Free Mortgage Leads - Really!

What's a mortgage lead generator to do with all those leads we can't find a buyer for?  Well why not give them away for free?  In recent years as we have over doubled the number of leads coming thru our system we end up each day with plenty of leads that for whatever reason we just couldn't find a home for.  A couple of years ago we had the bright idea of why not just give them away.  This seemed like a slam dunk of an idea - we make every request for a quote gets answered and a few mortgage brokers get a taste of what our leads are really like.  Whenever I talked to potential customers about buying our product they always wanted a few to cut their teeth on.  The problem with the whole thing we realized was we just couldn't start handing out leads to just anyone.  We needed to make sure somehow that who recieved the leads was who they said were and that also they were a licensed mortgage broker. 

The solution we came up with was the LeadSampler program.  We designed a way to make it easy to signup, validate who you were and that you were in fact a mortgage broker.  Then we set up a window where someone could browse all the leads that were available and choose which ones they wanted.  And with that our free mortgage leads program was created.  Two free leads are available each week and is limited to just one state per broker.  Other than that there are no limitations to the program or for how long one can participate.  We beta lanuched it about 3 months ago and there are currently about 175 members.  But there are still plenty of free mortgage leads available each day.

Better Mortgage Pay-Per-Click

With the recent surge in interest in refinancing are you taking full advantage of all the internet?  To really capitalize on all the traffic, a good strategy is to look for cheap sources of paid sources.  Paying by the click to drive potential borrowers to a lead form or phone number is cheaper than ever before and can easily add to the bottom line.  With the boom most lead aggregators have scaled back their budgets for paid traffic leaving mortgage companies in a spot to be able to actually compete in places like Google Adwords and other paid sources of traffic.  Loanbright's own pay-per-click network has seen bids drop and competition level off leaving plenty of oppurtunity for generating mortgage leads cheaply and in good volume.  Because the Loanbright network is a bid-for-placement system, advertisers pay what the market will bear rather than a fixed cost per click that is found on other rate surveys.  First-time signups can now get a $50 credit to their account after making an initial deposit.

Pressing The Flesh

Do you often meet clients or potential clients in person?  Do you have loan packages out to folks 10 miles away but are doiing everything via email and FEDEX?  Time to get out of the house and gain a competitive advantage over other lenders.  As part of our Select Lead Program we have been offering brokers who pruchase our leads the ability to filter leads to zip codes or MSA's.  Many of our customers have found that being able to target folks who might be right down the street (and opening up the possibility of a face to face meeting) improves their chances of closing that loan dramatically.  We should also mention that having locally targeted mortgage leads also helps in the realtor referral side of things.  Here's our sales tip video on the subject:





Working The Weekends

Do you work the weekends?  Since we deliver leads 24/7 and we always emphasize the need to contact a lead as soon as possible, working leads on Saturdays and even Sundays can sometimes be crucial to getting the jump on other lenders.  Whenever this topic comes up I'm reminded of one broker who took one of our live connection mortgage leads and did the initial chat with the consumer while standing in line at Disney Land with his family in tow on a Sunday morning.  While this may be the extreme it points to the need to be flexible in being responding to leads. 

Here's the video on the subject.  It was the one of the first we ever did so be kind in your critiques.

Being The Backup Lender

Several months ago we created a video talking about being the "backup" lender.  You could call this a "training" video but really it's far too entertaining to label it that.  After posting the video on YouTube the anonymous star of the video gained a fair amount of notoriety at mortgage tradeshows with mostly positive feedback as to the message regarding how to capture more business by offering to borrowers to be an option should the first loan fall through.  There are more of these mortgage tips apparenty in the editing studio as of this writing so make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed to see the next one.  Here it is now for those who missed it: