By Chris Jones
Branch manager
City 1st Mortgage Services
Marketing Your Business and Yourself
Understand how to approach your marketing with purpose and diligence
It’s important for mortgage profes- sionals to realize that they’re con- stantly marketing; their business
and their professional image are on
sale all day, every day.
Consider the recent holiday season
and all the various parties and get-
togethers that you attended. Even if
those situations weren’t strictly tied to
your origination business, you should
have been conscious of the image
you projected and the trust that you
were or were not building with friends,
colleagues and strangers. you are your
own brand, and everything that you do
strengthens or weakens that brand.
Marketing with purpose
regardless of the variety or particular type of marketing in which you’re
engaging, how can you know if your
marketing is effective or not? at the
macro level, which is the only level
most mortgage professionals are ever
concerned about, it may seem fairly
simple: you may merely ask yourself if
you’re getting enough business in the
door to reach your targets.
If you are, so this line of thinking goes,
then your marketing is effective. If you
aren’t, then it isn’t. Just because it’s effective, however, doesn’t mean that it
couldn’t be more effective. further, just
because your marketing is effective
doesn’t mean that you’re not wasting
its effects with a system of loan-closing
that has significant leaks in it. yet these
things tend to be ignored in favor of the
simplistic hypothesis that marketing is
effective if it produces enough loans.
In a vibrant market, that brand of
thinking may be enough to keep the
doors open, but in this current market,
originators have to do better and maximize every hour and every dollar they
have. In other words, they have to market with purpose.
What are the specific activities you
engage in, both professionally and personally? What about the newsletter you
send out — is that effective? What about
the networking meetings you go to, or
the Chamber of Commerce meetings
you attend, or your affiliation with local
realtor organizations? are those affiliations effective? How can you know?
The only way to be confident in any
marketing campaign or initiative is to
test it. you need to take action in a decisive way and then determine the time
that it takes and the money you expend
in order to adequately measure the efforts you’re making. Then you can analyze the results, examining whether or
not you’re receiving additional referrals or gaining new opportunities. you
need to be certain that you’re not simply pouring time and money into activities that don’t affect your bottom line,
even if those activities make it seem as
though you’re busy.
Testing and analysis
Unless you’re inundated with business
— and probably even if you are — you
should be both exacting and demanding about your calculations. a good rule
of thumb is that a marketing campaign
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Chris Jones is a branch manager with City 1st
Mortgage Services and a 10-year veteran of
the industry. He’s the author of the forthcoming book Mastering the Six Channels of
Marketing, a look at why most loan officers
can’t even get their mothers to call them back
anymore. Jones is also a sought-after public
speaker. He and his wife Jeanette live in Lehi,
Utah, with their eight children. reach him at
(801) 850-3781 or chris@lehimortgages.com.
