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Mortgage Industry: Create Brand Experiences that Drive Business Growth

Posted by John Seroka on Thu, Oct 31, 2013

  

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The mortgage industry is fiercely competitive, especially among lenders. This killer competition is the driving force behind the industry’s adoption of some of the most forward-thinking strategies to capture the minds of the various publics it serves, both on the direct-to-consumer side and business-to-business side. Many marketing departments get caught up in the execution of tactics designed to drive business volume, but need to take a step back and determine how well those tactics really communicate their brand and whether those tactics will ultimately be memorable and connect with the audience on an emotional level.

Enter “experiential marketing.” Let’s start with a definition: According to Wikipedia, “experiential marketing is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumers and invites and encourages consumers to participate in the evolution of a brand. Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of messages, experiential marketers believe that consumers should be actively involved in the production and co-creation of marketing programs, developing a relationship with the brand.” Basically, it’s the process of using positive customer experience as a powerful component or as a foundation of your marketing strategy.

Experiential marketers think in terms of involving as many of the five senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing) of their target audience as possible in order to gain the most benefit in connecting with them on an emotional level. The more senses involved, the better the recipient will remember your brand. That said, I wanted to share with you a video of a full-blown campaign launched by TNT network in April 2012 in Belgium, to help you understand experiential marketing at its best…

Now, of course this is an extreme example that no doubt involved a massive budget, but now you get the idea.
In the mortgage industry, the question becomes, how would you best convey the experience of working with your company?

Here are some ideas designed to stimulate your creative thoughts that don’t necessarily require securing an enormous budget.

• Video testimonials: This one is the easiest to integrate immediately, with a very low budget threshold.
  Consumers don’t trust actors/actresses or other public figures they see promoting a product or service anymore. They're smarter than that...they understand these people are "purchased." But they DO trust others’ experiential advice like you would never believe. Customer testimonial videos capitalize on this trend. They don’t need to be especially slick or “overproduced,” they just need to be unscripted and truthful. Here’s an industry example brought to you by Quicken Loans:

• Local home and garden show events for the consumer-facing side of the industry: Creating an experience in a conservative industry such as ours is difficult, but it can be done, simply, with a very low budget threshold. Give qualified booth visitors an opportunity to experience what it would be like to work with you.
  If you’re a lender, for example, and you’re setting your sights on an upcoming local home and garden show you’ll be attending, I encourage you to think outside of the booth, so to speak. Think beyond the brochure stack, business cards and pens with your corporate name on them. You can keep it as simple as creating an experience with your company right at the booth by integrating a theme: having a home loan counselor on site dressed like JP Morgan, a credit repair specialist dressed as an old-school accountant, someone specializing in new construction wearing a hard hat, etc. You get the idea: Pick people from your company who have a superior “bedside manner,” if you will, and have them dress according to their roles in a fun way. This just requires a bit of imagination.
  Have a place where they can take prospective borrowers away from the action surrounding your booth to sit down and provide expert counsel, giving them the chance to experience your company. Your reps may provide an on-site preapproval certificate or printed-out action plan generated by your reps to help potential borrowers recall next steps and envision homeownership.

• Industry trade show: The annual MBA trade show is ripe for experiential marketing events. At these shows, you see three levels of marketing…
  Level 1 is the “giveaway” booth. The giveaway booth has brochures, business cards, pens, key fobs…all designed for potential clients, qualified or not, to put in their convention bags and move on. The booth visitors are approached by a salesperson who tries to drag the attendee into the booth and talk with them and give them some type of product demo.
  Level 2 is the “please come see me booth.” This booth attempts to take the booth experience to the next level by giving away anything from junk food to car leases to bicycles to Harley-Davidson motorcycles and more. These are great booth draws that leave the “experience” with that company out of the equation. The only experience they have is that of a company rep handing them a bag of popcorn or being lucky enough to select the right raffle ticket.
  Level 3 is the true “experiential” display or opportunity. This may occur at the booth itself or at a company-hosted event off the convention floor.
  Level 3 is the one I’d like to talk about. Here’s an example of true experiential marketing…
  A little over 10 years ago, we had a client, Triad Guaranty Insurance Corporation, a mortgage insurance company. Our goal was to orchestrate an event for the annual MBA show, which was in Chicago that particular year. We wanted to do something that would be genuinely fun for both TGIC and for its current and prospective clients. Accordingly, we developed an experience that integrated a night of comedy starring the CEO and other key executives that took place at Second City.
  At this event, key executives were brought on stage and incorporated into the comedy routine. Certain clients and other audience members were also invited on stage to participate, and others could participate, if they wished, from their seats.
  The response to the event was overwhelmingly good, and audience members who attended other events at the MBA show remarked that our client, TGIC, had the very best event of them all, beating out the multi-million-dollar events held by industry giants like Fannie and Freddie and many others. How expensive was it, you ask? Cheap! Even though I don’t recall the dollar amount, it was miniscule compared to the amounts spent by their competitors and many others.
  A night of free cocktails and hors d'oeuvres attracts people looking for free drinks and food, leads to forced conversation in some cases and features people armed with business cards milling around trying to sell themselves.
  Make the experience with your company the focal point, not the free drinks and food.

• Homebuyer seminar or user workshop: Whether you wish to conduct a homebuyer seminar or if you're a company demonstrating your technology to industry executives at your location, at a trade show or via GoToMeeting, develop an experience that integrates your people with the people in attendance in a memorable way. Focus on “edutainment.”
  Edutainment is when you have content that has both a high educational and high entertainment value. Some ideas include animations, humor, parodies and direct audience involvement.
  The production needs to strike a proper balance between the educational aspect and the entertainment aspect so as not to detract from the intended goal. It's not uncommon for those in charge of such productions to get a bit carried away with the entertainment aspect, losing the audience in the process. The purpose of edutainment is to give your audience a positive, memorable brand experience with great information so they will remember you at the right time. 

The goal of an experiential event is to engage as many of the senses as possible. The more senses involved, the more unforgettable you become! It’s essential that the experience people
walk away with is positive, so planning and creativity are important. The last thing you want to do is disappoint by enticing people with an experience that doesn’t live up to expectations.

Tags: Inbound Marketing, John Seroka, Mortgage, Marketing, Public Relations, Brand Development