The Truth about Mortgage Leads
Generating mortgage leads falls into two categories: self-generated and purchased.
Purchased Mortgage Leads
Buying mortgage leads is like dropping your fishing line into a fast moving stream. You need to be ready to hold on to what you catch on your line. Before buying a single mortgage lead, you need to be ready to receive, distribute and work incoming leads.
Purchasing mortgage leads seems like the easy way to sales, but experienced lead buyers know that without careful planning and a strong infrastructure, the costs of purchasing leads can quickly swell to a much larger number than your incoming sales.
Self-Generated Leads
The alternative to buying leads is to generate them yourself. The primary advantage of generating leads with your own marketing programs is that you can be guaranteed of the quality of your incoming leads. The main disadvantage is that growing your own leads program takes a while. If you are trying to feed a sales team with leads right now, you might have to start with purchasing mortgage leads even if your eventual goal is to generate them yourself.
Generating mortgage leads with your own digital marketing program requires more than just a web site and a prayer. Web, mobile, social and email are the main parts of your digital marketing arsenal, and how you use those tools will determine how many leads you create and how quickly.
What about Lead Conversion?
Without a strong lead conversion program, it does not matter whether you buy mortgage leads or generate them yourself. Most mortgage originators spend large amounts of money buying or generating leads and almost nothing on lead conversion strategies.
Successful mortgage lead generation programs demand strong lead conversion programs to succeed because of the long lag time between initial contact with a client and their final decision to act. For example, a first time home buyer might contact your mortgage company to request a pre-approval, but it may take up to a year for that buyer to find the home that’s right for them.
ProHomeLink is Eastwood Realty System’s solution to help mortgage loan officers convert purchase mortgage leads into closed mortgage loans. For details, click here.
