Archive for December, 2010
Back from NAMB West!
Posted by Kyle in Uncategorized on December 10, 2010
LenderHomepage just got back from the National Association of Mortgage Bankers (NAMB) West trade show in the one and only Las Vegas, Nevada. Worked the trade show floor, got in a bunch of meetings, and had a great time hanging out with the gorilla. What? You haven’t met the gorilla? The gorilla is a mortgage marketing genius.
A few photos from the trip.
7 Ways to Market Your Mortgage Website
Posted by Kyle in Mortgage Website Design, Mortgage Website Marketing on December 7, 2010
Designing and creating a solid mortgage website is just the first step toward converting internet traffic into leads. Check out these 7 mortgage marketing tips to get your website discovered.
1. Work with a consultant or a web design firm to work some SEO magic on your page. Honestly, though, SEO isn’t magic. It’s as simple as including the right keyword terms in your site content in order to help search engines such as Google better identify your site. It’s not rocket science, but it can get complicated. At LenderHomepage.com, we offer professional SEO consultation as part of our suite of web design services. Just saying.
2. Sign up for Google AdWords or another pay-per-click (PPC) service. AdWords is considered to be the best, and it’s not hard to get started with it. It will cost you some money, but you’re guaranteed traffic.
3. Build a landing page, separate from your website, to capture traffic from your ads. Not sure what a landing page is? Check out our analysis of the differences between websites and landing pages.
4. Use your website to respond to current events or news stories of the day. Establish yourself as an expert, a thought leader in the industry. It will build your credibility and help establish trust between you and your visitors.
5. Alternately, you could make the news yourself. Do something interesting and valuable with your business, such as donating blankets to a homeless shelter, and write a press release about it. Try to get local news sources to run with the release.
6. Become known as a problem solver by allowing visitors to ask questions or seek advice. Then, do everything you can to solve their problems for them, whether or not they promise payment. Word of mouth will create awareness.
7. Write an e-book and allow visitors to download it. Fill the book with your knowledge and expertise. Make sure your book content truly informs and helps the readers, though, or it won’t catch on.
Can you think of other ideas?
Top 3 Problems That Will Kill Your Mortgage Website (And How You Can Fix Them)
Posted by Kyle in Mortgage Website Design, Mortgage Website Discussion, Mortgage Website Values, SEO on December 2, 2010
Research shows that consumers seek real estate and mortgage services via the internet more frequently than any other medium. We’re in a digital, information-driven age. Sorry, but your ad in the phone book just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
That said, your mortgage website isn’t a magic money machine. You may find, in fact, that your website isn’t bringing in any new applications, leads, or even site traffic. If this is the case, one of the following issues may be at fault.
1. Your website is impossible to find. This is the fundamental reason websites fail. If no one ever sees your site, your site is a waste of time and money.
How you can fix it: Visitors won’t stumble onto your website accidentally, and you don’t want “accidental visitors” anyway. You want real, significant, qualified traffic. The following steps will help ensure that you get it.
- Make sure you have a domain name that is catchy, memorable, and easy-to-read-and-type.
- Fill your site with valuable, relevant content and information.
- Optimize your title tags to reflect the keywords your target market searches for, and integrate these keywords into your content. Consult with an SEO specialist to gain further ideas about how to optimize your site.
- Connect with other sites and affiliates. Get links to your pages out there for others to find.
- Check out these other ways to drive traffic to your site.
2. You have nothing to say. While good, valuable content can help solve your traffic problems, poor or confusing content will turn visitors away from your site once they get there. If your site makes no sense or doesn’t seem to offer anything useful, visitors won’t stick around long, and they definitely won’t call you for a loan.
How you can fix it: Again, content is the answer. Host a blog, post articles, update your pages on a regular basis with graphs, charts, market news, and more. Do anything you can to continuously provide visitors with the information they’re looking for, and organize it in a way that’s logical and easy-to-follow.
- Feature industry news on a regular basis. Offer your opinions on recent events.
- Write pages that cover small, local markets. A page for each local suburb or neighborhood might be good.
- Integrate a blog into your site, and update it with valuable content as often as possible.
3. Your site doesn’t evoke trust. Let’s say you’re getting traffic, you’ve got your content organized concisely, but still no leads. It may be that the way you’ve presented your site to visitors makes them feel pressured or skeptical. If you’re promising pie in the sky, your visitors will sense that you aren’t being honest. If your site is just a big mortgage marketing billboard, visitors will suspect a scam. It’s not easy to establish trust on the internet, but it can be done.
How you can fix it: Transparency and authenticity are key.
- Talk about yourself, but not too much. You need to let visitors know who you are, but don’t make yourself out to be some kind of hero or you’ll lose them. Post a few pictures of yourself and a bio.
- Be realistic. Talk about the true state of the economy, offer practical lending options, and so on.
- Focus on educating your visitors rather than selling to them. This is the best way to establish trust, and sales will follow trust.
Sound like a lot of work? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. Your best option is to work with a web development company that has the knowledge and ability to address these issues before they arise.