth.
Automate processes: when done right, automating your internal marketing process can optimize the overall performance of your lending team. This includes the many workflows that may have previously been completed manually. By automating these tasks, your team can use their time nurturing personalized customer journeys and closing more loans.

Hitting the right targets

When developing your marketing strategy, it is important to first identify the targets you want to attract, and at what stage(s) of the buying cycle they are in. These may include prospects, borrowers already in the application process, post-close borrowers or any combination thereof. When targeting prospects, creating brand awareness and differentiating your offerings will help drive more people to your business and application process. For in-process targets, providing education, nudges and reengagement workflows can generate higher pull-through rates, while fostering brand loyalty. And once the loan is closed, you can stay top of mind with borrowers, check in with them, educate them and, importantly, earn the right to their repeat and referral business.

Content is king

Quality content is the lifeblood of any successful mortgage marketing strategy. The value of the tools and materials provided to borrowers matters, because it will drive them to your website and your loan officers. Ensuring that your content is appropriately branded is crucial, as the combination of excellent content and consistent, recognizable branding will help to build positive equity with your targets. Your mortgage customer relationship management (CRM) system is key to this effort, as the best ones have powerful tools that convert content from your digital asset management library into fully-branded and data merged emails, landing pages, interactive content, collateral, loan calculators and more.

Developing points of differentiation

As you develop your content, it is important to focus on the things that make you stand out in a crowded field. Why would a borrower choose you as a lender? These differentiators may include some or all of the following:

Strong online presence
Educational and engaging content delivered via email, text and social media
Favorable mortgage rates and fees
Local/regional presence
Fast closing process
Offering a variety of products with excellent borrower benefits
You answer the phone in-person - availability matters!

Automate mortgage marketing with ICE Surefire

When looking for the right mortgage sales and marketing technology for your business, select a solution that supports borrower outreach throughout the mortgage process from a single platform. ICE Surefire has helped thousands of mortgage professionals win new and repeat business, thanks to intuitive set-it-and-forget-it workflows and award-winning content. With Surefire, you can effortlessly maintain and deepen your connections with borrowers, brokers, real estate agents and other members of your lending ecosystem. Learn more about this dynamic automated mortgage marketing technology.