How do you create a brand that drives Realtor® referrals?
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The tides have turned and the shores are awash with
those who have lost their jobs due to the rising rates and the resulting falloff
of refinance business. Mortgage companies from coast to coast are working hard
to campaign their way into the Realtor® community, hoping to build the necessary
trust that will drive purchase transactions through their doors.
So, let’s suppose that you’re a company that was built primarily on refinance
transactions or that you’ve just become disengaged from the purchase market. In
either case, you may or may not have a reasonable level of brand awareness with
realtors who already have other relationships in place. So, the question
becomes…how do you penetrate this market?For those who have knowledge of a certain level of positive awareness with realtors, then a good communications strategy to further that awareness, paving the way for your LOs to garner purchase transactions may do the trick! See #3 below.
Here are some questions to ask yourself to get you started in the right direction:
1) Is your
brand understood by your internal and external audiences? If you
have your doubts, then this is the perfect time to find out. What you don’t want
in a fiercely competitive purchase environment is brand confusion internally or
externally as you spend good money developing campaigns and putting “boots on
the ground.”
To start, I recommend conducting a Brand Insight
Assessment (BIA). This exercise can be completed in fairly quick fashion by
developing a few key questions, multiple choice and open ended, and then sent
off through SurveyMonkey to enable
quick response time. The questions should be designed to assess overall
awareness of your brand, what it stands for and where you stand
competitively.
From this assessment, you can discover gaps in
understanding and how well internal and external audience perceptions of your
brand are aligned with each other and your intentions. If the results show gaps
exist, you can now take action to close those gaps.
2) Are your
brand’s unique selling points (USP’s) clear? Be able to
articulate clearly and confidently why realtors should do business with you. If
you feel your
USPs lack strength, are
too commonplace or not backed up by any real proof that they’re true, now is a
good time to reevaluate them.
USPs lack strength, are
too commonplace or not backed up by any real proof that they’re true, now is a
good time to reevaluate them.
If you find yourself struggling with this piece as
many do, you may need to enlist a brand consultant to walk you through the
necessary steps to help you become clear on what your USPs are and how to
properly communicate them for the best audience impact.
3) Do you
have a communications strategy in place that targets realtors?
Your communications strategy for driving referral business is much different
from that which you use to drive refinance business.
Many are used to marketing by the numbers through
mail, broadcast and the Internet. Models have been honed to drive predictable
levels of response from each.
Your strategy for driving Realtor referral
business must be more comprehensive and leverage seminars, speaking engagements,
networking events, Realtor-specific sales materials, a blog, social media,
testimonials (Realtor and home buyer), media relations and much more. Your goal
needs to be expert positioning of your brand in the Realtor community.
All activities should be organized into a schedule
that identifies what you will do month by month over the next year. As your
exposure begins to increase, beware of publications you've never heard of, video
production companies that will get you TV spots on airlines or at obscure times
on cable channels and other vendors that will come out of the woodwork trying to
convince you that if only you spent some of your budget on their service,
business would beat a path to your door. Evaluate them very carefully. Many
can't keep the lofty promises they make…there’s no magic bullet.
4) Does your
way of doing business accommodate the needs of realtors and homebuyers on
deadline to get deals closed? You may want to assess your
business communications and processes to make sure they’re congruent with
being
effective in a purchase
environment. For example, how easy is it for referrers and home buyers to get
status updates? Can they get them via the web or an app, or do they have to call
and leave a voice mail message and wait for a call back? Is your company “set
up” to close loans within a reasonable time frame?
effective in a purchase
environment. For example, how easy is it for referrers and home buyers to get
status updates? Can they get them via the web or an app, or do they have to call
and leave a voice mail message and wait for a call back? Is your company “set
up” to close loans within a reasonable time frame?
If you don’t feel like you’re quite ready from a
communications and process standpoint, this should be an initial area of focus.
If you mess up here, word spreads far and fast.
5) Are your
employees true brand ambassadors? It’s a fact that not everyone
who works for you today should still be a part of your team tomorrow. Some of
your employees may not have what it takes to move forward with your company for
a variety of reasons…attitude, skill set, inability or unwillingness to change,
etc. This is especially true for LOs who’ve built their careers over the recent
past based on a flurry of refinance activity…they just may not have the skill or
desire to work in a purchase market where it’s all about building
relationships.
These pointers should help put your thought process for winning in a purchase
market in the right direction.Your brand must clearly state and provide ongoing proof of your desire, ability and focus on realtors.
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