Mortgage Marketing: Nurturing Your Leads

Let’s say that you have a number of promising leads in the pipeline but none of them seem ready to use your services just yet.  Naturally, you don’t want to throw in the towel and write them off.  So, how can you engage with your leads in a manner that  will increase the likelihood that they will work with you in the future?  You do this by nurturing your leads.  This process  involves keeping in regular contact with your leads as you build trust and credibility.  Then when they are in need of the  services you provide, they’ll choose to do business with you.  To improve your lead nurturing efforts, we offer up the following  pointers:

•  Opt In – Get permission from your lead to stay in touch by asking him to opt-in to receive future communications  from you.
•  Regularly Communicate – An important part of the lead nurturing process is staying in regular communication.  Rather  than throwing together a hastily constructed email every several months, instead strive to contact your lead on a regular basis with useful information.
• Be Responsive – If a lead does get in touch with you or submits an inquiry on your website, respond quickly.  The more responsive you are to your leads, the more you will establish yourself as a trustworthy professional in their minds.
• Create Quality Content – You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Content is king.”  That’s a good thing to remember when you are creating content for lead nurturing.  Try to focus on addressing things that your leads will find relevant or interesting.  If they are considering refinancing, for example, you might want to send them an article about the latest trends in home improvement, something that people often do after they refinance their homes.  Or, if you find an article indicating that interest rates are expected to rise, you may want to forward that along.  Most people don’t mind receiving emails from salespeople if they find the content useful.
• Provide Value – While it may be tempting to send out emails where you remind leads over and over again about your qualifications, this can be counterproductive.  Rather than go on at length about yourself, focus on your leads’ needs and concerns.  Great mortgage marketers know that communications should be customer-focused rather than egocentric in nature.  Also, avoid inundating your leads with emails that are heavily sales-oriented but light on content.  Only about 20% of your emails should be sales-oriented in nature; the remaining 80% should be more customer-focused for maximum effectiveness.