Experiential Branding Drives Mortgage Industry Businesses to Grow
Email ArticleThe 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 they serve, 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 if 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 5 senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing) as possible of their target audience 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 of 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 you would 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.
We’re in an age where “expert opinion” is an over-used concept. Consumers don’t trust actors/actresses or other public figures they see promoting a product or service. But they DO trust others experiential advice like never before. Customer testimonial videos capitalize on this trend. They don’t need to be especially slick or “over-produced,” they just need to be unscripted and truthful. Here’s an industry example brought to you by Quicken Loans:
-
Local home & 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 sites on an upcoming local home & 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 it. 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 sight 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 that have superior “bed side” manor, 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 pre-approval certificate or printed out action plan generated by your reps to help potential borrowers recall next steps and envision home-ownership.
-
Industry trade show: The annual MBA trade show is ripe for
experiential marketing events. At these shows, you see 3 levels of
marketing…
- Level 1 is the “give-away” booth. The give-away booth has brochures, business cards, pens, key fobs…all designed for potential clients, qualified or not, to put in their convention bag and move on. The booth visitors are approached by a sales person 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 and Harley Davidson motorcycles and more. Unfortunately, the visitor and even the winner of the big ticket items that are purely superficial. These are great booth draws that leave the “experience” with that company out of the equation.
-
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, as well as for their 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 that attended other events at the MBA show remarked that our client, TGI, 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 their competitors and many others.
A night of free cocktails and hors d'oeuvres attracts people looking for free drinks and food, forced conversation in some cases and people milling around trying to sell themselves armed with business cards.
Make the experience with your company the focal point, not the free drinks and food.
-
Homebuyer seminar or user workshop: Whether this is
conducted on-site or via Go To Meeting, develop an experience that integrates
your people with the people in attendance in a memorable way. Focus on
“edutainment.”
Edutainment is when you have an event that both educates and entertains. For this example, let me draw from a non-industry event I thought was great and maybe it will stimulate your creative thought process…
When a large group of Menards department managers gathered for a special training event, Ecolab took an interesting approach to telling their story to up-level their cleaning product demo experiences.
Two costumed boxers, Dirty Dan and Kid Clean Strike, staged a boxing match that attracted crowds.
After a brief introduction, each boxer led a group of attendees to participate in the product demos.
Following the demos, attendees returned to the “Main Event” where they used ARS keypads to answer questions about things they learned in the demos and competed for prizes.
Many companies at mortgage industry trade shows throughout the year have products they would like to demonstrate. Attendees see many competing product demos. Each company believes their product is the best. So, how could you make your demo exciting and memorable so your captive audience agrees that your product is the best solution?
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 is important. The
last thing you want to do is disappoint by enticing people with an experience
that doesn’t live up to expectations.
Seroka is where CEO’s, CMO’s and anyone responsible for their corporate brand and communications strategies in the mortgage industry can come to receive useful information, advice, insights and inspiration for growing their business.
No comments:
Post a Comment