How to Manage Site Visits Successfully

Transcription

1 EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SUCCESSFUL ONLINE MORTGAGE ORIGINATION BUT Consumer Direct Mortgage Marketing From A-Z WERE AFRAID TO ASK Must read information on sourcing site visitors, meeting their value proposition, and creating sticky experiences to keep them engaged - A quick how to guide on establishing and growing scalable internet mortgage origination.

2 Contents Foreward... 2 Online Mortgage Origination Part I: - Sourcing Site Visitors... 3 Traffic Aggregation Models... 3 Aggregating Site Visits... 3 Self-Sourcing Site Visits... 4 Self-Sourcing Site Traffic Required Skill Sets... 4 Hybrid Aggregation... 4 The Dance You Must Learn - The Consumer Direct Two-Step... 5 Creative Process... 5 Online Mortgage Origination Part I: - Sourcing Site Visitors, Summary Consumer Direct Mortgage Marketing From A-Z LoanTek, Inc.

3 Foreward The following pages represent over twenty years experience in mortgage internet marketing and online origination. One could certainly write entire books on the individual concepts of sourcing site visitors, meeting their value proposition, making the site visitor s experience sticky, and creating scalable online origination. While each of these topics is addressed herein more time would be required on both the reader and the author to affect a truly comprehensive piece on each. Therefor what follows is the short hand cliff notes to each respectively. The intention is to create a useful reference for your purposes and, hopefully, to pass on more of a success strategy and less of a cure for insomnia. Adam Stein, CEO, LoanTek 2 Consumer Direct Mortgage Marketing From A-Z LoanTek, Inc.

4 Online Mortgage Origination Part I: - Sourcing Site Visitors Traffic Aggregation Models Obtaining site visitors is the starting point of any online campaign. Simply put, without traffic (site visitors) there is no online origination. Traffic aggregation is no easy task; it has gotten easier, however, with the advent of social media, Google AdWords, blogging, mortgage tables, and other forms of lead generation that generate online referrals. When considering how to drive online traffic there are three paths a lender can take: aggregating, self-sourcing, and hybrid aggregation. Aggregating Site Visits For most lenders the aggregation model is the easiest to adopt and manage. Aggregating site visits and leads from third parties is more effective, time and cost efficient, when compared to the average lender s technical abilities. There are an abundant number of third party providers that can provide the lender with site traffic and leads. The aggregation method is therefore the easiest and most oft used starting point to create online origination. While the process of finding the consumers you want may have just gotten easier the process of evaluating and optimizing your results are very similar to the self- sourced model. You will still need a few tools to manage, optimize, and measure your marketing spend: Google Analytics, landing pages, and lead management. There is a reason that the top online aggregators like Bankrate, LendingTree, Trulia, and Zillow exist they re experts at the generating mortgage traffic and they command large streams of revenue by aggregating site visitors and rerouting them to their advertising partners. The primary difference between self-sourcing traffic and aggregating traffic is this: you are paying a third party for referring their traffic to you and, or, converting this traffic for you (leads). There are two types of aggregation Pay-Per-Click and Pay-Per-Action. Pay-per-click is similar to the prior self-sourcing avenues in that you will still need effective landing pages that convert these visitors efficiently Pay-per-action is, by any other name, a lead that has been already been converted. 3 Consumer Direct Mortgage Marketing From A-Z LoanTek, Inc.

5 In either case the answers to how many clicks to a lead? and how many leads to a funded loan? will determine whether the funds invested in the respective aggregation channels are to be nurtured or diminished (See Feed or Bleed later in this section). Self-Sourcing Site Visits Self-Sourcing Site Traffic Required Skill Sets The primary fail point of the self-souring method is that most lenders do not adequately pursue this method to achieve successful results; those that do, however, are richly rewarded. Selfsourcing site traffic can be done effectively but the tasks and skills to accomplish the end goal are no laughing matter. There are two key steps to successfully self-source mortgage originations online: create an engaging website, or landing page, that converts optimally, and; determine where you drive traffic from (Google AdWords, Facebook, Etc.,). What follows is a short list of the skills a lender will be required to possess, hire, or contract, to create an effective self- sourced campaign: - Copy Writing the ability to write concise marketing that will create engagement Graphic Design & Web Design the ability to create imagery and landing pages that will use your content to convert clicks to actionable consumer records - Content Writing (Blogging) the ability to regularly create and post unique content. Specifically, content that meets the value proposition of the consumer and creates Search Engine Optimization - Managerial Accounting the ability to measure the expense and conversion of your overall consumer aggregation model and manage the results accordingly Hybrid Aggregation Hybrid aggregation assumes two basic concepts: You have successfully implemented either self-aggregated or aggregated traffic; and, You are profitably managing these and you want to increase you sales opportunities. Congratulations on having reached this point! By revisiting the applicable section above you can grow your site traffic model to its fullest potential. You have already done half the work by this point and acquired the basic skills to measure your expense and conversion ratios. With a little more work and creative design you should be able to affect internet traffic at the highest volumes possible. 4 Consumer Direct Mortgage Marketing From A-Z LoanTek, Inc.

6 The Dance You Must Learn - The Consumer Direct Two-Step Independent of how you create your site traffic there are two required processes to launch an online campaign; one must create website collateral (landing pages) and also the ability to track the traffic and resulting conversions (Google Analytics and Lead Management). Some tips on managing this process are detailed below: Creative Process 1. For optimum conversion you will need to design very specific landing pages. These pages should be designed to convert traffic from a specific source. To make certain that the final landing page is not wasting your marketing dollars by performing poorly, you will want to create more than one page for comparison data. This process is called A/B testing. By creating a number of pages with unique content, imagery, and page design you can effect A/B testing. A/B testing is then the practice of producing multiple landing pages and studying their respective performance. By looking at a given landing page s conversion data, and comparing its performance against another, one is able to create an optimum landing page that leverages the strengths of each. Implementing A/B testing will allow you to create optimum web designs and content solutions convert to the highest number of leads per site visit. Managing Marketing Feed or Bleed 2. Once you have developed the optimum landing page use a Feed or Bleed budgeting process on the sources of your site traffic. Simply put, use Google Analytics to assess where your marketing dollars are working (Google Analytics is free I like free). Using the data from Google Analytics ask questions like: How much traffic is being referred from X? How many leads are resulting from the landing page per visit? When you get down to it these are the only things that matter: how many visitors did I get for my marketing dollar and how many converted to leads? The first question is a topline benchmark of your marketing dollar s efficiency with the given traffic source. The second question is more related to the effectiveness of your creative page, content, and quality of the traffic being referred: 5 Consumer Direct Mortgage Marketing From A-Z LoanTek, Inc.

7 Does my page meet the site visitor s value proposition? And, With respect to the quality of the traffic being referred: are the site visitors coming from X predominantly home buyers looking for financing or are they garbage clicks with high bounce rates? The answers to these questions will dictate which traffic sources to feed and which source to bleed. They will lead to the effective management of your marketing dollar and the cost efficient production of online consumers. Online Mortgage Origination Part I: - Sourcing Site Visitors, Summary Choose your method of traffic aggregation Develop specific landing pages to convert the traffic Use Google Analytics to measure traffic volume from sources Use Lead Management Systems to measure resulting lead conversion ratios Apply Feed or Bleed strategy based upon the data Go Next - add new sources of traffic into the model to effect more visitors 6 Consumer Direct Mortgage Marketing From A-Z LoanTek, Inc.