Online marketing for mortgage brokers has become difficult to the point of impossible over the past few years.  Impossible in only certain regards.  For example, two or three years ago I would have explained to mortgage brokers the value of creating good content on your site so that you will get good results in the search engines.  I still believe that you should have a web site with good content, but getting top results in the search engines for mortgage related keywords has become next to impossible.  There is so much competition out there form the big mortgage companies and the thousands of lead companies that you will be fighting an uphill battle.  If you are targetting a niche market, even if it means focusing very small, then you should definitely focus on your content because you still have a chance. 

If 90% of your web site's traffic comes from paid advertisements (like Google/Overture), then you should strongly considering setting up a special "landing page" on your web site or even consider setting up a new domain that is only used for your landing page.  So what is a "landing page" site?  http://www.schooldebts.com is a good example of a landing page site.  This web site is used to gather student loan consolidation leads.  Making your potential customers wade through a long lead form or search around on your web site just to be able to find your contact information is the exact opposite of what you want.  You want these people to contact you so you can sell them a mortgage.  It is that simple.  That is your job.

Your landing page should have your contact information on it.  Make it easy for people to call or email you.  Tell them, in one or two sentences, why they should contact you and then give them a lead form to fill out.  Most leads are looking for brokers who are going to find them a good deal on their mortgage and will be easy to work with.  If you are focusing your Google/Overture ads on your local market, make your landing page local.  "I have been working here in Chicago for 10 years......"  Somebody coming to your web site who lives in Chicago will be more likely to fill out your lead form after seeing that than if you have 50 different loan calculators.

Driving traffic to your landing page is half of the battle.  The other half is to get that traffic turned into real leads.  K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid is the motto you need to live by here.  Once you have that lead in hand, your next is to make sure you are following up with the rate shoppers and tire kickers.  My next article will be about using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) package to help you stay on top of your leads. 

LeadPortal will be offering a service in the near future where you can get a landing page site that not only gathers leads, but populates the leads into your own CRM system.  This will be a very inexpensive service that will greatly benefit many brokers.  http://www.bestloanoffer.com/indexX.php is an example of a mortgage broker landing page.  More to come!

This article was written by the team at LeadPortal.com.