In a world where attention is currency, only a strategic, high-impact marketing and PR approach will drive real growth for mortgage lenders and B2B technology vendors alike as they navigate the current environment.
Competition in the marketplace for each new mortgage technology client and mortgage loan is intense. As such, now more than ever, companies need to focus on how they are positioning themselves to drive market share and attract and retain top talent. Those that do this successfully will thrive.
The formula for accomplishing effective positioning – and doing it very well – includes the development of a well-thought-out strategic marketing and public relations plan.
What challenges are mortgage companies and B2B companies facing when trying to stand out?
Mortgage companies and B2B tech vendors have several challenges they need to overcome as they position themselves to successfully drive market share.
- Brand recognition: With strong brand recognition, you will have a much easier time attracting talent to help you build your company. Strong brand recognition also facilitates new business development and lowers your new client acquisition costs. While your AE’s or originator’s brand and name recognition are incredibly important, it also helps if they are with a company that prospects have heard of.
- Trust barriers: Being a known entity with positive brand recognition breaks down the barriers to trust of your company. When your audiences have trust in your brand, they are more receptive to you. Trust is built through a consistent presence leveraging a variety of communication channels that can include social media platforms, press articles and interviews, online advertising, your website, snail mail, community or industry events, and much more.
- Inefficient marketing: If you are marketing efficiently, you will have a solid brand that differentiates you from your competitors. If this is true, then you have successfully identified you value propositions, key messages, your mission and the vision statements for your company. You know your “why” – meaning why you’re in business and what legacy you want to leave – and all your marketing reinforces that. You have set goals and KPIs to track to ensure you’re hitting those goals.
These challenges are real. Consider your journey compared to that of a well-known mortgage industry brand. If you’re a mortgage company, think of the big ones like Rocket Mortgage, United Wholesale Mortgage, Fairway Independent, and many others. B2B companies might look to companies like ICE, Xactus, Fiserv, First American and others.
These well-known companies have made a substantial investment in SEO, SEM, content, their websites, and just about any outbound or inbound marketing activity you can think of. Therefore, it makes sense that if you want to succeed, you need a solid brand and a well-coordinated marketing effort.
How can a strategic marketing and public relations plan help?
A strategic marketing and public relations plan helps by taking into account how you differentiate yourself in the marketplace and all the communications channels you will need to leverage to drive your key messages into the marketplace in a well-coordinated way. Collaborate proactively with a marketing and PR firm that will work closely with your marketing team to ensure efficient plan development and execution, as well as establish a consistent feedback mechanism.
Let’s dive into four key aspects of a marketing and public relations plan:
Brand differentiation: This is the biggest struggle for many mortgage companies – how to differentiate yourself in a market where you are one of many offering the same products, the same service levels, and technology. For technology vendors, the challenge could be similar or you may provide a platform or service that claims to be best in class. The challenge for the latter is that it’s always only a matter of time before a competitor catches up and somehow one-up’s you.
You might take exception to “the same service levels,” but the point is that everyone claims great service in their marketing whether they have it or not. So, it’s hard to differentiate based on any of these factors when you’re thinking about key marketing messages.
Taking a 2-step approach that includes competitive research and an authentic look inward will help you as you develop your brand differentiation, whether you are a mortgage or industry B2B company:
Competitive Research
Your goal with the competitive research is to uncover how your competitors are positioning themselves to win in the marketplace. Some questions you need answers to include:
- How are their product offerings different?
- What unique selling propositions do they emphasize?
- What are their key messages and taglines?
- What is their marketing tone?
Who Are You?
- Why do you do what you do instead of anything else?
- Why did you start your company?
- When you started it, why did you believe you would be successful?
- How do you want to be known, or what do you want to be known for?
- How would you like your brand to be perceived by your different target audiences?
These two sets of questions are a good starting point.
What you’re going for is establishing a corporate personality that people can identify with, developing your unique value propositions, key messages, your mission and your vision statements.
Your goal is not to try to offer something different from everyone else in the United States. There will always be message overlaps among various mortgage lenders and even tech vendors. Rather, your goal is to establish clarity in all these areas so that you know who you are and, therefore, where you’re going.
Here’s why brand differentiation is important:
- Hiring: Not every high producer is the right fit for your company and the culture you want to create. It’s incredibly important that you hire those that are a good fit for who you are as a company and what you want to be known for.
- Culture: When you have clarity in who you are, why you do what you do, what you want to be known for, and your principles, you have a pathway to hire accordingly and establish a company culture. Top performers, whether you’re referring to originators, your executive team, or other staff members, are interested in working with a company that has a great culture that they fit into and feel like they are a part of. This plays a big role in retention.
- Marketing and public relations: Consistency is key. Having established your brand foundation will help your marketing and PR team. They will understand the goal and the messages to push out to your target audiences to foster familiarity with your company and what you stand for.
Marketing campaign effectiveness: Knowing what tactics to use to drive your message into the marketplace is the easy part. They include social media campaigns, SEO, SEM, a variety of content from videos to blog posts, emails, snail mail, and more. There are many. Then you have to consider your targeting strategy, tracking performance metrics, and how to leverage data for continuous improvement.
You have more than one audience you’re targeting. Therefore, it’s important that you speak to each one of them appropriately so that they don’t feel spammed by you. Depending on your origination channels and products, you could be targeting brokers, banks, consumers directly, real estate agents, investors, builders, 1st time homebuyers, current homeowners, 2nd home buyers, and more. For B2B technology vendors, you could be targeting brokers, banks, builders, mortgage lenders of a particular size, specific titles, jobs, experience levels and more. And you can break these audiences down into even narrower targets.
Your ability to identify your target audiences accurately and speak to their needs and concerns when reaching out to them is important for your success. This becomes even more true as time goes on and data and technology improve.
We’re all consumers. As consumers, we have higher expectations for the brands we like. Case in point: I do not need to receive an offer to refinance my house. I just did that. As of this writing, rates have not dropped to the point where it would make any financial sense for me to do it again. So, if I receive a refi mailer from my servicer, I think they are disorganized, trying to trick me into a transaction that benefits them more than me, and wasted paper on me. It’s even worse if they reach out to me by phone.
As a final note on this topic, what separates the winners from the losers is how well you know how to set the right KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), how to leverage data, and how to analyze data to inform campaign improvements.
When you execute a campaign, there are incremental milestones you need to hit that help you determine its effectiveness and whether you will hit the ultimate campaign goals. They can include website traffic, social media engagement, inbound calls, form fill-outs, content downloads and many more. Your ability to sort through this data and do a proper analysis is critical since you have access to it.
Leveraging PR effectively for greater positive awareness: It’s one thing to receive a mailer or come across a post on social media about the benefits of working with your company. It’s another thing to see that you’re sponsoring an event, receiving a top workplace award, landing an article in a key publication, speaking at a conference or on a podcast, or being interviewed by an important media outlet.
All of these things layered on top of a robust marketing strategy takes your brand recognition to new heights.
What’s great is that there are so many opportunities in the public relations realm for free, or earned, publicity. When people see your presence in the marketplace, they are witnessing a very public endorsement of your brand which goes a long way to build trust. Think about the impact this has when you want to hire top people to build out your team, or be recognized as a thought leader or a pillar of the communities you serve geographically.
At Seroka, our established relationships in the media and throughout the industry can help you achieve your earned media goals efficiently.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) enhances satisfaction and retention: Having a CRM component to your strategy is important for nurturing prospects, retention, and customer satisfaction. To aid this, there are some great platforms out there like Total Expert, Surefire, Aidium, Bonzo, Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo and many others that have tremendous capabilities and provide deep insights – well beyond what you can achieve with a spreadsheet. That means more closings. When companies focus on getting the most out of these platforms, the ROI is amazing.
Mortgage industry companies are living in a fiercely competitive environment, especially now, when many are just starting to see some profitability again. To be successful, you have to have a way to stand out and earn the trust of your target audience so that you can build market share.
The mortgage market is continuing to get much more sophisticated, for both consumers and lenders alike. So, having a solid strategic marketing and public relations strategy is important for long-term success. And remember, your ability to connect authentically, retain top talent, and adapt to changing environments in real estate will be key factors that set you apart. Invest in your strategy and commit to continuous improvement!