Nine out of 10 mortgage professionals can’t generate good quality leads from the web. Are you one of them?
If you want to grow your mortgage business, you have to steadily and consistently generate good quality prospects and leads. However, the landscape is changing rapidly and moving in a direction where conventional marketing is becoming less effective at generating qualified and engaged prospects that you can turn into mortgage deals.
There’s both a huge problem and an even bigger opportunity here, depending on how you look at it. Smart brokerages will capitalize on this change in market behaviour and take advantage of it for significant growth. Others will ignore it, and continue marketing themselves the way they’ve always done it, and risk being left behind.
With all the powerful tools we implement in our marketing and all the money we spend to get our message in front of the right people, we still fall far short of meeting people where they are and giving them what they need the way they want it.
But there has been no other option up to this point. Text-based email open rates continue to decline as inboxes are flooded with noise. And it isn’t slowing down.
- Average open rate across industries: 20.8%
- Average click rate across industries: 2.43%
Source: https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/
People are shifting how they do everything from accessing music and media to searching for and purchasing products. It’s all going mobile through apps.
People are using their smartphones and tablets more than ever to search for and consume media, information, education, and to search for, research and purchase products and services.
And they’re using apps to do it instead of browsers.
Mobile More Prevalent Than Ever
- People today have two times more interactions with brands on mobile than anywhere else—including TV, in-store, etc. (Google, 2017)
- 80% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies with mobile sites or apps that help them easily answer their questions. (Google, 2018)
- 94% of respondents in a Facebook survey (of one million people) have a smartphone on hand while watching TV. (Facebook, 2018)
- During TV shows, viewers paid attention to mobile 28% of the time, and during TV ads, they paid attention to mobile more than half the time. People ages 18–24 looked at their smartphones 60% of the time during TV ads, and people ages 45 and over did so 41% of the time (Facebook, 2018)
I hope it’s becoming clear that mobile is the future of the mortgage business and marketing online. Now, let’s look at how people are using their mobile devices.
Spam filters are becoming more strict and almost too good at restricting access, to the point where your content may not be seen by your prospective clients.
The experience is broken. When you click a link you have to leave your email client and move to another application to view the content. On top of that, people have become wise to text-based email marketing and are less responsive to it.
What are They Doing on Their Mobile Devices?
Consumers are using apps on their mobile devices significantly more than web browsers to get things done. And social media apps and messaging apps are at the top of the list.
It’s clear that people want an instant, seamless, frictionless experience that meets them where they are and gives them the power to do it their way. Apps give them that.
- Apps account for 89% of mobile media time, with the other 11% spent on websites. (Smart Insights)
- Users spend on average 69% of their media time on smartphones (Comscore, 2017)
- In 2017, 95.1% of active Facebook user accounts accessed the social network via a mobile device (Statista, 2018)
Your customers are on Facebook and Facebook Messenger where it’s easier to reach them and get their attention.
What is Facebook Messenger & Why Should I Care?
Messenger is Facebook’s messaging platform and application. Think text messaging, but through Facebook and 100 times more powerful and better.
And 1.2 billion people use it monthly on both desktop through browser and on mobile through dedicated apps.
And everyone who interacts through Facebook Messenger has a Facebook profile, which means they can be targeted by ads.
Most importantly, this is a messaging app that people use to communicate with friends and family regularly so they’re very comfortable using it. And it’s how they want to communicate.
So if that’s the case, wouldn’t it make sense to tap into that channel if you could?
Well you can, and it’s one of the best marketing decisions you can make, if you make it soon.
Why Use Facebook Messenger as a Marketing Channel?
Statistics show Facebook Messenger is a channel you should pay attention to.
- Over 2 billion messages are sent each month between people and businesses. If you think Facebook Messenger is only for people and not brands, you’re wrong. (Inc)
- 260 million new conversations are started daily. These are not just new threads between people, but between people and businesses too. This number will only grow. (Inc)
- Messaging apps surpassed social networks in monthly active users sometime in 2015 according to a report on Business Insider.
- Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion users. That is more users than Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram combined. (Inc)
- Messenger adds 100 million new users every five to six months. Facebook Messenger hit 1.3 billion users in September 2018. (Inc)
- 64% of monthly Facebook users use messenger. (DMR, 2018)
- Users have 7 billion conversations on Messenger every day. That’s over 2.5 trillion conversations every year. For comparison, Snapchat users send 3 billion photos per day. (Inc)
One of the Best Marketing Opportunities
By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships with businesses without interacting with a human (Gartner).
Commerce is moving that way, whether you adopt it or not.
This tool and channel allows you to communicate with customers the way THEY want: one-to-one, on their phones or tablets, whenever is convenient for them.
It keeps your customers within the safety of Facebook and removes friction and barriers from the process, making it easier to move the relationship forward faster.
And, most importantly, Facebook Messenger marketing creates conversations, not leads. You don’t need a complex funnel when you interact with customers the way they want.
The result is a better experience for the customer and that translates to a better first impression of your brand, which leads to a whole host of benefits for both you and your clients in the long term.
So… let’s talk about what you would actually get out of Facebook Messenger marketing if you decided to implement it for your mortgage business.
Messenger Marketing – What’s in it for My Mortgage Business?
1) Generates a conversation, not a lead.
In every other type of marketing you can do for your mortgage business, you’re never in an active conversation with the prospect in real time throughout the marketing process.
Marketing is meant to drive people to the conversation and make that conversation happen. Although, it can take a while. It’s never instant. Facebook Messenger makes this possible.
Now imagine this scene for a minute:
What if when you were watching a TV commercial, you could just walk up and press a button on the screen during the commercial and a conversation started right there between you and a person from that company?
That is exactly what happens with Facebook Messenger marketing. The customer clicks the ad and the conversation starts. The moment they click, they’re in an active dialogue with you and your brand.
That means you get to talk to them the moment they’re most interested in what you’re offering.
2) It gives the customer the simplest path to getting their problem solved without confusion.
It feels natural to them, so their guard comes down. Every time you have to leave one app for another to get something done, the friction reduces the likelihood you will turn them into a customer.
Most sales and marketing funnels are comprised of landing pages in one tool, a website on another platform, text-based email marketing in another tool, analytics in another tool…you get the picture.
That means that the user is going to have to figure out how to navigate through landing pages and multiple emails and website pages to finally get to the point where they can take the next step.
The image below is a comparison of a customer’s experience through a conventional landing-page funnel versus a Facebook Messenger funnel experience.
- Each dot represents a touch.
- Each red arrow represents a change from one software, app or device to another throughout the process.
The entire conversion process can take place almost entirely within Messenger. It’s a straight path to a solution.
That means prospects trust your brand faster and convert into a qualified lead and customer faster.
3) It’s automated, but not too much.
Once the user clicks the ad, they go directly to Facebook Messenger where the conversation is handled automatically by a Messenger bot.
A “bot” is simply a software version of a robot that you program to converse with users through Facebook Messenger just like a person…well, almost.
This means that your virtual assistant (the bot) is having a conversation behind the scenes with your prospective client, qualifying them, giving them more resources, gathering information about them, getting them interested and ready to talk to someone.
Then that prospect is handed over to the business to take over by phone or a scheduled appointment.
All of the lead generation and prequalification happens automatically.
4) Open up a channel four times more effective than email to communicate with your prospective customer whenever you want.
For someone to get value from what you send them, they have to consume it/access it/find it.
Facebook Messenger has an 80% open rate compared to text-based email with only 24%. Facebook Messenger has a 56% response rate compared to text-based email with less than 3%
Using Messenger Marketing in your Mortgage Business
Marketing is becoming harder and more expensive. People aren’t listening to channels like email and phone calls like they used to. They’re migrating to apps on their mobile devices to search for your services and products and do everything else.
With this huge shift in consumers to mobile, you need to have a strategy that focuses on reaching them there and engaging with them the way they want to do it – through apps like Facebook Messenger.
Let me ask you two quick questions.
1) Is your mortgage business positioned to take advantage of the mobile channel and channels like Facebook Messenger marketing rather than get left behind?
And…
2) Do you want to continue to generate leads that are getting more and more expensive by the day that hardly ever turn into conversations, let alone customers?
If your answer is “No” to either or both of the above questions, Facebook Messenger marketing could be the solution you need. If you want to explore this form of marketing for your mortgage business, or you have some questions, let’s connect and talk. Feel free to email me directly at javed@empression.ca
Last modified: February 14, 2019
Thanks for the information