Mortgage Broker Marketing: How to Get Referrals

Mortgage brokers can take their marketing to the next level with these six simple ways to drive referrals.

For those of you who are hoping to expand your business in the new year, you’re probably asking yourself a bunch of questions. How can I improve my services? What can I do to make myself more visible? How can I get more referrals to drive new business? Referrals are a key component in any mortgage broker’s plans to grow their business and a lot of times they can be hard to come by if you don’t know how to go about it. Word of mouth is a powerful tool and a home buyer will make their decision of which broker to go with based on that. So how do you go about making it work for you? Luckily, we’ve got the answers. Here are six simple ways to obtain quality referrals that will take your business to the next level.

Referrals are a key component in any mortgage broker’s plans to grow their business, and a lot of times they can be hard to come by if you don’t know how to go about it.

1. Keep the family close

The first thing any mortgage broker who excels at marketing will tell you is that in order to get quality referrals from current and past clients, you need to continue to nurture those relationships even after you’re done doing business. As a matter of fact, more than half of customer referrals occur within six months of the loan’s closing. Continuing to care about your clients after their loan has funded is a great way to make them feel strongly enough about your services to refer you to friends and family.

Many brokers and loan officers set up referral programs to encourage their clients to refer them to other people. Follow-up emails, new homeowner care packages, and rewards for submitted referrals are all ways to keep in touch with your clients and show them that you care. Mortgage broker marketing is about word of mouth, and being the type of broker people want to tell their friends and family about can go a long way for you. Stay in touch and watch it pay off.

2. Set goals

In the spirit of the new year, it’s only right that we encourage you to set goals for yourself. While the year is still young, think about how you want to improve your business. How many referrals do you want to get each month? Is that number reasonable to sustain over the course of a year? If so, how will you do it? Setting a proper plan of action will hold you accountable throughout the year and keep you focused on the task at hand: growing your business.

While the year is still young, think about how you want to improve your business.

3. Get your priorities straight

At the end of the day, this is a business. And in order to grow said business, you’re going to have to prioritize some things over others. That includes relationships. Let’s be honest here, some relationships are more fruitful than others. If you’re serious about growing your business through referrals, these are the relationships you’ll need to prioritize. I’m not saying you need to cut people off if they’re not able to refer you to as many people, just spend more time where you’ll get better results.

4. Expand your social media presence

Like it or not, the world is going social. There are approximately two million actively licensed real estate professionals in today’s market—91% of which use social media on a regular basis. You know who else is on social media? Homebuyers! Putting yourself out there and creating a social media presence not only makes you more visible to prospective clients, it allows you to communicate with them indirectly through your posts on top of the one-on-one communication you’ll be doing as part of your job. It’s one of the better ways to reach out to potential clients that you may not come in contact with otherwise. Build it and they will come.

There are approximately two million actively licensed real estate professionals in today’s market—91% of which use social media on a regular basis.

5. Work together

Speaking of those two million real estate professionals in today’s market . . . they can help you! Get in good with those guys and ask them to refer you to people who are looking to buy homes. Attending their open houses to provide insight into the mortgage industry can draw several potential clients, and potential clients mean potential referrals. You see what I’m getting at here? Everyone needs a little help, and a lot of these real estate professionals have the resources and the contacts to make your life a lot easier. In return, you can refer any clients of yours that are looking for real estate agents back to them. It sounds like a match made in heaven.

6. Be the best

This one’s a no-brainer. The better you do your job, the more clients you’ll attract, and the more referrals you’ll get. It’s easy, right? So how do you make sure you’re doing your job as well as possible in a way that’ll grow your business? COMMUNICATE! The most important part of any broker/client relationship is communication. Home buyers never want to be in the dark, especially when their money is concerned. Being honest and transparent with your clients is key to fostering good relationships with them and providing service that they’ll want to tell people about.

What else can you do to leave an impression? Know your loan programs. As a broker, you’ll need to have a thorough knowledge of your lender-partner’s product offering. Your clients will have plenty of questions, and if you can’t answer them, they’re not going to have much confidence in you. Knowing the loan programs, their rates, and which ones would be good fits for your clients goes a long way in keeping your customers happy.

A lot goes into being a good mortgage broker, but most of it has to do with just being a pleasant person. Having a good attitude doesn’t just affect how your clients view you, it affects how they’ll view the mortgage process as a whole. If you’re getting upset over something in the process, how do you expect them to act? Being friendly and always willing to help makes your client feel more at ease through the process, therefore, making your job way easier.

Brokers, do you have any marketing tips and tricks to share that will help other mortgage professionals grow their businesses? Share them with us on social media!